Making Things Worse: Civil Rights and the Sexual Revolution

Aside from the basic governmental function of defending the people from enemies, foreign and domestic, most government action actually Makes Things Worse. This is particularly true of our modern progressive educated ruling class, whose religion is that politics can bend the arc of history towards justice.

We have already seen how government education and pensions and government healthcare and home mortgages have Made Things Worse. Let us continue.

Government Civil Rights. When the United States Senate debated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) spoke out against it. He argued that the Civil Rights Act should only ban discrimination by government. It should not ban discrimination by corporations and individuals. Thus he said on the floor of the Senate that the act

would embark the Federal Government on a regulatory course of action with regard to private enterprise in the area of so‐called “public accommodations” and in the area of employment — to be more specific, Titles II and VII of the bill.

This act branded Goldwater -- who had demanded the desegregation of the Senate cafeteria on behalf of his black aide -- a racist to the end of his days.

But imagine if the Civil Rights Act had confined itself to discrimination by government. Then we wouldn't have the current regime of government forcing private institutions to discriminate on the basis of the latest fashion in elite circles.

The necessity of Jim Crow laws in the South was that outfits like bus companies, railroads, and ordinary lunch counters, needed to be forced to discriminate against blacks. Because the logic of the market economy and private enterprise is that a customer is a customer. What matter is whether the customer is trustworthy, whether the customer pays his or her bills. 

But the natural instinct of government is to discriminate, because that is the nature of politics: for US and against Them. Political leadership is all about rallying the tribe or the nation to arms in the present emergency against the existential peril. So, what is needed is not legislation to supervise individuals and corporations; what is needed is legislation to supervise politicians and bureaucrats, to forbid them from following their natural political instincts and discriminate in favor of "our people" against "their people."

Is discrimination against other people by race or by sex or by national origin by private individuals and corporations wrong? Probably. But not illegal. Humans have ways of socializing people away from wrong that falls short of government force. It is call naming and shaming, and women are particularly good at it.

The conclusion is obvious. Government laws that forbid discrimination by private individuals and corporations is wrong and Makes Things Worse.

Government Sexual Revolution. Back in the day, fathers made sure their daughters were safe from guys unless "their intentions were honorable." Back in the day, divorce was unthinkable. Back in the day, abortion was monstrous. Back in the day, nobody got married unless their marriage was primed with a dowry or a bride price that basically provided the wherewithal to survive. What happened?

In part, of course, our increased prosperity and our increased medical knowledge has transformed the world. An abandoned mother can, sort of, raise her child. A girl pursued and abandoned by a faithless lover can get an abortion. Divorce isn't the end of the world, especially when women work in the market economy.

If we say that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is for humans to produce the next generation and leave a better world for their children, then it makes sense to restrain young men that just want to get laid; it makes sense to force men to support and father their children; it makes sense to pressure married couples to stay married and not imagine that they could solve their problems with a new spouse.

Back in the day, the old rules were a matter of life and death. Today, not so much. Still, if you want a successful life and you want to leave prosperous children and grandchildren behind you then you need, in the breach, to follow the old rules. Girls need to feel that their lover will stick around. Children need a mother and a father: their mother and their father. Women need to feel that they will not be traded in for a newer model. Men need to feel that their wife will not suddenly take up an opportunity for a bit of hypergamy.

But today, the fashionable elite advances all these notions. And they are Making Things Worse.

More to come.

Making Things Worse: Healthcare and Mortgages

Aside from the basic governmental function of defending the people from enemies, foreign and domestic, most government action actually Makes Things Worse. This is particularly true of our modern progressive educated ruling class, whose religion is that politics can bend the arc of history towards justice.

We have already seen how government education and pensions have Made Things Worse. Let us continue.

Government Healthcare. Back in the day, when everyone (about 75 percent of people) belonged to the Masons or the Elks or the Eagles, each lodge had a "lodge doctor." I had a cousin who was a Mason -- he was a contractor that helped build his local lodge -- and he thought that lodge doctors was the best thing since sliced bread. You see lodge doctors were usually kids just out of medical school, and their were cheap. And, if you follow the link above, you will find that lodge doctors helped the poor. And, of course, doctors typically would attend to the poor for free. Not that they liked it, and not that they spent a lot of time and energy on the poor. But then I'm not sure that today's doctors put too much energy into their Medicaid patients, either.

