Beito and Somin on Eminent Domain as a Civil Rights Issue

Battle over eminent domain is another civil rights issue

Few protested the Kelo ruling more ardently than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In an amicus brief filed in the case, it argued that “[t]he burden of eminent domain has and will continue to fall disproportionately upon racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and economically disadvantaged.” Unfettered eminent domain authority, the NAACP concluded, is a “license for government to coerce individuals on behalf of society’s strongest interests.”

The American Declaration of Independence

….in Kurdish….

Representatives? Not Really....They're "Fixers"

In today’s New York Times, this interesting story about how one Senator (the presumptive GOP presidential nominee) has done favors for a constituent, “A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain.”

Mr. Diamond, for his part, said Mr. McCain had only done his job. “I think that is what Congress people are supposed to do for constituents,” he said. “When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why wouldn’t you want to help move things along? What else would they do? They waste so much time with legislation.”

The process is well described and analyzed by Fred McChesney in his important book, Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997)

Challenges of Democratization

A short essay I wrote some years ago on “Challenges of Democratization” was just published on News.Gooya.com, a major Persian-language news site. It had earlier appeared in Arabic and Azeri. (The Persian version is available here on Cheragheazadi.org.)

Just Plain Dumb

I just came across an especially strange argument (and that’s saying something) against going to court to vindicate the rights of American citizens to keep and bear arms in the District of Columbia. The author thinks that

A) the Bill of Rights does not apply to the states at all (he evidently rejects the 14th Amendment, so he concludes that the states may legally prohibit the free exercise of religion, shut down newspapers critical of the Governor, use torture, engage in unrestricted searches of “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” prohibit the possession of firearms, etc., etc.), and

B) the District of Columbia (which is a federal district and not one of the united states of America), “insofar as it behaves as a state, is properly treated as a pseudo-state by the Supreme Court.”*

The result of all that confusion?

Congress long ago delegated home rule functions to D.C., and it allows residents to elect mayors, city councilors, and a delegate to Congress. When it comes to the Second Amendment, then, D.C. is a state, and the Second Amendment does not restrict its policy-making discretion.

I’ve read and heard lots and lots of strained and implausible arguments against our lawsuit to vindicate the right to keep and bear arms, but few as risible as that one. But after my initial surprise that something so silly had made it onto the web, I noticed the author’s publications and the surprise vanished.

*If the District of Columbia is a “pseudo-state,” that means it is a “false” state, and if it is a false state, why should it be treated as a state?

Democracy, Liberty, Limited Government, Foreign Policy

The Northwestern University Law Review (Issue 102:1 (Winter 2008) has published my oral remarks during the 2006 Federalist Society panel/debate on “Limited Government and Spreading Democracy: Uneasy Cousins?” Judge A. William Randolph, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, National Democratic Institute president Kenneth Wollack, and French lawyer François-Henri Briard were the other participants. (Complete journal here.)

The remarks got a bit sharp at times.

My Discussion/Debate on the Second Amendment with Walter Dellinger

Click here and then select the right video: “March 14, 2008: Tom Palmer talks about the DC gun ban on Reporter’s Roundtable”

Property in One's Labor

While doing a little research to assist my Russian colleagues with the Cato.ru essay contest and summer school, both of which focus on property and freedom, I found again this wonderful statement from Adam Smith, offered in defense of freedom to labor against licensing and other restrictions on free exchange:

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman, and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the aothersa from employing whom they think proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the law–giver lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive.

*Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 2a An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, CHAPTER X: Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock (paragraph 591) (I am so grateful to the Liberty Fund for making such works available in beautiful and inexpensive print editions and at zero price in easily accessible forms online.)

Diminished Expectations for Politics

Tyler Cowen in today’s New York Times, “It’s an Election, Not a Revolution”

Rather than being cynics, we should be realists. Democracy is reasonably good at some things: pushing scoundrels out of office, checking their worst excesses by requiring openness, and simply giving large numbers of people the feeling of having a voice. Democracy is not nearly as good at others: holding politicians accountable for their economic promises or translating the preferences of intellectuals into public policy.

THAT might sound pessimistic, but it’s not. Many Americans will be living longer, finding new sources of learning and recreation, creating more rewarding jobs, striking up new loves and friendships, and, yes, earning more money. Just don’t expect most of these gains to come out of the voting booth or, for that matter, Washington.

