DOGE 'Pork Busters' Retread Is DOA

"[W]e cannot start calculus before we know arithmetic -- or argue about tariff protection before we know the nature of government." -- Leonard Peikoff ("The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think", 1984)

***

On top of the various on-point jokes flying around about DOGE -- starting cuts by creating an agency, having two bosses, etc. -- there is one small problem with the whole idea of trimming fat from the government budget: You can't address a fundamental problem by making marginal changes.

As my title indicates, conservatives have tried this before, so I have the benefit of having already thought about this.

Back in '08, Tea Party types were forwarding a column around that made it particularly easy to see the problem. Quoting it again:

Stop the abuse of our benevolent welfare system. We feed children free meals three times a day until they are 17. Churches give away good, clean clothes. Companies buy and donate school supplies. Emergency rooms provide health care at taxpayer expense and the food stamp program is buying food at home. What are parents doing for their children?

The first sentence nullifies all the rest, while almost asking the question that needs asking: "Why (and by what right) do we need a welfare system at all?"

To that I responded:

Image by Pork Busters, via Wikipedia, I believe my use of this image to be fair use under U.S. copyright law.

Since when has taking money away from its rightful owners -- which must be done sooner or later to fund welfare programs -- been "benevolent"? This system is inherently abusive! The only way to stop "abuse" in a system financed by theft is to do away with such a system, and begin consistently protecting property rights. In the meantime, everyone who wants to feel good about helping the poor is free to do so.

Ditto for "Stop all unnecessary spending so we will have the money for our nation's security, and to help needy and elderly Americans." Forget about the relative magnitudes of wasteful spending compared to the amount of money it takes to fund welfare state programs: What's "unnecessary"? (I nominate, "the government stealing money"!)

In other words:

Such grassroots efforts as "Pork Busters" form when enough people become outraged at such things as that infamous "bridge to nowhere" -- and yet nobody challenges the massively larger larceny cum vote purchasing that is the welfare state, and which makes such relatively penny-ante outrages possible at all.

So, to quote Ronald Reagan, the half-forgotten half-man of the conservative movement, Here we go again.

Except that things are arguably worse. Back in the aughts, some Republicans at least mooted the idea of backing our country out of Social Security. (I fondly remember ending up on TV as a "man on the street" and getting to say inter alia that no, Social Security wasn't 'outdated,' but rather never was a good idea to begin with.)

Now? Trump has taken Social Security and Medicare off the table. These are two of the biggest drivers of the government deficit, and are things the government shouldn't be doing anyway, "efficiently" or not. Servicing the debt is a huge and growing obligation that can't be touched without causing economic calamity.

The most optimistic take on this I've seen lately is that Musk and Ramaswamy might wring $2 trillion from the budget -- which was nearly $7 trillion this year. (I don't see it.) Our debt, by the way, is $36 trillion, up from 23 in '19.

Absent a fundamental shift in which our politicians are guided by restoring government to its proper purpose, the protection of individual rights, there will only be this nibbling at the margins. Meanwhile the leviathan will grow out of control until the unsustainable mess mercilessly self-corrects.

Trump -- whom the partisan hacks at Issues and Insights completely shielded from blame for his role in worsening this mess -- is not the man to do this. He is committed to pretending the welfare state can work, whereas the first step towards solving any problem is correctly naming that problem.

Spoiler alert: Waste isn't that name. Inefficiency isn't it, either.

Speaking of waste, this election was a historic opportunity for change. We wasted it on Trump II, instead.

-- CAV

'Don't' Won't Work for Trump, Either

Trump has yet to take office, but he has already replicated Joe Biden's attempt to conjure world peace through magic incantations.

Not so long ago, when Iran threatened to bomb Israel into oblivion, Biden famously said, "Don't." We all know how that turned out:

...President Joe Biden issued a warning to any state or hostile actor considering attacking Israel: "Don't, don't, don't." And yet, Israel has faced relentless bombardments from multiple Iranian proxies for the last six months. The ineffectiveness of Biden's strategy was on full display again this past weekend, when the president issued a similar warning to Iran against striking Israel, this time with a single "don't." Predictably, this did nothing to halt the rogue state, which launched 300 drones and missiles at Israel late Saturday night. Almost all were intercepted, thanks to the combined efforts of Israel, the U.S., the U.K., France, and several Arab states. [links omitted]

I had forgotten that Biden had tried this cantrip multiple times, all to similar effect.