Anyway, without government healthcare the cheapskates could get healthcare from their lodge doctors, others could have health insurance plans with whatever deductibles they had in mind, and the fancy-pants set would go to the Mayo Clinic. And we could all decide, years in advance, how much heroic care we wanted at end-of-life. Medicare, you know, has developed all kinds of protocols to speed end-of-life care. That's why Sarah Palin got into so much trouble talking about "death panels." How Dare She!

Then, there is the huge regulatory burden of government regulations and credentialization on healthcare. When you regulate an industry what you get is "regulatory capture." That's science, developed by George Stigler.

The conclusion is obvious. Government healthcare makes healthcare worse, and it won't get better until we break up the unholy marriage between government and the healthcare industry.

Government Home Mortgages. Back in the day, before the Great Depression, people only got to borrow about 50 percent of a home's value, and they could only get a ten-year mortgage, which terminated in a balloon payment, at which point you paid off the rest of the loan or you refinanced at the going interest rate. That meant that houses were smaller, prices were lower. But then the government created a secondary market in mortgage loans with Fannie Mae, and then they let Fannie Mae issue government-backed bonds, and then they let people borrow up to 80 percent of a loan and take out 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, and then they said that you had to take into account a wife's income when determining creditworthiness. And then home prices soared into the stratosphere and priced the kids out of the market.

Plus, as the science says in Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street, when you have mortgages that can't be liquidated because low down payments and borrowers can't make their payments because unemployment then you get the mother of all credit crunches as in 2006-08. So low-down mortgages make the credit system fragile. Imagine.

The conclusion is obvious. Government mortgages make homes more expensive and the credit system more fragile.  They make home ownership worse.

More to come.

Making Things Worse: Introduction, Education and Pensions

One of the constants in political rule is that, while the job of political leaders is to defend their people from enemies foreign and domestic, the worst enemies of the people are the politicians themselves.

The reason is not hard to find. Political leaders -- chiefs, dukes, kings, emperors, presidents -- have funded their armies and police forces, mostly, from taxation and forcible exactions from the people they are sworn to protect. It is a small step to expand the exactions from the amount necessary to protect the people into an amount sufficient to build an empire or a personal fortune, and distribute loot among your supporters.

In other words, it is a small step from improving the life of the people to Making Things Worse.

More and more, I find that I want to tell the story of our times as the story of The Educated Ruling Class that Made Things Worse.

You can see why that narrative might be attractive to me. It negates the story that the educated ruling class wants to tell, of itself as the enlightened, progressive, liberal people destined by the arc of history to Make Things Better -- by using political power. And I like the kind of narrative that cuts across the ruling class narrative. It makes me feel good.

So let us review all the glorious accomplishments of our rulers, and turn them upside down, proving conclusively that they Make Things Worse.

Government Education. Back in the day, when Shakespeare went to school, children started work at age eight: child labor. But his dad, a glovemaker, could afford to send his kid to the local grammar school. Lucky Will. 

What a wonderful thing that we ended child labor so that every kid could get an education! Not.

For one thing, you may not have noticed, we still have child labor. Kids are expected to go to school all day, then do homework. That is work, in my understanding. And do you know how much children get paid for working in school all day and doing homework in the evening? I'll give you one guess.

But but but! How could kids get an education if they didn't go to a free government school? Are you serious? First, we could pass a law that the employers of all kids under the age of 16 had to provide classes in the Three Rs. Second, we could encourage all employers to formalize their relationship with their young employees in an apprenticeship contract. Did you know that in the old days of apprenticeships the employer would typically commit to providing education and training to the apprentices? Third, we could ennoble billionaires that created and funded schools for the Oppressed Peoples.

I could go on.