And if you’re still worrying about how to vote, I have two pieces of advice. First, spend your time studying foreign policy, where the president has more direct power, and the choice of a candidate makes a much bigger difference. Second, stop worrying and get back to work.

Commodification as a Necessary Byproduct of Marxism

“Do you want our Chinese women?” Mao asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

“It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. “We will have to study it.”

Can Government Be Limited?

A Deep Thinker

Anthony de Jasay in Cato Unbound: “Government, Bound or Unbound?”

Jasay is one of the most interesting and challenging writers active today. His books are always an adventure. He has a column at EconLib.org (“Your Dog Owns Your House” is a good sample of his insight) and is the author of many books, my favorites among them Social Contract, Free Ride and Choice, Contract, and Consent: A Restatement of Liberalism.

My essay “No Exit: Framing the Problem of Justice” was published in the new festschrift for Tony, Ordered Anarchy: Jasay and His Surroundings, ed. by Hartmut Kliemt and Hardy Bouillon (London: Ashgate, 2008).

What is a Libertarian?

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Libertarian?

Essay on the Nature of Liberty in French

My address to the 60th meeting of the Liberal International has been translated into French. It will come out soon in German, as well.

English: Freedom Properly Understood

French: Bien comprendre la liberté

Our Brief in Defense of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Has Been Filed

Here it is. (There is a separate petition to reinstate the five additional plaintiffs. But the meat of the case is in this brief.)

Paper on Globalization and Governance

Coming Soon to an Academic Portuguese-Language
Bookstore Near You!

I gave a paper at a conference on governance at the University of Aveiro, Portugal in 2006 and it’s about to appear in the book that resulted from the conference. (I also debated the leader of the Left Bloc in the Portuguese parliament and did, I think, rather well, as he seemed not to understand the concept of “evidence.”)

Here’s the paper in English.

The Debate:

Thanks to André Azevedo Alves for the invitation, the book, and the whole experience!

Capitalism, Free Trade, and Democracy

The quotes in this Washington Post story (“Shanghai’s Middle Class Launches Quiet, Meticulous Revolt”) tell a lot:

“They can’t arrest everybody,” said Yao, a 58-year-old protester who asked that his full name not be used because he is a manager at a state-owned enterprise.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Wang Guowei, 51, a manager in a Chinese-Japanese plastics venture whose family lives near the planned extension. “We always follow the Chinese constitution, we never violate the law. And in our many contacts with the police, they say we are within the law.”

My Old Dissertation Supervisor

When I went to Oxford for my doctoral studies, my first supervisor was John Gray. He provided some very competent critiques of my writing, as well as some very good strategic advice about getting the dissertation written. I benefited from his supervision. That said, he was rapidly becoming a very serious crank. (As my later supervisor, after John had left Oxford, noted, “I have had a fairly consistent approach, changing in details over the years as I learned more, but during that time John has gyrated wildly across the heavens, occupying virtually every position in modern political thought.” Almost.)

Carlin Romano’s review of John’s latest book (“The Triumph of ‘Smugism,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2008) provides a useful appraisal of what John has accomplished. But there is so much more to be said, such as how John would write that no serious person could believe X, despite X being the position he had advanced with equal certainty only a few years before. It seems that every viewpoint he discovered and then adopted had….lacunae, flaws, problems!!!….and that meant that it was of no value at all. As my late friend Roy Childs noted in one of his last essays before his death, in a review of one of Gray’s attacks on classical liberalism, one can’t compare a theory to perfection; one compares theories against other theories. Gray had complained that libertarian theories had no clear answer to such questions as when do children become adults and whether abortion violates rights (i.e., libertarians can take a number of positions on the latter issue). But, asked Roy, what theory does answer those questions clearly and without problems?

Exit Rights and Social Contracts

My chapter on “No Exit: Framing the Problem of Justice” from Ordered Anarchy: Jasay and His Surroundings (ed. by Hartmut Kliemt and Hardy Bouillon; London: Ashgate, 2008) is now available as a PDF. Comments welcomed.

To Yale for Free Trade, Toronto for Toleration

I will debate the topic “Resolved: Spread Democratic Liberalism through Free Trade” at the Yale Political Union tomorrow evening. Thursday I’ll be in Toronto for a conference on the moral, juridical, and political thought of Francisco de Vitoria, a pioneer of the theory of individual rights.

