Jim DeMint Gets Milton Friedman's Immigration Views Wrong

Guest — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:02:07 -0500

Michael Hamilton is a libertarian writer living in Washington, D.C. His main interests are economics, immigration, and land-use policy.

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint took to the pages of the Washington Post this morning to defend his institution’s latest report on immigration, in which the ludicrous claim that “amnesty” would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion is made.

I’ll leave analysis of the study itself to others (and boy, are they really piling on), but I take exception to the very first sentence of DeMint’s op-ed: ”The economist Milton Friedman warned that the United States cannot have open borders and an extensive welfare state.”

Every now and again a particular clip from a larger Milton Friedman speech is brought up, and this debate is rehashed in libertarian circles. In it, Friedman says, “it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.” This is what DeMint is referencing, and he seems to think it supports either his general point of view or his immigration policy prescriptions. I believe that either is unlikely.

Within the same speech, Friedman makes an argument that put him at odds with both DeMint and the larger body of immigration work at Heritage.

Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.

Friedman’s entire point here is that the conclusion he reaches, given that open borders are problematic for a welfare state, is not the more intuitive position taken by conservatives like DeMint. Instead, Friedman believes that Americans should celebrate immigration generally and illegal immigration specifically because it solves, at least to some extent, the problem of immigration and welfare.

Anyone with basic familiarity with Friedman’s ideas should know that open borders were his preferred policy, even if the welfare state caused him to temper that view. In fact, this exact issue was covered in great detail by many others. DeMint should have known better than to cite Milton Friedman when he would have clearly opposed Heritage’s immigration policy proposals.

Nullify Now: The Case for State Action

Guest — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:17:20 -0500

Michael Boldin is the executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center, established in 2006 in response to endless attacks on liberty from both major political parties.

Want to stop the sociopaths in Washington DC?

Ron Paul told you how. Judge Napolitano is on board. Tom Woods provides intellectual firepower to back it up. And today, I’ll share six steps to get you started.

Obviously, it will take some work. But what should a liberty lover actually do? March on DC? Lobby Congress? Support a campaign in the 2016 presidential election?

Answer: No. No. And, no.

RON PAUL’S ADVICE

Ron Paul said nullification would “reverse the trend and stop the usurpation of all the powers and privileges from the states to the federal government.”

The game-plan is right in front of you. It’s nullification.

That bears repeating: if you want to stop federal thugs, Ron Paul advises you to nullify.

I can’t think of a stronger endorsement for libertarians than this powerful statement from the man who brought the principles of liberty to the mainstream.

Think about it. Nullification isn’t just an interesting theory or some historical oddity for study. It’s a method Ron Paul himself endorsed as a path to “stop the usurpation of power.” That’s serious business, and a call for you to take action.

DEFINITIONS

What is nullification? In order to share a plan of action, you must first understand what nullification is. When Thomas Jefferson called it the “rightful remedy,” he didn’t specifically define it.

Dictionaries from that time offer a pretty broad definition. Nullify: To annul; to make void.

Dictionary.com is far more specific. Nullification: “the failure or refusal of a U.S. state to aid in enforcement of federal laws within its limits, especially on Constitutional grounds.”

Personally, I find that definition far too narrow.

Tom Woods’ indispensable LibertyClassroom.com says nullification happens when states “refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.” Woods also points out that outright resistance can be part of the process too.

The Tenth Amendment Center takes a “big tent” view when defining nullification: “Any act or set of acts which has as its end result a particular law being rendered null and void, or unenforceable within a particular area.”

NULLIFICATION: IN PRACTICE

Nullification is more about the end result than the method. There are five main paths.

1. “Legalized” public defiance. State laws allowing what the feds have banned can accomplish nullification. Such laws encourage people on the margins to join in with others already defying the federal act.

State marijuana laws fit into this category. In a conversation with Judge Napolitano, Ron Paul confirmed state marijuana laws nullification. In his recent Mises Institute article, Mark Thornton agreed.

While such laws don’t create physical barriers blocking DC from enforcing their criminal acts, time and increasing numbers create a situation the feds can no longer stop or control.

2. State, local and individual noncompliance. By 1928, 28 states stopped funding alcohol prohibition enforcement and local police only sporadically enforced the law. In a 1925 address to Congress, Maryland’s Senator Bruce stated, “national prohibition went into legal effect upward of six years ago, but it can be truly said that, except to a highly qualified extent, it has never gone into practical effect at all.”

There are similar actions happening today. Washington State and Colorado will stop enforcing marijuana prohibition. And states and local communities are considering bills refusing cooperation with NDAA “indefinite detention” provisions or gun control measures.

Judge Napolitano recently observed how powerful noncompliance like this can be. He noted that the federal government simply doesn’t have manpower to enforce all its laws. Therefore, noncompliance can make federal laws “nearly impossible to enforce.”

Ron Paul strongly supports individual noncompliance: “Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero — because they practiced the libertarian principle of civil disobedience, nonviolence.”

3. State and local interposition. State agents “stand between” you and the federal government to protect your rights. In general, this includes criminal charges for federal agents attempting to enforce a nullified “law.” In response to the fugitive slave act of 1850, a number of states did just that and were quite effective.

Two bonus categories:

Jury nullification. A jury votes to acquit, even if a “law” was broken.

Individual nullification. Every time you break a so-called “law” and get away with it, you nullify.

TAKE ACTION NOW

Here are some steps that you can start taking now. Not after the next election, and not next year. Not next month or next week. Today, not tomorrow. Right now.

1. Forget that the 202 area code exists. If you’ve spent days calling DC to support or oppose this or that, you’ve wasted your time. To advance liberty, forget DC - that pit of criminals. You will never, ever accomplish your goals there. Don’t call anyone there. Don’t send letters to reps or senators. Don’t support campaigns, or donate money to them. Ever.

