Last week’s episode of The Philosopher’s Zone was titled, “The Epistemology of Blogging.” Alan Saunders discussed blogging’s impact on the development and dissemination of knowledge in society with two speakers, Rutgers University’s Alvin Goldman and the University of Tasmania’s David Cody.
Professor Goldman argued that, to the degree to which blogging hastens the demise of the traditional media, investigative journalism will suffer. In addition, the blogosphere lacks the traditional media’s gatekeepers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the information we get from outlets such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, and Fox News is only of the highest quality. Professor Goldman is concerned that blogging enables consumers to self-select unfiltered information that merely confirms their biases. This could lead to less informed voters, which could end up harming the democratic process.
Professor Goldman obviously has a much higher opinion of the traditional media and of the democratic process than I do.
David Cody, on the other hand, took the glass-half-full perspective on blogging, suggesting that the democratic process doesn’t need gatekeepers in the first place, and that blogs offer some healthy competition to the world of news and information. He drew a parallel between modern arguments against blogging to the arguments made against the printing press in the 15th century. It seems that Johannes Gutenberg took some flak from the established information gatekeepers of his day, too.
Obviously Mr. Cody’s viewpoint more closely reflects my own.
As I listened to the podcast, though, I was struck by Professor Goldman’s implication that the traditional media actually provide the range of perspectives that he believes is so important to the body politic. As a libertarian, the idea that consuming information provided by the major news outlets would lead to a more informed, unbiased populace is laughable. I can probably count on one hand the number of times that a pro-liberty perspective has ever been presented by the mainstream media. Instead, all we ever get is a comparison and contrast of two marginally different big-government approaches to any given issue, and at no point is a serious critique of the role of government ever allowed to enter into the conversation. If it weren’t for the advent of blogs and other non-traditional media outlets, these more fundamental questions might never be considered at all.
This idea stayed with me all week as I listened to and read the traditional news media. For example, The Dallas Morning News ran a story about how parents are left to decide when their children are old enough to stay at home alone. To quote the article, “Laws govern when children can drive, vote, drink, even quit school. But in Texas, there's no limit on the age when a child can stay home alone.” What primitives we Texans must be! How can we possibly be expected to handle the pressures of parenthood if the state government doesn’t even tell us when our children are old enough to be left alone? I suppose next we’ll be expected to make our own decisions about what our kids can eat or what clothes they can wear. When, oh when, will the madness stop?
Not to be outdone, NPR threw its hat into the ring this week to compete for the honor of the most idiotic piece of journalism with a story on how the poor American dairy farmer is suffering from the low prices paid for milk these days. At no point in an almost thirteen-minute piece covering the price of dairy products did the reporter, John Burnett, manage to mention the myriad government subsidies and price supports that have controlled the dairy industry since 1937. Instead, all we heard was whining about the "free market" and (of course) "too little government oversight." I understand that journalists can’t know everything about everything, but how is it possible to know nothing about anything?
And then there’s health “reform.” As far as I can tell, all of the traditional media outlets – no matter what their supposed political biases may be – use the term “reform” when covering President Obama’s efforts to nationalize the health care and insurance industries. Of course, the word “reform” means “to improve through alteration.” This is a normative statement that begs the question, and it has no business being mentioned by allegedly objective journalists in their discussion of the issue.
With stories like these shot through the traditional media outlets, it’s hard to take Professor Goldman’s concerns too seriously. If this is the kind of service that the traditional media’s vaunted “gatekeepers” provide, we’re probably all better off just reading unfiltered blogs (like this one).
So now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants Congress to raise the national debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is the statutory limit that Congress imposes on the federal government’s debt. Of course, whenever the government’s debt approaches the maximum amount allowed by law, they simply raise the limit rather than doing anything nutty like cutting spending. In this respect Congress is a lot like the alcoholic who goes to a bar and promises himself that he’ll only have two drinks and not a drop more. But before he finishes that second drink, he decides that his self-imposed limit isn’t really a “limit” in the strictest sense of the word, but really more of a guideline - a well-intentioned, if ultimately unrealistic, suggestion.
And when it comes to the federal debt, we’re talking about a lot more than your typical bar tab. The last time I checked, the debt was $11.7 trillion and climbing. That means that every man, woman, and child in the United States owes approximately $39,000. Not to worry, though. The latest income numbers show that Americans make $39,751 a year, so if we all just pull together and give every penny we make this year to Uncle Sam, we can pay off the debt and still have $750 left over for things like food and shelter. Of course, these figures don’t include this year’s federal deficit, which should come to just under $2 trillion. But hey, what’s a couple trillion dollars among friends?
In light of these sobering numbers (sobering at least to those of us living outside the beltway), Geithner wants to raise the debt ceiling to some unspecified point above the current $12.1 trillion mark. When one considers that the entire US gross domestic product is somewhere around $14 trillion, a $12.1 trillion debt load seems pretty weighty already, but Geithner reckons he’ll need just a few trillion more to set things straight. To put his latest request into perspective, imagine someone who earns $50,000 a year and carries credit card debt totaling $43,000 – and then applies for more credit cards so he can spend his way into solvency. That’s basically the Geithner plan in a nutshell.