No Exit: Framing the Problem of Justice

My essay on the “exit closure” and the social contractarian theory of John Rawls just came out in a book edited by Hardy Bouillon and Hartmut Kliemt, Ordered Anarchy: Jasay and His Surroundings (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007).

The book has some very interesting chapters, which I’m looking forward to reading. (My chapter, “No Exit: Framing the Problem of Justice,” should be available soon on this humble website as a downloadable PDF.

Conference on Bruno Leoni

My presentation at the Istituto Bruno Leoni
conference on Leoni’s thought

The conference hall at the Collegio Carlo Alberto - Moncalieri (Torino)

(I addressed four topics in my presentation: 1) Leoni’s formative influence on the early developments of law and economics and public choice economics; 2) Leoni’s anticipation of some later developments in those fields; 3) Leoni’s on-going influence in current research topics; 4) areas of institutional development (and design) where Leoni’s insights and thinking are sorely missed. Here is a comment I co-authored on Leoni’s thought some years ago.)

Supremes Agree to Review Second Amendment Case

Our case is on the way to the Supreme Court. That includes a petition to reinstate standing for myself and the four others who were original plaintiffs. The heroic Bob Levy, the man who has made it all possible, addresses the case in the Los Angeles Times and in a podcast.

Liberalism.ro

There’s a useful classical liberal website in Romanian: www.Liberalism.ro. (My little essay on globalization is included: “Globalizarea este minunată!.”)

Tanzania, Hamburg, "Freedom Properly Understood," and Back

I am in Hamburg and quite exhausted, partially because I seem to have gotten something rather nasty in Tanzania. (The hospital here was noncommital, but they said to keep taking the medications and I should be ok.)

My talk to the Liberal International meeting here was, I think, well received and I enjoyed the comments from the panelists. Here is the full version, which I finished while suffering from the heat and humidity in Tanzania (I only got them to fix the AC in the room on the third night) after sessions of the African Resource Bank: “Freedom Properly Understood.”

Our Africa trip was very inspiring in a number of ways. It was our first meeting of Cato’s Africa team and I am optimistic that we will be able to have a positive impact in the continent. I have known and worked with all but one of them before, and I had a chance to meet for the first time one of our new colleagues from Ghana. All are serious, impressive, and very sharp. In addition to our two Ghanian colleagues, members of Cato’s Portuguese, French, and Arabic teams were also there, as well as my colleagues David Archer and Nicole Kurokawa, and all are pulling together to create a sound continent-wide libertarian program. (We hope to include a Swahili element, as well.)

After the African Resource Bank meeting (where I spoke on “Globalization and Cultural Identity”), we had a team meeting for Cato’s Center for Promotion of Human Rights in Zanzibar . At that meeting, we went over strategies and had a very valuable presentation and training session on media outreach and publication strategies and techniques led by our Arabic team members, Fadi Haddadin and Ghaleb Hijazi. It was followed by a walk through Stone Town and dinner at the waterside restaurant dedicated to the late singer Freddy Mercury, who, it turns out, was born in Zanzibar.

The trip to Zanzibar was on the fast boat, which was reasonably tolerable. The two television screens in the economy class section showed a really dreadful movie about “Lake Placid,” Maine, in which a GIANT crocodile was overturning boats and eating people, including biting them very graphically in half, with body parts all over, etc., etc. Not really a great movie for a boat ride, but it was one of the few stable objects on which I could focus to avoid getting sick, so I saw most of it.

Well, the same movie was playing on the way back. I had figured it was a broadcast of some sort, but no, it was what the crew had chosen as appropriate entertainment for the trip. The trip back was truly awful and almost everyone was terribly sick. Only David, our cheerful English participant, seemed unfazed by it. The rest of us were miserable — really miserable. (The full-screen pictures of human entrails being eaten by crocodiles did not help.) One of our team members (not to be named) staggered out and sprawled on the deck in misery, only to find himself propped on the coffin (occupied) that was being sent back to the mainland for burial. That evidently didn’t help his spirits. It seems that all (except, again, for David) were sick for a long time after.

We have big plans for publishing, broadcasting, webcasting, and teaching about liberty in Africa. 2008 should be a big year for African libertarianism.

A Cool Breath of Reason

Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Enviromentalists’s Guide to Global Warming

Bjorn Lomborg has a great essay in today’s Washington Post, “Chill out: Stop fighting over global warming — here’s the smart way to attack it.”

