Video Claims That Google Is Functioning as an Arm of the Democratic Party

Google's Orewellian-named  ML Fairness system functions as a politically motivated information-massage system. It is consistent with the totalitarian trend among the Democrats, the media, social networking, and higher education.  I no longer use Google as my first choice for Web searches, although their technology is still the best.  I start with Bing and use Google as a backup. Hopefully, innovators will come up with technology that surpasses Google's, but that has yet to happen.  Relying on Google for information about current events is as stupid as relying on the spokesperson for the Democratic Party for information about the Republican Party.

College Students Denounce "Trump" Immigration Quotes Until Realizing Democrats Said Them

Fox News in Nashville quotes my research in the context of a story about students  at American University.  Cabot Phillips of Campuswatch read statements that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had made about the need for border security. When the students thought that President Trump had made the statements, they called the statements "divisive." When they learned that President Obama and Senator Clinton had made the statments, they laughed nervously, were at a loss for words, or said "that's interesting." The piece notes that intolerance and pressure to conform shape many college students' political views.  The article cites Pew research that finds that 61 percent of Americans believe that college education is going in the wrong direction.

The current milieu suggests the need for policymakers to begin to think about restructuring higher education.  The concept of validation in psychology and human resource management should be brought to bear on higher education.  There is limited evidence that controlling for IQ all college programs contribute to finding a job or provide any education. Many likely do not.  A study done seven years ago found that half of students make no gains in college. These are likely concentrated in the social sciences and cultural studies fields. 

Tea Parties Should Work within the GOP

The Poli-tea blog has an interesting post (h/t Chris Johansen). The blog argues that Tea Party activists should avoid working within or infiltrating the GOP:

"Infiltrationist strategy plays right into the hands of the ruling political establishment: filling out the apparatus of the Democratic-Republican Party political machine is literally exactly what the ruling political establishment wants you to do!"

It is unlikely that the Tea Party will ultimately constitute a major party. The reason is its inability to find a national leader. My good friend Phil Orenstein is a likely candidate who seems to have been overlooked. Otherwise, there has been so much confusion that one of the groups claiming to be the Tea Party had Sarah Palin as their keynote speaker.

There are several reasons why a third party will not work. First, Americans have been committed to a two party system almost since the first Congress. Initially, partisanship was considered unseemly, and politicians did not consider it appropriate to volunteer to run--they ought to have been asked, they thought. Washington was concerned about the formation of independent political clubs. Nevertheless, by 1790 two discernible parties had formed, the Democratic Republicans of Jefferson and the Federalists of Hamilton. Although after Jefferson's election in 1800 there was a twenty-something year respite from parties (the "era of good feelings") partisanship reasserted itself when Andrew Jackson took several aggressive stands, especially against the Bank of the United States. In response, Henry Clay formed the Whig Party. The Whig Party was the forerunner of the Republican, but it broke up just prior to the Civil War and was replaced by an all-northern Republican Party that included abolitionists.

If you look at the history of the parties they were all started by charismatic or special leaders: Federalists-Hamilton; Democratic Republicans-Jefferson; Democrats-Jackson; Republicans-Lincoln. Who is the charismatic leader of the Tea Party (besides Phil Orenstein)?

Second, there is a long history of third parties playing a prodding role in American history. In the 1850s The Anti-Masonic Party pushed for some nativist platforms in the Whigs. In the 1890s, the Populist Party pushed for inflationist and "Progressive" platforms among the Democrats. I believe that the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan was in part due to prodding by the Libertarians.

The major parties have been good at integrating insurgent interests. In contrast, insurgents have been generally poor at building independent parties. The Progressive Party, founded by the redoubtable Theodore Roosevelt, spoiled the 1912 election and had an effect in the days of Progressivism and social democracy. But it never gained power. The same for Ross Perot. Perot was an almost-successful leader. But the proof was in the pudding. The failure of his party to generate a continuous organization shows how difficult it is to start a new party. Even a leader of Perot's caliber was unable to do it. I don't think Phil Orenstein can either (although he never said he was forming a third party--he's an active Republican).

In sum, the difference in difficulty of working through the GOP and starting a new party is the difference in difficulty of sending someone to the moon and sending someone to Mars or Venus. So far, I am not convinced that the Tea Party knows which end is up, much less whether it can start an independent party.

Infiltration of the GOP is possible. This is what happened to the Populist movement. When the Democrats ran William Jennings Bryan in 1896 as the inflationist/populist candidate, it had just seen four years of libertarian leadership by Grover Cleveland, a "Bourbon Democrat" from New York. Bryan lost to McKinley, who was a pro-tariff Republican who supported sound money. But within forty years, Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted most of what Bryan had advocated (in 1896 and in two subsequent failed presidential runs). In other words, the Populists transformed the Democrats.

That is a more fertile strategy for the Tea Party than to start a third party. I worked with the Libertarian Party in the 1970s and know that third parties are very difficult without charismatic leadership. And if Orenstein keeps refusing the job of leading the Tea Party, I'm not sure who is going to do it.

Contrairimairi on Political Strategy

ContrairiMairi of Chi-town just sent me this e-mail:

Honestly, Mitchell, I think we MUST look outside BOTH parties! I do not trust ANYONE on an inside track that either party will endorse right now.....The rhetoric during election cycles all sounds so wonderful....then BAM! Once they are in office, the hierarchy pull all the strings!

I think if the Tea Party Movement is going to be ABSOLUTELY successful, we MUST disassociate from ANY and all candidates running on a Dem or Repub ticket. That is going to put a ton of pressure on the Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates, but I believe it is THE ONLY WAY! Repubs and Dems MUST be taken to their knees.

Look what happened with Brown in Massachusetts. I DID contribute, but only to send a message to D.C., "You're next!" But what really changed? Brown is a RINO from the get-go. His term will be an abbreviated version, and I can live with that for now.....but if we REALLY want America and The Constitution back, then ALL DemocRATic and Republican sponsored candidates MUST be refused!

I believe we MUST make a list of focused demands. Once that list is compiled, we MUST make candidates sign a pledge to adhere to it. If they do, they will be supported by the Tea Party Movement, grassroots, NO big-money backers......the people know how to, and WILL, spread the word.....it's already underway.....

I think the information I sent you previously form the Thomas Jefferson Center is an EXCELLENT place to start. The one thing I feel badly that they have not included, is a DEMAND that all candidates PLEDGE to rid this Country of illegal aliens. They must also pledge that there will be no such thing as an "anchor baby"......any mother who illegally enters this Country to deliver, passes her crime on to the child.....baby shall NOT be eligible for citizenship and BOTH will be thrown out summarily! The arrangement shall be retroactive......no baby born here by a mother entering illegally should EVER have been considered a citizen. Only babies born to individuals here on a legal basis shall have that distinction!

Not sure what you will think, but we have GOT to get smart in this Country, and quit standing back wringing our hands and complaining. We have to INSIST on REAL applications to already existing laws. We have enough laws already to keep us busy....time to roll up our sleeves and get the hard work done.

E-verify MUST find and remove the illegals here.

GOD Bless,
airi

Totalitarian--Authoritarian--Pro-Freedom Political Continuum

The categorization of political views along a spectrum of right to left was never applicable to the United States. The terms "left" and "right" refer to the revolutionary French General Assembly's seating plan. The Jacobins, famous for the Reign of Terror and the first modern political mass murder, sat on the left, and the French aristocrats sat on the right. Instead of left and right I propose a continuum of pro-freedom and anti-freedom.

America has never had aristocrats and never had mass murderers, although Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese during World War II mildly paralleled the direction of European history. Rather, the left has used this dichotomy as propaganda. It claims that the "right" represents "aristocrats" while the "left" represents "the people". But it has never explained why the "people" tend to be highly paid college professors, hedge fund managers, professionals, the Ochs Sulzbergers, Warren Buffet, George Soros, and trust fund babies while the "aristocrats" are inevitably blue collar plumbers and carpenters.

In fact, the "left's" re-distributional scheme has always involved heavy support for the professions; for banking; for the Ochs Sulzbergers; for big business; and for large real estate developers. Thus, the "progressive" supporters of Robert Moses in the 1940s and 1950s, who destroyed New York's entrepreneurial spirit and turned New York into a haven for investment bankers and European aristocrats, today support the "progressive" President Barack Obama, who is handing America to well, well-paid college professors, hedge fund managers, professionals, Warren Buffet, George Soros and trust fund babies. This is accomplished in part by hiding the attack on the dollar that Presidents Obama's and Bush's policies have required. The sale of American assets to the Chinese hides the weakening of the dollar that the Bush-Obama wealth transfer requires. The Chinese are apparently willing to suffer losses in order to prop up the dollar and continue on a straight path to industrialization not impeded by currency fluctations. Nineteenth century American economic history saw considerable fluctuations in the nation's economy when prices rose and fell due to disturbances in Europe. The Chinese are pursuing fool's gold, though, because purchasing overvalued assets in America will ultimately hurt them. They are delaying a hangover by drinking more scotch, but in the end the hangover will be all the worse for them.