2. Support all nullification bills. Any piece of state or local legislation pushing back on federal power, whether refusing compliance with so-called federal “laws,” or frustrating or preventing enforcement, is a good thing. As Thornton wrote on Mises.org, “This is important, because, if thanks to nullification, governments have to obtain acceptance, or at least acquiescence from subsidiary governments, rather than just imposing their dictates on them, they are more likely to act in a less threatening and harmful manner.”

3. Get on a jury. As Don Doig and Stewart Rhodes wrote, “Serving on a jury should be viewed as a form of liberty guerrilla warfare in the current ‘soft’ or cold war between the forces of liberty and the forces of tyranny.” Vote to acquit!

4. Vote with your Money. Market demand can overpower even the strongest government. Hundreds of marijuana shops flat-out defying federal power in one city alone proves it. The feds may rough people up from time to time, but they’re fighting a losing battle. As much as you can, support businesses, organizations and individuals willing to defy government power. Every dollar you spend helps grow the market and makes it stronger.

5. Just say YES! If they ask you to turn in your firearm, will you? When it comes time to comply with mandated insurance coverage, will you be obedient? Will DEA bans prevent you from planting hemp? Will you continue to comply with legal tender laws on gold and silver? Will you fight that next war because “it’s your duty?”

A “No!” to tyrants is a “Yes” to liberty.

ONE FINAL STEP

Be patient.

Criminal politicians have proven over decades that taking one small step at a time is extremely effective. Liberty will not win in one year, one legislative session, or with one action. It will take time and relentless action.

I agree with Murray Rothbard’s warning against “falling prey” to “short-run optimism”:

For short-run optimism, being unrealistic, leads straightway to disillusion and then to long-run pessimism.

In closing, I leave you with Rothbard’s advice:

For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to cast off his needless and debilitating pessimism, to set his sights on long-run victory and to set about the road to its attainment.

Our long-run victory will come one step at a time.

The path is before us. Nullify, nullify, and nullify!

We Look to the Founders for their Expertise, Not for their Skin Color or Wealth (or “On Respecting Your Elders”)

Guest — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:16:36 -0500

Dr. Nathan Griffith is an associate professor of political science at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. He teaches constitutional law, European politics, political economy, and methodology. He is currently on sabbatical while he finishes a forthcoming textbook on American government.

On the last day of the year past, Louis Michael Seidman wrote an op-ed in the New York Times advocating that we “give up on the Constitution,” as our following it had left us “teeter(ing) at the edge of fiscal chaos.” He asks why “a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for re-election, (should) have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation’s fate?” The heart of his objection comes with this:

“Imagine that after careful study a government official—say, the president (sic) or one of the party leaders in Congress—reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?”

As Mr. Seidman puts the question, the answer is a definite “no.” That, however, is the problem. It is truly disappointing—and perhaps revealing—that someone who studies constitutional law has never bothered studying the Constitution. We do not listen to James Madison or others from the founding era because of any of the characteristics Seidman lists. We do not even listen to them because they happened to be the people in the room at the inception of the Constitution. We listen to them because of their expertise.

As Seidman correctly points out, both “originalism” and “living constitutionalism” are non-sense. The second is nonsense because it is wish fulfillment dressed up in the clothes of truth and justice. If the Constitution grows and changes, then we may discover whatever growth or change we wish to see. We find the outcome we desire, whether because it is expedient or practical or what the judge finds just, then re-read the laws to justify that outcome. Nor, for that matter, is this a recent practice: John Marshall read the word necessary to be a synonym for convenient in 1819 (as well as in defiance of all common sense and reference works).

If the second suffers from a lack of guiding principle, the first suffers from too many. “Originalism” is the attempt to divine what “the Founders” intended when they wrote the Constitution. This is non-sense, because like most experts, the Founders disagreed among themselves, so we would first have to decide to whom to listen among the cacophony. Actually, we would first have to decide who qualified to be “a Founder.” Those at the Philadelphia Convention? If so, for how long? (Not all stayed for the duration.) Those who wrote letters and pamphlets? Those at the state ratifying conventions?

We want a simple, bright-line distinction, but the only reason to prefer one expert over another is their expertise, the quality of the reasoning they give—not because of their skin, property, life, death, tolerance or even endorsement of slavery. The question is not the extent to which any of them possessed any of those characteristics; the question is to what extent they knew what they were doing in designing a system of government to preserve liberty.

So why should we constrain government so that revenue bills have to begin in the House? Why should we have an imperfectly apportioned Senate be able to refuse whatever the House does? It is Mr. Seidman’s hypothetical scenario that gives the answer. Do any of us truly believe that a government official will engage in careful study or reach a considered opinion? They may cloak their actions in those words, and there may be occasions when those words actually fit, but most politicians are, at best, merely human.

That is, politicians’ consideration is of their welfare: what will get them re-elected. Anyone who bothers to follow Presidential elections will quickly agree with Douglass Adams, that anyone capable of getting themselves elected should on no account be allowed to do the job. Our election process does not produce careful study or considered opinion; witness the candidacies of Paul Tsongas, Fred Thompson, Bill Bradley, Pierre DuPont, or anyone else who tries to explain the product of careful thought and study to the populace.

The ugly truth is that what is popular is not always right, true, or just. Slavery, to borrow Mr. Seidman’s inflammatory interjection, was at one point quite popular. So was eugenics, the idea that we should remove the infirm and diseased (and any other unpopular group) from the gene pool before they reproduced. What is popular gets you elected, though.

So the people who happened to be framing our government had the sense to realize their own limitations and built a system to balance the good part of the need to be popular and get re-elected (it keeps politicians from abusing the majority) with provisions to limit the bad part (being popular with the majority for abusing the minority). That’s why we have a Senate proportioned perfectly by state (and Senators were originally elected by state legislatures) and House proportioned by population. The majority can seek what they want, but the minority can protect themselves through the political process (assuming they are allowed to participate in it).

The framers even had the sense to provide a way for the Constitution to change and grow, for later generations to make it live for them: the amendment process. We have used it to give access to those originally denied it. The amendment process, however, is not very popular, because it requires the agreement of a very large part of the nation. Even more than our political process, it does not happen quickly and it does not happen rashly, because even more factions have a chance to object.

