I, Extremist, Part V
By Mitch Berg
According to Janet Napolitano and most of the mainstream media, I’m an “extremist”; I’m pro-life, anti-tax, pro-Second-and-Tenth Amendment…
…which, to some, means “anti-government”; as if “wanting just the parts of government we really need” is in some way the same as wanting the government to be overthrown.
Here’s one of my “extremist” beliefs; that the government that governns best, governs least. Of course, that was really Thomas Jefferson – who, let’s never forget, was also an extremist.
Look – most of the case for limited government boils down to this: The Constitution really defines what government is supposed to do; defend the nation, look out for the “general welfare”, raise taxes for federal functions (which at one point meant “functions that were properly the province of the Feds, although that’s been bastardized beyond recognition for the past couple of generations), sign treaties with foreign governments, interpret the Constitution and, since the end of the Civil War, make sure that “equality before the law” is a unform, national thing; above all, per the Tenth Amendment, to keep its hands off of everything else.
But you can hear that from the entire Libertarian Party, and a fair chunk of the libertarian wing of the GOP; that’s Conservatism 101 (or, if you’re talking with Keith Olberman or Nancy Pelosi or Janet Napolitano, “extremism”, but I digress).
There’s another, ethical reason to limit the size and power of government. It does in unbendable fact what capitalism supposedly does; it arbitrarily picks winners.
Imagine that you’re a barber. You live in, let’s say, Portland, Oregon, a city with nine other barbers. Now, being plagued with hippies, it’s not the best town to be a barber. But you get word that the guys from Phish are going to all get flattops; knowing what a bunch of “non-conformists” hippies are, you and your nine fellow barbers are getting ready for an avalanche of business.
As one of your items of business, you set up a PAC – call it “Portland Cares about Hair”. You publicize photos of bad flat-tops. “Portland must demand better”, the ads say. And you go before the Portland City Commissariat Council, and convince them that bad flat-tops are something that government must prevent – so they should impose a license on the barber trade, with licenses going to would-be barbers who have passed a license exam issued by the “Board of Barber Examiners” – a panel of three barbers drawn from among the ten of you. Which means that, as the hordes of hippies wander about looking for flat-tops, there are only ten shops to go to; all of the hippies who try to start their own barber shops are busted by the cops and fined for “barbering without a license”.
In other words, you and your nine barber friends have just used government to give you a better, more commanding market position.
Business does this all the time; the bigger the business, the bigger the likelihood they’ll get government to clamp down on the market for them:
Yes, that’s the largest investment bank on Wall Street calling for stricter regulation from Washington. Stoll has a pretty straightforward explanation:
What [Goldman CEO Lloyd] Blankfein and Mr. Cohn are now saying is that their desire for higher capital requirements isn’t related to concern about their ability to control Goldman‘s risk-taking (“Please, Mr. Government, supervise me more closely, allow me to borrow less money, and force me to take less risk”), but their ability to assess and judge the risks of their counterparties, the other firms they are doing deals with.
Why should Goldman have to pay for mitigating the risk of its deal-partners when the SEC or the Fed can do Goldman’s work for it — on the taxpayer dime?
This is further evidence of what I’ve been saying for months: just as tobacco regulation was a gift to Philip Morris, toy regulation was a gift to Mattel, and health-care “reform” was a gift to Big Pharma, financial reform will improve Goldman’s profitability, Obama’s populist rhetoric notwithstanding.
Government has no more business picking winners than it has defining who shall lose. At least, it shouldn’t.
I know. What an extremist I am.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
You do know that Goldman-Sachs is doing this now, don’t you? They’re supporting the financial industry “overhaul” that Blarney Frank is promoting because it will hamstring their smaller competitors who won’t be able to deal with the paperwork required.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Sorry, hit submit too soon. This is a fundamental problem in scope and vision with all the folks in office now.
We’ve chosen winners in retirement: TARP is being used to bail out GM/Chrysler retirees, but Ford will lose because it isn’t covered by the bailout.
Government “help” is doing what it does best: making business permanently dependent on the prospect of it being there and removing the risk and reward of actual innovation.
And the removal of risk and reward is a terrible thing. Silicon Valley has atrophied over the last decade as Sarbanes-Oxley has made startups too risky and too difficult to really do. As a result there are very few startups anymore, and those are really only software startups simply because there’s less capital exposed in such a situation.
We’re over-regulating and removing the ability to innovate that’s been the engine of American growth!
April 8th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
This might actually be an area of agreement with liberals.
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.html#2
Although we would point out that license requirements generally work to restrict the supply of high-wage professions like doctors, lawyers, ect and thus keep their wages high. Low wage workers like barbers don’t get the same level of benefit.
April 8th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Not entirely. Five years ago, the state licensing board tried to require barbers’ licenses from Eritrean hair braiding salons. No scissors involved, no hair ever really cut…but it took serious legislative action to get that waived.