Instead, we have one-size-fits-all government child custodial facilities, and the teachers in these schools are clearly a very powerful special interest that politicians hardly dare challenge. In the late COVID incident, teachers clearly signaled that they were more interested in their own health than in teaching children. And it seems that all over the land, the government school districts and universities are all deciding with one voice to teach critical race theory. What's that all about? When did we get to vote on that?

The conclusion is obvious. Government education makes education worse, and it won't get better until we stop governments educating our children.

Government Pensions. One of the constants down the ages is that rulers get support by rewarding their supporters. Feudal lords reward their vassals with nice choice manors -- taken, no doubt, from a disobedient vassal. Warrior lords reward their soldiers with loot and plunder. Absolute monarchs reward their supporters with sinecures and noble titles. Modern politicians reward their voters with entitlements. Governments reward their employees with lifetime employment and rich, fat pensions.

So I suggest that government pensions are monies forcibly removed from the economy and given as a reward to the supporters of the ruling class. They are, and have always been, a net loss to the prosperity and the wealth of the people.

But but but! Whatabout the poor? Whatabout widows? OK. But let us start with ordinary people. First, if ordinary people save for their own retirement, it means that every dollar of their savings will go to create jobs for the young'uns rather than get sucked up in taxes that are spent on today's geezers. What a concept! Second, and this is important, people will retire when they can afford to, or when their financial advisor recommends. They may retire at the point that they can convert their savings into an annuity, or they may retire at the point where the income from their savings is sufficient to provide a suitable income without dipping into capital. Third, they can use their savings at any point in life, to start a business, to educate the kids, to tide over a government recession. Fourth, they will be able to transmit their savings onto their children.

OK, so whatabout the poor? Well, in my perfect world the poor will have jobs. And if you authoritarians insist, we will force the poor to save for retirement, assisted by billionaires, starting with the Widow Jobs, who will be forced to sell The Atlantic and do something useful with her money.

Whatabout widows? Did you know that one of the reasons why my dad and just about everyone else back in the day joined the Masons or the Elks or the Eagles or the IOOF, or any other fraternal organization, is that they took care of widows. What? You didn't know?

The conclusion is obvious. Government pensions make pensions worse, and it won't get better until we stop governments fleecing workers and taxpayers to give pensions to its supporters.

More to come.

Disentangling Economics and Politics

There's piece in The American Spectator boosting Trumponomics against "neoliberal economics" of the Republican and Democratic Parties. How exactly does by Adam Korzeniewski define all this?

Here's Trumponomics:

industrial policy, national economics, immigration restriction, and skepticism of globalism, [and borrowed from Henry Clay's American System] which focused on internal improvements (infrastructure), tariffs to protect industry, and subsidies when necessary.

Here's Neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism, broadly defined, constitutes a wide range of policies, including the deregulation of markets, elimination of trade barriers, increases in immigration, and the globalization of capital flow. These policies lead to the liberal calcification of corporations and government bureaucracy. They also treat people as interchangeable components in the economy, in which individual value and cultural norms are meaningless. 

Democrats add a twist:

President Biden’s neoliberal economic model leeches off the entropy of American economic power to accelerate the end of domestic industries and American jobs in favor of international corporate profits.

Hmm. Not quite. The problem is that we are mixing economics and politics here. First, let's try to understand economics and the market system.

Economics arises when people do not just produce for themselves, but exchange stuff that they have produced in return for something else, usually money. The next step is that people don't work making stuff for themselves at all; they hire out their labor, usually in return for money. And then some people work entirely in the money business, loaning money and investing in enterprises.

Obviously, this gets bloody complicated, right away. But, in another proof of God's existence, it turns out that humans can value everything that is offered for exchange by a concept we call the price system. There is no mystery about prices, as imagined by the classical economists and the Marxists. In marginal economics the price is whatever something just sold for, and whatever someone is willing to pay right now.

Thus, in a perfect world, markets would be markets, and no regulatory and tariff barriers, and anyone could work for anyone, and move to anywhere and capital, the mother's milk of enterprise, would go wherever it was most needed, all over the world.