That is to say, we should hold tight to the Constitution, because those who wrote the rules had the good sense to make them require careful study and considered opinion, and required they be careful and considered enough to convince those who would have to live with their effects.

That, in the end, is why we should lend careful consideration to what the Founders said. They designed a machine that worked brilliantly to balance popular government with individual liberty. When we understand that machine, we can modify it to make it more powerful—this is not a static position. However, when we start to modify it without ever understanding how it works, we court disaster.

In fact, to return to John Marshall for a moment, it is the times we have abandoned the Constitution, often circumventing the amendment process, which have produced this mess. Supreme Court decisions (McCulloch v. Maryland and Wickard v. Filburn) expanded federal power at the expense of the states. The 16th and 17th Amendments gave the federal government more influence and the states less. Rather than a more robust, decentralized system, one more resilient to shock and less susceptible to crashes, we have moved to a more modern, more popular centralized government that lets the majority get what it wants.

And this, in the end, is Mr. Seidman’s problem. Like most people, he facilely assumes that his preferences and interests are everyone else’s, that if government would just “give us what we want,” we’d be happy. So he advocates a stronger government, one that can deliver him his every wish—forgetting that a government that can deliver your every wish can deliver your every nightmare, too. He blithely ignores the most critical part: figuring out what “we” (as opposed to I) want.

Let's have a discussion about the Second Amendment

Guest — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:00:16 -0600

This post was written by Richard Schrade, an attorney from Georgia and member of the Libertarian National Committee, and gun rights proponent.

This current meme being circulated by those that even seek to think about the real reasons for the Second Amendment is that no matter how well armed the populace that a tyrannical repressive government will always have superior firepower. That being the case, so goes this meme, there is no reason to allow assault weapons, high capacity magazines etc. in private hands. That argument is welcomed so far as it is intellectually honest in recognizing that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect the citizenry from the government and has little to do with hunting. However, the argument is fundamentally flawed.

If revolution ever visits this country again, the central government will be better armed and better organized (as it was in 1775); the early participants in the revolution will represent less than 50% of the citizens (as in 1775); and the ultimate fate of the revolution will rise and fall on the tenacity of the revolutionaries (as with nearly every revolution in western history).

Revolutions are necessarily asymmetrical. The government always (nearly always) has the upper hand in financing, organization and manpower. Often the revolution will be loosely organized – sometimes for ideological reasons (St. Petersburg in February 1917) and sometimes for reasons of safety (Chechnya 1990s). Sometimes the revolution seeks to throw off a colonial ruler (Vietnam 1950s), sometimes a tyrannical government (France 1789).

But the common element in successful revolutions is that there comes a “tipping point” at which government soldiers lose the will to kill revolutionaries. Sometimes that happens early, sometimes only after the loss of many lives. The tipping point only comes when the government soldiers face personal risk at the hands of the revolutionaries. I cannot think of a single revolution in which the revolutionaries outgunned the government (I am sure there are some and I look forward to being schooled by those who can think of some).

To return to the current debate on gun control – a repressive and tyrannical government will always outgun a group of revolutionaries that seek to throw off the yoke of that government. There will be a tipping point in that revolution at which those government soldiers lose the will to risk their lives in the defense of that government. The Revolution reaches that tipping point more quickly with assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and special ordinance more quickly in the hands of private citizens.

Let’s have a debate about gun control – let’s have a debate about weapons in the possession of private citizens – but let’s do so honestly. Let’s frame it in the context of a fundamental change to the Second Amendment. If three-fourths of the States want to give up or attenuate the right to armed overthrow of the federal government then so be it. Let’s not pass hastily constructed legislation in the heat of justifiable rage at the slaughter of innocents.

Finally – lest any of you think I am suggesting that we have a violent overthrow of the federal government at this time, I am not. Lest any of you think that I enjoy seeing young children killed, you are delusional. If any of you think that I would rather die a free man than live as a slave, you are correct.

Attempt to Ban "Bullet Button" in California

Guest — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:40:26 -0600

Written by Brandon Combs, Director of the Calguns Foundation (@CalgunsFdn), and posted with permission.

In a press release issued by his office on Tuesday, California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) announced that he has introduced a new piece of legislation, SB 47, modeled after a bill he introduced last year [SB 249] but that was held by the State Assembly. The bill prohibited semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s and AK-47s from having devices known as bullet buttons and mag magnets….SB 47 will also prohibit add-on kits that allow high-capacity magazines.”

The text of the bill as it stands today is simply: “It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation relating to assault weapons.”

We’re not yet sure what “add-on kits” will defined as in SB 47 - the bill is currently a “spot bill” - but we are betting that Yee chief of staff Adam Keigwin will find some way to make a mess of the bill like he did last round. Sen. Yee’s SB 249 gun ban attempt, which stalled in the Appropriations Committee after significant efforts by the STOP SB 249 campaign (a project of CGF and dealer association) as well as groups like NSSF, would have forced gun owners to reconfigure their firearms as “featureless builds” and use detachable magazines (including lawfully-possessed large capacity magazines) or dispose of the firearms before the bill would have taken effect. If you haven’t seen the SB 249 YouTube videos by Wes Morris of Ten Percent Firearms and Jeff M of PRK Arms, be sure to check them out.

Yee also announced that he would introduce legislation to require yearly registration and background checks for gun ownership and another bill that will require that all guns have a locked trigger and be stored in a locked container.

Senator Yee and his staff apparently don’t read Supreme Court decisions like D.C. v. Heller, the landmark Alan Gura victory which established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms and overturned a number of D.C.’s gun control regulations, including a locked storage requirement. After Yee’s embarrassing 7-2 loss at the Supreme Court in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (which struck Sen. Yee’s ban on video games on First Amendment grounds), one would think that he and his staff might first consult the Constitution before ginning up new bans on fundamental rights.

In this recent CBS5 San Francisco report on the new Yee bill SB 47, Calguns Foundation Chairman Gene Hoffman noted that most major shootings occur in Gun Free Zones and suggested that school administrators and teachers should be allowed at least Tasers to defend theirs and their students’ lives if they are ever confronted by a madman set on violence.

