Quartz #51—>Italy Should Look to Ancient Rome to Reform Its Ineffective Senate

Link to the Column on Quartz

Here is the full text of my 51st Quartz column, "Italy should look to ancient Rome to reform its ineffective Senate,“ now brought home to supplysideliberal.com. It was first published on August 8, 2014. Links to all my other columns can be found here.

The idea for this column emerged during my trip to Rome, when I talked to Luigi Guiso about the economic and political situation in Italy. I wanted to thank him for all of his insights. Don’t construe that as his endorsement of my proposal, though!   

Luigi Guiso

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© August 8, 2014: Miles Kimball, as first published on Quartz. Used by permission according to a temporary nonexclusive license expiring June 30, 2017. All rights reserved.

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The prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, wants to miniaturize the Italian Senate—both in number of senators and in power. Under Renzi’s reform plan, senators would be appointed by regional councils and have no power to approve budgets, pass most national laws, or hold a no confidence vote on the government.

One of the touted motivations is to save money: the equivalent of about $58 million in salaries, plus pension benefits. But even if it all added up to $100 million a year total, that would be only .005% of Italy’s $2 trillion a year economy. Any pluses or minuses for governance have to vastly outweigh the direct cost savings, so the issue should be thought of primarily as a constitutional issue, not a budgetary issue.

Italian senators are resisting. They have introduced almost 8000 amendments to Renzi’s reform bill to put the brakes on this constitutional change. This trench warfare was predictable. Back in March, James Mackenzie explained in Reuters that Renzi’s plan “to transform the Senate into a non-elected chamber stripped of the power to approve budgets or hold votes of no-confidence in a government” would meet stiff opposition:

[Renzi’s] bill would scrap the current fragmented system, which grants equal powers to the Senate and the lower house Chamber of Deputies but elects them by different rules which make it hard for any group to win a stable overall majority in parliament. …

But despite loud public calls for change from all sides of the political spectrum, the reform is expected to encounter strong opposition from many in the 320-strong upper house who will have to vote to scrap their own jobs.

Italian blogger Roberta Damiani gives an excellent primer on Renzi’s reform plan for the Italian Senate. She explains:

Currently, Italy has a system known as “perfect bicameralism”: both chambers are directly elected during the same general election, and have exactly the same authority on every matter, including monetary ones. This is really rare, especially in parliamentary systems; Italy and Romania are indeed the only two countries in the EU with such a system.

Such a system makes it hard to pass legislation. Right after Italy’s Fascist era under Mussolini, it made sense to make it hard for the government to do anything big. But now, when Italy faces a host of economic problems, that need imaginative solutions, it is a problem.

Ancient Rome provides the inspiration for a very different reform of the Italian Senate—a reform that doesn’t save any money on senators’ salaries, because it would let the senators keep their jobs, but would:

1. End the gridlock caused by the current system;
2. Elevate the Italian Senate as a deliberative body;
3. Maintain the equality of the Senate with the other house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.

The highest officials in the Roman Republic were two consuls. The consuls took turns running the show, with one consul in charge one month and the other in charge the next month. The consul who was in charge was said to hold imperium. One consul could veto the actions of the other when the other was in charge, but used that power sparingly in order to avoid being checked in turn when it was his month.

For the modern Italian Parliament, here is what I am proposing: just as consuls in Ancient Rome took turns being in charge in alternate months, let the modern Italian Senate and the other house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, be in charge in alternate years. Require an active vote by 55 percent of the house of Parliament that is not in charge to veto an action by the one that is. (To minimize opposition to this reform plan, leave the number of senators the same as it is now.)

Besides an occasional veto vote, what would a house of Parliament do during its off year? Although they might shirk in their duties, members of parliament in an off year would be expected to turn their house of Parliament into a kind of think tank, preparing and thinking through the actions they planned to take in the following year when they would again collectively be in charge. Having to watch the other house of Parliament be in charge during an off year would do a lot to stimulate creativity in putting together a program for the year when their house held imperium.

Under this system, the members of parliament could all keep their jobs, as long as the voters kept reelecting them. The fact that the house of Parliament in charge could pass legislation with a simple majority vote but the other house could veto only with an active vote of 55 percent would do a lot to reduce gridlock. The years each house of Parliament would go through having to sit on the sidelines would do a lot to foster deeper deliberation.

Italy has not been an easy country to govern. I think prime minister Renzi is trying to make things better, but he chose the wrong model for constitutional reform in Italy. For a better model—one that wouldn’t face the uphill battle of persuading senators to vote their own jobs out of existence—he can turn to the ancient Roman Republic, the source of so many of the world’s key democratic principles and traditions.

Italy Should Look to Ancient Rome to Reform Its Ineffective Senate

Here is a link to my 51st column on Quartz, “Italy should look to ancient Rome to reform its ineffective Senate.”

The idea for this column emerged during my trip to Rome, when I talked to Luigi Guiso about the economic and political situation in Italy. I wanted to thank him for all of his insights. Don’t construe that as his endorsement of my proposal, though!   

Luigi Guiso

Daniel Greenfield: Liberal Newspeak →

This is a very insightful article, vividly illustrating a phenomenon I also learned about from reading Matt Gentzkow’s and Jesse Shapiro’s Econometrica article “What drives media slant? Evidence from U.S. newspapers.” I would love to have the corresponding article on right-wing use of language to pair with it. But the fact that both parties do it does not make it innocent.