But it’s important to note that the “official” numbers only tell part of the story. Keep in mind that the federal government doesn’t hold itself to the same accounting practices it demands of the private sector. Companies have to recognize expenses at the time they’re incurred, even if the payment will be made later. The federal government doesn’t. Promises to pay for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare don't show up on the government’s balance sheet in the same way they would if a private business had incurred similar debt obligations. The unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare now amount to almost $100 trillion. Obama’s socialized medicine plan will only cause health care costs to skyrocket further, making Medicare’s current financial mess look like a drop in the bucket. But that’s the kind of crushing debt burden Obama and Geithner wish to impose on us and our descendants.
Exhibiting the kind of detachment from reality that can only come from spending way too much time in government, Geithner claimed that taking on more debt is actually the fiscally responsible thing to do. In his letter to Congress he stated, "It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations.”
How would that line of reasoning work with your bank? “As I’m sure you’re aware, sir, I’m deeply in debt with no visible means of support. Given the circumstances, I’m sure you’ll agree that you need to increase the credit limit on my Visa card so that I can reassure you and all the other people I owe money to that I will be able to meet my obligations. We wouldn’t anyone to panic, now would we?”
This is madness and there’s simply no way the Feds can pay for it all, at least not honestly. I can only assume that they will resort to any number of tactics, such as raising taxes, monetizing the debt, reducing promised benefits, rationing services, raising age requirements, or whatever else they can think of to avoid an Argentina-style default. Some would say that they’re already doing many of these things already. According to the Fed’s own published research, the money supply has literally doubled in the past year alone, and bank reserves have gone from about $50 billion to $900 billion in the same period.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote, “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom.” The flipside is also true - that what is folly in the conduct of every private family can scarcely be prudence in that of a great kingdom. If it’s a bad idea for an individual to incur more debt than he can possibly pay off in a lifetime, it’s also a bad idea for the government to do the same thing. And yet that is precisely what Geithner is proposing.
My wife became a US citizen last week, completing an arduous naturalization process that involved overcoming many difficult hurdles (not the least of which was marrying me). She had to fill out multiple and lengthy forms, spend a lot of money, pass a background check, and take a civics test. Since she passed the background check I can only assume that no one in the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, DHS, or ICE reads this blog.
As a dutiful husband, I initially offered to help her study for the civics test, but I thought better of it after flipping through the official US Citizenship and Immigration Services study guide, Learn About the United States – Quick Civics Lessons for the New Naturalization Test. It’s amazing how little our government actually knows about our government. Here are some sample questions from the text book, along with the official answers. I’ve also taken the liberty of adding my own “unofficial” answers for each one.
Q: What does the Constitution do?
Official A: Sets up the government, defines the government, or protects basic rights of Americans.
Unofficial A: It collects dust while being roundly ignored by those sworn to uphold it.
Q: What is the economic system in the United States?
Official A: Capitalist economy or market economy.
Unofficial A: Participatory fascism, or creeping socialism.
Q: What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
Official A: Checks and balances or separation of powers.
Unofficial A: Nothing. (I found it interesting that the study guide actually underlines “one” in the question…as if they were going out of their way to distinguish the problem of one branch becoming too powerful from the total non-issue of all branches becoming too powerful).
Q: Who makes federal laws?
Official A: Congress, Senate and House of Representatives, or legislature.
Unofficial A: An army of unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch who write thousands of pages of regulations each year, each of which carries the force of law.
Q: Who does a US Senator represent?
Official A: All people of the state.
Unofficial A: His largest campaign donors.
Q: What does the judicial branch do?
Official A: Reviews laws, explains laws, resolves disputes, or decides if a law goes against the Constitution.
Unofficial A: All of the above (except for that last one). Also acceptable would be “provides pseudo-intellectual rationalizations to allow government to exceed its constitutional limits.”
Q: What is the highest court in the United States?
Official A: The Supreme Court.
Unofficial A: The latest Gallup poll.
Q: Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?
Official A: Provide schooling and education, provide protection (police), provide safety (fire department), give a driver’s license, or approve zoning and land use.
Unofficial A: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. (Evidently new citizens don’t need to know about the tenth amendment).
This is not to say that all the test questions are wrong. For example, USCIS does manage to correctly identify the colors of the American flag (red, white, and blue). And in some ways the new test is an improvement over the old test, which included questions like these:
Q: Where does freedom of speech come from?
Official A: The Bill of Rights.
Unofficial A: From our nature as human beings.
Q: What US Citizenship and Immigration Services form is used to apply for naturalized citizenship?
Official A: Form N-400 (Application for Naturalization).
Unofficial A: Same as Official A, but I thought it was funny that the people working for USCIS were so wrapped up in their own bureaucracy that they thought all new citizens should be able to reference government paperwork by name - especially since the form in question has to be submitted long before the citizenship test is even taken.