Early on, much of the Jacobin platform was consistent with a moderate degree of limited government republicanism, to include separation of church and state and universal education. Initially, the Jacobins were mostly aristocrats and French middle class or bourgeois. The debate between left and right in France did parallel a debate in America. The Federalists supported Burke's ideas, which today would be called "conservative". The Democratic-Republicans of Jefferson were supportive of France. But in America, unlike in France where both sides were somewhat statist, the dispute between right and left was between advocates of limited government intervention, especially of support for business and banking, and advocates of limited government who opposed supports for business and banking. If anything, the "left" of today, along with today's "conservatives", is closer to the Federalists of Revolutionary War times in that they support government intervention in all areas of life, to include anti-civil-libertarian intervention with respect to speech (see, for instance, Dinesh D'Souz's Illiberal University) as well as with respect to business (as in the recent bailout). The recent bailout was a Federalist program that both national Democrats and Republicans supported. The Democrats did so more heartily than the Republicans because a large fraction of the Republicans are pro-freedom and anti-Bush. The Democrats are mostly anti-freedom and anti-Bush.

In America, the debate between Federalists and Democratic Republicans; Democrats and Whigs and Progressives and their opponents has increasingly revolved around freedom as well as privilege. The Progressive-liberal philosophy of Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was carried forward by the social democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat. Further confusing the discussion, the left appropriated the term "liberal" which was an appellation of support for free trade and liberty. It has claimed that it is in favor of civil liberties. But when the left gains power, as it has in universities, it adopts speech codes and advocates tight, politically correct restrictions on speech that deviate from its ugly moral opinions. This is consistent with the left's anti-liberal stance where it has gained power in Europe and in the communist countries.

Today there are three views: the descendants of the old Federalists, Whigs and Progressives, who might be called "Rockefeller Republicans"; the descendants of social democratic Progressives, socialists, who are "liberal" Democrats; and descendants of Jeffersonian Republicans, who are liberal or libertarian Republicans and some Democrats. The first two of these groups, the Progressives and social democrats, differ primarily with respect to who should get the spoils. The Republican Progressives advocate taxing the majority and redistributing wealth 60% to the wealthy and 40% to others. The Democratic social democrats advocate taxing the majority and redistributing wealth 55% to the wealthy and 45% to others. It is only the pro-freedom Republicans (and some Democrats) who advocate ending taxation; who see taxation as theft; and understand that an innovative economy cannot be planned.

The continuum of American politics looks like this:


Totalitarian--->Authoritarian--->Pro-Freedom Republicans/Libertarians/Democrats

Some examples of these groupings are:

Totalitarian

Communist Party
Neo-Nazi Party
Socialists
Bill Ayers


Authoritarian

Democratic Party
New York Times
George W. Bush
John McCain
National Republican Party
Neo-conservatives

Pro-Freedom

Tea Parties
Republican Liberty Caucus
Goldwater Republicans
Ron Paul
Libertarian Party

The United States Is Irremediably Divided

Barack Obama's supporters would like to claim that Mr. Obama is uniting the nation. However, when their president's abilities are questioned, they become belligerent and refuse to countenance debate. The Obama cult does not permit questions. This is consistent with the monotone in the banker media, CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, NBC, and NPR. If the nation were united, a public debate would transpire. Where the press is not free, as it is not in the United States, virtually all media sources say the same thing. The election results were 52.7% versus 45.9%. Yet, virtually no questions are asked.

The absence of an American free press arises because of financial interests' control of virtually all media. The financial interests are the crux of the military industrial complex that in turn relies on Federal Reserve Bank funding and federal government regulation to retain control of credit and of economic development. The major corporations in the United States, especially the financial community, do not create value and are unsustainable except through violence (i.e., state support) and extraction of rents from the public. This violence is only viable through extensive propaganda via universities and the media. Thus, alternative views on key issues--the structure of the banking system for example, which was of paramount importance to Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers-- are barred.

In fact, Jefferson and the Founding Fathers would have found the current adoption of Federalist and Whig ideology to be a disgrace and a major failure. It is laughable that in the media and in universities elitist views that were scorned in Jefferson's day are called "progressive" and "new" and are the mainstay of the ideological propaganda. As well, journalists, television announcers and the like are so poorly educated that they do not understand what Americans have traditionally thought. The Progressive fixation on centralization and authoritarian solutions, alien to the American ethos, is the only currency of public discussion, ranging from right to left.

Nevertheless, enough of the Lockean impulse remains in rural America that the nation is irremediably divided between traditional Americans and Progressives. I do not think the nation's current centralized approach will permit a friendly reconciliation of the sharp differences of which Mr. Obama's election reminds us. Certainly the solutions he and the Democrats have on offer are ridiculous. Mr. Obama's election has divided, not united, the nation.

Social Democratic Liberalism Came to Serve Corruption

Americans' acceptance of the Keynesian ideology, often called social democracy or post-war liberalism, had its roots in Hamiltonian Federalism. Hamilton, a follower of Hume's economic ideas, had advocated federal expansion of credit and concentration of its availability to business interests. This was to be accomplished by federal assumption of the Revolutionary War debt and establishment of a central bank. Hume had argued that if credit is made available to merchants, then the merchants' smart investment decisions would allocate resources into their most productive uses. Thus, the public might become richer by the artifical creation of money, in Hume's view. Hume assumed that it is a good bet for the public to bear investment risk. But there is certainly risk. Hume believed that the risk would pay off, but this is an apriori argument, not an empirical fact. Moreover, this argument rested on particular facts that were true in the 18th century and ceased to be true by the late nineteenth, in particular merchants' personal assumption of risk.

Hume wrote at a time when corporations did not exist. Corporations did not take their present form until the late nineteenth century, as late as the 1890s. At the time that Hume wrote, merchants who assumed risk did so on their own account, and if they lost money they personally suffered. Thus, there was considerable motivation for rational, profit-maximizing behavior. When central banking was abolished, business needed alternative means to aggregate capital. Corporate organization did so, and it did so by shifting risk away from entrepreneurs and merchants onto investors. This is a more rational method for allocating risk than is central banking because it can reflect personal preferences for risk. Moreover, it permits reflection of a wide range of public preferences. Some people have considerable utility for money in the present because they prefer to consume. Consumers might prefer not to take risks with money but rather to spend it. In contrast, other people have greater utility for money in the future. Such investors can choose to invest more heavily in corporate ventures than a central bank's broad allocation of public resources to specific interests would permit.

Corporate organization might be viewed as an alternative form of capital aggregation to central banking. It is superior because the allocation of risk is explicit. Those who wish to take risks invest in the corporation, while those who do not wish to take risks do not invest. This contrasts with monetary creation by the central bank, which forces all citizens to participate in risky business decisions whether they choose to or not.

But the compounding of the corporate form with central banking might exaggerate risk taking and confound the Humean-Hamiltonian model. Merchants who are not personally at risk may not behave rationally. The result is a potential for corrpution. A corporate president who is granted dollops of credit artificially created by a central bank might be motivated to present false earnings reports, pay himself an exaggerated salary and then resign from the firm before it goes bankrupt, much as the officers of Enron and Bear Stearns did. There is no guarantee of rational behavior by corporate organizations staffed by self interested bureaurcrats. Thus, the subsequent adoption of Hamiltonian Federalism under the Keynesian moniker has gradually led to a crap shoot economy unbridled by rationality and propelled by self-seeking, incompetence and greed.

By 1830 it was evident to most workers that the Central Banking system was not beneficial to them. The Humean and Hamiltonian theory of credit had failed. In particular, banking monopolies led to depreciating currency which in turn led to resentment of the central bank, which President Andrew Jackson abolished in 1832 and 1833. Between 1833 and 1913 there was no central bank, and this was the period of greatest economic creativity in American history. It was also a period of slow business profit, which resulted in repeated complaints about "depressions". Every decade saw increasing real wages and every decade saw a "depression". By the end of the 19th century the average American was much better off, the American economy was the center of world innovation, immigrants flocked here by the millions, but business interests incessantly complained about "depression". Moreover, governmental subsidies to railroads engendered corruption and overexpansion. Post-Civil War monetary inflation facilitated speculation and created income inequality. This occurred at the same time that Jackson's spoils system led to political corruption in the cities.

Many observers felt that rationalization of the state through civil service would improve the economy. The traditional American belief that morality led to economic success was being tested by corruption associated with the railroads and political clubs in the cities. In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which created a rudimentary civil service for the federal government. In turn, advocates of moral and limited government, to include the Mugwumps, argued for increased use of civil service, honesty in government, and the gold standard and reduced tariffs. The election of 1884, in which the Mugwumps bolted the Republican Party to support Grover Cleveland, led to Cleveland's election. At the same time, the corporate form of organization facilitated the expansion of industry.