Neatly Skewered

The soi disant deep thinker Naomi Klein has her deep thoughts brought up for a little sunlight by Tyler Cowen, “Shock Jock.”

(I read her book No Logo years ago. Lots of elegant sentences, but they don’t add up to a coherent picture of how anything works.)

Is the Welfare State Justified?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel Shapiro, an old friend and author of a very important new book, at an Institute for Humane Studies function on Friday. The book is Is the Welfare State Justified? and it’s just been published by Cambridge University Press.

It’s the only sustained response of its kind to political philosophers and theorists who believe that the welfare state is justified because they uphold egalitarianism, or “prioritarianism” (that is, that priority should be given to the worst off among us), or “positive rights,” or “communitarianism.” Shapiro does not take issue with those values or commitments. Instead, he argues that the welfare state does not serve those principles well and that market-based institutions would do a better job of providing the benefits that are merely assumed to be provided by the welfare state. Shapiro’s book is very important and very well done. As a part of his case, he makes two very, very shocking claims (shocking among political philosophers, at least): 1) institutions matter, and not only aspirations; 2) facts matter.

This is a book worth buying.

(Slight caveat: it’s occasionally a bit challenging and not the most riveting of works, not because of the complexity of the argument, but because he’s very thorough; there are parts that deserve sustained and focused attention and parts that can be read a bit more lightly.)

Presidency or Dictatorship?

George Will poses some excellent “Questions for Mukasey.”

The first is especially good:

The Bush administration says “the long war” — the war on terrorism — is a perpetual emergency that will last for generations. Waged against us largely by non-state actors, it will not end with a legally clarifying and definitive surrender. The administration regards America as a battlefield, on which even an American citizen can be seized as an “enemy combatant” and detained indefinitely. You ruled that presidents have this power, but you were reversed on appeal. What do you think was the flaw in the reasoning of the court that reversed you?

Siloviki Statism

A very useful introduction to the political economy of the new Siloviki State: “The making of a neo-KGB state.”

On Liberty Now Available in Arabic

Thanks to the hard work of Fadi Haddadin, Ghaleb Hijazi, and our other Arab colleagues, John Stuart Mill’s classic work On Liberty is now available in Arabic, through the Cato Institute’s Arabic Lamp of Liberty and Dar Al Ahlia.

A True Hero of Liberty

Baron József Eötvös de Vásárosnamény

I met my old friends Ivan Csaba, whom I knew from the old days, as well as from Oxford, and Tamás Meszerics, whom I had not seen in ages (and who is now teaching political science at the Central European University) today. Tamás suggested we meet at the statue of József Eötvös, whom he knew to be one of my heroes. I have read a few of his books, and was especially influenced by Die Nationalitätenfrage, in which he offered a classical liberal diagnosis and remedy of the conflict of national identities. Only one of his books, also one of his greatest, is available in English, Der Einfluss der Herrschenden Ideen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts auf den Staat, translated as The Dominant Ideas of the Nineteenth Century and Their Impact on the State (Vol. I, Vol. II). I recommend the work highly. (The three dominant ideas are freedom, equality, and nationality, and he warns that they are incompatible unless one — freedom — be made the idea by which the others are interpreted.)

Reincarnation: A State-Given Right

Calling Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes, who insist that all rights are “positive rights” that are created by the state: BeliefWatch: Reincarnate.

Hat tip to Constantino Diaz-Duran.

Ukraine and the Benefits of Divided Power

I’ve talked with some Ukrainian economists who told me that the economy here is booming, not in spite of, but because of the political deadlock, in which no grouping can exercise complete power and expropriate the other. Although Ukraine is “split” politically (roughly on an east/west axis), there is no real desire to be gobbled up by Russia, even on the part of the leaders of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The wealthy backers of that party know that they’re much better off in an independent Ukraine than in a region of Russia.

I got this morning an email from my thoughtful friend John Welborn with a link to this fascinating article from Business Week on the topic, which confirms what I’ve learned here: “Ukraine: What Crisis?: Despite political turmoil, economic growth is roaring.”

The experience of divided government turns out to be fairly similar to the experience of divided government in the US, as Cato scholar William Niskanen argues.

History, Myth, Fable, Custom, and Tradition

Conservatives do not make a fetish of property rights
….
Instead of blanket rules, we seek to comprehend the divine intent, groping towards it through history, myth, fable, custom, and tradition.