Have no fear! Trump's followers will say Trump will soon straighten all of this out.

Indeed, just as he has lost no time in making dubious cabinet picks, Trump has been communicating with hostile international figures, including Putin and, if rumors are to be credited, Iran's mullahs.

Trump, who is aggressively dovish and imagines that anything can be smoothed over with a "deal" (i.e., diplomacy) appears to have a foreign policy much like his successor/predecessor, absent (we hope) the arms embargoes to Israel.

The embarrassing man-crush may have a bigger chance of surviving than American deterrence. (Image by the Kremlin, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already waltzed right past a pointed warning from the MAGA leader, sending tens of thousands of soldiers to the Ukrainian war front after Trump told him not to escalate the situation.

...

Trump had spoken with Putin over the phone on Thursday, reportedly advising the foreign leader not to escalate the war, reminding Putin of America's military capabilities in Europe, according to The Washington Post.

Don't wasn't effective coming from Biden's lips and the same word won't become effective by the magic of being said by Donald Trump.

As with anything else, the Republicans are going to fool around with the theory that "our guys" doing essentially the same things (e.g., diplomacy, deficit spending, and central planning) the Democrats did will somehow make it work, and they are going to find out otherwise.

-- CAV

Stossel and Lowe on Elections

On Election Day, John Stossel wrote a piece that offers a dose of perspective that we Americans are fortunate enough to need reminding about from time to time:

Image by chilla70, via Pixabay, license.

No matter who wins this election, we don't need to wait for government permission to solve our problems.

Left to our own devices, we adapt and innovate. Without direction from Washington.

A final, most important thing to consider if that horrible other candidate wins:

You and I are not normal. We spend time reading about politics.

Most Americans don't. As one told me, "We have lives!"

Most of what really makes life worth living -- family, friends, music, love, religion, recreation, hobbies, art, food, travel, health -- doesn't depend on who is in power.

Politics is loud and sometimes unavoidable. Yes, the American government has grown so much that it now sucks up nearly 40% of our money. Yes, it sometimes stops us from doing good things. Yes, its mandates are often stupid and counterproductive.

But government is just one piece of a much bigger picture.

The real magic of life happens where you live. [bold added]

This perspective may well be hard to keep over the next four years -- and for my fellow travelers, this would have been the case even if Harris had won -- but it is crucial to do this for the sake of sanity and to keep one's compass in what promise to be turbulent times.

Being interested in cultural and political change is nuts unless that interest has preceptual-level and deeply emotional anchors to the facts of reality. Appreciation for what's there is what keeps us going, and it's what will motivate us -- those of us with more than a "normal" interest in such things -- to fight back in whatever way we can.

Regarding that last, my favorite science blogger, Derek Lowe, concretizes what this can mean for an intellectual activist. And again, it also would have applied, although often to different specifics, in the wake of a Harris victory:

[I]f you allow yourself to become totally outraged every time there's something that under normal circumstances would be worth being totally outraged about, you'll never make it. Because these aren't normal circumstances. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Take some time to work out what the most efficacious thing you can do about any given outrage might be and when might be the best time to do it, and where it ranks next to all the others. I will be following this advice personally, so don't expect to see rapid reactions here to every single hideous thing that happens.

We're going to need our energy, our stamina, and our hope for better things to make it out of all this intact, because there's going to be a lot of work to do after this is over. Keep working steadily to make sure that it does indeed pass. Be strong, and stay strong... [bold added]

This last reminded me a little of a partisan in-law from the left coast who seemed to spend the entirety of Trump's first term ... obsessing about Donald Trump. But there's no room for smugnes this time around. Trump is, if anything, nuttier and better-prepared: Folks who would otherwise forget all about politics may need to work some to keep from having him live rent-free in their heads 24-7.

Do not allow this threat to what you love cause you to forget what you love.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. At New Ideal, Ben Bayer argues that abortion bans purporting to makes exceptions "for the life of the mother" don't really do so because of a common misconception of what life is for a human:

Likewise, women forced to bear unwanted children may still breathe and have a pulse and even pursue some human values. They're not dead. But living is not merely escaping death. It's the untrammeled, positive pursuit of values.