But the world ain't perfect. Thus governments are instituted among men to protect us from pirates and plunderers. Trouble is that, as often as not, governments act as pirates and plunderers.  

So, the trouble with "neoliberalism" is that it tends to bend the arc of economics to favor big global corporations that fund politicians. Which often screws the little guy.

But the trouble with Trumponomics is that "industrial policy," "infrastructure," "tariffs," and "subsidies" are all in the eye of the beholder. They all tend to benefit existing economic interests and are used to buy votes.

And the trouble with government programs in general is that they subtract from the verdict of the market, that always wants to fund the most urgent need of the consumers as expressed by the price system. So, "industrial policy" may seem like a good idea, but it will probably end up benefiting existing established interests. Ditto "tariffs" and "subsidies."

And in fact the net effect of almost all government programs is that they try to violate my Four Laws: 

Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises). The administrative state cannot work because the Man in Washington does not have the bandwidth to run the economy (Hayek). Regulation does not work because “regulatory capture” (Stigler). Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill).

Whenever you violate one of my Four Laws, chances are that you  are Making Things Worse. For the market giveth and the market taketh away. 

The story of the last 200 years, of the Great Enrichment, is also a story of ruined dreams. The handloom weavers were put out of business by power looms. The candlemakers were put out of business by Rockefeller's illuminating oil. The stagecoaches and the carters were put out of business by railroads. The sailing ships were put out of business by steamships. The horse-breeders were put out of business by automobiles. Silent movies were put out of business by talkies. Passenger ships were put out of business by airplanes. Mom and pop stores were put out of business by megastore chains. Mainframe computers were put out of business by minicomputers, then microcomputers, then server farms. Yes, we can help the latest industry put out of business by "progress," but for how long?

You think politicians and bureaucrats are smart enough to outguess the ceaseless innovations of the market?

Look, Trumponomics is a political program to help the ordinary middle class and soften the competition from Factory Girls in China. Neoliberalism is the political program of international business and the educated class that wants to live and work anywhere in the world.

In the best of all possible worlds we would come to a compromise between the two while still remembering that there ain't no hiding from the market. Not in the long term, not in the medium term.

For the problem is always, I would say, that whenever government gets involved in the economy, you can be sure that someone is looking for a bit of loot and plunder, and the politicians are only too glad to help out.

The Folly of the All-powerful Intelligence Community

In his notion of the Fourth Branch of Government, Sundance proposes that ever since 9/11 -- and accelerated under Obama -- the United States has come to be ruled by the Intelligence Community -- FBIs, CIAs, NSAs, -- and their bureaucratic appendages and combinations. It was of course the intelligence community that was front and center in the 5-year Deep State war on Trump.

Of course, this game is an old game, pursued by rulers all over the world and all through history, the lust to keep an eye on dangerous elements in society and keep any opposition subdued and safe: down to a dull roar.

And now we have Nancy Pelosi's secret police, an expanded Capitol Police force, that will have offices in various cities "with the first field offices located in California and Florida."

Of course, we all know that secret police and shadowy intelligence agencies are a monstrosity, as proved by the headline secret police agencies of the 20th century, the Cheka/NKVD/MVD/KGB of Soviet Russia. The Gestapo of Nazi Germany. And I don't even know what the secret police in China is called.

But I think that secret police are stupid. And a secret police or ramped up intelligence agencies are a "tell" that the ruling class isn't really legitimate and really doesn't get it.

But, of course, before the illegitimate regime and its secret police exit stage left, there is always the butcher's bill. And beyond the butcher's bill, the millions of lives for whom the "authoritarian government" has Made Things Worse.

In reading Sundance's piece, we are to understand that the Obama administration wanted more political push for its "fundamental transformation" agenda. So it had no problem siccing its gumshoes on the Tea Party in 2010. But, you may remember, in 2010 the Republicans still gained an extraordinary 64 seats in the House of Representatives. Good work Barack!

So, in the Trump years we had an unprecedented use of the intelligence community to harass candidate Trump and later President Trump. And, you can say, look at the results! They got rid of Trump! Yay! But first, what a bunch of second-raters, 

the new woke FBI of hard noses like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Jim Baker

as Victor Davis Hanson points out. Yeah, that's what you call a First Team. And then Robert Mueller.