Safe, Legal, Rare and Early

image source

Even in a year when the abortion issue has been relatively quiet, the struggle over abortion policy continues to make news. On June 26, the Supreme Court decided that a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics was too great an imposition on the free-speech rights of anti-abortion activists. On June 3, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down restrictions on pills that induce abortion early in pregnancies.

And Wendy Davis’s uphill campaign to become governor of Texas was jumpstarted by her filibuster against restrictions on late-term abortions. 

The American politics of abortion generates a lot of heat because of the passion of those with extreme views. Yet most Americans have moderate views on abortion. The debate over abortion restrictions involves a tragic conflict between a human life—however small and undeveloped—and the freedom of a potential mother to determine the course of her life.   

Bill Clinton famously said during the 1996 presidential campaign:  “Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.” In saying this, he missed another important proviso. According to most Americans, abortion should be not only safe, legal and rare–when there is an abortion, it should be done early in pregnancy.Gallup polls from 2012 indicate that only 31% of adults think abortion should be illegal in the first trimester, but 64% think abortion should be illegal during the second trimester, and 80% think abortion should be prohibited in the third trimester. And these attitudes have been remarkably stable over time.

I agree with the majority of Americans. It makes sense to me that someone ought to have the right not to be killed the day before they would otherwise have been born. And it makes sense to me that, despite its potential, the interests of a single human cell from a recently fertilized egg cannot weigh as much in the balance as the interests of a woman in choosing one of the most basic aspects of what her future will look like. In between, I see the ethical weight of nascent human life as increasing gradually over time. There are milestones along the way: fertilization, implantation, getting a heartbeat, becoming able to feel pain, being born. But even those transitions, seen up close, are gradual ones.  For example, birth is not one moment of transition, but many: the breaking of the water, the emergence of the baby’s head, the first breath, the cutting of the umbilical cord, and many key moments along the way.

Even after birth, loving parents feel a baby becoming more and more precious with every passing day. And with passing time, the child gains a greater and greater consciousness of its own existence, and (in all but pathological cases) its own strong desire to live. At the other end, even before conception, I like to think that even the unconceived have at least some small ethical interest in getting a chance to become an actual human being.

So to me, there are no sudden ethical jumps, but instead, a gradually increasing ethical weight to a developing human life, at least from shortly before conception to shortly after birth. What this ethical view means for policy is that when an abortion does happen it is better to have it occur early. Laws against partial-birth abortion seem ethically appropriate to me just as laws against killing the baby one day later are, but attempts to discourage women from using morning-after pills such as “Plan B” do not. It takes many, many fertilized eggs to equal the ethical weight of a single one-month-along fetus aborted because a woman was kept from using a morning-after pill. And while it might be reasonable to consider short waiting periods to encourage people to think things through, restrictions on abortion (or harrassments to drive out abortion clinics) that force women to go to another state at the cost of weeks of delay magnify the horror of the abortion that ultimately does take place.

Unfortunately, the extreme viewpoints that have driven much of the policy debate have left little room for us to focus on trying to insure that the abortions that do occur are early ones. The politically most active parts of the pro-life movement claim that a fertilized egg is the moral equivalent of a baby, while the politically most active parts of the pro-choice movement are loath to give any rights to a human being the day before birth. So it is the duty of the rest of us—who have both pro-choice and pro-life leanings jostling in our hearts at the same time–to work toward policies that will insure that abortions are not only safe, legal and rare, but also early.

Michael Gerson: The Tea Party Will Hurt Republican Prospects Until It Faces Political Reality →

I think Michael Gerson’s analysis is excellent. 

Michael Bloomberg: A University Cannot Be Great If Its Faculty Is Politically Homogenous

I was delighted to see that Michael Bloomberg gave a Commencement Address at Harvard articulating the same sentiments I expressed in my post “Colleges Should Stand Up For Freedom of Speech!” The text is available in full on his website, and I plugged in the embed code above for the video of his talk. 

Here are some key passages. I am in full agreement:

1. Great universities are places where people of all backgrounds, holding all beliefs, pursuing all questions, can come to study and debate their ideas – freely and openly.

Today, I’d like to talk with you about how important it is for that freedom to exist for everyone, no matter how strongly we may disagree with another’s viewpoint.

Tolerance for other people’s ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable values at great universities. Joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of our democratic society.

2. Repressing free expression is a natural human weakness, and it is up to us to fight it at every turn. Intolerance of ideas – whether liberal or conservative – is antithetical to individual rights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-rate scholarship.

There is an idea floating around college campuses – including here at Harvard – that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism.

Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.

3. In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama.

Ninety-six percent. There was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors.

That statistic should give us pause – and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama for reelection – because let me tell you, neither party has a monopoly on truth or God on its side.

When 96 percent of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer.

Diversity of gender, ethnicity, and orientation is important. But a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous. In fact, the whole purpose of granting tenure to professors is to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on ideas that run afoul of university politics and societal norms.

When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservative norms.

Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideas run up against liberal norms. Otherwise, university research – and the professors who conduct it – will lose credibility.

Great universities must not become predictably partisan. And a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism.

The role of universities is not to promote an ideology. It is to provide scholars and students with a neutral forum for researching and debating issues – without tipping the scales in one direction, or repressing unpopular views.

4. … a university’s obligation is not to teach students what to think but to teach students how to think. And that requires listening to the other side, weighing arguments without prejudging them, and determining whether the other side might actually make some fair points.

5. if students graduate with ears and minds closed, the university has failed both the student and society.