To rob a woman of the central choice of when and whether to have a child is to rob her of part of her life: it may not destroy her brain but it stops her from using it, i.e., from using her sovereign judgment to control her own body and lifepath. That is a real "impairment of a major bodily function."

If there is to be a silver lining to the Dobbs decision, it will be that a more rational and complete idea of what a human life is gains much-needed currency in our culture.

This is ultimately what it will take to ensure that a woman's right to abortion is recognized and protected by law.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn defends big business:

The failure to distinguish between economic power and political power leads people to believe that large corporations have grown through coercion.

Although government cronyism exists in a mixed economy, Big Business -- large corporations -- is not inherently immoral. On the contrary, absent government favors and protectionism, companies grow large because they act morally. It means that they are productive: they continually develop and produce goods and services that customers value. They are just: their trade with others (customers, employees, suppliers) is voluntary and mutually beneficial. They respect the individual rights of others: they do not initiate physical force, including deception and fraud. (Accepting government subsidies and tax credits in a mixed economy is not immoral, as long as one keeps advocating for free markets and for reducing government interference).

The confusion between political and economic power is why so many people are, oddly, both paranoid about "big business," and yet naively trusting of big (i.e., improper) government "solutions," such as antitrust law.

3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney shares further insights on "motivation by love" prompted by the Q&A of her recent interview by Yaron Brook (also embedded below):

...The change from motivation by threats to motivation by values can be fast.

...

Once you identify the deep values on both sides of a choice, you often resolve the conflict and feel motivated with desire to act to gain and keep the greater value.

For anyone not yet familiar with the potential for conflict between motivation by love and motivation by fear, there is a link to Moroney's very helpful golf course analogy near the start of her post.

4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger considers a few surprising positives from Trump's recent election win:

[H]ere in Florida, I talk regularly with many MAGA people, and they are motivated more by a rejection of the Left than by xenophobia and racism (which are usually present, beneath the surface). They are Trumpians based on sense-of-life. Despite some ugly elements, the motivating factor of the MAGA people is the "American sense-of-life" that Ayn Rand described and lauded in "Don't Let It Go" (1971), reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Binswanger follows with the relevant Rand quote -- which also contains a warning.

This positive is the most important and possibly also the most tragic of the election, which I see as having gotten a very wrong man into office for some laudable reasons.

-- CAV

Missing -- or Hidden -- Productivity?

Over at The Endeavour is a thought-provoking post concerning a common question: Why aren't we more productive than we are, given the vast array of productivity-enhancing technology at our disposal?

Cook himself is reacting to a then-Twitter thread, in which Balaji Srinivasan came up with five generalized reasons.

Of the five from the list, Cook opines, "If I had to choose one of the five, I'd lean toward The Great Dissipation, inventing new tasks to absorb new capacity," and I agree.

He continues:

Image by Our World in Data, via X, license.

... This is what happened with the introduction of household appliances. Instead of spending less time doing laundry, for example, we do laundry more often.

Maybe we're seeing that technological bottlenecks were not as important as we thought.

For example, it's easier to write a novel using Microsoft Word than using a manual typewriter, but not that much easier. MS Word makes the physical work easier, but most of the effort is mental. (And while moving from Smith Corona 1950 to Word 95 is a big improvement, moving from Word 95 to Word 365 isn't.)

Technology calls our bluff. Improvements in technology show us that technology wasn't the obstacle that we thought it was. [bold added]

Building on this: If, to borrow David Allen's cranking widgets metaphor for productivity, we focus on the wrong "widgets," it can look like we're doing less and less, when we're doing more things that count. William Faulkner, after all, wasn't producing wads of paper: He was writing novels.

We are indeed absorbing the capacity, but the new tasks are not necessarily of the same kind we are freed up to do.

But this isn't all, as we can see from Srinivasan's description of the Great Dissipation: The productivity has been dissipated on things like forms, compliance, process, etc.

Cook's example is a positive one, if we remember that we are productive in order to live. Yes, we can now do useful things more often, and we can facilitate creative endeavors up to a point.

But there is also the negative side of the ledger in this category, drags on productivity. Mismanagement or improper government policies can become less apparent in a more productive milieu. We may well be much more productive, but with less to show for it and wondering, as a result, why we aren't as productive as we could be. (If an inflated money supply enables the government to pickpocket everyone, there is much more to pickpocket, but it will cause the victims to see less of their own production.)