During this period Bismarck in Germany was experimenting with social democracy. Bismarck implemented national health insurance, social security and other social programs. The German historical school of economics argued against the laissez faire economics of Charles Sumner and Adam Smith. Smith, like Hume, argued that there are general laws of economic development. In contrast, the German historical school argued that economic laws are specific to time and place and that generalization is impossible. Moreover, the German historical school assumed that it is possible to rationally guide an economy. This contrasts with Hume's belief that merchants are better equipped to assess investment opportunities than anyone else. It also contrasts with the Whiggish and Jeffersonian belief in countryside entrepreneurs as better equipped to assess investment opportunity than either central planners or elite merchants.

In the late nineteenth century young American academics such as Henry Carter Adams, Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons sought education in the German universities. This was linked to the late nineteenth century Mugwumps' interest in establishing professions. The Mugwumps not only believed in fighting corruption and establishing sound money, but they also had specific professional interests in mind. They wanted to establish standards in academia, law, medicine and other professions. These professional interests became the common thread of modern liberalism. If there is one constant theme from the Mugwumps to todays American Association of University Professors, it is the importance of a college education, professionalism and regulations to establish them. The Mugwumps did not believe in social democracy, but they did believe in rationalization. The German universities were the best in the world, and they thought that if Americans were trained in German universities that they could bring the best methods to bear on American problems. But in social science the German universities were not really so methodologically advanced. The German historical school's emphasis on state-based solutions was a form of romanticism. The Americans who studied in Germany brought some reform ideas to bear on American problems, but combined these with faith in the power the state to solve social problems.

At first the Mugwumps resented the ideas of Richard T. Ely and Henry Carter Adams. As Nancy Cohen points out, Ely, who founded the American Economics Association, was denied tenure and forced to conform to the Mugwumps' expectations. Henry Carter Adams left academia altogether. However, the long term effect was to stimulate support for Progressivism. Ely's student John R. Commons was a central figure in the reform-oriented Wisconsin school, for instance. Progressivism had a number of roots, to include Social Gospel Christianity and Populism, but it was also heavily influenced by Commons's academic theories. Progressivism should not be confused with socialism or social democracy. At times it had elements of these but it included reform ideas of varying kinds.

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson had established the Federal Reserve Bank in order to rationalize the credit markets. Wilson was a supporter of the gold standard and had voted for the Gold Democrats in 1896. He did not anticipate a return to Hamiltonian Federalism. Rather, he saw the Fed as a way to rationalize and professionalize financial management. However, by reestablishing a central bank, he reopened the door to Hamiltonian Federalism. Immediately after the Fed was founded, there was a serious inflation which in turn led to a depression. By 1920 the public had grown weary of the disruptions in economic life and elected Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. By 1920, after two decades of Progressivism, there was little memory of the laissez faire ideas of the late nineteenth century. Thus Harding and Coolidge, who succeeded Harding when he died three years into his term, nor Congress, were motivated to repeal the Progressive legislation of Roosevelt and Wilson. Part of the reason was that the more extreme socializing ideas that the Republicans under Roosevelt advocated had not come to pass. Instead, the more conservative approach of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson had led to limited judicial enforcement of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Hepburn Act which established railroad rates, and the Federal Trade Commission Act. But these laws had limited effects. On the other hand, they turned out to be a stepping stone to a greater degree of governmental intervention in the economy within 12 years.

The compounding effect of the central bank and the corporate form of organization in generating economic inefficiency and corruption did not begin to be felt for a number of decades. This was accomplished by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early 1930s. First, FDR abolished the gold standard in 1932. Second, he used the pretext of social democracy to strengthen the federal government, which in turn led to increased availability of credit. This was done through the expansion of the military along with the expansion of the welfare state. Government contracts became available as did increased credit. The stock market began to increase from 1937 onward, and after World War II it began an ascent from which it has never returned. In contrast, the financial markets did not increase from the 1880s until the 1930s. In effect, Roosevelt implemented the Hamiltonian system in full force, but he did so with a cloak. The cloak was that of social democracy. American politics became a debate between two statist visions, both derivative of Progressivism and Federalism. The Republican vision was one of state intervention on behalf of business and opposition to social democracy. The Democratic vision was one of state intervention to regulate business in the name of social democracy but to subsidize business through credit expansion just as Hamilton had suggested in the 1780s. Thus, modern American politics deteriorated into a debate between two Hamiltonian visions, both of which aimed to subsidize inefficient corporations at the expense of a bewildered public.

Social System Matching and the Expertise Culture

In the twentieth century the idea of convergence was suggested to explain the trend of socialist economies to look more like capitalist ones and capitalist economies to look more like socialist ones. This idea fell on hard times in the 1980s because socialism failed and some capitalist countries deregulated. The idea of convergence is linked to the idea of optimality. The notion that there is one best way to do a job or one best way to solve a social problem was characteristic of the Progressive era. Convergence was a remnant of Progressivism.

But perhaps there is no such thing as optimality with respect to social systems. Rather, there is an infinite array of potential strategies which match citizens' needs to a better or worse degree. Optimality depends on the match between the culture in which people live and the social system. Social evolution involves the search for optimal matching. If a system is suboptimal the system which permits the greatest flexibility with respect to searching for matching arrangement may be most preferable. That is, there are likely an array of systems which match varying cultural configurations, and an approach which provide equal matching but more flexibility will be preferable to an approach which provides less flexibility.

Labor economists have argued that some workers fit some kinds of jobs, other workers fit other kinds. In the same way, some cultures may fit some kinds of social systems while others fit different kinds. Discovering a optimal match depends on how well the social system can change to fit a given region or culture.

If that is so, then the trend toward increasing federal power and centralization during the twentieth century may have been an error since centralized power is more difficult to change than decentralized power. The founding fathers in America had hit upon an excellent formula to exploit regional and cultural differences: permit variations in across state governments so that local match can be optimized. Moreover, variations permit experimentation so that the knowledge base develops much more quickly than with a centralized one.

The centralization of power in America in the past 100 years may have impeded learning through decentralization and so had a crippling effect on progress. As well, forcing regional and cultural uniformity across a large country results in lost opportunities to match sub-systems to sub-cultures. Centralization of power is authoritarian and so as the nation has grown and simultaneously centralized power deviations from optimal points for specific subgroups have become greater. In turn, this has lead to increasing stridency of public debate.

Advances in organization theory that started with James March's and Herbert Simon's 1958 book Organizations have permitted firms to think about the key problem that faces them: information. Organizing information, gathering information, undestanding it and using it is a problem that faces government as well as private firms. In the twentieth century firms decentralized and experimented with increasingly flexible organizational forms. Toyota's Taiichi Ohno took 15 years to develop the process known as lean manufacutring, which includes just in time inventory. No expert had thought of this concept. Similarly, E.I. Deming's total quality management was unknown in business schools until he convinced a number of Japanese firms to adopt it.

In contrast, progressives and social democrats have made an antiquated assumption about rationality based on the ideas of Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt: that experts can discern optimal solutions. Naturally, such experts will see the possibility of convergence toward an optimality in which they believe because of sharing of ideas, peer review and the like.

The corporate world has found that preconceived strategies rarely materialize and that focused or organized chaos results in the spontaneity of creativity that also depends on interaction and supportiveness of change. Supportiveness of change is foreclosed by the expertise culture. If an expert claims an optimal answer, then alternative views are ignored. Thus, fundamental errors in social science and economics have been perpetuated, and the public's ability to debate and innovate has been forestalled by social democracy.

There are many other concepts in organizational theory, such as the learning organization, organizational differentiation and integration and differentiation can be applied to the modern state. However, instead of thinking small and decentralizing, federal power has been increasingly concentrated in poorly performing agencies like the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration.

Conservatism, Surgical Radicalism and the Four Party System

The current popular political debate occurs between two kinds of conservatives. The first, called liberals or progressives, argues that the current framework of American democracy, created during the Progressive era and New Deal and now roughly 100 years old, ought to remain in place. In their view introduction of additional institutions, plans and programs like national health insurance along the lines of earlier ones is needed, but today's framework is a good one.

The second kind of conservatives, popularly so called, are not comfortable with the New Deal project---Social Security, government regulation of industry, and large-scale federal social welfare programs, but do not want to repeal these programs either. They follow Edmund Burke, who argued against radical in favor of gradual change. Burke felt that gradual transformation of institutions while protecting liberty was a better path than the French revolution's authoritarianism, political correctness and executions. Rather, he preferred the American revolution's restraint.

Today's conservatives retain Burke's dislike for radical change. But the institutions that exist in America today were radically imposed during the first half of the twentieth century. They did not evolve logically from the market economy of the nineteenth and they did not reflect economic exigencies of the the early 20th century. Rather, they reflected the imposition of a political vision of specific rent-seeking special interest groups and agenda-drive political radicals.

