Some Quizzes

Religiously:

Belief O-Matic

1.	Secular Humanism (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (95%)
3.	Liberal Quakers (80%)
4.	Nontheist (77%)
5.	Theravada Buddhism (74%)
6.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
7.	Neo-Pagan (70%)
8.	Reform Judaism (57%)
9.	New Age (52%)
10.	Orthodox Quaker (44%)
11.	Mahayana Buddhism (44%)
12.	Scientology (44%)
13.	Taoism (44%)
14.	Sikhism (40%)
15.	New Thought (40%)
16.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (38%)
17.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
18.	Seventh Day Adventist (33%)
19.	Baha'i Faith (32%)
20.	Hinduism (32%)
21.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (32%)
22.	Jainism (30%)
23.	Islam (29%)
24.	Orthodox Judaism (29%)
25.	Jehovah's Witness (25%)
26.	Eastern Orthodox (23%)
27.	Roman Catholic (23%)

And of course, The Political Compass. I've been taking it since high school. I've moved from about 0, -2 to 8, -5.5.



Actually, from my livejournal:
11 July 2003
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 4.25
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -2.67

19 April 2003
Economic Left/Right: -2.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.13

Apparently sometime between April-July 2003 I took a hard right.

Modern Politics, again.

I am convinced that, within ten years, we will not have a Republican Party. And if we do, it will be significantly different than the one we have now. The $700 billion bailout bill exposed the sharp difference between the Limited Government Republicans and the Big Business Republicans. Throw in the fact that America is growing more socially liberal, and you find the end of the Republican Party. 

I could see it playing out somewhat like this:

There could be a legitimate third party that challenges the two major parties, mostly at the expense of the Republicans. The way I see it, the Republicans are broken up into several subgroups: 

Religious Isolationists, who believe in limited government so that people can stick with their own. Tend to be pro-School Vouchers and homeschooling, and are much more social conservatives, but don't feel the government should interfere too much. Generally pro-immigration, especially Catholics.

Religious Interventionists, who support things like the Drug War, and are more vocally anti-gay marriage, etc. Generally, both of the above are anti-abortion. These people tend to be more Populists, Mike Huckabee types, and are also more anti-immigration.

Big Business / Big Agriculture - They like regulations written in their favor, subsidies, etc. 

Free Marketeers - People who believe in the free market, and have decided that the RP is the best they can do. Pro-immigration.

Right now, the Republican Party is the Hawk party, but that seems to change with whoever is in power. They were against the wars in the Balkins, and had a relatively strong anti-Vietnam segment. I can't see either party keeping the title permanently.

Of course, if the RP were to fall apart, it would affect the Democratic party quite a bit. I would predict that the Dems would shift much more to the Center on Social issues, while absorbing the people I termed 'Religious Interventionists'. I see this as possible only with the decline of social conservatism. I see the Democrats reclaiming the South, with the southern democrats much more conservative, but still populist. The Democrats would move to be more anti-immigration, and would retain their economic interventionism. 

During the transition, there would be a period of time when the Democrats were in complete control. I have a feeling that they would attract the lobbyists of Big Business, who would fit perfectly into their system.

This leaves two groups stranded: social liberals, and free marketers. Clearly, my hope is the social liberals and the free marketers band together, and the Libertarian Party wins out, or the Republican Party becomes more like them. 

American Politics

There's an example from Economics that I keep thinking of. Say there is a long stretch of beach, and there are two food stands, one on each side. Where would each of them move to, to maximize profit? Well, if both are on the far end of the beach, one could move closer to the middle, and get a greater percentage of the customers (assuming the customers choose to go for whichever one is closest). While the optimal placement for customers (shortest walking time) would be one at each of the 3/4 points along the beach, equidistant from both the edge and the center, both businesses will move to the very middle, to prevent the competition from moving over any more and taking their customer base. This assumes that no other competition can move in.

This is pretty much what American Politics seems like to me. By November, McCain and Obama will be barely differentiable, but everyone to Obama's left will vote for him, and everyone to McCain's right would vote for him. This is what a two party system does; going back to the beach analogy, if given no other choices, and Hitler were running for the Republicans and Stalin for the Democrats, right at the edges of the beach, then the voting results would be fairly similar.

This is what happened in the 2000, election, at least. Bush was a moderate-conservative and Gore was a moderate-liberal. That was just branding, of course, because both have turned out to be quite different than they were when running.

Brave New World

I just started reading this classic, and I wanted to share this snippet from the intro:

It is probable that all the world's governments will be more or less completely totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there is no sign that such a movement will take place...

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.

This was written in 1946, a year after Hiroshima, at the height of Harry Truman and Josef Stalin; Huxley is understandably pessimistic. How did we escape his prediction of a totalitarian future? The newspaper editors were as cowardly and lazy as he predicted, the schoolteachers retained a near-monopoly on the development of the youth, and the ministries of propaganda were in full swing.