It’s my experience that most conservatives are far more interested in myths and fables than in history or custom. They reveal an astonishing ignorance of historical evidence and their understandings of customs are in fact themselves myths, such as the myths about the essential nature of families (derived from 1950s sitcoms), or of sexuality, or of forms or origins of social order. (I once heard Irving Kristol dismiss libertarian ideas of property in one’s person as “an invention of some hippies in the 1960s.” I challenged him to explain his unusual historical claim in the context of documents such as the Decretal of Innocent IV (c. 1250), the writings of Henry of Ghent (c. 1217-1293), the Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua (1324), the writings of Francisco de Vitoria (De Indis, 1524) and Bartolome de las Casas (In Defense of the Indians, 1550), Richard Overton (An Arrow Against All Tyrants, 1646), John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689), and more. He looked at his wife, the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who shook her head, and charmingly replied that “On the advice of counsel, I decline to answer the question.”

I also once took part in a conference on Chinese thought during which a conservative intellectual participant stated that the writings of Confucius resulted in Maoism and those of Aristotle in the U.S. Constitution, with little awareness that a few things had happened in between, such as the Mongol non-conquest of Europe (thanks to the accident of the poisoning of Ogedai Khan on December 11, 1241), followed by their conquest of China.

Summer School on Freedom, Law, and Prosperity in China

Our partners in China ran their own Cato University this last week: the Lao Tse and Adam Smith Academy.

Not As Elegant, But Good. Very Good.

An Elegant Explanation

No, it doesn’t answer every question or go into every corner of the theory of individual rights, life-boat cases, and so on, but this is an elegant statement.

Cato-Sponsored Seminars on Libertarian Thought: Ghana, China, Crimea

Inspiring African Transformation

I’m pleased that, following on the successful Cato University (with 179 participants) in San Diego last month, two major seminars on libertarian thought have been run this week with support from the Cato Institute. A seminar on “Inspiring African Transformation” organized by the IMANI Center is underway in Ghana and the “Lao Tse and Adam Smith Academy” organized by the Cathay Institute for Public Affairs is underway in China.

I will be in France next week for the Summer University on “The Institutional Challenges of Globalization,” followed by Crimea for the Cato.ru seminar on “Global Capitalism and Personal Freedom” (Глобальный капитализм и личная свобода), and then by Bucharest for the European Resource Bank Meeting (which the Cato Institute is also co-sponsoring).

A Presumption in Favor of Prudence?

Stephen Bainbridge has an interesting essay up about foreign policy over at Andrewsullivan.com, “On Non-Interventionism.” It´s a helpful dose of wisdom, but…. a presumption in favor of prudence suggests that other principles, which are to be applied prudently, need not be articulated. That seems quite wrong-headed to me. A general presumption in favor of non-intervention is itself prudent; it´s not the alternative to prudence. A prudent approach will know when to resort to war (very, very rarely, if ever), but the presumption should be for non-intervention. That would by itself be prudent.

Herbert Spencer in Arabic

Thanks to the hard work of my colleagues, Herbert Spencer’s briliantly radical essay “The Right to Ignore the State” from his book Social Statics has just appeared on Misbah al Hurriyya (the Lamp of Liberty) in Arabic….and was promptly reprinted on Libyaforum.org.

Now Online...

The Center for Promotion of Human Rights

African Libertarianism

The Imani Center in Ghana is organizing a seminar in Accra on Inspiring African Transformation. I’m listed on the program, although sadly I won’t be able to be there this year. I am so happy to see my African libertarian friends doing so well. And I’m thrilled that the Cato Institute and Cato University* could co-sponsor this summer university with them.

Anyone who would like to contribute financially to the spread of peace and freedom and prosperity throughout Africa should drop me a note. I’ve got lots of contacts and plenty of ideas. They’ve tried everything else in Africa and now people are turning to something that actually delivers positive results: classical liberalism. Now is the time to help African friends of liberty to replace war and civil strife, statist dictatorship, and socialist impoverishment with peace, freedom, and prosperity.

*Cato U this year is set to have over 170 participants. It’s going to be a blast.

It's Astonishing How Self-Referential Their Legislation Is

A member of Congress promotes a bill criminalizing any sexual solicitation of under 18s online … and most of you know the rest of the sordid story. Another politician proposes a bill to specify that the location of “unnatural and lascivious” acts increases the penalty, in particular, that it be a second degree felony to commit such acts within 1,000 feet of a public park. Where was that politician arrested (and, of course, presumed to be innocent) for allegedly offering $20 for the right to perform fellatio on an undercover police officer? A public park, of course.