Q: What is the most important right granted to US citizens?
Official A: The right to vote.
Unofficial A: Rights are inherent, not granted. But even if they were, are you kidding me? The right to vote would be number one?
Q: Name one of the purposes of the United Nations.
Official A: For countries to discuss and try to resolve world problems or to provide economic aid to many countries.
Unofficial A: To transfer wealth from the American taxpayer to corrupt foreign governments. And as an aside, can someone point to the article of the Constitution that authorizes the UN? If not, then why should it be part of this particular test?
Q: Can the Constitution be changed?
Official A: Yes.
Unofficial A: Sure, but why go through the hassle of changing it when you can just act like an elected official and ignore it altogether?
Don’t get me wrong, I am glad my wife is now an American. But during this process I realized that it’s probably a good thing I am an American by birth, because there’s no way they’d ever let someone like me become a citizen.
Senator Chuck Schumer recently introduced S1542, the “Milk Import Tariff Equity Act.” If signed into law, the bill will impose quotas and increase tariffs on imported milk protein concentrate, or MPC. MPC is not currently subjected to the same degree of protectionism as other dairy products, and food producers have naturally shifted to MPC as a substitute for the relatively more expensive domestic dairy alternatives.
Fortunately for dairy farmers, Chuck Schumer is not inclined to sit back and just let consumers spend their own money as they see fit. Foreign MPC products are eroding what New York dairy farmers see as “their” (captured) market share and the Milk Import Tariff Equity Act is Schumer’s attempt to do something about it. After all, it’s not easy being a dairy farmer these days. With the cost of inputs like feed and fuel on the rise, dairy farmers are discovering that the Federal government’s Milk Marketing Order, Milk Price Support Program, Milk Income Loss Program, Dairy Export Incentive Program, and import barriers are just not enough to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed since 1937 when the Soviet-style price fixing scheme for dairy products was first put into place. They obviously need more help from the Federal government at the consumers’ expense, and by God, Chuck Schumer is going to do everything he can to take it from you and give it to them. And as if S1542 weren’t enough "help," on Tuesday the Senate approved a $350 million increase in the milk price support program.
Referring to bill S1542 Schumer said, “It’s time we closed the loophole and gave New York dairy farmers a chance to compete. Instead of New York milk in our dairy products, we end up with imported MPC. This bill is widely supported by dairy farmers.”
Really, Chuck? Dairy farmers support forcing domestic consumers to subsidize their business model so they don’t have to compete? Who’d have thought? Next you’ll be telling me that Paul really doesn’t mind if you rob Peter to pay him.
The Milk Import Tariff Equity Act is just another sad example of the lengths to which government will go in order to prevent us from obtaining the goods and services we need at the lowest possible cost. The protectionist fallacy that making things more expensive somehow helps society as a whole simply will not go away - a fact that works to the advantage of politicians like Schumer. They can simply point to what is seen (the obvious benefit that accrues to the politically favored few), and ignore what is not seen (the hidden costs that are spread across the rest of society). In the case of government milk supports, Schumer speaks only of the assistance that the dairy farmers receive, but studiously avoids mentioning the artificially high costs that must be borne by consumers. And these hidden costs are not insignificant. The OECD estimates that the various government milk programs equate to an implicit tax of 26% on dairy products sold in the United States.
Milk is by no means the only food product that is subject to these ridiculous government distortions. The honey industry is also suffering from the perhaps unintended but all-too-predictable consequences of protectionist policies. Late last year, for example, a dozen armed DHS and ICE agents raided Pure Foods Inc., a honey producer and importer in Washington state. The reason? The company was suspected of importing “counterfeit” honey. And by “counterfeit,” they don’t mean that it’s not real honey. They mean that it’s mislabeled, which is reason enough to put someone behind bars these days.
The fact that possession of honey with intent to distribute is now literally a Federal offense comes from government efforts to protect domestic honey producers from “unfair” (i.e., cheaper) foreign competitors, especially those from China. Chinese honey is subject to a higher import duty than honey from other countries. This has incentivized some nefarious Chinese producers to transship their honey and to label it as the produce of those other countries in order to avoid the high tariff. And all the wheels of law enforcement are then set into motion to combat the scourge of honey smuggling.
And what is the ultimate purpose of all of these import tariffs, quotas, price supports, and Homeland Security raids? To prevent people from paying too little for something they want, and to provide certain groups (such as domestic milk and honey producers) with an unearned advantage over their rivals in the marketplace. Perhaps Murray Rothbard said it best when he wrote, “Protectionism is simply a plea that consumers, as well as general prosperity, be hurt so as to confer permanent special privilege upon groups of less efficient producers, at the expense of more competent firms and of consumers.”
It’s a bizarre yet pervasive pathology, and we're made all the poorer for it.
Last week’s episode of The Philosopher’s Zone was titled, “The Epistemology of Blogging.” Alan Saunders discussed blogging’s impact on the development and dissemination of knowledge in society with two speakers, Rutgers University’s Alvin Goldman and the University of Tasmania’s David Cody.