You can track Sen. Yee’s SB 47 at the state’s Leginfo website.

A Moment of Silence

Guest — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:14:07 -0600

Charlie Harper is editor of Peach Pundit, Georgia’s most-read political blog, and a columist at The Courier Herald. This has been reposted with permission.

I attended Sunday’s Falcons game at the Georgia Dome. In addition to the usual presentation of our nation’s flag and the singing of The National Anthem, there was a moment of silence. In days gone by, it would have been a public prayer. Instead, we were instructed to be quiet for a moment of reflection on the lives lost last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut. It was brief, but lasted long enough to make me wonder if we didn’t need a longer one, not just at football games, but across the whole country.

I became consciously aware of the shooting just after 1:00 pm Friday, not from the breathless news reports, but while reading Twitter and Facebook. I made the decision not to turn on the television right away. Unfortunately, this has become too familiar that I knew what to expect by doing that. There would be pictures and stories of unimaginable tragedy, told with incomplete and often incorrect information for the first few hours. I decided I could actually postpone reality for a bit, though I pieced together enough thoughts to post a request for “prayers for Connecticut” on my blog at Peach Pundit.

Then I checked out for a couple of hours. It was time for a moment of silence.

Facebook and Twitter are now the rapid response sites for citizen-based commentary during all events. When observing initial reactions there is a one general rule of thumb: You will lose faith in humanity reading knee-jerk responses and political solutions from instant experts while first responders are still trying to treat the wounded and remove bodies.

Whether those who were assessing blame for an Arizona shooting before Congresswoman Gabby Giffords could be loaded into an ambulance, or those linking a disturbed Colorado grad student to a political group he didn’t belong to while bodies were still inside a movie theater, or those demanding we begin confiscating guns while the media were incorrectly reporting which Lanza brother was Friday’s killer, opinions race ahead of facts. Even without the basic facts known in each of the above cases, there were plenty of people willing to both assess blame and demand remedies before the bodies were even counted, much less identified.

It’s clear we’re now going to have a national debate about guns, and that’s fine. When raw emotion subsides the cold facts of the situation generally reveal that most of the solutions suggested would have done little or nothing to stop the tragedies of yesterday nor prevent the ones of tomorrow.

Those yelling the loudest – on both sides of the gun debate – are blocking the discussion that needs to happen, and that must happen, based on the history of the cases above and so many others. The problem at hand is not about weapons and their accessibility, but rather the horrible state of mental health care in our nation and its lack of accessibility.

Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and Adam Lanza have much more in common than guns. They each struggled with some form of mental health issue as a precursor to their horrific acts.

Much of the political class seems content to yell past each other about guns in the aftermath of these all too often occurrences. We’re quite used to the arguments, so it gives each side an opportunity to roll out their talking points, demonize others while creating a smug sense of self-righteousness, and generally assuring no intellectual effort or deep introspection will occur to figure out if we’re even addressing the right root cause.

We’re good at making noise at times like this. We’re horrible at reaching consensus as to what would actually change public behavior. That isn’t an easy answer as it is complex, multifaceted, and may ultimately make us remember that there are sometimes events in life which no system can be designed that will give us peace, security, or control.

Understanding won’t come from us shouting past each other in demands for quick fixes. “Doing something” because it appears easy doesn’t mean the problems go away or that threats diminish. Taking a real moment of silent reflection will help us come to grips with these items as fact.

And if, perhaps, we were silent long enough, we could actually spend some time summoning the inner courage to address the much more complicated, much less sound bite-oriented problem of mental health in this country.

Land-use policy needs to rely on markets

Guest — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:14:47 -0600

Michael Hamilton is a libertarian writer living in Washington, D.C. His main interests are economics, drug legalization, immigration, and land-use policy.

“The plans differ; the planners are all alike.” — Frédéric Bastiat

It’s common to hear libertarians pejoratively referred to as “Republicans who smoke pot,” the idea being that libertarians don’t really favor freedom in areas where it would lead to outcomes they do not like. For the most part this is false. There is one policy area, however, where this is an accurate criticism: land-use policy. On this issue, the dominant libertarian narrative does not live up to its name.

The narrative, to put it briefly, is that most Americans prefer detached, single-family homes, and zoning laws reflect this for the most part. Save for eliminating certain regulations aimed at curbing sprawl that make homes expensive such as open space rules or growth boundaries, it says policymakers should avoid making major changes to traditional zoning laws lest we fall into the hands of the “planners” and have to live under “smart growth” policies. The narrative associates suburbs, homeownership, and cars with mobility and better living. Libertarians main goals, so it goes, should be relatively inexpensive (or at least not “artificially expensive”) single-family homes and decent traffic. Note that libertarians who support traditional zoning do not consider themselves planners

This narrative is not only wrong, but distinctly unlibertarian. Before I attack it, two small concessions:

First, smart growth is something that libertarians should oppose for both philosophical and utilitarian reasons.

Second, a lot of Americans do choose to live in single-family, detached homes. For the past seventy years, most residential buildings have been single-family, detached homes, and this is unlikely to change in the future. While I think the location and number of single-family homes was altered by government interventions, I don’t think that everyone will live in dense neighborhoods absent these interventions.

However, demonstrating that smart growth is not a libertarian urban development strategy, or that suburbs are vibrant, is insufficient to demonstrate that traditional zoning is a free-market or libertarian policy. In addition, this narrative conflicts with the most common conceptual frameworks libertarians use for understanding policy—public choice theory, spontaneous order, and rule of law.

The first problem with the ‘libertarian’ work on land use is the way it is framed. According to them, there is a struggle between people who support traditional zoning and single-family homes, and smart growth advocates imposing urbanism on others.

A libertarian shouldn’t care one way or another about how people choose to live so long as they do not victimize others. Whether American cities take the form of Gotham or Mayberry, libertarians should instead care about the process through which this is accomplished. One of the most basic tenets of libertarianism is that market processes—which involve voluntary interactions between millions of individuals—should direct economic action.