I’ve long believed that the “religious right” and other moralists (including the sanctimonious left) are motivated too much by introspection (the former into their overactive libidos, the latter into their personal stinginess) and too little by empirical observation of how most people go about their lives. To the examples above (and there are plenty of others), we can add a peek at the tax returns of prominent advocates of redistributing the wealth of others (the Gores, the Clintons, etc.).

George Will on Brink Lindsey on America's libertarianism

George Will has a deeply intelligent review/appreciation/critique of Brink Lindsey’s truly fine new book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture, in today’s New York Times Book Review: “Land of Plenty: What makes Americans different? The Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsey has some ideas.”

Excerpts from Brink’s book, which is rich and interesting and very provocative, have been run recently as the cover story in a recent Cato Policy Report (“How Prosperity Made Us More Libertarian”) and as the cover story in this month’s Reason magazine. (You’ve got to get a copy of Reason to read the essay; it won’t be online for another month.)

Big Donor Exposes Big Shortage

It turns out that the “Big Donor” program in the Netherlands was a hoax, but a very good way to draw attention to the tremendous shortage of transplantable organs, a shortage caused by government inserting itself between willing donors and willing recipients and blocking mutually beneficial forms of cooperation. Incentives are not — repeat, not! — to be allowed, other than moral hectoring and state coercion. My colleague Sigrid Fry-Revere took on the issue and defended voluntary agreements to help others with kidney donations.

P.S. I’ve blogged on planes before (SAS and Lufthansa have offered wifi on board), but this is my first blog entry while on a train, using my Verizon broadband wireless access gadget. I recommend the one that plugs into the USB port, since it’s compatible with basically all computers, including desktops (in case your DSL or cable access goes down).

Have They Nothing Better to Do with Their Time?

Do you have a right to force people to introduce you to other people for romance? According to a Californian in search of love (and her lawyers) the answer is yes: “eHarmony Sued In California For Excluding Gays.” Good grief!

My Interview in a Tunisian Paper

I was interviewed by a Tunisian journalist whom I met at a conference Cato co-sponsored in Morocco. Here’s the interview in Mouwatinoun. (The name of the paper means “Citizens.” You have to scroll down to page 10 of the PDF.) The interview in English is in the rest of this blog entry.

Question 1 : The Middle Eastern countries have in common their economic wealth on the one hand, and their democratic “poverty”, what are the reason for that according to you?

That is one of the most important questions that political scientists and economists face today. First, however, it’s worth a moment to clarify some issues. Average per capita income in most middle eastern countries is not high. It’s much lower than even poor Eastern European countries. Because some countries have oil, many people think that those countries or the people in those countries are rich. That’s a mistake. The existence of natural resources is not the primary cause of a nation’s wealth, as Adam Smith explained so long ago in his famous book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” A natural resource, if it is monopolized by the state — and oil is a very good example — can make your country very poor. If a country enjoyed the rule of law and well defined and legally secure property rights before oil was discovered, the oil becomes a source of prosperity. Consider the USA, Canada, Great Britain, and Norway as examples. But if the rule of law and legally secure property rights were not well established and then oil was discovered, it turned out to be a curse, because it was monopolized by the state or by ruiling dynasties and that source of wealth to the rulers obstructed the evolution to democracy. When the state depends on income from a resource, such as oil, and not on the support of the people through broad-based taxes, then people become dependent on the state, and that is not a good recipe for democracy.

The causes of the relative economic decline of most middle eastern countries are complex, but mainly they center on the lack of the rule of law and accountable government. The reasons for that lack are harder to explain. One scholar who has addressed the issue is Professor Timur Kuran, a professor of law and economics and the King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California. His article “Why the Middle East is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation” is helpful to understanding the complex root causes. [The Essay is available on Misbahalhurriyya.org.]

Russia is an example of a country that is losing its hard won democracy because of the influx of oil revenues to the state, which is strengthening itself against civil society. Much the same process is going on in Venezuela. There is a short-term increase in wealth, but the long-term conditions of prosperity — democracy and limited government — are undermined, with terrible consequences for the medium to long term.

Question 2: Why do internal reform movements fail in influencing the nature and form of government in the region?