Burke wrote in Britain in the late eighteenth century when barbaric institutions had gradually evolved into more democratic and liberal forms in Britain and to a lesser degree in Europe. Burke did not write about what to do to unravel the harm that the French revolution had caused. Rather, he wrote about how Britain and other liberal nations might best cope with change. This is not the problem that faces America today. An excessive application of Burke is inappropriate. America has had some radical change imposed while partially retaining liberal institutions. Conservatives who wish to create a new liberalism need to be surgical radicals. They need to undo New Deal radicalism's derangement of older versions of liberalism. The derangement has taken a number of shapes, to include social security, urban renewal, welfare, the Federal Reserve Bank, excessive application of eminent domain, and excessive regulation of business. Such radically instituted habits ought to be undone conservatively but radically.

Progressivism and the New Deal were radical upheavals. They rewrote American institutions that were not very old. A radical conservatism is one that is pragmatic, and asks that if radically imposed institutions fail that they be undone. This is a surgical radicalism that devises new liberal institutions where Progressivism and New Deal social democracy have failed.

Conservatives who wish to retain Progressive institutions, who are loyal to the old Federal Reserve Bank and its old-fashioned economic planning, high levels of government spending and support for business are Progressives. Conservatives who wish to retain New Deal institutions like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act are social democratic liberals.

Perhaps Americans should think in terms of a four-party rather than a two-party system. Perhaps there should be a surgically radical conservative party; a Progressive-conservative Rockefeller-Republican Party; a New Deal Party; and a social democratic radical party. Of these, the surgically conservative radical party would be the most radical, liberal and progressive.

Ratio of Democrat to Republican Donors at Brooklyn College

Huffington Post lists political donors by employer. The information is publicly available on the World Wide Web. I am not breaching confidentiality by copying the data.

The folks at the American Association of University Professors keep claiming that there is no imbalance between Democrats and Republicans in universities. They claim that the professoriate represents a balanced range of views. That is of course absurd.

The top of the Huffington Brooklyn College list states:

$16,093 was given by people who identified their employer as "Brooklyn College".
$0 to Republicans
$16,093 from 25 people to Democrats

The summary states that it all went to Democrats. However, that is inaccurate, as there is one Republican donor on the list. Me. If you look down the list you will see that I gave $540 to John McCain. I am the only Republican donor on the list. With 25 on the list, the politically interested faculty appears to be 4% Republican and 96% Democratic.

Moreover, the amounts contributed to the Democratic Party are surprisingly large. For example, Professor Leo Zanderer donated $4,600 to Christopher Dodd. Professor Madelon Rand donated $1,950 to Hillary Clinton in the first quarter of 2008. Librarian Howard Spivak donated $1,000 to Hillary Clinton. Professor Barbara Winsolow gave $2,000 to Howard Dean.

My question, friends, is: why does the heading of the list say that there are no Republican donors at Brooklyn when it lists me as having given $540 to John McCain?

Brooklyn College Political Donations

Leo Zanderer Professor Brooklyn College Christopher Dodd $4,600
Madelon Rand English Instructor Brooklyn College Hillary Clinton $1,950
Howard Spivak Director, Academic Information,Brooklyn College Hillary Clinton $1,000
Gail Gurland Professor Brooklyn College Hillary Clinton $600
Mitchell Langbert ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BROOKLYN COLLEGE John McCain $540
Philip Thibodeau Professor Brooklyn College Barack Obama $465
Ellen Wayne Professor Brooklyn College John Edwards $450
Renison Gonsalves Updated Q1/2008 Hillary Clinton $420
John Van Sickle Professor Q1/2008 Barack Obama $400
Donald M Levine Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2008 Barack Obama $391
Lindley Hanlon Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2008 Barack Obama $308
Michael Hipscher Teacher Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2008 John Edwards $300
Matthew Moore Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2008 Barack Obama $300
Mac Wellman writer/professor Dennis Kucinich $300
Andrew Meyer Professor Brooklyn College Q1/2008 Barack Obama $272
Sonia Murrow College Professor Brooklyn College Q1/2008 Barack Obama $250
Barbara Winslow University professor Brooklyn College Howard Dean $2,000
Charlene Forest Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $500
Joe Fodor writer Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $500
Ellen Wayne College Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $450
Clement Mbom Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $408
John Van Sickle Professor Brooklyn College Q1/2004 John Kerry $375
Kathleen Axen Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $300
Matthew Moore Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $300
Peter Wayne College Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 John Kerry $250
Len Fox college professor Brooklyn College Q1/2004 DNC $250
Todd Holden Professor of Physics Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $250
David Bloomfield Educator Brooklyn College Q1/2004 John Kerry $250
Roni Natov English Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $250
Daniel Mufson Assistant Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 Howard Dean $250
Steven Jervis Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 John Kerry $200
Corey Robin professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 Howard Dean $200
Charles Ayes Architect Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 John Kerry $200
Len Fox College Professor Brooklyn College Q1/2004 John Kerry $200
Frederick Gardiner Professor Brooklyn College Q1/2004 John Kerry $200
Mac Wellman Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 Dennis Kucinich $200
Gary Giardina Physician Assistant Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 DNC $150
Daniel Mufson Assistant Professor Brooklyn College Updated Howard Dean $150
John Van Sickle Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 Howard Dean $100
Allison Dean Professor Brooklyn College Updated Q1/2004 Howard Dean $60

Toward Separate American Communities

Woodrow Wilson argued that America ought to become a community that is united by common belief. However, Wilson did not anticipate the brokerage of special interest coalitions engendered by the expansive state. Instead of a community of interests, the expansion of the welfare state resulted in heightened factionalism to a degree unforeseen by Madison and the founders of the American constitution. The factionalism is in large part economic. The Federal Reserve Bank has served as a redistributive, extractive mechanism by which wealth is taken from workers and savers and redistributed to investment bankers. This is accomplished with the full support and flourish of the New York Times and the mass media in the name of rationalization of credit markets and similar vacuous phrases. The brokerage of coalitions and privilege extends to almost all facets of state and federal government. It is related to the passage of every law. It imbues the very substance of the American system. Under New Deal Progressivism, America has not become, as Wilson envisioned, a community of shared interests, but rather a land where various minorities wage economic war on the majority.

Progressivism entailed an increase in executive power and a reduction in the power of the states. It depended upon the federal government reflecting a popular will. But today, the popular will is fractured not only by economic but also by severe political criteria. The liberalism of Roosevelt has, for many, turned out to be a failure. The states where the New Deal has been taken to its furthest extremes, such as New York, are the dying states. Yet, the mass media cling to the New Deal paradigm as any reactionary clings to his fossilized ideology.

Many Americans have renewed their faith in traditional American values and adopted a conservative position that evolves from twentieth century progressive-liberalism. The conservative position finds that the ideas of the nineteenth century had more substance than the old Progressives thought. It finds that markets are required for flexibility and progress. It also finds that new ideas cannot be adopted by government rooted in special interest privilege.

The competition between the forces of conservative progress and the forces of progressive-liberal reaction is bitter. There can be no community of interest in a society where one half of the public hates the values of the other; where progressive-liberals reject the conditions for progress, i.e., markets and the entrepreneurial creative destruction; and where progressive-liberals hold their own country as well as conservatives in contempt. Likewise, it is unfair to those progressive-liberals who would like to be subject to government control; who want the guidance of a powerful executive leader and do not care about the independence of entrepreneurship and self employment to have freedom thrust upon them. It is unfair to ask progressive-liberals who need social and political guidance to think for themselves.

The solution to this dilemma of war of all against all, of economic interest against economic interest, is separation. A separation of state powers to enhance competing models. Through competition the states can serve as laboratories of experiment for both conservative and progressive-liberal ideas. A libertarian state can be juxtaposed to one that is progressive-liberal. Differing ideologies and the mutual contempt in which the advocates of liberty and the advocates of state power hold each other need not be brought into overt conflict. Instead, let them separate. Let them experiment. Let us see which state flourishes: the state that extols private use emininent domain, central banking and government intervention; or that state that dispenses with these institutions, views them as failed and frees entrepreneurial talent from government control. Will the anarchic state or the totalitarian state flourish? It is only through experiment that the answer can be found.

The separation of power into separate states would have advantages beyond the role of experimentation. The brokerage of special interests would be diminished with more local control. Special interest pleading depends in large part on asymmetry of resources and organization costs. As political entitites diminish in scope, the asymmetries become smaller and the advantages of wealth and concentrated power diminish as well. Perhaps progressive-liberalism will perform to a better degree should it cover a smaller geographic expanse. Perhaps European states manage themselves more professionally because of their smaller scale and lesser concomitant corruption.

Man-Eating Progressive Zombies Run Wild in New York

The 2007 sci fi film I am Legend is a remake of two earlier films, The Omega Man (1971) and The Last Man on Earth (1964). According to Wikipedia, the films are based on Richard Matheson's novel, I Am Legend, which is about the last man in LA.

This movie is about the last man in New York, and I have been pondering the reason for the change of venue.

The reason is that the film is about progressivism, and New York offers a better venue to dissect progressivism than any other state. It was the home or birthplace of several of the founders of progressivism, to include Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as their New Deal acolytes, to include as Al Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Francis Perkins (Perkins was born in Boston but attended Columbia and subsequently made her career in New York before becoming Secretary of Labor under FDR).

