David Boaz

Like Walter Olson, I was struck yesterday by Tim Carney's admonition that “Libertarians need to reassess their allegiances on social matters” in light of government infringements on religious liberty. Walter did a good job of demonstrating that libertarians, even those who are not themselves religious, have been "on the front lines" in defending religious liberty in such cases as Catholic hospitals' objections to paying for birth control and the wedding photographer in New Mexico who didn't want to photograph a gay wedding. Libertarians don't have to be conservatives to object to "liberal" infringements on personal and religious freedoms. But there's another problem with what Carney wrote. I'm not quite sure what "Libertarians need to reassess their allegiances on social matters" means. But perhaps he means that libertarians should stop thinking of themselves as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" and recognize that a lot of infringements on freedom come from the left. In my experience libertarians are well aware that in matters from taxes to gun ownership to Catholic hospitals, liberals don't live up to the ideal of true liberalism. But what about conservatives? Are conservatives really the defenders of freedom? Carney seems to want us to think so, and to line up with conservatives "on social matters." But the real record of conservatives on personal and social freedom is not very good. Consider:

• Conservatives, like National Review, supported state-imposed racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. (I won't go back and claim that "conservatives" supported slavery or other pre-modern violations of freedom.)
• Conservatives opposed legal and social equality for women.
• Conservatives supported laws banning homosexual acts among consenting adults.
• Conservatives still oppose equal marriage rights for gay couples.
• Conservatives (and plenty of liberals) support the policy of drug prohibition, which results in nearly a million arrests a year for marijuana use.
• Conservatives support state-imposed prayers and other endorsements of religion in public schools.

This is how the culture war generally plays out these days: The Left uses government to force religious people and cultural conservatives to violate their consciences, and then cries "theocracy" when conservatives object.

Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in economics—though that is hardly the most significant aspect of her work—has died at 78. My old friend Mario Rizzo of New York University examined her scholarly accomplishment in 2009 when she won the Prize:

The work of Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in economics, is not very well-known among economists. In fact, I would venture the guess than most economists had not heard of her before the prize was announced yesterday morning. Two reasons for this are that her degree is in political science and she has written for publications outside of the mainstream economics journals. Additionally, her work, by and large, lacks the high degree of mathematical formalism now so characteristic of economics. Yet the Nobel Prize Committee has done a great service to economics and the greater social-scientific community. When a well-known economist receives the prize little is gained apart from the recognition of a job well done and perhaps some wider public recognition. I do not think that great contributions are made in any discipline because of the incentive effects of an improbable prize. However, in this case the Nobel Committee has brought extraordinary work to the attention of an economics discipline that has become excessively specialized and, perhaps increasingly irrelevant to the real world, as Paul Krugman and others have recently suggested. Professor Ostrom’s work is highly relevant to important issues in economic development, common-pool resources, the development of social norms, and the solution of various collective action problems. Her work is also methodologically diverse. She uses experimental methods, field research, and evolutionary game theory. She is not afraid to draw on various disciplines when appropriate: economics, political science, evolutionary psychology, cultural anthropology and so forth. She is a very worthy intellectual descendant of Adam Smith who realized that the study of trade based on self-interest needed to be supplemented by a broader view of humankind – individuals capable of the so-called “moral sentiments” like honesty, benevolence, and loyalty, as well as the standard vices. Much of Ostrom’s work centers on developing and applying a broader conception of rationality than economists usually employ. The standard conception of rationality is not the rationality of real human beings but the rationality of cognitively-unlimited lightning-fast calculators. This is a purely imaginary construct. On the other hand, Olstrom’s “thick rationality” is the result of trial and error, use of relatively simple heuristics, employment of rules, and the embodiment of cultural norms. To reject standard, improbable rationality is notto reject rationality. It is rather to develop more sophisticated, and yet more realistic, models of rationality. “Thick rationality” is a bottom-up phenomenon. It recognizes the importance of local knowledge and diverse approaches in the management of resources. For example, many top-down irrigation projects in developing countries have failed because they have concentrated on the physical aspects of water delivery. Ostrom believes that the institutional aspects are more important. Irrigation systems built by farmers themselves are often more efficient. They deliver more water, are better repaired, and result in higher farm productivity than those built by international agencies. Often these agencies take no notice of local customs, knowledge and incentive structures; the knowledge of the bureaucrat is inferior to the knowledge of the individuals on the ground.