You do like to pose very difficult problems! If I knew the definitive answer, I would be sure to share it with everyone. I think that there is probably not just one reason and that the situations of countries differ enough to make a general answer of little value. The biggest problem is that the core ruling groups have managed to create forms of dependency on them from other groups in society. That process was well described in the 17th Century by the French writer Etienne de la Boetie in his “Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.” Generally speaking, some degree of economic freedom and security for property are conditions for the emergence of successful democratic transitions. A middle class that is secure in the possession of property and that has the means to promote an open political system will be more likely to succeed in dislodging entrenched ruling groups. That was the case with the transition of South Korea and Taiwan from dictatorships to rather stable democracies. One thing bears remembering: transitions that are violent almost never result in democratic outcomes, even if that’s the desired outcome. Violent transitions set the precedent for yet more violent transitions and typically result in government by coup d’etat, rather than democracy.

Question 3: While it was proven that democratization through foreign military intervention has negative consequences as in the Iraqi case, do you think that the American intervention under the premise of reforming the region had the opposite results?

It’s probably too early to give a definitive answer to this question. I am generally skeptical that democracy can be injected into a country from outside. The normal rule is that it has to be generated from within. The U.S. could, I think, do a better job of promoting democracy simply by setting an example, rather than by intervening in the political processes of other countries. Such intervention has rarely resulted in democratic outcomes and is better avoided. I think that the Americans are learning that. I hope so.

Question 4: The American administration under George Walker Bush in that direction (sic.) is trying to contain political islamist movements and to create “moderate” groups while pressuring Arab governments to integrate those in their political processes, do you think that this policy would empty democratic [reform] from its substance?

I’ll be direct and honest. I don’t think that the officials of the U.S. government generally know enough about Arab political systems to exert positive influence. Many of them — maybe most or even all of them — may have good motivations, but good motivations are certainly not enough. You also have to have understanding and wisdom and they seem to lack that and often find themselves merely being manipulated by governments and factions. Some governments have suppressed moderate opposition in various ways and that has left a choice of either the governing regime or people who offer a very radical and intolerant alternative. That has proven useful at manipulating the population and also at manipulating foreign governments.

Question 6: on another topic, American media speaks rarely of Tunisia, and American political and human right organizations have little interest in Tunisia, what is the reason for that in your opinion?

There are many countries that are not discussed much in the American media and many of them offer much more dire human rights problems than Tunisia. They tend to get more attention from human rights organizations to the extent that they are engaged in widespread acts of killing or genocide, such as in Sudan or Rwanda, and to the extent that they are considered by the government to be strategically significant. Tunisia, as a result, gets less attention than many other countries.

Question 6: you wrote “By attempting to rob from some to give to others, a state merely creates universal poverty, except, of course, for those who manage to gain supreme power, and who never lack for palaces and expensive cars. The defense of justice against aggression and violence must be the primary concern of the state. When the state itself becomes an instrument of aggression and violence, democracy itself is in danger.” How can this equation be inverted by turning the state from a means by which one would get rich and accumulate wealth to a tool guaranteeing justice for all?

Now you’ve asked the hardest question of all! We now know very well what policies produce prosperity and a healthy society: the rule of law that is enforced through an independent judiciary; well defined and legally secure property rights; freedom of trade; a free press; limited government and a tax system that is low and relatively simple. As Adam Smith said in 1755, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” The evidence that Smith was right is well established in the studies of the “Economic Freedom of the World Report” (www.misbahalhurriyya.org/efw). But what we don’t know, or at least we do not have a good understanding of, is how to produce the policies that produce good results. The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto addressed that question in his book “The Mystery of Capital” (De Soto’s work is also available on Misbahalhurriyya.org), which offered some insights, but more thinking is needed to understand how we move from lack of the rule of law and lack of property rights to the rule of law and security of rights.

One thing we do know is that a liberal mentality is a part of the transition; by that I mean a desire for freedom and justice but without revenge. Successful transitions to freedom almost always happen by changing minds, not merely by changing rulers. If we want to live in freedom, justice, and prosperity, we must change minds.

Thank you for this delightful opportunity to chat. You posed some very, very difficult problems.

Individualism Discussed

My podcast on individualism, which was in response to the learned remarks of Professor Kenneth Minogue, whom I admire, and with whom I vigorously disagreed, at the Hudson Institute.

And the State of Liberty in America.....

Void Where Prohibited by Law<