Oregon Trail

In the very merry month of May, Team KPC took a road trip. I bundled the JR up into the station wagon and we headed down to Durham to grab Meat Mountain Mungowitz for the trek west. When our feckless trio hit the Sooner State, I handed driving duties over to Robin. Our freshly-minted quintet hooked a right turn on our way to the fabled land of the Great Beaver. Here's a partial transcript of the cabin conversation as we approached Wichita for the  evening's respite.

Robin: Okay guys. I see a... I see a McDonalds and a Burger King. Where should we eat?

Angus: McDonalds, of course. Slainte!

MMM: Uh huh, I don't think so. Home of the Whopper, please. Please and thank you.

It's difficult for me to adequately convey the kindly imperiousness in Mungo's voice here. As the father of two grown men (and a chaired professor at a major university), he's developed a certain rhetorical style that manages to be both charming and compelling at the same time. Search the Econtalk archives if you don't believe me.

JR: <snore>

Jeff had been asleep for the past hour and a half.

Me: I don't like hamburgers.

I could feel perplexed contempt just starting to boil off my traveling companions. How is it even possible to "not like hamburgers?" Is this guy a Communist or something? Luckily, we had a peacemaker in the car.

Robin: Okay, well, there's also a Five Guys and a Whataburger. How about that, Sam?

Me: I don't like hamburgers. At all.

Kevin had heard enough.

Angus: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T LIKE HAMBURGERS!?! IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR HAMBURGER, YOU KNOW WHAT WE'LL HAVE? ANARCHY!!! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT!?!

I did my best to suppress a smile. I probably wasn't all that successful, judging by Mike's follow-up.

MMM: Okay, we'll settle this like adults. Jeff's asleep, so Robin, Kevin, and I will vote on where to eat, and we'll watch as you enjoy our democratically-chosen hamburger. We don't want you to starve, after all. it's for your own good and the collective good of the car.

Here's Reuters. Here's the Oregon DMV. Full text of HB 2177 here.

I keep company with many folks who are naturally skeptical—if not outright contemptuous—of choosing via the ballot box instead of in more spontaneous, natural agglomerations such as professional, neighborhood, or social clubs. Politics, they say, make fools of us all, forcing upon private citizens a certain telescopic morality that is both unseemly and unnatural. I don't disagree, but I also don't see a lot of damage done in reducing the costs of voter registration. It's not like it makes voter participation any more salient for disaffected, alienated, or apathetic voters. At most, Oregon's HB 2177 adds a little more noise to the voting process, and it's very likely that the noise will be centered pretty much on mainstream beliefs. It's the nasty biases in the mainstream beliefs that cause so much havoc. Noise in large systems tends to cancel out. [citations available in any standard Public Choice textbook, esp. Mueller]

The party registration bit in there (seriously, check the language in the third link) reflects the typical ambitions of the sovereign: "we're just gonna go ahead as sign you up as a voter here. And oh, by the way, have you heard of the Democratic and Republican parties? Would you be interested in some literature?" It's got some grim humor to it, I must admit. After all, how can we even have a republic if constituents run about all willy-nilly identifying as independent or with another party. Maybe this is only funny to me, having spent so much time with these specific GSS variables. Eh, whatever.

Governments are duly organized by constituents to serve the interest of the public. Elites who interpret that mandate as "the public exists to participate in the political process" reveal a curious sort of political philosophy. Authority is being exchanged here for sure, but I'm not convinced it's all that euvoluntary.

"Vote or die" is not the slogan of a free society, people.

Toward A Theory of Euvoluntary Political Exchange

I had a fun little back-and-forth with SMBC cartoonist and BAHFest organizer Zach Weiner yesterday on Twitter. You can read it here if you're so inclined, but be forewarned: it got silly and a bit scatological pretty quickly. The non-silly modified transcript went something like this:

Z: Are any lawmakers going to do anything about the CIA torture report?
S: What would you have them do?
Z: Punish transgressors. Credibly commit to punish future transgressors.
S: Torture has been around for thousands of years. How will a little extra punishment help?
Z: WTF are you talking about? We successfully outlawed slavery. We can successfully outlaw torture.
S: Slavery still exists, all we did was force it underground.

And then Adam G joined the conversation and it quickly devolved into jokes about the political economy of seasteads (check for yourself if you don't believe me).

It struck me that Zach and I must have very different game theoretic models underpinning our views of how and why the state exists. By suggesting that punishing torturers would produce better behavior, I think Zach basically subscribes to the notion that the telos of the state is to govern, that the sovereign is generally the product of Lockean bargaining, Hobbesian entrepreneurship, or Rousseauian foresight. Zach appears to hold a wildly popular view, both inside the academy and among the general public, that people who hold political power—the power to coerce others—are endowed according to the Enlightenment-era principles described by Jefferson in the DoI:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

To Zach, and indeed to any American you'd poll with probably greater than 95% likelihood, this sentiment is accurate. The government is legitimate if and only if it serves the interests of the people, if perhaps not always their direct will. How widespread is belief in this model? I've heard my patron here at EE [obliquely] reference it more than once. If there's anyone in the world I most closely agree with on matters of political economy, it's Michael C. Munger.