The central problem on which her employment of the notion of “thick rationality” can shed light is what she calls “social dilemmas.” These are circumstances in which interacting individuals can easily succumb to maximizing their short-term interests to the detriment of their long term interests. To return to our irrigation example, suppose farmers share the use of a creek for irrigation. They face a collective problem of organizing to clear out the fallen trees and brush from the previous winter. Each farmer would like to have the others do it. There are incentives to free-ride on the “public spiritedness” of others – however, everyone may think this way and nothing will get done. Ostrom finds that cooperation will often take place while the “thin” theory of rationality predicts that it will not. She finds that factors such as face-to-face contact (likely when there are small numbers), the equality of each farmer’s stake in the benefits of irrigation, and the ease of monitoring the farmer’s contribution to brush removal all make the likelihood of cooperation greater.

Elinor Ostrom has and continues to expand the power of a broader conception of rationality – one that Adam Smith would have recognized and been comfortable with – to explain the multifarious forms of human cooperation that conventional economists have been unable to explain. This is a major contribution.

Paul Dragos Aligica and Peter Boettke of George Mason University showed excellent prescience in publishing a book in the summer of 2009, just a few months before the Nobel Prize was awarded, on the work of Ostrom, her husband Vincent, and their colleagues at Indiana University, Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School.

Twenty-five years ago Tuesday, President Ronald Reagan made his famous speech at the Berlin Wall in which he declaimed:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

On a trip to East Germany in 2006 I talked to a politician who had been involved in the 1989 Leipzig protests that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall. I asked him, “When Reagan said ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ in 1987, did you know that?” He said, yes, not from East German TV but from West German TV, which they could watch. And what did you think, I asked. “We thought it was good, but we thought it was impossible.” And yet just two years later, “peace prayers” in Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche turned into protests for liberalization and open borders. The Leipzig politician told me, “As it says in the Bible, we walked seven times around the inner city, and the wall came down.” Then I went to a museum exhibit in Leipzig on the history of the German Democratic Republic. It was very impressive, with a large collection of posters, letters, newspapers, video, and more. Alas, it was all in German, so I had only a dim understanding of what it all said. I did get the impression that it wasn’t a balanced presentation of communism such as might be found in a Western museum; these curators knew that communism had been a nightmare, and they were glad to be out of it. As it happened, the only English words in the entire exhibit came in the collection of audio excerpts that greeted visitors in the entry foyer. And they were a familiar voice proclaiming: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!”

Ray Bradbury has died at 91. Far be it from me to try to assess the work of the great author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. I'll just quote Gerald Jonas in the New York Times:

By many estimations Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. His name would appear near the top of any list of major science-fiction writers of the 20th century, beside those of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and the Polish author Stanislaw Lem.

Like most libertarians -- which in this case probably includes a lot of liberals and conservatives -- I'm a great fan of the anti-censorship novel Fahrenheit 451. But a story that doesn't get much attention -- it's not in the Times obituary -- is how Fahrenheit 451 itself was censored by people who no doubt thought they had the best of intentions. When Bradbury discovered what had been done, he wrote this Coda to the 1979 Del Rey edition. It's worth reading today. What he said then is still true: "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people run­ning about with lit matches." In memoriam, Ray Bradbury's Coda:

About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles. But, she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles? Read more...

At the Huffington Post I have an article on President Obama's prospects this fall with young voters. I note that:

He's stumped the country promising to keep interest rates low on student loans, and every voter likes free money. And then perhaps more importantly, he re-established his cool by endorsing gay marriage. Hope and change are back. For many young voters, this reconnected them to the hip young Obama of 2008.

But those aren't the only issues. Citing surveys from Gallup and Harvard, I ask what young voters think about his policies on war, the war on drugs, jobs, and the massive debt he's leaving them. Today's dismal unemployment numbers, of course, just reinforce the point that

President Obama's policies have produced the slowest economic recovery in history. An analysis from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University found that more than half of young college graduates were unemployed or underemployed last year.

Read it all.