Writers like Wendell Cox, who has written for libertarian organizations Reason Foundation and Foundation for Economic Education, constantly critique smart growth for causing home prices to rise and say these are the “predictable” outcomes of government intervention. Somehow, it escapes their attention that traditional zoning is likewise a government intervention with predictable, similar, outcomes.

For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual. Zoning, with its attendant restraints on voluntary action and market processes, pits the individual against the state. This is true whether or not the state actors who control zoning prefer suburbs (traditional zoning) or dense cities (smart growth). Both approaches determine lot sizes, parking policies, height limits, and setback requirements through the political process. Both require developers who wish for an exception to the rules to go through a costly entitlement process

The preferred policies of most ‘libertarian’ land use writers suffer from what F.A. Hayek called the knowledge problem. Support for traditional zoning because it delivers the type of city that one prefers might sound plausible to conservatives, but it should sound like an out-of-tune piano to a libertarian ear. As Hayek wrote,

“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.”

Cities—like economies, languages, and law—function best when they result from Hayek called spontaneous order. Rather than affirm the kind of development people want, land-use regulation has instead supplanted the only mechanism that could possibly tell homebuilders what people want: the price system. Zoning has distorted the price signals that owners of capital would employ to determine how to put their land and existing buildings to use because zoning has designated almost all desirable land as off-limits to any kind of development other than what it is currently used for. At the same time, people choosing where to live face different prices and types of housing than would have been offered by the free market. The result is an inefficient, man-made mess.

Central planning, i.e. zoning, causes resources—land, building materials, money, and time—to be spent inefficiently. Not only would a market have allocated all of these resources more efficiently than city planners could have (i.e in a spontaneous order), but our cities would have taken a largely different shape over the last 86 years. It is impossible to estimate the scope and magnitude of the losses incurred throughout the economy, but these are the unseen costs that libertarians routinely warn of in other policy areas. So too should it be with land use policy.

A Hayekian approach should also make a libertarian wonder how traditional zoning advocates were able to determine what people want, and whether traditional zoning has delivered it. As economic information is dispersed across millions of people all over the country, and their preferences for housing to purchase or build is weighed against every other option and also against every other good they desire, I suspect that no single person could ever determine such a thing. That preferences and populations are constantly changing makes such a determination even less likely.

Land use regulation, as carried out in most cities, is also incompatible with the libertarian concept of rule of law. As Hayek outlined in his greatest work, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume One, a free society should be “restrained only by rules of just conduct of universal application” and is most likely to achieve the ends valued by individuals under such an arrangement. Or, as David Boaz put it, the law should “not aim at any particular result or outcome.”

Zoning codes, and the permitting process that accompanies construction, are the antithesis of this concept of law: anyone who wishes to build or remodel a building has to go through a process that will, at some stage, require a bureaucrat or commission to approve or deny a plan based on his subjective judgement or tastes, with the goal being to ensure a particular outcome or type of city.

Land use regulation can seem, at first glance, to be primarily based on general rules. This is the case in places like cities like Washington or Houston (often falsely cited as having ”minimal land use restrictions”). However, these cities usually create such restrictive rules that many desirable, standard land uses fall outside the “as of right” development allowed by law, and force developers to seek a variance. Depending on how far outside of the code individuals wish to build, they are subject to different levels of discretion by local bureaucrats. In some cases, when developers wish to build far outside of what is allowed, they have to go through the nightmarish “planned unit development” process, as they call it here in D.C. As libertarians have pointed out in regard to criminal justice, discretion invariably leads to corruption. Even if it were the case that city planners usually approve buildings that exceed zoning codes, public choice theory suggests it would be foolish going forward to rely on the benevolence of the state instead of creating rule-based laws that respect individual’s rights to develop their property.

One reason zoning laws are so popular is that they give people within a political jurisdiction what amounts to a veto over any project that they do not like, or that they feel will change the character of their neighborhood. In the absence of this arrangement, these same people would either have to purchase the land in question or compensate developers to prevent them from building projects that don’t suit current residents’ tastes. Instead, zoning allows them to stop development for free, in what amounts to stealing through regulatory takings.

It is important to note here that the types of land use regulation preferred in the dominant libertarian narrative do not primarily address legitimate problems such as nuisance or other harms that libertarians rightfully seek to address in law. Nor does it deal primarily with ensuring that developers do not overwhelm public utilities or pass negative externalities onto third parties.

When viewed through these conceptual frameworks, the policy supported by the dominant libertarian narrative isn’t all that different from the authoritarian smart growth policy that it opposes. These ‘libertarians’ shouldn’t be surprised that the state apparatus they want to control land use is operated by people with differing goals at least half the time. An actual libertarian policy alternative would move towards a development process that is rule-based and focused on the rights of individuals, not particular outcomes such as single-family homes, density, sustainability, or walkability—whatever the merits of each.

Contrary to what is often written on land use policy, I see no reason why people who enjoy suburbs should necessarily oppose those who support density and urban living. Under free-market conditions there is room for both to live as they please. The only caveat is that the market will determine where skyscrapers and single-family homes are built, and that people would have to pay the full costs associated with living in either arrangement.

We need only to agree to let others live as they choose. Shouldn’t this be the default position for libertarians anyway?

__________________________________________

Post-script: I am obviously not the first libertarian to write about this issue, and I have barely touched the economics behind it. For ongoing, in-depth coverage, I suggest following Emily Washington and Stephen Smith at www.marketurbanism.com. For academic work, I suggest papers by Ed Glaeser, and GMU’s Alex Tabarrok has a book on this issue. Matt Yglesias, full-time non-libertarian, is libertarian on housing policy.