I am Legend's plot is that a new treatment for cancer causes a virus that wipes out 90 percent of the the human race and turns the remaining 9% into a species of man-eating zombies. About one percent of the population is immune to the virus, but most of those who are immune (except for Robert Neville) have been eaten by the zombies. The story focuses on Robert Neville (Will Smith) who has remained in New York to attempt to find a cure for the virus. Unfortunately, his efforts have been unsuccessful. He is able to avoid the zombies but he is accidentally exposed, leading to a climactic battle between Smith, armed with an M-4 machine gun, and hundreds of zombies.

I am Legend is clearly a movie about progressive-liberalism. The experiment that killed the human race was federally funded. The zombies look suspiciously like New York's progressives.

Progressive-liberalism claims that the poor should eat the rich, but really aims for the rich to eat the poor. Somebody eats somebody. How many human beings have been murdered through socialist or left wing ideology? The zombies' hive pattern is clearly a reflection of progressivism.

Moreover, the left has long behaved as a mindless horde of zombies whose policies destroy all who do not fit its politically correct mold. The left aims to establish a zombie-like world where all disagreement is suppressed and all human instincts eradicated.

Smith is the lone conservative in a city of progressives who are trying to eat him alive. I know because I have lived in New York. What better example than Mayor Michael Bloomberg? Can you seriously argue that he is not a zombie?

While New York's population base exits almost as fast as depicted in I am Legend, this film fairly depicts progressive New York. At the end, a surviving character moves to Vermont. A zombie who looks suspiciously like Bernie Sanders awaits.

Madmen, Hillary and the Wizard of Oz

American Movie Classics'(AMC's) Madmen is great television. Madmen's quality equals HBO's and Showtime's, which puts it a cut above today's Hollywood movies.

Madmen stars Jon Hamm as Don Draper. It is about an advertising agency in the golden age of television, the late 1950s and early 1960s. The name "Draper" alludes to draping or deceiving, and we are reminded of the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, whom Dorothy exposes behind the drapes of the control room. Like the Wizard, Draper's job is to create illusion. One of the story lines is that Draper's firm represents the Nixon campaign pro bono in the 1960 election, the first that television influenced.

Before watching Madmen it would be useful to read a history of consumerism. One is William Leach'sLand of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture and another is Gary Cross's All Consuming Century. Both books provide rich perspective on the dynamic of consumerism and its implications for culture. Leach goes into an extended analysis of the Wizard of Oz.

Following amusement parks, Wannamaker's department store decorations, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and L. Frank Baum's ideas (Baum, besides being an author, was an early expert about window displays), advertising has been the basis of consumerism. That is, one of the characteristics of consumerism is the creation of imaginative imagery about consumption. Thus, New York and several other large cities became the centers not only of art, culture, theater and television, but more importantly of imagery about consumption that created today's global culture. Such imagery would be unnecessary or unimportant were it truthful. The association of consumerism and advertising suggests that deception is at consumerism's root.

There is an inherent conflict. To be possible, consumerism requires advances in technology. In turn, technology depends on uncovering of the truth, discovery of fundamental principles and a relentless willingness to let old modes, business methods and social constructs die. Schumpeter called this creative destruction. But stimulation of consumption relies on creating an image, one that is often false, romantic or misleading.

At the same time the left is a romantic movement that itself is a reflection of consumer society and advertising. The left manufactures political ideas that are romantic but have as little truth or reality as the mountain stream in a Newport cigarettes ad. The left claims to oppose the deception inherent in commercialization, but does so through "draping" and deception that parallel commercialization. To the left, ideology plays the role that advertising plays to consumerism. The left substitutes lies about a romanticized past and a fictional claim to ethical belief. It deceptively claims that the past is the future.

Thus, the left claims that centralized economic planning (monarchy) is economically superior to markets, a lie. The left claims that government power and regulation, much like the power of kings, is more humane than limited government and private enterprise, which is a lie. The left claims that monetary expansion, which favors the wealthy over the poor, is necessary to help the poor, which is also a lie.

Hence, the dialogue of twentieth century America* was largely between a conservative, market-based view which depends on the truth and technology for its foundations, but furthers its ends through lies and mass media; and a left-wing view whose ideology is itself a lie. Both modern conservatism and left/liberal ideology depend on groupthink. Both rely on the mass media. Both focus on the trivial. Both advocate policies whose effects are the reverse of what they claim. It may be said that in the twentieth century the Sophists triumphed and that the Sophists now dominate our most retrograde institutions, such as universities.

The Republicans claim to be for less government, then when elected expand government. The Democrats claim to be for the poor, but create massive inner city slums, urban ghettos that isolate racial minorities and the poor. As well, the Democrats' educational policies, via left-wing institutions like NCATE, cripple the poor by enfeebling them educationally; and they and the left attack private institutions such as Wal-Mart that benefit the poor economically.

Were it not for the left, the role of intellectual would in part be the one that L. Frank Baum assigned to Dorothy: lifting the drapes from the Wizard's control room, and exposing him for the fraud that he is. That is the tradition of Thorstein Veblen as well as the Austrian economists. But the academy fell prey to ideology, and has adopted rigid, ideological deception, commitment to elitism and attacks on the poor, for instance, through attacking Wal-Mart and through favoring the Federal Reserve Bank, low interest rates and inflation. Universties themselves are a state supported system that encourages class stratification, alienation of the average person and economic isolation of the talented poor. Universities are institutions who demonize the average person, humanity, in the name of an inept elite that produces nothing and whose main purpose is to institutionalize itself.

Doug Ross @ Journal lists "Hillary's Top Ten Fabrications". These include her claim that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary although she was born five years before he climbed Mt. Everest; her failure to disclose profits from Whitewater; and her description of abortion as a "tragic choice".**

It is not surprising that Hillary is a liar. Nor would it be surprising that the Republicans are equally liars. The groupthink; lack of vision; fixation on trivia; emotional outrage about superficial issues and ignoring the fundamental issues such as special interest group influence; corruption of the democratic process through gerrymandering and related processes; misleading disclosure in areas like government operations and inflation; monetary expansion and the corruption of the dollar; claiming to be for less government when you are for more government (such is the history of Rudy Giuliani) all suggest that Republicans and Democrats have similar stakes in equivalent forms of corruption. Both are parties of liars.

It is increasingly important that competition be introduced into the political system. "Voters for None of the Above" offers a mainstream alternative. I discuss NOTA here.

*In Europe, with the exception of Britain, the chief ideologies of the twentieth century were mainly variants of the left, to include fascism, Nazism, communism and today's dirigisme.

**Concerning the abortion issue, William Saletan of Slate writes:

"...against the ugliness of state control, she wants to raise the banner of morality as well as freedom...'There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.'...Once you embrace that truth—that the ideal number of abortions is zero—voters open their ears...Admit the goal is zero, and people will rethink birth control. 'Seven percent of American women who do not use contraception account for 53 percent of all unintended pregnancies'..."

But Clinton's argument, which transfers the moral concern about abortion into a discussion of abortion as a quality process, a quality target that needs to be minimized, is itself a form of draping.

Regulated Versus Free Labor Markets

I teach a web-based class in human resource management. The class covers most of the traditional personnel material such as job analysis, compensation and employment discrimination. In the section on employment discrimination, I asked the students to participate in several discussion boards about (1) "employment at will, pro or con?"; (2) "affirmative action, pro or con?" and (3) "the regulated workplace versus free labor markets". The last question was taken from the course text by Randall Schuler and Sue Jackson and read:

"Some people feel there are simply too many laws and regulations governing how companies may manage their employees. These people believe that everyone would be better off if we let the free market system work without so much government interference. Other people believe that employees are not sufficiently protected against unfair treatment. They believe that employers would treat employees unfairly if our laws didn't forbid it. Which position do you most agree with? Why?"

The majority of students supported affirmative action; a larger majority opposed employment at will and 100% favored regulated as opposed to free labor markets. To quote three students' comments (they were almost all along these lines):

>"I wholeheartedly do not believe employers would treat employees fairly if our laws did not forbid it. Industry in our country is a business. The bottom line is the more profit you make the more successful the business."

>"I think government intervention, as far as the employee-employer relationship is concerned, is a positive thing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, 'employees are not sufficiently protected against unfair treatment', but I would say that if laws didn’t forbid it employers would treat employees unfairly. Government intervention, I believe has proven to be most helpful to employees, in form of regulations/laws/policies."

>"I am glad there is government intervention, if the government rules and regulations did not exist it would be a catastrophe. The EEOC, OSHA and ADEA were created to protect our employees because of unfair treatment to employees. I do believe without the governments laws that employers would treat employees unfairly. We have come a long way but there is still room for improvement because there are still a lot of employers that still break the rules and get way with unfair treatment towards their employees. I do not believe Free Labor Market would help improve the work environment it would just do the opposite. Government intervention is a positive thing definitely not a negative thing."

My response to the class was as follows. Note that unlike the majority of left wing professors, I do not try to suppress the students or give them low grades because I disagree with their views. Rather, I engage in civil debate.