The Mueller bully team collapsed and found no collusion with the Russians, despite a 22-month, nearly $40 million blank check... And Mueller embarrassed himself with befuddled congressional testimony, in which he was either unaware of or lied about Fusion GPS and the Christopher Steele dossier—the seed and fertilizer of the entire Russian “blockbuster” collusion hoax and hence his own investigation. 

Maybe Our Nance's Capitol Police is brighter and smarter and meaner than the Keystone Kops of the Get Trump team. But I doubt it. I think I had my "aha" moment on this watching the 2020 Russian movie Dear Comrades! about a strike in the Soviet Union in 1962. There's a KGB officer in the movie. And it seems to me that his #1 concern is keeping his record clean at the office and not making a false step. He is a mouse and so are all the other local political figures.

Oh, I don't think that the stepped-up intelligence community and Nancy's Specials will be completely useless. I expect they will help extend the life of our current old and tired ruling class for a few years. And they will manage to wreck the lives of numerous ordinary people who dare to challenge the ruling-class narrative and a few elite people that prove to be a nuisance the way that Trump did.

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida! That means you!

My belief, that Government is Force and that is all, has been strengthened by re-reading Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution, start here. At the end of it all, he asks: did the revolution -- in England, in America, in France, in Russia -- really achieve fundamental change to the country in question? Not so much. After it was all over, England was still England, America was still America, France still France, and Russia still Russia.

If you want proof, read Philosopher Putin's review of Russian and Ukrainian history. You'd almost think the Bolshevik Soviet era was just an embarrassing hiccup in the glorious arc of Russian history.

The point is, Brinton writes, that human society is a lot more complex and a lot more difficult to change than the average intellectual and politician and revolutionary thinks. The wise man thinks of human culture in terms of geology and glaciers. Slow, but relentless.

And the bottom line is that nobody knows what the future holds. Whatever your glorious vision of freedom and liberty and justice and equity may be, the future will probably make mincemeat of it, just as your political gumshoes make mincemeat of a lot of ordinary people that just want to live their ordinary lives without being put in the meat grinder of politics.

The Three Functions of a Ruling Class, Then and Now

I was checking out the meaning of noblesse de la robe yesterday, and of course it led me to the three Estates of old-regime France. Let us rehearse it.

The First Estate was the clergy. Their job was managing the moral framework of France.

The Second Estate was the nobility. But they had two jobs! Nice work if you can get it. There was la noblesse de la robe. Their job was running the higher administrative echelons of the justice system, where, I suppose, they got to wear cool robes lined with ermine or something. La Wik:

[They] were French aristocrats whose rank came from holding certain judicial or administrative posts... The most influential of them were the 1,100 members of the 13 parlements, or courts of appeal.

The tippety-top of la noblesse de la robe was the Parlement de Paris, the closest thing to a Supreme Court. And, in the years before the Revolution of 1789 the Parlement de Paris sometimes handed down decisions that challenged the power of the KIng, Louis XVI.

Then there was la noblesse de l'epée. Yessiree, the nobles of the sword. La Wik:

[They] were the noblemen of the oldest class of nobility in France dating from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and arguably still in existence by descent. It was originally the knightly class[.]

And it got me to thinking. I dare say that, if you are a person with pretensions to be part of a ruling class, you probably need to be in one of the three noble categories: priest, high administrator, or warrior.

Because some things never change, and our brains are still programmed in much the same way as in 1788.

Now obviously, our cancel-ologists and our Karens and Beckies are the modern priests, searching and destroying sin and corruption wherever they find it in unredeemed racist-sexist-homophobic sinners. And some of them are like itinerant friars, our activists, that don't just sit there issuing sermons on Sundays, but go out into the community to purge it of evil elements.

And just as obviously we have our own special noblesse de la robe. That's all the educated snobs in administrative government and its regulatory agencies, that love to issue ukases to the rabble about recycling and vaccine passports.