Days Before Voting, Ukraine’s Parties Abandon Coalition Efforts while Observers Identify No Major Election Violations

Guest — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:50:18 -0500

United Liberty welcomes this guest contribution by Ina Kirsch, Managing Director of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a pro-market NGO that is interested in seeing Ukraine become more integrated into the western world through markets and political liberalization. Ukraine’s parliamentary elections will take place this weekend, and will feature electoral reforms that Ukrainians adopted broadly last November. These reforms aim to prevent corruption by making the process more transparent, and should result in a higher degree of representativeness of Ukraine’s diverse preferences. Learn more about ECFMU’s US Allies Project by clicking here. - Jason

In the lead up to Ukraine’s 28 October 2012 Parliamentary elections, polling indicates support moving toward the governing Party of Regions, with a close race between Batkivshyna and UDAR for second place. Those two parties had flirted with forming an official coalition, but amid a series of angry exchanges in the press, halted their plans. Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) issued the second interim report from its observation mission, noting progress in key areas but also some concerns regarding the country’s election process.

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) report is generally neutral, with relatively minor areas for improvement identified. ODIHR stated that the election is active, with “significant variations within most regions.” In cities and urban areas, they observed rallies, meetings with voters, tens for distribution of campaign literature and political newspapers, and political advertising on billboards, posters and local media. In rural areas, the campaigning was more oriented toward billboards, posters and occasional meetings with voters, and in some districts, ODIHR noted that the campaign was scarcely visible.

OSCE’s report highlighted that the Central Elections Commission – the independent body tasked with overseeing the electoral process – is processing complaints in a “timely manner,” and thus far the judiciary has adjudicated all complaints “within the legal time limits.”

The report also noted that the CEC, jointly with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), has launched a thorough training process for the District Election Commissions (DECs), which will in turn train the Precinct Election Commissions (PECs). However, it expressed worry that a large number of DEC and PEC members were recently replaced, with more than half of those replacements at the insistence of five small parties. These new members presumably have less familiarity with election processes.

OSCE also noted allegations of the use of government administrative resources for political purposes, saying that long-term observers has observed or verified more than 20 instances in a dozen regions. This has been in the form of events by local and regional authorities at which campaign flags, tents or other materials were used, which featured candidates prominently, or which staff at public facilities like schools or hospitals were required to attend.

The full OSCE interim report is available here.

The analysis from OSCE comes as the Party of Regions’ two main competitors in the election, the UDAR party run by former boxer Vitali Klitschko, and Batkivshyna, headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, worked through a dispute over whether they would form a coalition in advance of the election, with the goal of overcoming the Party of Regions. After promises on both sides, UDAR rejected Batkivshyna’s advances and decided to run on its own.

According to Klitschko, “We respect the suggestions of our partners in the opposition, but we believe that winning the elections and protecting the voting results, rather than signing new statements, declarations and agreements, is the main task of the opposition these days. Our position is clear, open and honest – without ultimatums, prerequisites and backroom agreements.”

“This is in the European tradition, when democratic parties that get into Parliament unite their efforts and develop a common action plan,” he told reporters in Kharkiv.

Batkivshyna reacted sharply, attacking Klitschko’s actions and motives. A party statement read, “Vitali Klitschko’s refusal to sign an agreement on the creation of a coalition of democratic forces in the next parliament is a move that is in the interests of the Party of Regions, a move that turns him into an ally of the Party of Regions, a move that will lead to the dissipation of democratic forces, rather than their unity in the struggle against the current regime of Yanukovych.”

The statement continued, “Now it’s clear why Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party disrupted the coordination of joint actions by democratic forces at the beginning of the election process. And then, last week, it unilaterally withdrew from negotiations with the united opposition on the formation of a single list of candidates running for single-member constituencies and, without any consultation with its partners, announced its decision that allows the Party of Regions to receive an additional few dozen seats.”

Svoboda deputy chairman Andriy Mohnyk, representing the far-right nationalist party, insisted that UDAR’s decision was a sign that it would negotiate with the election winner, regardless of party.

In the interim, Batkivshyna and Svoboda signed an agreement in opposition to the government, unifying their parties just ahead of the election.

In the midst of the turmoil, experts in Ukraine expressed doubt that the opposition parties could successfully unite in the Verkhovna Rada after the elections. According to Yevhen Kopatko, head of polling company Research & Branding Group, “I can hardly imagine the unification of opposition parties. They currently have a lot of disagreements that are difficult to solve.”

In recent weeks, the Party of Regions has consolidated its support, particularly among likely voters (as opposed to all eligible voters). No polling will be released prior to the election, the best guidance is from the most recent data. According to Research & Branding Group’s latest figures, 27.8 percent of those planning to vote will select the Party of Regions (22.2 percent of all voters), 19.4 percent of likely voters will select Batkivshyna (15.4 percent of all voters), and 16.6 percent of likely voters will select UDAR (14.8 percent of all voters). The Communist Party of Ukraine earns 11.2 percent of support among likely voters (9.6 percent of all voters), while Svoboda and Ukraine-Forward! both fail to cross the 5 percent threshold.

FDA Wants To Roll the Cigar Industry

Guest — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:01:36 -0500

Jeff Edgens is a member of the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Georgia and a member of the Cigar Rights of America. He lives in Statesboro, Georgia.

Cigars have a family tree that can be traced back like that of a pencil. I,Pencil - the classic article written by Leonard Reed describes how a pencil is made. In his essay, Reed chronicles the business transactions seen and unseen in the manfuacture of a pencil. He distinguishes between the invisible hand of the marketplace that brings willing buyers and sellers together from that of the planned economy foisted on to the marketplace by a regulatory agency.

I, Pencil reminds us that no single person has the knowledge to make a pencil and the same holds true for making a cigar. Both are made by a myriad of individual business transactions that cooperate and bring to bear their respective talents toward a final product.

In this case, besides rolling the cigar there are all of the steps that come before the final product reaches the hands of the customer. There are those who provide the raw materials to build the tools used to harvest the tobacco. There are those who harvest the leaf, those who ship it, those who buy the leaf, those who roll it, those who market it, and those who sale the final product. Other steps are unseen and those are the ones that take place long before a cigar ever reaches the marketplace. There are entirely too many transactions for one person or an agency of people to know how to direct or control.