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," sang a legendary nanny. But today's most powerful nanny, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, won't tolerate that. He plans to ban the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters, and even street carts, the New York Times reports. Mayor Bloomberg has lots of facts at his fingertips: Many Americans are overweight. Consumption of sugar can cause weight gain. All true, and a good reason for Mike Bloomberg to watch his diet. But why should he watch MY diet? And the diets of 8 million New Yorkers, most of them adults? If he thinks New Yorkers should consume less sugar, let him hold a press conference. But giving people information isn't good enough for him. Sometimes he gives people information, and they still don't act the way he thinks they should. So what's a billionaire mayor to do? He could bribe them, I suppose. But as Otter said, that could take years and cost millions of lives. Well, millions of dollars anyway. So, like Otter, he's decided to go with "a really futile and stupid gesture" instead. When he's in the mood, Mayor Bloomberg can give eloquent testimony to the virtue of freedom when it comes to Muslims  --

America is a beacon of freedom, and no place defends those freedoms more fervently, or has been attacked for those freedoms more ferociously, than New York City.

-- or gay people:

I have no doubt that in your lifetime, liberty’s light will allow us to see more clearly the truth of our nation’s founding principles, and allow us to see all people, and all couples, as full and equal members of the American family....If government can deny freedom to one, it can deny freedom to all.

But somehow when it's the mayor's own sensibilities that are offended, he forgets his eloquent defense of freedom. Suddenly, as White House chief of staff Andrew Card said of President Bush, Bloomberg "sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child." A child who needs protection. A child who can't make his own decisions. A child who needs a parent, or a nanny, to tell him what to eat and when to exercise. In a free society, government doesn't make our personal decisions for us. We don't need a Big Brother or a mayoral nanny. We have the right and the responsibility to make our own decisions, so long as we don't interfere with the rights of others. And even if we make what Mayor Bloomberg views as the wrong decisions. And speaking of the mayor's commitment to freedom, who exactly is going to impose this sweeping ban? Not the people, in a referendum. Not a constitutional convention. Not even the city council. This "far-reaching ban," as the Times describes it, will be imposed on 8 million free citizens of New York by the city's unelected Board of Health, all of whose members are appointed by . . . the mayor.

Two weeks ago Brian Doherty discussed his new book, Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired, at a Cato Book Forum, which you can watch online. This weekend BookTV on C-SPAN2 will broadcast the event twice:

• Saturday, June 2, at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Sunday, June 3, at 3:30 p.m. ET

Also on BookTV this weekend: a rebroadcast of Brian Lamb's 1999 interview with Virginia Postrel on The Future and Its Enemies, and an interview with Elizabeth Price Foley on The Tea Party: Three Principles.

Beto O'Rourke, who is well known for questioning the policy of drug prohibition, defeated eight-term congressman Silvestre Reyes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a Texas congressional primary yesterday. In the heavily Democratic, 78 percent Hispanic El Paso district, O'Rourke is almost certain to win in November. President Obama endorsed Reyes, and former president Bill Clinton campaigned for him. The Washington Post notes:

Reyes made an issue out of O’Rourke’s support for marijuana legalization, which the congressman opposes. In one Reyes ad, a group of children say “no” to drugs while “Beto O’Rourke wants to legalize drugs” flashed across the screen.

O'Rourke campaigned as a "true Democrat" on economic issues. But in addition to his criticisms of the drug war, he endorsed term limits and criticized Reyes for supporting the Patriot Act. Last November, O'Rourke spoke at Cato's conference "Ending the Global War on Drugs," along with the former president of Brazil, the former foreign minister of Mexico, and other world leaders. Watch the video: O'Rourke was also interviewed for a Cato podcast. Back in 2009, Cato's Juan Carlos Hidalgo participated with O'Rourke in a conference on the drug war in El Paso. Reyes is the sixth congressional incumbent defeated in a 2012 primary, which doesn't sound like a lot. But the Campaign for Primary Accountability, which supported O'Rourke, notes that the average number of incumbents defeated in any primary season is three.

In Sunday's New York Daily News, I deplore the efforts of politicians and regulators to drag successful companies into the parasite economy of Washington, the most recent example being Apple. As the article says,

Heard of “too big to fail”? Well, to Washington, Apple is now too big not to nail.

I was prompted to these reflections by a recent article in Politico. The Wall Street Journal used to call itself "the daily diary of the American dream." Politico is the daily diary of the rent-seeking class. And that class is very upset with Apple for not hiring many lobbyists, as illustrated by Politico's front-page cartoon: The story begins:

Apple is taking a bruising in Washington, and insiders say there’s a reason: It’s the one place in the world where the company hasn’t built its brand. In the first three months of this year, Google and Microsoft spent a little more than $7 million on lobbying and related federal activities combined. Apple spent $500,000 — even less than it spent the year before.