"I enjoyed reading the class's comments and I urge you all to look at what your classmates had to say in the three excellent discussions on affirmative action, employment at will and workplace regulation. However, I must say that I disagree with the majority of students on all three topics, particularly with respect to the regulated workplace. Thus, I do not agree with affirmative action; I do agree with employment at will; and I do not think that employment regulations are helpful to workers. Instead I would argue that workplace regulation is harmful to workers and does not make workplaces more ethical.

While I agree with the argument that affirmative action need not involve quotas and is primarily a means to encourage consideration of previously excluded groups through non-intrusive methods such as advertising in newspapers in neighborhoods where "under-utilized" groups are predominant (this is the traditional description of it), I do not believe that it works that way in reality or that its proponents really believe that it works that way. As Thomas Sowell has ably pointed out in a long list of books, such as his recent "Affirmative Action Around the World", affirmative action, defined as hiring preferences based on race, have repeatedly led to anger, conflict and violence.

In "Affirmative Action Around the World" Sowell traces the implications of affirmative action in five countries, to include India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and the United States. He notes that affirmative action has often led to extreme resentment and even violence. In Nigeria, the genocide of the Ibo people in the 1960s was largely the result of resentment of affirmative action policies. Likewise, affirmative action policies favoring "Untouchables" in India has done nothing to improve their economic position but instead has tended to help a small, privileged segment within the Untouchable group who would have had access to the best schools and jobs anyway. In turn, resentment against the privileged group has lead to violence against the bitterly impoverished Untouchables not in the privileged category who cannot benefit from the affirmative action laws in part because they live in rural areas where there are no schools or transportation to schools.

Sowell argues that this is characteristic of affirmative action: that it leads to increased resentment and discrimination against the least privileged members of the group that affirmative action claims to help, while it is the most favored members who benefit. But the most favored members of the group whom affirmative action claims to help often have greater advantages in the first place than the majority in society, including the less privileged members of the dominant group (e.g, the white working class in the U.S.) as well as the less privileged members of the group whom affirmative action claims to help. For instance, there are probably no groups in America more downtrodden than the WASPs who live in Appalachia. Yet, they are not helped by affirmative action and in fact are potentially excluded from jobs because of it.

Similarly, in Malaysia laws favoring the "sons of the soil" that amount to apartheid-like discrimination against the ethnic Chinese minority have resulted in the impoverishment of Malaysia. In other words, by excluding highly productive Chinese entrepreneurs, who are a self-made minority in Malaysia, the Malaysian economy has suffered. The Malaysians, who live as a minority in Signapore but a majority in Malaysia, have a higher per capita income in Singapore than in Malaysia. (Malaysia cut off Singapore from the rest of Malaysia because it was primarily Chinese and Singapore is now much more successful than Malaysia.) In other words, the affirmative action policies in Malaysia against the Chinese (in favor of the so-called "sons of the soil", i.e., the native Malaysians) have made the average Malaysian poorer, not richer.

The pattern of unforeseen effects stymies all regulatory systems. Employment at will is another example. In Europe, employees are protected by extensive legal requirements, the so-called social contract. The effect of the "social contract" is to reduce employment and increase unemployment. Britain, which has the weakest "social contract" among the major European nations (excluding the newly free nations of eastern Europe) has seen a massive influx of young French men and women, who cannot find jobs because of the "humane" regulation of the workplace in France. Likewise, the Muslims who dominate the low-income suburbs or banlieue have been excluded from jobs precisely because there are so few jobs. They lead lives of desperation, excluded from the workplace, because of the benign "social contract". The French majority feels very good about how generous it is, but France is a society rife with ethnic hatred and anti-Semitism. The "social contract" is anything but benign.

There are so few jobs in Europe (unemployment is much higher than here) because there is so much beneficent regulation. The riots in the banlieue have gone on for several years, and recently have broken out again. There is so much "ethical" and "humane" regulation in France that it is not unusual for French college grads to fail to find jobs for ten or even twenty years after graduation. Not very humane in my book.

The tradeoff between Europe and America is clear. Where there is heavier workplace regulation, as in Europe, unemployment and the exclusion of unfavored and unlucky workers goes up. In America, where there is employment at will, unemployment goes down and employment goes up. The jobs may not be as good, and perhaps the employees aren't as treated well, but you don't have the social exclusion of large segments of the population in America that you have in "ethical" Europe, a continent whose history is blighted with mass murder as well as the "benign" social legislation of Bismarck.

I wold argue that if most regulation were repealed in the US, then demand for employees would skyrocket. Contrary to what several student claimed, regulation hugely reduces wages. It doesn't increase them.

Wages are determined by the interaction of supply and demand. Wages are an economic phenomenon that are enhanced by a more competitive economy. Deregulation means more demand, which means higher wages.

The best security for all is a competitive economy that is generating considerable innovation and lots of jobs. That can be done in a deregulated, laissez faire economy. The more regulation in America, the more Brooklyn will look like the French banlieue, economically depressed and full of people who cannot find jobs.

Nor do I believe for a second that government is more ethical than business. I do not believe that at all. In fact, the worst crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by government, not by business. The Nazis, the communists, the fascists, the Castros, the Hugo Chavezes have all advocated workplace regulation in the name of beneficence.

If you look, for instance at Hitler's 25 point program in the 1920s, the Nazi Party advocated workplace regulation similar to what American liberals advocate:

"14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

"15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

"16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

"21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young."

Thus spake Hitler.

Rather than relying on government, the approach that made America successful was allowing individual initiative as much free rein as possible. No system is perfect. But in the 19th century, the average worker improved their standard of living tremendously even as 100s of thousands of Europeans, Italians, Irish, Jews, Poles, etc. flocked here. No other nation in history has seen such a large influx of immigration, yet the economy was able to create better jobs for these people BECAUSE OF FREE ENTERPRISE. The economy didn't start slowing down until government intervention began in the 1900s.

In Praise of NOTA (None of the Above)

I have a project in which I believe: None of the Above. I had a long conversation with Bill White on Tuesday. Bill founded Voters for NOTA in Massachusetts and introduced bills in both legislative houses to permit voters to register a vote for "none of the above". The bill isn't going anywhere in Massachusetts, but it's worth a college professor's try in New York as well. Back in the 1960s, Howard Jarvis, a 1962 California primary Senate candidate didn't see Proposition 13 pass until 1978, eight years before his death in 1986. I envision a similar bill being proposed in NY, and I think I will be the one to propose a bill to my legislators. Bill White has done all the heavy lifting, and NOTA is an idea whose time has come in New York State.

This is a good year for NOTA. There's very slim pickings among the presidential candidates in both parties. Newsmax reports that James Carville believes that the Democrats are stronger than the Republicans only because of the "complete implosion" of the Republican Party, not because of enthusiasm for the Democrats. Even so, reports Newsmax, Carville still believes that the Democrats "could still lose focus". One reason might be the way the candidates look. I still believe that, ugly as Carville is, he is still better looking than Hillary, although both are better looking than Rosie O'Donnell.

On October 3, the Sun reported that growing evidence that conservatives are concerned about the choices shaping up in the Republican primary race, and Mike Huckabee's increasing popularity among voters in caucus states, offers the former Arkansas governor a rare opportunity to become a serious contender. Instead, social conservatives are thinking of running a third party candidate.

Speaking as an advocate of hard money, limited government and the common man, I feel the same way. Candidates just aren't interested in the erosion of the dollar, presumably because they assume that since voters have been educated in American public schools, the subject is difficult for them.

Last week in Kingston, NY, a shopper on line behind me in Hannaford's Supermarket claimed that grocery prices have gone up six percent since July. At dinner on Monday night, my aunt, Norma of Manhattan, a retired bookkeeper, mentioned that she believed that the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics has been misleading the public by publishing inflation statistics that do not include food prices.

The only candidate who grasps the inflation issue is Ron Paul, but his views on Iraq are silly and his use of the phrase "Israel lobby" concerns me. Ryan Sager covers this matter here.

ABOR Bill Referred to Higher Ed Committee in Albany

When Phil Orenstein and I met with aides to several state senators last summer I did not expect to see an actual bill proposed in the State Senate this legislative session. The following bill, S. 6336, has been proposed by Senators DeFRANCISCO, GOLDEN, JOHNSON, LARKIN, MALTESE, MEIER, MORAHAN, PADAVAN, TRUNZO, and WINNER. It is an important step for academic freedom in New York and in the nation. If the New York State Senate can propose ABOR, the rest of the country definitely can pass it.