Whatabout the vitally important noblesse de l'épee, working out at the local fencing club? Well, it's pretty obvious. These folks are the heroic peaceful protesters celebrated in verse and song, the BLMs and AntiFas heroically battling it out with far-right extremists that dare to pollute the sacred streets of our progressive cities with their conspiratorial disinformation. And as you get older, you learn the fencing skills of elective politics.

One of the things that exercise my mind is that the old male pursuits of war and aggressive hierarchy are less vitally important these days than in the good old days when you never know when the Vikings or the Huns or the Mongols might show up.

But men still want to smite the attacker of their sacred ancestral lands. And they still want to be cock of the walk in whatever society they strive, whether in politics, business, religion, activism. If nothing else there is the necessity of achieving high status because hypergamy as practiced by our female friends.

But can't we do better?

Isn't there a better way of moral preening than cancel culture and Greta Thunberg style "How. Dare. You?" Isn't there a way of setting a moral example without the abomination of what we call "virtue-signaling?"

Isn't there a better way of serving the administrative needs of society other than nice cozy sinecures in administrative bureaucracies funded by the state, you professors?

Isn't there a better way of protecting society from violence than posturing in the street as the street thugs of the regime, as close as you can get to the fascist Sturmabteilung of the National Socialist German Workers Party without actually putting a swastika on your arm?

There's gotta be a better way than the corrupt and vile culture of our present ruling class.

All is Proceeding as I Have Foreseen?

Obviously America is at a confusing moment in its history. Obviously the narrative of the educated ruling class of the last century is a little tattered and worn. Obviously we really don't know what narrative will take its place. Here are some confusing confusions to confuse you today.

At National Review: Bring Back the Tea Party. I doubt it. We don't need an organic movement like the Tea Party. We have already created a Republican Party that is focusing more and more on the needs of the average Commoner, the average middle-class Anybody. We have Donald Trump and now Ron DeSantis who are clearly fixin' to lead the middle-class against the Overclass.

At American Spectator: Anarchy and the Roots of Wokism. A.J. Caschetta illuminates the words and actions of the anarchists of the 19th century. And it illuminated for me the idea that the great task of our modern era is to channel the instincts of pre-urban -- and even pre-agricultural man -- into safe channels. For my take on the anarchists and our modern BLM/AntiFa street fighters is that they want and need to be warriors, slaughtering the enemy. But, I like to say, the old need for warriors to defend the border is kinda vieux jeu old chap. But we men still need to work out our aggressive instincts. Any ideas, before lefties level our society until the rubble bounces.

About my neighbor across the street: Helion Energy Builds... Fusion Power Plant. Hmm. When I talked to David on Tuesday night at the annual street Block Watch party he talked about a manufacturing facility. But Helion Energy is a startup trying to make the technology for real fusion power plants. The real thing: wind and solar need not apply. David says that Helion Energy will be going public fairly soon. Peter Thiel is an investor.

From NYMag: The US's Secret Drone Assassination Thingy. Did you know that the US has a secret drone program that can launch missiles at known terrorists? And the command hierarchy goes all the way up to the president who gets to sign off on the go-nogo decision. This piece is about a weirdo, David Hale, that was in the program flying a computer. And then started taking docs out of his office in the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and handing them off to journalists. He is the "Second Snowden." I don't know about you but I have a real problem with these shadow agencies.

From Western Journal: Make It Too Expensive to Drive a Car. Heard of the MBUF, the Mileage-based User Fee that's included in the infraststructure bill? This is the sort of stuff I really hate. You liberals want to tax cars by the mile? Then debate it in the House, the Senate, and get the consent of the governed, you twerps.

From the American Spectator: The EPA's Bureaucractic Goon Squad. The EPA is busily raiding auto repair shops that will modify your car computer to make it perform better. Yeah, nearly all gubmint agencies in the front rank have their own police forces. The police police may not be allowed to use force to apprehend home invaders, but don't you dare modify your car from its bureaucrat approved settings.

I tend to think that the good thing is that our ruling class really doesn't have a clue. But the bad thing is that it really doesn't have a clue.