Yet, federal regulators think they can direct a process that the invisible hand brings about willingly. Food and Drug Administration bureaucrats propose rules that get in the way of these willing buyers and sellers working in their own self-interest. The FDA believes it can actually direct or centrally plan the steps along the road to building a cigar. Regulations, though, only harm the little guy and all of those people invovled in making a cigar.

When President Obama passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act it was done to place tobacco products under the control of the Food and Drug Administration’s central planners. Bureaucrats work by mandating to others and not through the idea of voluntary cooperation. FDA’s proposed rules jeopardizes over 85,000 jobs in the U.S and will destroy a lot of Main Street, USA“mom and pop” retailers. Another 250,000 jobs aligned with the cigar industry in Latin America are also at risk from FDA overreach.

To be clear, a handful of government officials can never accomplish through regulation and command what thousands of people cooperating together can achieve. Hundreds of years of knowledge in various fields, and the collective lifetimes of learning hard economic lessons, cannot be controlled by one agency and expect a better product as a result. Only those working towards self-interest can accomplish the feat of making a cigar.

All of these craftsmen and laborers have one thing in common - they work to provide a life for themselves, not because they like cigars, perhaps they do, but it’s because they benefit themselves and by doing-so benefit others.

When bureaucrats dictate how a product is to be made, they distort the marketplace and interfere with all of those hundreds of people’s abilities to earn a living. Agency actions will only serve to weaken the cigar industry and at worst to extinguish a quality of life enjoyed by thousands. It’s a good bet they have no idea what they are regulating in or regulating out.

The FDA cigar cops have a list of things they want to change about how cigars are made and sold. They want to ban flavored cigars, and they want to interefere with cigar art by manadating pictures of the health effects of smoking be plastered over the fine cigar boxes created by skilled artisans. The FDA doesn’t stop there—they propose regulations to prohibit handing out cigars at cigar events, banning mail-order cigar sales, and limiting the marketing and advertising of cigars.

Perhaps worst of all, FDA officials think they are in the cigar making business. Proposed rules include regulating the types of tobacco blends from which to make a cigar. FDA would approve the contents of a cigar instead of the cigar maker deciding new blends. A cigar maker would have to submit prospective samples of a blend to the FDA for its approval. Once the agency approves the blend then the company can begin to manufacture the cigar. FDA arrogance knows no bounds if it thinks it knows best how to build a cigar.

In a bit of good news for the cigar industry Congress is considering legislation to exempt cigar manufacturers from the clutches of the FDA. By doing so, it protects jobs and hundreds of small famly cigar businesses across the country. It would be best if there were no need for the legislaton and a legal business could go on its merry way unmolested to participate in a free market.

Indeed, those businesses engaged in free-markets realize that thousands of willing buyers and sellers cannot be successfully directed from a bureaucratic Mt. Olympus. It bears repeating, one person does not know all there is to produce a cigar and rest assured that FDA central planners do not either. But it doesn’t stop them from trying to roll an entire industry, their actions will only get in the way of a good cigar.

Pandering to Idiots: How Obama Flip-Flops

Guest — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:10:59 -0500

Jorge Gonzalez is a motion designer and political activist living and working in Midtown Atlanta. In his free time, he enjoys filming, photography, and reading.

I recently had a discussion with a close friend of mine who is a very “progressive” guy. He’s the type that buys into all the horror stories about Republicans and libertarians. You know, we don’t care about the poor or women’s rights or worker’s rights and we’re cruel, intolerant etc etc. He started off the conversation by claiming “Romney panders to stupid people. Obama does not…Obama doesn’t bend his beliefs to fit an uneducated and sensationalistic base.” If you didn’t fall out of your chair just now at the sheer stupidity and myopia of a statement like that, then I ask you to read on, dear Reader, because what follows may be of interest to you.

Now let me start off by saying that I am no fan of Mitt Romney. I will not be voting for him and in many ways his positions are the antithesis to much of what I believe. Let me also say that yes, I agree with my friend that Romney will say and “believe” anything to assuage the concerns of his idiotic base in hopes of securing their votes. It’s a base filled with xenophobes, nativists, jingoists, and irrational religionists. But to suggest that Obama’s base does not also consist of such an assortment of fools strikes me as a monumental inability to understand political constituencies clearly and it’s intellectually dishonest. Obama’s base is filled with nativists, collectivists, irrational religionists, jingoists, and protectionists. The suggestion that he doesn’t bend his beliefs or panders to stupid people to secure votes or support is, well, idiotic. Obama is just as bad of flip-flopper as Romney and in many ways Obama’s flips and flops are much more egregious.

In 2007, then-candidate Obama pandered to bigots and idiots by not coming out in favor of gay marriage then. No, instead, Obama, (who in 1996 told a newspaper in Illinois that he supported gay marriage — while seeking his first term as state senator — and then in 1998 when running for re-election stated that his position on the issue was “undecided”) in 2008 came out in support of Civil Unions. Not marriage. Oh no, he learned that that position carries a heavy political cost given his vacillation in 1998. And then, after 3 and half years of treating citizens unequally, he supports gay marriage because polls show a majority of American’s are cool with it, and well, he needs the money from LGBT groups desperately. But wait, he doesn’t support it all the way really. You see, it should be left up to the States to decide how to deal with the issue. I wonder how a black man makes the argument that a certain subset of the population should have their civil rights left up to state legislators? So, even in support of gay marriage, Obama panders to his african- american base that is filled with anti-gay bigots and idiots in order to not exact too large a political toll on his reelection aspirations. But don’t tell my buddy. Remember, Obama doesn’t pander to idiots. Nor does he bend his beliefs to cater to the whims of his idiotic constituencies.