Introduced by Sens. DeFRANCISCO, GOLDEN, JOHNSON, LARKIN,
MALTESE,
MEIER, MORAHAN, PADAVAN, TRUNZO -- read twice and ordered
printed, and
when printed to be committed to the Committee on Higher Education

AN ACT to amend the education law, in relation to creating an
academic
bill of rights

The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assem-
bly, do enact as follows:

1 Section 1. The education law is amended by adding a new section
224-b
2 to read as follows:
3 § 224-b. Academic bill of rights. 1. A student enrolled in an
institu-
4 tion of higher education has the right to expect:
5 a. A learning environment in which the student has access to a
broad
6 range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects
the
7 student studies in which, in the humanities, the social sciences
and the
8 arts, the fostering of a plurality of serious scholarly
methodologies
9 and perspectives has a significant institutional purpose;
10 b. To be graded solely on the basis of the student's reasoned
answers
11 and appropriate knowledge of the subjects the student studies and
to not
12 be discriminated against on the basis of the student's
political or
13 religious beliefs;
14 c. That the student's academic freedom and the quality of
education
15 will not be infringed upon by instructors who persistently
introduce
16 controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that
has no
17 relation to the subject of study and that serves no legitimate
pedagog-
18 ical purpose;
19 d. That the freedom of speech, freedom of expression,
freedom of
20 assembly and freedom of conscience of students and student
organizations
21 are not infringed upon by administrators, student government
organiza-
22 tions or institutional policies, rules or procedures; and
23 e. That the student's academic institution distributes student
fee
24 funds on a viewpoint-neutral basis and maintains a posture of
neutrality
25 with respect to substantive political and religious
disagreements,
26 differences and opinions.

EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in
brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.

LBD13937-01-5



S. 6336 2

1 2. A faculty member or instructor at an institution of higher
educa-
2 tion has the right to expect:
3 a. Academic freedom in the classroom in discussing subjects
while
4 making the students aware of serious scholarly viewpoints other
than
5 that of the faculty member or instructor and encouraging
intellectual
6 honesty, civil debate and the critical analysis of ideas in the
pursuit
7 of knowledge and truth;
8 b. To be hired, fired, promoted, denied promotion, granted
tenure or
9 denied tenure on the basis of competence and appropriate
knowledge in
10 the field of expertise of the faculty member or instructor and
not on
11 the basis of political or religious beliefs; and
12 c. To not be excluded from tenure, search and hiring committees
on the
13 basis of political or religious beliefs.
14 3. An institution of higher education shall fully inform
students,
15 faculty and instructors of the rights under this section and
of the
16 institution's grievance procedures for violations of academic
freedom by
17 notices prominently displayed in course catalogs or student
handbooks
18 and on the institutional publicly accessible site on the Internet.
19 4. The governing board of an institution of higher education
shall
20 develop institutional guidelines and policies to protect the
academic
21 freedom and the rights of students and faculty under this
section and
22 shall adopt a grievance procedure by which a student or faculty
member
23 may seek redress of grievance for an alleged violation of a right
speci-
24 fied in this section. A governing board under this subdivision
shall
25 publicize the grievance procedure developed pursuant to this
subdivision
26 to the students and faculty on every campus that is under the
control
27 and direction of the governing board.
28 § 2. This act shall take effect immediately.






NEW YORK STATE SENATE
INTRODUCER'S MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT
submitted in accordance with Senate Rule VI. Sec 1



BILL NUMBER: S6336

SPONSOR: DEFRANCISCO
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the education law, in relation to creating an academic
bill of rights
PURPOSE:

To ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education
receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recog-
nize the academic rights of faculty members.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 224-b (1) -- Outlines what a student enrolled at a higher educa-
tional institution can expect. Included in this portion of the bill are
provisions stating that a student can expect to be graded solely on the
basis of his/her work, student fee money should be distributed in a fair
manner, and a student's freedom of conscience shall not be infringed
upon by administrators or student government organizations.

Section 224-b (2) -- Outlines what a faculty member has a right to
expect. Included in this portion is a provision requiring that faculty
be hired, fired, or promoted on the merits of their work and not on
their political or religious beliefs.

Section 224-b (3) -- Higher education institutions are required to
inform students of their rights and of the institution's grievance
procedures for violations of academic freedom.

Section 224-b (4) -- The governing board of a higher education institu-
tion is required to develop and publicize a grievance procedure for
violations of academic freedom.
JUSTIFICATION:

Every institution of higher learning has a duty to promote intellectual
diversity on campus. Too often, students find many college classes
biased or one-sided. The ideas of all students and faculty members
should be treated with respect, and all ideas deserve to be represented
on campus.

Professors and administrators have an obligation to make students aware
of a broad range of viewpoints and perspectives. They are not hired to
teach only students who share their political or philosophical views,
and professors should never force their own views upon their students.
The classroom is not and should never be a soapbox for a professor to
promote his or her point of view.

The Academic Bill of Rights has been introduced as legislation in a
number of state legislatures, and a few states have already adopted a
form of the Academic Bill of Rights. In one of the most recent examples,
the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives -- in July 2005 --
passed a resolution supporting the principles of the Academic Bill of
Rights.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
New bill.
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.
LOCAL FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.

Trade, Wal-Mart and New York Democrats’ Attack on the Poor

The Economist 's lead story this week on globalization ("Tired of Globalization: But in Need of Much More of it"—Nov. 5) mentions Senator Schumer’s proposal to impose a 39% tariff on Chinese imports. As well, the New York City Council, the politburo of the People’s Republic of New York City, has imposed a law imposing health insurance costs on large supermarkets in order to capriciously discriminate against Wal Mart. At the same time, there were anti-trade demonstrations in Argentina concerning the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and by implication the latest round of tariff-reduction talks that especially affect agriculture.

Schumer is a Harvard grad and, hopefully was exposed to David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage in college (although along with the Harvard faculty’s belief that there are no differences between men and women, who knows what laws of economics they have concocted).

These latest assaults on economic freedom do what all restraints on economic freedom ultimately do—assault the poor. Schumer’s bill would forestall economic progress in China, in the long term reducing wage gains and diminishing learning of Chinese workers and future entrepreneurs. The ban on Wal-Mart means that those New Yorkers with low incomes must pay inflated prices for their groceries. The Doha round of trade talks would directly help the farmers of Brazil, Africa and other third world countries and low-wage people in America, while the agricultural tariffs that the demonstators seem to support help domestic producers such as Del Monte at consumers' expense.

I brought these issues up in my class at Brooklyn College, and was interested in how few students (a) had heard of the theory of comparative advantage, (b) had thought about the impact of trade on economic outcomes and freedom and (c) had heard of or were critical of the ban on Wal Mart and protectionism. One student argued that Asians who work in factories would be better off starving to death than working in American factories overseas because of poor factory conditions. This student did not say whether she wished her ancestors had so starved to death in the 19th century. Another student said that it is good that poor people in New York pay higher prices to supermarkets because they would just fritter away the money anyway. I questioned the student whether this wasn't the same economic philosophy that governs North Korea, and why wouldn't he want to live there.

It seems to me that the left’s use of universities and schools to ideologically brainwash students to believe in their failed and erroneous economic theories has worked. It will be a long path to counteract the economic ignorance that the schools and universities have wrought on the American public, and that shows itself in the illiterate discussions of trade among elected officials like New York's Senator Schumer and New York City's politburo, and among left wing demonstrators.

Review of Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead

New York: Random House, 2004, 241 pp., $23.95 hardbound

Jane Jacobs’s book Dark Age Ahead, published last year, is a major disappointment. In her most famous book, Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jacobs’s arguments are close to those of the Austrians and other free marketeers. She argues that communities need to evolve spontaneously, and that large scale planning schemes such as the urban renewal of the 1950s had been a failure.

Dark Age Ahead shows that without an underlying theoretical grasp, even the most brilliant authors with the most brilliant insights, such as those evinced in Life and Death of Great American Cities, are likely to falter. In Dark Age Ahead Jacobs claims that Western civilization is teetering on a Dark Age because our culture cannot cope with technological change and interest group pressure on public policy. Ms. Jacobs defines a Dark Age to be a state of cultural amnesia, a “horrible ordeal” where a previous way of life slides into “an abyss of forgetfulness” (pp.6-7). She claims that five trends interactively evidence an incipient Dark Age. These include: (i) The decline of the suburban family and community, (ii) credentialing in higher education, (iii) second-rate science in fields like traffic engineering, (iv) incompetently managed public finance systems and (v) the decline of ethics in the accounting profession.

With respect to the decline of the family and community, Ms. Jacobs points out that the spirit of community characteristic of the urban neighborhoods of the 1950s is missing in twenty-first century suburban communities. Her point that modern urban planning has resulted in the deterioration of community spirit and family relationships is similar to arguments in Death and Life of Great American Cities.

In the second chapter, Ms. Jacobs argues that credentialing, or an emphasis on obtaining a degree regardless of the quality of the underlying education, has become the primary business of North American universities. Complaints about the rituals of higher education date back at least to Thorstein Veblen’s (1993) Higher Learning in America, and in light of this tradition Ms. Jacobs does a credible job of depicting higher education’s transformation into an employment signal. In her view credentialing has served the narrow economic interests of universities as well as employers.

With respect to second-rate science, Ms. Jacobs criticizes the lack of scientific imagination of traffic engineers, public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control, and Canadian economists.