And if you want to know where that leads, look no further than Washington, D.C.

Down in Washington, every major question facing our country – involving our security, our economy, our environment, and our health – is decided.

Yet the two parties decide these questions not by engaging with one another, but by trying to shout each other down, and by trying to repress and undermine research that runs counter to their ideology. The more our universities emulate that model, the worse off we will be as a society.

And let me give you an example: For decades, Congress has barred the Centers for Disease Control from conducting studies of gun violence, and recently Congress also placed that prohibition on the National Institute of Health. You have to ask yourself: What are they afraid of?

6. We must not become a country that turns our back on science, or on each other. And you graduates must help lead the way.

On every issue, we must follow the evidence where it leads and listen to people where they are. If we do that, there is no problem we cannot solve. No gridlock we cannot break. No compromise we cannot broker.

The more we embrace a free exchange of ideas, and the more we accept that political diversity is healthy, the stronger our society will be.

7. Standing up for the rights of others is in some ways even more important than standing up for your own rights. Because when people seek to repress freedom for some, and you remain silent, you are complicit in that repression and you may well become its victim.

Do not be complicit, and do not follow the crowd. Speak up, and fight back.

You will take your lumps, I can assure you of that. You will lose some friends and make some enemies. But the arc of history will be on your side, and our nation will be stronger for it.

It is worth comparing the arguments Michael gives to those you can see in the links in “John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Freedom of Speech.” Michael quotes John Stuart Mill in one place, but articulates the fundamental logic of John’s argument in many other places in new words.

The Man in the Tank: It's Time to Honor the Unsung Hero of Tiananmen Square

Here is a link to my 48th column on Quartz “The Man in the Tank: It’s Time to Honor the Unsung Hero of Tiananmen Square.” In addition to my editor, Mitra Kalita, I want to thank my father, Edward Kimball, for excellent editorial suggestions in putting together this column.  

The Tiananmen Square Massacre is an event well-deserving in its infamy of a two-day memorial. Tomorrow’s post will also remember.

Sliding Doors: Hillary vs. Barack

“Sliding Doors” Wikipedia article. Please imagine in your mind’s eye a version of this poster with Barack Obama on top and Hillary Clinton on the Bottom to represent the two alternate histories: actual history and “Hillary wins in 2008.”

“Sliding Doors” is one of my wife Gail’s and my favorite movies. It explores the perennially fascinating theme of alternate histories–“what if” or “counterfactual” histories.

Although it is too early for me to attempt any serious discussion of the race to be elected president in 2016, it is not too early to rerun the what-ifs raised by the 2008 Democratic primary that came down to a hard-fought battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Most political observers believe that Hillary would also have defeated John McCain in the general election, as Barack did, so the Democratic primary in 2008 comes closer than the general election to providing a “sliding-doors” moment when history could easily have gone either way. If I had the technical skill, I would photoshop the “Sliding Doors” poster above to have Barack on top and Hillary on the bottom, instead of blond and brunette Gwyneth Paltrow. 

I would be interested in your opinion about how the world would be different if Hillary had won instead of Barack. I have two thoughts on that subject, that I am happy to have you dispute.

First, I think the 2008 Financial Crisis was baked in the cake by the time of the 2008 primaries, so whoever became president would have had to deal with the same type of economic problems, and the differences between Hillary and Barack could have been crucial. I think Hillary, having been burned on the health care reform front before, would have pursued health care reform, but would have put it as a lower priority relative to economic recovery than Barack did. As I wrote in “What Should the Historical Pattern of Slow Recoveries after Financial Crises Mean for Our Judgment of Barack Obama’s Economic Stewardship?” I think it was a mistake for Barack not to devote every ounce of his political capital to getting a bigger stimulus package for economic recovery; so at that juncture, it was a mistake to let the goal of health care reform distract from the goal of economic recovery.

In my book, to the extent a health care reform steamroller would then have been impossible, that also might have been a good thing. Given how little we know about what works in health care reform at a systemic level (see my column “Don’t Believe Anyone Who Claims to Understand the Economics of Obamacare”), I believe that Medical Reform Federalism would have been the best course, and this might have been exactly the kind of compromise eventually reached had Barack not been in the presidency to push through Obamacare. As I wrote in my post “Evan Soltas on Medical Reform Federalism–in Canada” here is what I mean by Medical Reform Federalism:

Let’s abolish the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance, with all of the money that would have been spent on this tax exemption going instead to block grants for each state to use for its own plan to provide universal access to medical care for its residents.

Second, I think that Hillary would have helped the Syrian rebels more as President than she could as Secretary of State, which in turn would have projected enough more toughness that Vladimir Putin would not have dared to seize Crimea for Russia and Ukraine would not be facing that loss of the Crimea and possible further loss of territory right now. Supposing that is true, even greater differences between the two alternate histories I am considering (actual history and Hillary winning in 2008) are likely to open up as time goes on.

I was stimulated to think again about Hillary vs. Barack by a Washington Post article this morning by  Philip Rucker and Zachary A. Goldfarb that can be found online here:

“The Clintons fight back, signaling a new phase in 2016 preparations”

Here are some memorable passages from that article:

1. Bill Clinton reveled in mocking Karl Rove for his suggestion that Hillary Clinton may have suffered brain damage from a fall in late 2012 … 

Referring to Rove’s remarks, [Bill] Clinton chuckled and fired back with humor.