April 8th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
What do you think the chances of an Eritrean doctor or lawyer getting their liscensing requirements waived?
April 8th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
license requirements generally work to restrict the supply of high-wage professions like doctors, lawyers, ect and thus keep their wages high.
Yet more proof that RatioRinkyDink has no grasp of life in the real world. Nor on structuring arguments.
Yeah! Let’s abolish license requirements fro lawyers and doctors and dentists, oh my! Everyone should be able to set up chairs on the corner to pull teeth, or to cut out an appendix. Everyone stayed at a Holiday Express at least once in their lives!
Why do you hate high wages for professional people, RatioRinkySoci*listDink? From everyone based on their ability to everyone based on their need? Is this your credo?
April 8th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
What do you think the chances of an Eritrean doctor or lawyer getting their liscensing requirements waived?
Dunno. But then, the consequences of wildcat braiding are pretty minimal; those of unqualified brain surgeons potentially not so much.
By the way – let’s make sure we’re clear here. Professional standards groups – like medical specialty boards and the organizations that certify engineers – are pretty much private, and part of what makes a “profession” a profession.
April 8th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
The “oldest profession” has standards? Who knew!
April 8th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
JPA:
I don’t like the government keeping wages for high wage earners artificially even higher by restriciting the supply.
Mitch:
“the consequences of wildcat braiding are pretty minimal; those of unqualified brain surgeons potentially not so much”
Sure everyone agrees we need to enforce basic safety standards and we both agree such regimes can be twisted to artificially raise the wages of some set of workers. I would just add that wealthy workers because they have more access and make larger donations are in a better position to abuse the system.
April 8th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
we both agree such regimes can be twisted to artificially raise the wages of some set of workers
Kinda like the UAW, Rick?
April 8th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I’d like to warn everyone that this thread is coming dangerously close to “group hug” territory.
April 8th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Kermit:
“Kinda like the UAW, Rick?” Except that the UAW is a private organization that works via a private contract.
April 8th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I don’t like the government keeping wages for high wage earners artificially even higher by restriciting the supply.
There is a government quota for professionals? Who knew?
April 8th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Rick is once again wrong. With the government intercession in both GM and Chrysler the UAW is now effectively a federal entity.
April 8th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Well, RickDFL, I feel better about paying a high salary to a doctor who has gone through years of med school & residency than to someone who has got himself into a trade union through a family connection.
April 8th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Rent seeking is rent seeking, regardless of who engages in it. I have no problem with professional licensure or endorsement; I have substantial problems with the idea that the power of the state can be invoked to prevent you from engaging in the vocational activity of your choice.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
What are you guys talking about? I thought this whole barbershop thing was an allegory for Education Minnesota and Teach for America.
April 8th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
What is the constitutional basis for the government “picking winners” by licensing doctors?
Don’t misunderstand (krod), I do think we should license medical professionals. But where is the cut-off of where the government has a reason to license and where it doesn’t?
April 8th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
[…] According to Shot in the Dark I am also an extemist!! Apparently dissent and protesting is only allowable by the likes of Code Pinko and related leftist […]
April 9th, 2010 at 1:49 am
“I, Extremist”? What is an extremist?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines an extremist as “noun – one who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics”
Kevin seems to have put his finger on the crucial point when he wrote this was getting into ‘group hug territory’, in that there is substantial agreement in theory, distinctly less in degree and details, but still agreement….so no one here seems to meet the criteria for an extremist; there is no resorting to measures beyond the norm.
Sorry, Mitch, but I think your stretching it to claim that Napolitano and the main stream media or anyone else would characterize you as an extremist.
But it is fair to suggest that if you get too far from that norm, from the mainstream, you should ask yourself who it is that has to change the most – the few, or the many. Democracy, especially our democracy, is a balance between the positions of the few and the many. defining the norm as the many. While it does provide some protection for the few, overall it favors the many by design.
At bottom, what you are arguing is that regardless of not being the many, on other reasons than consensus of the many, your views should prevail.
If you can persuade enough people to join your view, then you and those greater number of people should get your way, your size of government, your degree of involvement by the government – but only then. Otherwise, I think as a self-styled ‘extremist’ or more minority view, you provide a very important and necessary balance – but one that is likely to result in some frustration.
Personally, I don’t care what anyone’s views are, more people or fewer people; the minority view eventually may persuade enough individuals to become the new majority. What I object to is pretty much exclusively those who would force their extremist views on an unwilling majority through coercion and violence instead of the slower and less certain methods of persuasion.
Having read many of the terrorist assesment reports that have been made public, both on terrorists from the right AND the left – that seems in fact to pretty much be Napolitano’s position as well. I think you misrepresent the position of the Sec. Homeland Security.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:37 am
Dog Gone, you called me an ‘extremist’ not long ago at AB’s place. This was despite the fact that I hadn’t resorted to or advocated anything.