But on this matter, I part a bit with first-principles theories of political organization. It might be that the sovereign arises to solve some thorny collective action problem, but that doesn't say very much about what it does once it sticks around. In this sense, I find myself much more closely aligned with Hume, that the continued existence of the sovereign is to encrease his own opulence and dominion. If good public law and order happens to arrive along with this pursuit, all the better, all the more euvoluntary if you will. However, a lifetime of casually following politics, of noting the periodic lapses in ethical behavior of the political elites, of surveying historical episodes of malfeasance, of noting the curiously acceptable practices in politics that are outright illegal in the private sector (insider trading is the most benign example that springs to mind), I find it nearly impossible to conclude that the state exists to serve anyone other than itself.

If the popular model is correct, if Zach is correct, the CIA (and whatever other organizations who've not had extensively-redacted reports publicized) is acting aberrantly when its agents force food and water into the rectums of prisoners with sufficient vigor to result in hemorrhoids, anal fissures, and rectal prolapse. Punishing those who are not acting in concert with the fundamental principles of the organization is sufficient to ensure compliance. Contrarily, if my model is correct, if Hume was right, and the state exists to encrease the dominion of the sovereign, there was no wrongdoing. At least not in the hidden, hermeneutical mission statement of the agency. If I'm right, the only person committing heresy is the whistleblower. If I'm right, Snowden is a criminal, not Rogers. If I'm right, whistleblower statutes need to (a) exist and (b) have no real capacity to protect whistleblowers. If I'm right, prosecutions would be Soviet-style show courts. If I'm right, the only way to ensure that torture is ended is to abolish the CIA entirely, along with the numerous other unaccountable federal agencies that enjoy wide discretion and little Congressional oversight.

However, I am not the hegemon of Plato's Cave. I do not have the luxury of indoctrinating the young while calling it "social studies." I cannot convince you that my model is correct and the popular model is as fanciful as a chocolate unicorn riding a pumpernickel skateboard across a peppermint half-pipe. All I can do is gently encourage you to revisit from time to time the basic model you have for political authority and to ask if the patterns you see in political activity reflect your hypothesis or if they might be better explained by an alternative.

We all want a more euvoluntary relationship with those vested with political authority. To get there, it might be worth reconsidering the terms of the implicit contract. T/F, explain.

Shovel THIS!

So, Philadelphia is dealing with a commons problem, in the traditional Lockean sense.  Combine your labor with the (undeveloped) resource, and ownership moves from the commons to your private control.  At least until the snow melts.

If there is no private ownership of parking spots, no one shovels out the parking spot and it is not available for anyone.

But, if someone combines his/her labor with that spot, shoveling it out, then that person has the sense thta it is "owned," at least until the snow melts.  Remember, the spot is useful to no one until it is shoveled.

Should Philadelphia be prosecuting this "#NoSavesies" campaign on twitter?  Or should they allow the informal norm to exist, since it encourages the public good of shoveling out parking spaces, though at the price of short-term privatization?  Not surprisingly, the "intelligentsia" just assume that the public good will be provided, by magic, and that property is theft.  Mayor Nutter, on the other hand (whom NO ONE would accuse of being a member of the intelligentsia!) thought the practice made sense.  One suggestion I like from that article:  "Shovel the snow back in!"  Now that is the Philly way..."If I can't have dis, YOUSE can't have dis!"

So, should we allow people to take "ownership" if they shovel out the space, combining their labor with the (otherwise useless) resource?  After all, there is clearly "as much and as good" for the rest of us, if you just get out your shovel.  Or should we treat parking spaces as common property of which you take ownership only so long as you combine your CAR with the space?

Or is there a third alternative?  What do YOU think, folks?

Badhwar on Market Justice

Neera K. Badhwar on Just Market Exchange. Money quote:

[T]here is nothing unjust about raising the price of a commodity when it is in short supply, and lowering it when it is abundant. Doing so neither takes advantage of people by making grossly disproportionate exchanges, nor treats them as mere means to the seller’s own ends. Nor is it unjust in any other way that I can see. Rather, it is the only economically and morally rational way to act.

 Nailed it.

Example

From a FB post by JLW:

Michael Munger and John Locke may like this: Last Spring we had a garage sale. A relative priced most things, but due to circumstances couldn't put a sticker price on everything, so the rest was negotiable. Among those was an item in which $50 was offered from a neighbor who said she really needed it, but my relative negotiated down to $25 -- remember: my relative was the seller! That's to say, her gut told her to accept only $25 because $25 was the offer she would have taken from a stranger. THAT is ethics. You can't legislate it or regulate it, but it's there nonetheless.