“First they said she faked her concussion, and now they say she’s auditioning for a part on ‘The Walking Dead,’ ” he said, referring to a television series about zombies. “If she does [have brain damage], then I must be in really tough shape because she’s still quicker than I am.”

2. Asked whether [Hillary] Clinton is still a stateswoman operating above the political fray, Republican presidential strategist Mark McKinnon wrote in an e-mail, “There is no ‘above the fray’ in politics anymore. There is only ‘the fray.’”

3.  [Bill] Clinton, who has faced criticism that income inequality worsened on his watch in the 1990s, defended income growth during his term but acknowledged that the gap between the rich and the poor represents a significant problem.

“You can say, ‘Well, inequality has still increased,’ because the top 1 percent did better, but I don’t think there’s much you could do about that unless you want to start jailing people,” he said.

On Freedom of Political Speech

Link to Wall Street Journal article “Political Speech Wins in Wisconsin”

My experiences with the Mormon Church’s attempts to suppress freedom of speech within the Church, using ecclesiastical power, make me very leery of allowing the heavier power of the government to fine people or throw them in jail for speech. So it seems very short-sighted to me when many commentators put concerns about money in politics ahead of concerns about maintaining the freedom of speech that fosters desperately needed information processing at the social level.

As a result, I give props to federal judge Rudolph Randa who in issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday ending the John Doe investigation of allies of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, wrote: 

… the larger danger is giving government an expanded role in uprooting all forms of perceived corruption which may result in corruption of the First Amendment itself.

He also wrote:

O'Keefe and the Club obviously agree with Governor Walker’s policies … but coordinated ads in favor of those policies carry no risk of corruption because the Club’s interests are already aligned with Walker and other conservative politicians.

Concerns about corruption must never be a stalking horse for criminalizing speech that is objectionable primarily because it deeply offends one’s political sensibilities.

Is freedom of speech really important enough that we should risk an excessive role of money in politics? This is a genuine tradeoff, but our answer should be yes. It is worth sacrificing a lot for freedom of speech. To me, freedom of speech is sacred because it is necessary for seeking truth. So for over a year, every other week, I have built my Sunday religion post around a passage from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I hope you will read On Liberty closely along with me to see if you don’t weigh the importance of freedom of speech more highly–even relative to other very important values–after pondering John’s argument.

Notes

1. You can see all the posts based on On Liberty in my Religion, Sciences and Humanities sub-blog:

http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/tagged/religionhumanitiesscience

2. On truth as a sacred value, see the discussion on this Facebook post:

https://www.facebook.com/miles.kimball.9/posts/10202070113535257

North Carolina Clergy Bring Religious Freedom Lawsuit against State’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban →

I don’t mean to claim I had any effect, but I am interested to see that the argument I made in my column “The Case for Gay Marriage is Made in the Freedom of Religion” is being pursued in North Carolina. My thanks to John Davidson for pointing me to the news report by Lorelei Laird linked above. Here are key passages:

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday in the Western District of North Carolina puts a new spin on same-sex marriage litigation: religious freedom. In it, several individual clergy members and the General Synod of the United Church of Christ argue that state laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutionally penalize them for practicing their faith. …

North Carolina has both a constitutional amendment and a statute making same-sex marriages invalid. Furthermore, North Carolina General Statute §51-6 makes it a crime for members of the clergy to perform marriages for couples who do not have a license.

As a result, the complaint says, state law forbids the plaintiffs from practicing their religions, in violation of the free exercise and free association clauses of the First Amendment. The plaintiffs also make the due process and equal protection arguments more common in same-sex marriage lawsuits after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor.

Michigan, University and State, Occasion a Landmark Supreme Court Decision on Affirmative Action →

The link above is to a well-written and careful discussion by Jess Bravin in the Wall Street Journal of the Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision to uphold the right of a state—in this case Michigan—to prohibit the use of explicitly race-based affirmative action at its universities.

Within Michigan, the voter initiative against using race-based affirmative action was prompted in the main by the University of Michigan’s actions.

As a professor at the University of Michigan, what I regret most is this: by going too far in the direction of formulaic affirmative action, the University of Michigan caused a backlash that may imperil the ability of the faculty and administrators at the University of Michigan to do affirmative action based on case-by-case judgments. That seems especially unfortunate to me because I think affirmative action based on case-by-case judgments is likely to strike a better balance among all the different kinds of affirmative action that might be warranted.

Here is a link to an earlier Wall Street Journal article giving some of the history of the legal battle about affirmative action in Michigan:

• The Weekend Interview with Jennifer Gratz: The Woman Who Fought Racial Preference

Jessica Hammer: Venezuela's Deadly Struggle

Image from “Venezuela’s March 8 Protests" by Brian Ries

Jessica Hammer is a student in my "Monetary and Financial Theory” class at the University of Michigan. Students in the class write three blog posts a week for an internal class blog. Of the ones they select as their own best work, I have been choosing a few to publish as guest posts on supplysideliberal.com. This is Jessica’s second appearance here. Her previous guest post is “Jessica Hammer: The World Poverty Situation is Better Than You Think.” This post about Venezuela is a grim but powerful complement to Ezequiel Tortorelli’s guest post, “The Trouble with Argentina.” Here is what Jessica has to say about Venezuela:

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When someone hears about Venezuela, I suspect the first thing most people think of is oil. Of course, this is due to the fact that this country is an OPEC member and exports around 25 million barrels of oil to the United States each month. Venezuela has one of the most abundant oil sources in the world but, unfortunately, it is being wasted. Perhaps you remember ex-President Hugo Chavez, and his passing in recent years. Many hoped the tyrannical government would disappear along with him, but the power of “chavismo” (the support for Chavez’s socialist reforms) prevailed. But the current president (the used-to-be bus driver who received no college education and is bluntly incompetent) , Nicolas Maduro, is slowly losing control of the country – or so they hope. The world knows little about the horrid situation in Venezuela, and how this potentially-wealthy nation is destroying itself.