In a chapter entitled “Dumbed-Down Taxes” Ms. Jacobs discusses the fourth trend, incompetently managed public finance systems. Ms. Jacobs argues that government works best when it is responsible to the people it serves, and that this objective is best satisfied when government finances are transparent. Government accounting and budgeting processes often serve to cloak what “provincial kleptocracies” (p.110) do with federal grants. Not enough resources are available for social programs, and there is an absence of fiscal accountability because government accounting information is obscure. Her concerns about fiscal responsibility and budgetary equity in Canadian provinces are similar to issues that face state governments in the U.S.

Ms. Jacobs’s observations with respect to the fifth trend, the decline in professional ethics, notably with respect to the accounting profession, reflects the recent series of corporate scandals involving Adelphia, Enron, Lucent, Tyco, Worldcom and other large firms. This chapter is weak because it confuses issues involving government accounting with the corporate scandals, and fails to address either government accounting or the scandals coherently. Harvard professor Robert N. Anthony (Anthony and Young, 1993) has spent a substantial part of his notable career arguing that government and private sector accounting should not be treated all that differently, and conservative economists such as Mancur Olson (1983) have developed theories that explain the lack of transparency of public sector accounting in terms of special interest group pressure. But problems with government accounting are at most obliquely related to the private sector accounting issues that have been relevant to Enron et al.

An underlying problem with Dark Age Ahead is that Ms. Jacobs’s definition of Dark Age is vacuous. Ms. Jacobs’s definition of a Dark Age as cultural forgetting implies that 18th century American culture is in a Dark Age of cultural forgetting because the techniques of slave driving, horse-drawn carriage driving, and blood letting as a medical cure have been forgotten. Rather, some form of compulsion, elimination of free choice, or erosion of transportation or communication systems would seem to be necessary for a Dark Age.

Social scientists sometimes accuse economists of methodological imperialism when the economists extend their neoclassical paradigm to adjacent fields. In this book Jacobs seems almost imperialistic in discussing education, labor economics, general science and political science.

I had philosophical quibbles with much of the book. For instance, Ms. Jacobs’ claims about the Centers for Disease Control study are overdrawn. Rather than suggesting a Dark Age, the incentive structure provided to government researchers likely offers clues as to why their work was of poor quality. The solution might be to redesign the incentive structure, although the special interest group pressures that government employee unions pose may play a role. Perhaps Ms. Jacobs should have included a chapter on the role that public sector unions play with respect to economic decline.

Likewise, in the chapter on government finance, Ms. Jacobs intelligently argues for fiscal accountability in government. But she also condemns “neo-conservative” approaches to “reinventing government” such as requirements that government programs pay for themselves. Of course, the reason voters often have favored such “neo-conservative” reforms is the very lack of accountability and misuse of government monies that she observes in other contexts. Ms. Jacobs seems to argue both that (a) government programs should be encouraged even though (b) government behaves unaccountably.

Ms. Jacobs is a fine writer and imaginative observer, but this book is far from her most important work. Rather than indicating a Dark Age ahead, many of the issues that she adduces could best be resolved by limiting government, a solution that she paradoxically opposes. It is a significant loss to libertarians that Ms. Jacobs lacks the theoretical rigor that would have directed her toward a more consistently free market solution set. Her ideas are garbled and self-contradictory. This book represents a loss to anyone seriously interested in seeing reform of liberalism’s failed institutions.

References

Anthony, R.N. and Young, D Management Control in Non-profit Organizations Seventh Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin 2003.

Jacobs, J. Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Olson, M. The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983

Veblen, T. The Higher Learning in America, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.

Paris on the Hudson

My following Op Ed appeared on page nine of the New York Sun of November 28 and is copied here courtesy of the New York Sun.

November 28, 2005 Edition > Section: Opinion > Printer-Friendly Version
Paris on the Hudson
BY MITCHELL LANGBERT
November 28, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/23606
When considering the recent rioting in France, it is more important to remember that the rioters were poor than that they were Muslim - it was a case of economic, and not merely religious, strife. As such the episode should give New Yorkers pause. Just as the world witnessed a collision of two Frances, one of mostly ethnically French "insiders" and another of more diverse "outsiders," New York has increasingly become a city divided along class lines, with the lower stratum dominated by African Americans, Hispanics, and a perennially emigrating white working class. Is the lack of opportunity for the poor of both Paris and New York a coincidence?
Arguably not. Rather, it is in both cities a function of dirigisme, government intervention and control in the name of social cohesion and welfare. However wonderful it might sound in theory, in practice it is all too clear that "social cohesion" and "welfare" ends up excluding the poor.
In the post-World War II era, government played a large role in France's economic development. The emphasis was on creating a technocratic elite based on merit and a high degree of government influence on the economy. In the early 1980s, the socialist prime minister, Francois Mitterand, first aimed to intensify dirigisme, but because of the problems that nationalization created he reversed course and liberalized the economy. However, the liberalization did not do away with labor regulation. A 35-hour week was enforced and restrictions on firing that make hiring expensive were retained.
Like France, New York has a history of dirigisme. In the 1920s, Al Smith pushed for reforms that later became the basis for the New Deal. In reducing the influence of the patronage system of Tammany Hall, Fiorello La Guardia encouraged a meritocratic approach to hiring. The state's intervention in the economy intensified in the 1940s and 1950s with urban renewal and public housing laws that rebuilt the city's infrastructure. Due to this interventionist history, New York's economic philosophy today is closer to that of Paris than to that of Phoenix. New York's taxes are among the highest in the United States. Its rent control laws raise the rents for newcomers including the young and recent immigrants, creating homelessness. Just as French elites fear American culture, so the New York City Council passed a health insurance regulation in October targeting Wal-Mart and other big-box stores, cultural icons that are popular almost everywhere else in the country.
Regulation imposes costs on employers that make them less likely to hire. At 10%, French unemployment is higher than New York's, and among France's Islamic and African minorities unemployment levels are higher still. Tens of thousands of young people in France have given up looking for a job, and the unemployment rate for those under 25 is 25%.In New York, the unemployment rate is about 5.7% but, as in France, among teens it is 23% and for African Americans it is 10.6%. According to the Community Service Society, in New York in 2004 the black employment rate was 60.7% while for whites it was 76.6%.
In both Paris and New York, heavy regulation makes jobs scarce for those with the least power. In both cities a veneer of politically correct diversity rhetoric cloaks economic policies that benefit the median citizen such as middle class public employees while squeezing those at the margins, specifically marginal racial minorities.
Perversely, increasing labor costs through regulation creates incentives for employers to be more selective in hiring, which can mean indulging discriminatory preferences. Since regulation makes firing costly, it reduces employers' willingness to take risks on ambitious employees who lack conventional qualifications but may be willing to work longer and harder. For ambitious workers from underprivileged backgrounds, the way around discrimination often is competition through the acquisition of skills, but regulation limits the possibility of their acquiring skills by raising the cost to employers of hiring employees from diverse backgrounds that do not fit employers' stereotypes. Those who gain admission to the most prestigious schools and can afford the tuition, and those whose parents have trained them to be most articulate and socially adept, have an enhanced advantage under dirigisme. Those whose ability is harder to discern because it has not been as carefully cultivated and those who are most eager to work hard to succeed despite disadvantages are the ones likely to suffer most from marginalization.
In Paris the 35-hour workweek serves to reinforce the privileges of capital by preventing poor, would-be parvenus from working extra hours to compensate for their poverty. In New York, the state and city saddle employers with high taxes while the schools teach neither basic skills (reading, writing, and math) nor self-discipline. Instead, the students are taught to have self-esteem. The result is that the higher-end firms that can remain in New York are decreasingly likely to hire New Yorkers.
The French regularly denounce racism in the United States. Yet, when it comes to hiring, they are strikingly discriminatory. In New York, the diversity rhetoric is coupled with the eviction of Wal-Mart and the managed decay of the educational system, policies that cripple the poor while subsidizing special labor interests.
In both Paris and New York, large, established firms find it easy to comply with complicated regulations while small entrepreneurial firms find it difficult. Middle- to upper-income consumers don't mind spending more at a department store, while lower-income consumers are in need of the price reduction Wal-Mart offers. Most importantly, those who have not been able to graduate have a greater need for work experience in modest-paying jobs with longer hours and will benefit most from the experience that marginal jobs offer. But such jobs are driven out by dirigisme in Paris and New York.
Perhaps the biggest difference between France and New York is that dirigisme is a policy that influences all of France, while New York's state intervention does not cross the Hudson. Since the days of Horace Greeley, New Yorkers have tended to emigrate westward. In recent decades, the reason has been New York's war against the poor. The working-class youngsters in the French suburbs do not have a larger nation with a free market philosophy to which they can emigrate to escape the assault of dirigisme. As a result, the young French increasingly emigrate to London, much as New Yorkers have increasingly emigrated to Texas, California, and Colorado. Policies that claim to be communitarian are precisely those that are decimating communities in Paris and New York.
Mr. Langbert is an associate professor of business and economics at Brooklyn College.