The nerve of them! How do they expect lobbyists to feed their families? Then comes my favorite part:

The company’s attitude toward D.C. — described by critics as “don’t bother us” — has left it without many inside-the-Beltway friends.

"Don't bother us"—yes! Don't tread on me. Laissez nous faire. Leave us alone. Just let us sit out here in Silicon Valley, inventing cool stuff and distributing it to the world. We won't bother you. Just don't bother us. But no pot of money can be left unbothered by the regulators and rent-seekers.

Apple is mostly on its own when the Justice Department goes after it on e-books, when members of Congress attack it over its overseas tax avoidance or when an alphabet soup of regulators examine its business practices.

And what does the ruling class say to productive people who try to just avoid politics and make stuff? Nice little company ya got there, shame if anything happened to it:

“I never once had a meeting with anybody representing Apple,” said Jeff Miller, who served as a senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee for eight years. “There have been other tech companies who chose not to engage in Washington, and for the most part that strategy did not benefit them.”

As I noted in the Daily News, back in 1998 Microsoft was in the same situation—a successful company on the West Coast, happily ignoring politics, getting too rich for politics to ignore it—and a congressional aide told Fortune's Jeff Birnbaum, "They don't want to play the D.C. game, that's clear, and they've gotten away with it so far. The problem is, in the long run they won't be able to." All too true. Watch out, aspiring entrepreneurs. You too could become too big not to nail.

In Sunday's Washington Post, U.S. Naval Academy professor John Nagl notes that "For the first time in modern American history, neither major candidate for the presidency has any military experience." That reminded me of a post I wrote as the 2008 presidential campaign got underway, with only one veteran in the mix. I'll bring the last line of that post up to the front: "At the very least, candidates who have never served in a war should have some special humility in urging that other Americans be sent to war." Some of the other commentary in that post seems still relevant today:

“As some of the leading presidential candidates trooped before the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City this week, there was one thing largely missing at the lectern — veterans of foreign wars,” writes Peter Baker in the Washington Post, contrasting this year’s campaign with past election years. Baker grades both former presidents and current candidates on a steep curve. He writes, “Every president from Harry S. Truman to George H.W. Bush served.” But LBJ, already a congressman, went on investigative missions for FDR, admittedly flying around the South Pacific combat zone. And the nearsighted Ronald Reagan made propaganda films in Los Angeles. He even counts George W. Bush as a veteran on the basis of his Texas Air National Guard service. As for the current candidates,

“The torch is being passed to a new generation that’s never worn a uniform,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, a military historian at Columbia University. “It’s a significant change. It means people are now coming of age who are really the post-Vietnam generation.”

But is that really true? The leading Democratic candidates are a woman and a man born in 1961. But John Edwards, born in 1953, Bill Richardson (1947), and Joe Biden (1941) are not “the post-Vietnam generation.” They’re the non-Vietnam generation. A blogger has some more details about the Vietnam records of 2008 candidates here. As for the Republicans, John McCain famously served, as Baker notes. But Mitt Romney (1947), Rudy Giuliani (1944), Fred Thompson (1942), and Newt Gingrich (1947) are, like their Democratic counterparts, within the age cohorts who went to Vietnam. They weren’t post-Vietnam, just nowhere-near-Vietnam. Mike Huckabee (1955) and Sam Brownback (1956), along with Barack Obama, would seem to the only candidates who are actually from the post-Vietnam generation. Does this matter? It used to matter to voters. When I asked my parents in the 1960s, about 20 years after the end of World War II, why all the local candidates listed themselves as veterans on all their campaign literature, my mother told me that you’d wonder what was wrong with a man who hadn’t served in “the war.” Today, some worry that military veterans might be more eager to go to war. Historian Jackson sees it differently: “When you have leaders who haven’t gone [to war], I do think it changes the equation a little bit,” he told the Post. “It’s a little bit worrisome. People who have actually been to war . . . are actually a little less inclined to go to war. Generals know what war’s about, and they’re less enthusiastic to go rocketing off than civilians.” That reminds me of Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers, often denounced as militaristic or even fascist, especially by people who have only seen the movie. In the novel, only military veterans were citizens with voting rights. But the basis for that was classical republicanism: that only those who were willing to defend the society, and who by facing combat had come to understand the real meaning of power and war and violence, could be trusted to lead the society. At the very least, candidates who have never served in a war should have some special humility in urging that other Americans be sent to war.