Caracas, the capital, is currently (and has been for a while) the world’s deadliest city. Not Baghdad or Mogadishu. Mexico is known for its drug-related violence, but its murder rate is well below Venezuela’s rate of 73 per 100,000 citizens. Caracas, however, experienced a soaring rate of more than 200 per 100,000 in 2012 (and 2013 was even higher). To put this into perspective, Venezuela’s murder rate is higher than the death rates of the US and the 27 countries of the EU combined. Violence is so predominant, that people live in constant fear of going outside. Most wealthy people have to travel with bodyguards in order to avoid kidnappers. I personally know a lot of Venezuelans, and they all know of someone who has been murdered – either friends, family, or friends of friends. Most cases like these are a result of robberies. But gun fights are common to establish property rights, personal disputes, or drug-related problems. And the problem isn’t only the fact that violence is so widespread; nearly 90% of murders go unpunished. The police are so corrupt that they are often the ones involved in murders.

As if this weren’t enough to put up with, Venezuelans face daily shortages of basic goods. The most common ones include toilet paper, flour, sugar, cooking oil, and chicken. Not only are there rations on available goods, but these goods are not readily available. Producers point to the price controls and the limitations on foreign currency, which limit the availability of resources needed for production. Also, there are viable claims that 30 billion dollars were robbed from Cadivi (the government body which administered currency exchange) by the government elite. This is seen as the cause for the country’s current shortage problems.

Additionally, inflation is among the highest in the world at 56%.  Maduro eliminated the Cadivi program last year, which Venezuelans used to transfer dollars overseas. Today, a dollar goes for 84.2 bolivares in the black market – 13 times more than the official rate. Toyota is halting production, while Ford is significantly reducing its production in Venezuela. Venezuela’s economy is in shambles.

And its government is worse. Without getting into too much detail, Venezuela’s government is best described as a raging civil war where the Chavistas in power have bought the support of enough people to think they can deceive the country into thinking that they are representing them. In the last elections, the result was announced before all the votes were counted. People took to social media to report the fraud. Pictures and videos of military men burning boxes of ballots quickly spread over Facebook and Twitter. But the government had enough power over the military to stay “enchufados” (plugged in), as the opposition says. However, beginning February 12th, Venezuelans have taken to the streets by the millions. They are peacefully protesting against the government that is driving their country into ruins. Sadly, many people have been killed as they continue to take to the streets in protest, and the government persistently uses military force to subdue them. Now, they are outraged that the government is so blunt in oppressing them – not even trying to hide it anymore.

It is tragic to see a country so rich in natural resources, with so much talent and potential, deprived of its capability to provide its people with a decent life-style. Corrupt governments have a far-reaching effect on the economic well-being of a country. Most people in the US, and many other democratic countries, don’t realize the deep extent of corruption that exists in places like Venezuela. My intent is to raise awareness about this. The Venezuelan government is not the only corrupt, undemocratic government in the world, but at the moment, it stands out as one that is close to being brought down in favor of a more open, honest government. More pressure from foreign governments is essential–along with the noble efforts of the Venezuelan people–to put Venezuela back on the path of freedom and democracy.

John Locke: Revolutions are Always Motivated by Misrule as Well as Procedural Violations

John Locke

Jack Rakove, writes in his book Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America(p. 309): 

In a key passage, Locke defined the prerogative of the executive not in terms of the time-encrusted powers of a king, but rather as a discretionary power to act “for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it.” To this definition he added a shrewd observation: “Whilst employed for the benefit of the community, this true use of prerogative never is questioned: for the people are seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point.”

This matches what I have seen in Department politics. By and large, as long as almost all the faculty agree with the results of a Department Chair’s actions, they tend to overlook procedural violations. It is only when they think that the Chair’s decisions are mistakes that the professors harp on the infringement of the faculty members’ right to be consulted. On the other hand, I have seen the combination of enough perceived mistakes and procedural violations lead to the academic small-time equivalent of revolution.

The key to avoiding the perception of misrule is to make sure to know and fully take into account in one’s decisions what people want–especially what those with the ability to influence what others want.

Note: Everything I say here is descriptive (“positive”) rather than prescriptive (“normative”). There is a danger that comes from setting bad precedents about violating procedures that is not always fully taken into account. On the other hand, though I am deeply committed to constitutional government, one cannot avoid the logical possibility that a set of bylaws or constitutional rules inherited from the past might be too much of a straitjacket.

Quartz #44—>The Case for Gay Marriage is Made in the Freedom of Religion

Link to the Column on Quartz

Here is the full text of my 44th Quartz column, “The case for gay marriage is made in the freedom of religion,” now brought home to supplysideliberal.com. It was first published on January 11, 2014, 2013. (Based on pageviews in a column’s first 30 days, it is currently my 4th most viewed column ever.) Links to all my other columns can be found here.

This column is a followup to my Christmas column “That baby born in Bethlehem should inspire society to keep redeeming itself.”