A little introspection wouldn’t kill you, Dog Gone.
And, since I am picking on you, your comments are way too long. I can never finish reading them. It’s not like there is any kind of reward for reading them to the end. I’d rather take my own eye out with a spork than read to the end of one of your eight paragraph comments.
This, for instance:
So you are in favor of democracy. Holy cow, what a daring stand to take (my eyes are rolling).
You are like a volcano that erupts luke-warm unsalted oatmeal.
April 9th, 2010 at 8:06 am
“In other words, you and your nine barber friends have just used government to give you a better, more commanding market position….Business does this all the time; the bigger the business, the bigger the likelihood they’ll get government to clamp down on the market for them”
That’s what I’ve been writing about for 5 years……in my case smoking bans, lobbied and funded by the maker of Nicoderm, Nicorette, Nicotrol Johnson & Johnson via RWJF. Marketing products via government mandate……good work if you can get it.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/02/smoking-bans-good-public-policy-or.html
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/worldwide-economic-meltdown-and.html
April 9th, 2010 at 9:43 am
next stop, Net Neutrality, where we will need liscensing to become bloggers and post on the internets. You think it can’t happen?
April 9th, 2010 at 9:56 am
“You are like a volcano that erupts luke-warm unsalted oatmeal.”
Ha! Spot on. And Terry knows volcanoes.
April 9th, 2010 at 9:58 am
“It’s not like there is any kind of reward for reading them to the end.”
Terry, that is true, but sometimes there might a an ironic gem:
“What I object to is pretty much exclusively those who would force their extremist views on an unwilling majority through coercion…”
Can you say Chicago politics!!!
Can you say ram ObamaNationCare down our throats. Cornhusker kickback… Louisiana purchase… bribes and blackmail…
April 9th, 2010 at 11:44 am
Your next purchase WILL be:
The O Pad
Buy it now, learn what it might do later.
http://stark-raving-sane-dont-go-in.blogspot.com/2010/04/o-pad.html
That will get rammed down your throat along with the next racist to be appointed to the SCOTUS.
Justice Stevens knows Obama is burning bridges with the American people. Time is running out and the Liberal Fascists know it.
http://stark-raving-sane-dont-go-in.blogspot.com/2010/04/obamas-extremism-has-been-rejected-by.html
April 12th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Anti-tax, yes, you oppose all taxes, there is never enough cutting. We cut the highest rate from 70% to 35%, but hey, that wasn’t enough. We cut capital gains, but hey that wasn’t enough.
Bottom line, you just don’t want to pay taxes – you SAY you do, but you’re never satisfied. I get it – my suggestion, move to Bolivia. THe US has the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world, has massive poverty and homelessness, and you clearly don’t care to see those who benefit from society contribute in equal measure to their opportunites provided by a nation which built the infrastructure upon which they subsequently built their fortune. I get it.
April 12th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Anti-tax, yes, you oppose all taxes, there is never enough cutting.
Nope. I refute you thus; I do not oppose all taxes.
‘
That was all it took!
We cut the highest rate from 70% to 35%, but hey, that wasn’t enough. We cut capital gains, but hey that wasn’t enough.
Well, yeah – because both measures were utterly successful. How much success is “enough?”
The cutting in capital gains made the modern ownership market possible. The Reagan cuts made the prosperity of the ’80s AND the ’90s possible.
And you say we made the cuts; so what? For what did government at any level want? Indeed, the Laffer Curve worked as advertised, so government prospered even as the rest of us did.
Bottom line, you just don’t want to pay taxes – you SAY you do,
Pen, that’s just a weird thing to say. Nobody “wants” to pay taxes, but as a member of this free association of equals, I agree to. That doesn’t mean I have to agree to cheerfully pony up for every stupid expenditure you guys want.
but you’re never satisfied.
What does that mean? Was I satisified in 1984? Well, perhaps, although I made probably $2,000 that year. Whatever happened back then, though, why on earth would I be “satisified” now, when taxes are going to be zooming up through the roof.
I get it – my suggestion, move to Bolivia.
Hah! The “progressive” equivalent of the old “you don’t like it, move to North Korea” that some dumb conservatives used to toss out.
Sorry, but no, Pen. It’s my country, and by your leave I”ll exercise my right to stump for any changes I want.
THe US has the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world,
Now, y’see, Pen, this is what I was talking about with Dog Gone; you Penigmoids uncritically repeat lefty chanting points with out any examination.
We do not have the lowest taxes, and it’s going to get worse.
Please, Pen; start examining some of the stuff you believe.
has massive poverty and homelessness,
We have all sorts of poverty – which has not been impacted by 45 years of “war on poverty”.
Perhaps you can provide some cites with figures to define “massive homelessness”; that’s another of those lefty chanting points that never, I repeat never, stands up to scrutiny.
So kindly provide the requested information.