Or what about when Obama promised not be a drug warrior? He promised to leave medical marijuana and it’s legal state up to the States, and then he was elected and things changed. Dramatically. Obama is worse on medical marijuana dispensaries than his Republican predecessor. Why the change you think? Supposedly, senior Obama advisors believe a tough-on-pot stance will shore up support among seniors in key swings states as well as to play to Southerner’s attitudes in swing states like Virginia and North Carolina. So again, here we have Obama reversing himself and treating “peaceful Americans who chose to use intoxicants not approved of by the U.S. government” in order to pander to fools and religionists and nanny statists who think it’s their duty to keep people from doing something peaceful and harmless. But don’t tell my buddy this, because if you recall, Obama doesn’t bend his beliefs to idiots.

If my memory serves me correctly, then-candidate Obama also promised to utilize a much less aggressive foreign policy. I suppose that would explain why, as President Obama, he not only argued for but supported regime change in Libya using our military and making war by launching missiles and using drones in support of ground forces all without Congressional approval, escalated the war in Afghanistan, replaced torturing suspected terrorists with just outright assassinations including assassinating US Citizens, entered the sovereign airspace of three more countries and launched hellfires at targets on the ground there, and instead of giving terrorist detainees trials in civilian courts like he ran on, he instead did the Bush thing and went with military tribunals. All things he did to secure the votes of Democrats who had become much more hawkish on US foreign policy after September 11th. So, there, once more, Obama bends his beliefs to the will of jingoistic idiots within his party and to secure the allegiance of independent voters with a more jingoistic streak in them. But please, don’t tell my buddy…or the media for that matter because only Mitt Romney is the flip flopper that caters to knuckledragging war mongers.

During the 2008 election, Obama promised that by end of his first term he would cut the deficit in half. We all know how that’s gone. Of course, now, he makes similar pledges but appeals to the collectivist myrmidons and economic dullards in his base by playing the class warfare card and blaming our deficits on the wealthy not paying enough in taxes. Here is some truth for the idiots in his base who think raising taxes will fix the problem. If you eliminate the Bush aka Chimpy McHitler* tax cuts on “millionaires and billionaires” (Obama’s words for anyone making more than $250,000 which you should know $250k does not a millionaire or billionaire make, but if you’re an idiot in his base that fact will probably escape you) you may want to do some math because raising those taxes will only generate you about $700 billion in revenues over the next 10 years. Sounds good right? Except our budget is about $3.55 trillion over the next 10 years. So while this class warfare gets sweaty, bike riding idiot liberals all hot and bothered, the fact is, Obama is playing to your stupidity because he knows it ain’t going to make a difference. He says he can cut the deficit in half and he knows it plays to people who pretend to care about the deficit, but if his 3 yrs in office show anything it’s that he could care less about the deficit and he played his collectivist and “deficit minded” progressives for the idiots they are. This isn’t a case of Obama changing his mind as much as it an example of Obama pandering to economics impaired imbeciles.

There’s also plenty that can be said about Team Obama’s demagoguery of success, of Mitt Romney the out-of-touch, murderous, money grubbing capitalist Mormon and cruel, Ayn Rand loving running-mate, Paul Ryan. You know using sensationalism to stoke class warfare and the worst kind of divisiveness there is politics. But then, Obama doesn’t senationalize in order to stir the passions of his fawning idiot constituents…or does he?

Two more and we’ll be done.

As a candidate Obama promised to approach illegal immigration in a much humane manner. That’s a position I can agree with. His governance has been anything but humane. As a candidate, he promised to create a path to citizenship, and as President he had the majorities in Congress to be able to get that done, but he didn’t. Instead he has deported more than 1 million illegal immigrants as of March 2012. That’s a million deportations in a little over 3 years. Bush or, pardon me, Chimpy McHitler, managed 1.5 million in 8 years. And why do you think this might be? Maybe to pander to his union base chock full of nativists and protectionists? Wouldn’t want those illegals pushing down wages or “taking our jarbs!!!” It really makes you scratch you head to hear candidate Obama on immigration and then to see what he has done to pander to key constituencies in swing state like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Colorado. But I ask you to recall that in this election, the flip flopping cruel, inhumane one is Mitt Romney and only Mitt Romney.

And the coup de gras is Obama on Obamacare. As a Candidate Obama said the following: “If a mandate was the solution, we could solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house.” Many times, Candidate Obama argued against the individual mandate. Check out this video, it’s Obama in his words. And yet, we got an individual mandate in his health care reform. At the time he was saying no to the mandate, once again, he was pandering to his constituents in order to scare them about the cost of a mandate. Then he became President. And the individual mandate to purchase health care became the corner stone of the legislation. Having also promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, many detractors argued that the mandate was a tax. Obama, however, knowing that if he said it was a tax, it would cost him politically and would break his campaign promise of not raising taxes on the middle-class, argued vociferously that it wasn’t a tax. All the while, dear reader, his administration was arguing in front federal court after federal court that the mandate could be justified as a tax. This is a perfect case of “tell your voters one thing because they are idiots and don’t follow the details that closely but do another thing that it too abstract for your idiot constituents to follow.” Well, low and behold, the mandate is a tax according to the Supreme Court (under one of the most tortured reasonings I’ve ever read come from the High Court). And another case of the flip flopping is that Obama very clearly told us that if you like your healthcare provider, under his plan, you could keep it. Not so. And what about his claims about how his plan controls costs? Again, false. Once more, pandering to idiots who should know better but whose support he needs. Neither my buddy nor the media need know any of this. It doesn’t quite fit the narrative.

President Obama’s campaign and his governance has been Machiavellian. Say one thing, do another and never let your voters know exactly what you’re doing. Play on voters’ fear by demonizing your opponent and distorting him into a diabolical caricature. It seems that the essence of hope and change is to find enough idiots to buy into your garbage, then get elected, lie about what you’re doing or just do the opposite or obfuscate what you’re doing to ensure those idiots never know they just got bent over. And then, come election season again, those same idiots will bend their knees and vote exactly as before because it isn’t the truth they are interested in. They don’t really care about whether Romney was responsible for the death of a plant worker’s wife, they don’t care if their President lied to them on nearly every major point of policy. They are interested in only one thing: does the candidate have a D or R after their name. And that, my friends, is the most idiotic part of it all.

*as non-divisive unity loving liberals fondly called him

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