I want to make it clear that I am not making a narrowly legal argument in this column. It is addressed at least as much to current and future voters and legislators as to lawyers crafting arguments for judges.

If you want to mirror the content of this post on another site, that is possible for a limited time if you read the legal notice at this link and include both a link to the original Quartz column and the following copyright notice:

© January 11, 2014: Miles Kimball, as first published on Quartz. Used by permission according to a temporary nonexclusive license expiring June 30, 2015. All rights reserved.

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Freedom of religion is a hard-won principle. In Europe, the wars of religion raged for over a century before the Peace of Westphalia  solidified freedom of religion for rulers in 1648. Freedom of religion for ordinary citizens was much slower in coming: the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution was a huge advance in that sphere.Then it took the US Civil War for the principle to be firmly established in the 14th amendment that the key provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to state laws as well: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The reason so much blood was shed before the principle of religious freedom was established is that it’s not a principle that comes naturally to the human mind. If a behavior or belief deeply offends God or the gods, then it doesn’t seem right to tolerate it. And if a behavior or belief will bring eternal damnation down on the heads of those involved (and those they might influence), then doesn’t the solicitous kindness of tough love demand doing whatever it takes to pull them away from that behavior or belief?

Within the United States, ground zero in the battle for freedom of religion is in Utah, where US District Court Judge Richard Shelby Federal judge ruled on Dec. 20, 2013 that Utah could not prohibit gay marriage. Utah is appealing, in a move that could put the case on a fast-track to the Supreme Court.

Gay marriage is a matter of religious freedom for two reasons: First, a substantial component of the opposition to legalizing gay marriage is religious in origin. This is particularly true in Utah, where the Mormon Church has taken a lead role in opposing gay marriage. Leave aside religious objections to gay marriage and what remains would be unlikely to garner much respect. As Judge Shelby reminded us in his opinion, “the regulation of constitutionally protected decisions, such as … whom [a person] shall marry, must be predicated on legitimate state concerns other than disagreement with the choice the individual has made.” It is easy to come up with religious concerns about gay marriage; not so easy to come up with “legitimate state concerns.”

What’s not said as often is that gay marriage is itself an exercise of religious freedom. As many with good marriages know from experience, marriage is one of the most powerful paths toward spiritual growth. A good spouse helps one to see the aspects of oneself that one is too blind to see, and inspires efforts to be a better person. And when two human beings  know each other so well, and interact so thickly, the family they create is something new and wonderful in the world, even when there are no children in the picture. And for those who do choose to have children, but cannot bear their own biologically, adoption is a tried and true path.

To those who would dispute that the freedom to marry the one person you love above all others is a matter of religious freedom, let me argue that if I am wrong that this is a matter of religious freedom, it is a freedom that should be treated in the same way. In his influential book A Theory of Justice (p. 220), John Rawls made this argument:

“This idea that arose historically with religious toleration can be extended to other instances. Thus we can suppose that the persons in the original position know that they have moral convictions although, as the veil of ignorance requires, they do not know what these convictions are. … the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regulate the claims of rival religions.”

Rawls’s point is that when something touches on a fundamental liberty—as the choice of whom to marry certainly does—people gain so much from that freedom they would not sell that freedom for anything. Imagine a time before you knew whether you would be gay or not—for many a time within actual childhood memory. Would you trade away the right to marry whom you choose for the right to prevent others from marrying whom they choose? No! Almost none of us would.

At the founding of our nation, we the people struck a bargain to live and let live in matters of religion. That freedom includes the freedom to believe that God frowns on gay marriage. But it does not include the freedom to impose one’s own view of God’s law as the law of the land—unless one can make a compelling argument that speaks to people of the whole range of different religious beliefs—or as John Rawls expresses it, “by reference to a common knowledge and understanding.” I know that my own religious beliefs make legalizing gay marriage an important part of the path toward God ([1,] [2,] [3]). In our republic, the way to arbitrate between warring religious beliefs is to privilege freedom.

I am always moved when I read stories of happy gay couples after legalization of gay marriage in one more state. I wish everyone could feel that way. But that is not the world we live in. For some, allowing a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman comes hard. But I ask them to do so in order to maintain the principles that guarantee their own freedom in matters close to their hearts.

Quartz #43—>That Baby Born in Bethlehem Should Inspire Society to Keep Redeeming Itself

Link to the Column on Quartz

Here is the full text of my 43d Quartz column, “That baby born in Bethlehem should inspire society to keep redeeming itself,” now brought home to supplysideliberal.com. It was first published on December 8, 2013. Links to all my other columns can be found here.

I followed up the main theme of this column with my post “The Importance of the Next Generation: Thomas Jefferson Grokked It.” I followed up the gay marriage theme with my column “The Case for Gay Marriage is Made in the Freedom of Religion.” I also have a draft column on abortion policy that is waiting for a news hook as an occasion to publish it.

If you want to mirror the content of this post on another site, that is possible for a limited time if you read the legal notice at this link and include both a link to the original Quartz column and the following copyright notice:

© December 8, 2013: Miles Kimball, as first published on Quartz. Used by permission according to a temporary nonexclusive license expiring June 30, 2015. All rights reserved.

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Among its many other meanings, Christmas points to a central truth of human life: a baby can grow up to change the world. But it is not just that a baby can grow up to change the world; in the human sense, babies are the world: a hundred-odd years from now, all of humanity will be made up of current and future babies.