Other items I take issue with, again on the basis that humans are productive for a reason. New leisure activities represent an improvement in our standard of living and can increase our productivity in unanticipated ways (e.g., an acquaintance met through social media can lead to landing a better job or starting a business).

To be clear, merely "improving productivity isn't the justification for such activities. Humans aren't machines, and need recreation, so I don't think it's right to dismiss the new activities -- themselves being produced -- so easily as mere "distractions" when they are employed at time of great productivity, as paradoxically evidenced by the fact that we have more leisure and produce in much greater abundance than at any other time in human history.

Don't be fooled by the fact that much of the new evidence doesn't look like the old evidence!

-- CAV

Commandment Display Law Blocked for Now

Last April, Louisiana passed a law mandating prominent display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state. It was challenged by concerned parents almost immediately on constitutional grounds.

Yesterday, a federal judge declared the law unconstitutional:

The proper place to display the Ten Commandments is on private property, at the owner's expense. (Image by Bill Gullo, via Unsplash, license.)

[U.S. District Judge John] deGravelles said Louisiana's law conflicted with a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision voiding a similar law in Kentucky, and violated the religious rights of people who opposed the displays.

He also said the law would pressure children in public schools into adopting Louisiana's preferred religious teachings while attending school at least 177 days per year.

"Each of the plaintiffs' minor children will be forced in every practical sense, through Louisiana's required attendance policy, to be a 'captive audience,'" the Baton Rouge-based judge wrote.

"The issue is whether, as a matter of law, there is any constitutional way to display the Ten Commandments in accordance with [Louisiana's law],'" he added. "In short, the court finds that there is not."

The decision will, of course, be appealed.

The appeal will go to the conservative fifth circuit in New Orleans.

An interesting aspect of deGravelles's decision is that it found the law unconstitutional even under a recent Supreme Court ruling on prayer at public high school games in Washington on the basis of there being "no broader tradition" of using the Commandments in public education.

I wouldn't trust the current Court to agree with such reasoning if this case makes it that far.

-- CAV

Caution: Central 'Planning' Ahead

Over at Reason, Veronique de Rugy notes that both parties ran on economic platforms that differed in detail, but were essentially the same:

The Next Boeing? (Image by Coolcaesar, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are surely experiencing disappointment, but one of the Biden-Harris administration's pillars -- "industrial policy" -- won big on Tuesday. That's because it's already been embraced by both parties. President-elect Donald Trump loves expensive tariffs, and Harris loves big subsidies to big businesses, and to some degree vice versa.

...

... What makes industrial policy distinct is that it picks certain economic activities to promote in attempts to reorder our economic landscape -- sometimes even for cultural reasons.

Democrats use it to force a transition away from energy sources they dislike. They use mandates, subsidies, and tax incentives to permanently change the way we consume energy at the national level, whether we want it or not. Meanwhile, lots of Republicans want to impose tariffs that push more people into manufacturing jobs and incentivize women to stay home so that America looks more like it did in the 1950s.

Both sides want to coerce some people into activities that are not in their best interests. So, to achieve a national order that intellectuals and politicians prefer over the current one, the economy must suffer.

This is a good overview of what industrial policy is, for anyone who may be unfamiliar with the latest trendy repackaging of central planning.

The piece also notes that Boeing, long favored by industrial policy, is a cautionary tale and may well be a preview of the fate of Intel, the government's latest darling.

The piece indicates in several ways that central planning fails in large part due to the perverse incentives it sets up, often purposely. This is true, but it is always worth noting further that, on top of it being a misuse of government, central planning is a fool's dream.

My favorite quotation on that last score comes from the economist George Reisman, who puts it this way:

The overwhelming majority of people have not realized that all the thinking and planning about their economic activities that they perform in their capacity as individuals actually is economic planning. By the same token, the term "planning" has been reserved for the feeble efforts of a comparative handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the planning of everyone else, presume to substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intelligence of tens of millions, and to call that planning. (as quoted in Andrew Bernstein's Capitalist Manifesto, p. 345) [bold added]

Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump's embrace of industrial policy will improve our economy has another thought coming.

-- CAV