Babies begin life with the genetic heritage of humankind, then very soon take hold of, reconfigure, and carry on the cultural heritage of humanity. The significance of young human beings as a group is obscured in daily life by the evident power of old human beings. But for anyone who cares about the long run, it is a big mistake to forget that the young are the ultimate judges for the fate of any aspect of culture.

Since those who are now young are the ultimate judges for our culture, it won’t do to neglect instilling in them the kind of morality and ethics that can make them good judges. I have been grateful for the lessons in morality and ethics that I had as a child in a religious context, and with my own children, I saw many of these lessons instilled effectively in short moral lessons at the end of Tae Kwon Do martial arts classes. I don’t see any reason why that kind of secularized moral lessons can’t be taught in our schools, along with practical skills and a deep understanding of academic subjects, especially if we do right by kids by giving them time to learn by lengthening the school day and year.

In at least two controversies, the collective judgments of the young seem on target to me. Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone fame came to the University of Michigan a few years ago to talk about the research behind his more recent book with David Campbell,  American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. He expressed surprise that many young people are becoming alienated from traditional religion when attitudes toward abortion among the young are similar to attitudes among those who are older. But the alienation from traditional religion did not surprise me at all given another fact he reported: the young are dramatically more accepting and supportive of gay marriage than those who are older. I am glad that the young are troubled by the conflict between reproductive freedom and reverence for the beginnings of human life presented by abortion on the one hand and abortion restrictions on the other. But there is no such conflict in the case of gay marriage, which pits the rights of gay couples to make socially sanctioned commitments to one another and enjoy the dignity and practical benefits of a hallowed institution against ancient custom, theocratic impulses, and misfiring disgust instincts that most of the young rightly reject. In this, the young are (perhaps without knowing it) following the example of that baby born in Bethlehem, who always gave honor to those who had been pushed to the edges of the society in which he became a man.

The hot-button controversy of gay marriage is not the only area of our culture due for full-scale revision. Our nation and the world will soon become immensely richer, stronger, and wiser if young people around the world reject the idea I grew up with that intelligence is a fixed, inborn quantity. The truth that hard work adds enormously to intelligence can set them free. What will make an even bigger difference is if they also enshrine their youthful idealism in a vision of a better world that can not only motivate them when young, but also withstand the cares of middle-age to guide their efforts throughout their lives.

Knowing that those who are now young, or are as yet unborn, will soon hold the future of humanity in their hands should make us alarmed at the number of children who don’t have even the basics of life. By far, the worst cases are abroad. The simplest way to help is to stop exerting such great efforts to put obstacles in the way of a better life for them. But whether or not we are willing to do that, it is a good thing to donate to charities that help those in greatest need. Also, I give great honor to those economists working hard trying to figure out how to make poor countries rich.

For those of us already in the second halves of our lives, the fact that the young will soon replace us gives rise to an important strategic principle: however hard it may seem to change misguided institutions and policies, all it takes to succeed in such an effort is to durably convince the young that there is a better way. Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, said “Science progresses funeral by funeral.” In a direction not quite as likely to be positive, society evolves from funeral to funeral as well—the funerals of those whose viewpoints do not persuade the young.

It is a very common foolishness to look down on children as unimportant. The deep end of common sense is to respect children and to bring to bear our best efforts, both intellectually and materially, to help them become the best representatives of our species that the universe has ever seen.

The Case for Gay Marriage is Made in the Freedom of Religion

Here is a link to my 44th column on Quartz, “The case for gay marriage is made in the freedom of religion.”

This is a followup to my Christmas column “That baby born in Bethlehem should inspire society to keep redeeming itself.”

I am not making a narrowly legal argument in “The case for gay marriage is made in the freedom of religion." It as addressed at least as much to current and future voters and legislators as to lawyers crafting arguments for judges. 

Miles Kimball, Jason Becker and Jordan Weissmann Discuss Affirmative Action →

Kids who get passable grades in high school despite serious outward disadvantages are more likely to have the grit needed to succeed in college than kids who get somewhat better grades despite every advantage. And it is especially valuable to increase the odds that kids who have overcome obstacles many others also face will gain a broader influence in society by admitting them to elite colleges. But outward disadvantage is much more than a matter of race alone.

You might be interested in this Twitter discussion of affirmative action in that light.

But the big injustice in education is that we haven’t fixed our K-12 schools for those at the bottom of the heap. Here is a start:

http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/27813547755/magic-ingredient-1-more-k-12-school

Lars Christensen: Beating the Iron Law of Public Choice

The Iron Throne in The Game of Thrones

In his post “Beating the Iron Law of Public Choice: A Reply to Peter Boettke,” Lars Christensen gives this description of the supposed Iron Law of Public Choice: 

… the Iron Law of Public Choice – no matter how much would-be reformers try they will be up against a wall of resistance. Reforms are doomed to end in tears and reformers are doomed to end depressed and disappointed.

Lars gives this ancestry for the Iron Law of Public Choice: 

The students of Public Choice theory will learn from Bill Niskanen that bureaucrats has an informational advantage that they will use to maximizes budgets. They will learn that interest groups will lobby to increase government subsidies and special favours. Gordon Tulluck teaches us that groups will engage in wasteful rent-seeking. Mancur Olson will tell us that well-organized groups will highjack the political process. Voters will be rationally ignorant or even as Bryan Caplan claims rationally irrational.

 But at the end of the day, I agree with Lars when he says

ideas – especially good and sound ideas – can beat the Iron Law of Public Choice.

Anat Admati's Words of Encouragement for People Trying to Save the World from Another Devastating Financial Crisis

Anat Admati

I was privileged to be copied on an email exchange between Anat Admati and someone who had worked hard to make the financial system more stable, but had gotten discouraged by the politics one runs into in such an effort. I loved Anat’s words of encouragement, which I think are apt for anyone who is trying to make a difference for greater financial stability in the real world. Anat kindly gave me permission to reprint a passage from that message here, after some very light editing:

…“policy makers’ indifference to reality” resonates. I had no idea just how bad it can be. First I was shocked at confusions and misunderstanding. Naively I thought that is mostly what it is, never mind why, if folks don’t understand, maybe they can’t be blamed. Then you come across the political issues and the capture and the picture becomes much uglier. I read a book recently and met the author called “Willful Blindness” – http://www.amazon.com/Willful-Blindness-Ignore-Obvious-Peril/dp/0802777961 – part of the evidence is from experiments. It becomes about what people WANT to know, and then of course they have to be ABLE to do something about it, and they also have, again, to WANT to do something. By the time you get to actually doing something, well, the numbers are very few and far between. 

So I may have stirred the pot, but serious progress, maybe a little bit, reluctantly, hard to tell… it depends on expectations..

Anyway, I can understand the bruised feelings. In my case, especially since I am up against a lot of money, I also get bruised a lot and it’s hard to take. It’s easy to give up, but I get annoyed about the wrong side winning so I dust myself off and think of something else to do. Fortunately, I/we do have paying jobs and I feel by now that under the circumstances, it is virtually our duty to lobby on behalf of the public. The political economy of money and influence ends up messing up democracies, see Olsen etc…

Michael Huemer's Libertarianism

The Lone Ranger and Tonto (original story, movie, movie review)

I am not drawn to Libertarianism as it is usually argued (see my post “Libertarianism, a US Sovereign Wealth Fund, and I”), but I am drawn to Michael Huemer’s version of Libertarianism. I am not sure that he has the right practical solution for achieving the ethical ideals he champions, but the ethical ideals themselves must be taken very seriously. I want you to see some of the force of his argument. I actually find his arguments most powerful as applied in particular areas of concern, as you can see in my post “Michael Huemer’s Immigration Parable.” I plan to post more of Michael’s “applications” in the future.

My own very brief summary of Michael’s argument is that it is only OK for the government to do what the Lone Ranger (along with Tonto and any number of other colleagues) could ethically do. But let me give you Michael’s own summary of his argument, with two passages from his book The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey:

Libertarianism is a minimal government (or, in extreme cases, no government) philosophy, according to which the government should do no more than protect the rights of individuals. Essentially, libertarians advocate the political conclusions defended in this chapter. But this position is very controversial in political philosophy. Many readers will wonder if we are really forced to it. Surely, to arrive at these radical conclusions, I must have made some extreme and highly controversial assumptions along the way, assumptions that most readers should feel free to reject. 

Libertarian authors have indeed frequently relied upon controversial assumption. Ayn Rand, for example, thought that capitalism could only be defended by appeal to ethical egoism, the theory that the right action for anyone in any circumstance is always the most selfish action. Robert Nozick is widely read as basing his libertarianism on an absolutist conception of individual rights, according to which an individual’s property rights and rights to be free from coercion can never be outweighed by any social consequences. Jan Narveson relies on a metaethical theory according to which the correct moral principles are determined by a hypothetical social contract. Because of the controversial nature of these ethical or metaethical theories, most readers find the libertarian arguments based on them easy to reject.  

I have appealed to nothing so controversial in my own reasoning. I reject the foundations for libertarianism mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I reject egoism, since I believe that individuals have substantial obligations to take into account the interests of others. I reject ethical absolutism, since I believe an individual’s rights may be overridden by sufficiently important needs of others. And I reject all forms of social contract theory, for reasons discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. 

The foundation of my libertarianism is much more modest: common sense morality. At first glance, it may seem paradoxical that such radical political conclusions could stem from anything labeled ‘common sense.’ I do not, of course, lay claim to common sense political views. I claim that revisionary political views emerge out of common sense moral views. As I see it, libertarian political philosophy rests on three broad ideas:

1. A nonagression principle in interpersonal ethics. Roughly, this is the idea that individuals should not attack, kill, steal from, or defraud one another and, in general, that individuals should not coerce one another, apart from a few special circumstances.
2. A recognition of the coercive nature of government. When the state promulgates a law, the law is generally backed up by a threat of punishment, which is supported by credible threats of physical punishment, which is supported by credible threats of physical force directed against those who would disobey the law.
3. A skepticism of political authority. The upshot of this skepticism is, roughly, that the state may not do what it would be wrong for any nongovernmental person or organization to do. [pp. 176-177]

I have therefore focused on defending skepticism about authority by addressing the most interesting and important theories of authority. In defending this skepticism, I have, again, relied upon no particularly controversial ethical assumptions. I have considered the factors that are said to confer authority on the state and found that in each case, either those factors are not actually present (as in the case of consent-based accounts of authority) or those factors simply do not suffice to confer the sort of authority claimed by the state. The latter point is established by the fact that a nongovernmental agent to whom those factors applied would generally not be ascribed anything like political authority. I have suggested that the best explanation for the inclination to ascribe authority to the state lies in a collection of nonrational biases that would operate whether or not there were any legitimate authority. Most people never pause to question the notion of political authority, but once it is examined, the idea of a group of people with a special right to command everyone else fairly dissolves. [p. 178]