The answer, in my mind, lies in the message that we were trying to send through these outlets. The red scare and the Cold War in general gave these brainwashing institutions more than enough to deal with. In order to portray the Soviets as negatively as possible, we had to portray totalitarianism in a somewhat negative light, and exalt freedom and liberty more than we might have otherwise. I have seen this argument used to explain the shift against immigration; in the 1980s, it was okay for Reagan to grant amnesty to the illegal immigrants - by showing off the great number of people who wanted to come to our glorious nation, we could differentiate ourselves from the Soviets, where people were dying to leave.

I also think that credit should be given to Eisenhower; as of right now he is my favorite president of the 20th century. Electing a man who had as much firsthand experience in the horrors of war is the best way to avoid more wars. (Though I'm not going to claim this for John McCain; he is thirty-plus years removed from war and seems to have forgotten how bad it was - his reaction to the recent Guantanamo ruling proves that.)

Response to Jake's comment

Jake Quinton:

Honestly, in all the hubbub about tax cuts, I didn't stop to think once that those wealthy bastards I love to hate (and aspire to be like) pay for such a large portion of our government.

I still would like tax cuts to be seemingly the most beneficial for those lower quintile (love that term) of the population that is most often faced with the choice of having either milk or lights some months.

But that might just be the socialist in me.

I'm going to respond in post-form, because I just know if I start typing out a long response my computer is going to die without auto-saving. So yeah...

My problem with this is:
1.) the lowest quintile pay .65% of the income tax in America, so income tax cuts won't benefit them too much. (time for a digression) The real place where the poor are hurt are in things like gas taxes and excise taxes; these taxes tend to be regressive, because the poor will spend a greater percentage of their income on these. Especially with things like New York's new cigarette tax, which more than doubles the price of cigarettes. This is done with the full knowledge that it will force the poor, who are more likely to smoke, to have to decide between smoking and eating.

2.) It tends to be the top quintile who produces and distributes things like milk and lights. By punishing them, the government indirectly punishes the people who have to pay for their products. If a research scientist, working to produce cheaper light bulbs, works 35 hours a week at a 50% tax rate, but would work 50 hours a week if the tax rate were 20%, meaning that each additional hour he or she works means marginally more money for him or her, then it's more likely that a cheaper light is produced, which would benefit the poor.

It also drives up the cost of doing businss, as hiring someone who wants to make a certain amount of money costs businesses more, which is passed on to the consumers via higher prices.

So cutting taxes for the rich may not directly benefit the poor by giving them more money, but it benefits them by making their money able to buy more.

I think this may be Reganomics though, now that I look at it. Whoops.

Obama

After listening to one of his speeches on the radio regarding his tax plan, I can safely say that whatever chance I had of voting for Obama is now gone. I hate it when pundits who whine about tax cuts benefiting the wealthy. Well, no shit - One percent of Americans pay for 34.3 percent of the government. Is it really surprising that tax cuts benefit those who pay the most more? He went on to say "I don't mean to embarrass you, but could those of you who make more than 2.8 million stand up?" implying that to make that much money one must have a racket in stealing children's lunch money. He kept complaining that tax cuts rewarded "Wealth" not "Work" as if the two were mutually exclusive. I also liked that he is comfortably above the $2.8 million mark (those making 2.8 million or more would get 1/4 of the tax cuts by McCain), but didn't mention that.

Granted, I'm still as likely to vote for McCain as I am for Ahmadinejad, but all of the initial enthusiasm I had for Obama is gone.

(I would like to note that the spellchecker for Blogger has 'IBM' as the closest match for Obama)

I called it

It turns out the guy who has the blog,Five Thirty-Eight, which I mentioned earlier is Nate Silver, who happens to be involved with Baseball Prospectus, which is a big baseball-statistics think tank that I used to subscribe to. And indeed, he studied economics at the University of Chicago.

Baseball, Politics, and Economics. Whodda thought.

This guy must have some econ training

This is a great blog for election buffs and number nerds.

The Dreadful English Language

I stumbled upon this brilliant essay by George Orwell: "Politics and the English Language"

Especially:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Many political words these days tend to be completely meaningless. I would add to this list the word 'people,' and 'society.' Rarely does anyone stop to ask: "which people?" or "who makes up society?" When a politician speaks of doing something for the people, or society, or the common good, what he or she really means is "my people," "my constituents," "my friends," or "my lobbyists." If someone asks you to sacrifice for the common good, be more skeptical than you would be dealing with a used car salesperson. Their intentions are usually darker and the means they are willing to use much more dangerous.

LP:2008-2

The day after the primary, I decided to become a dues paying member of the Libertarian Party. It was not out of support of Barr, but the realization that as much as Barr was the last person I wanted to win the nomination, he is better than either of the major party candidates. I am planning on voting for Barr/Root in November.

I think I tend to side with the left-libertarians on most issues, but I'm much more pro-market than I think the left ones are. I like the market, not only because it is the best way to accomplish the goals of decreased poverty and increased wealth creation, but because it is the only system where a person is rewarded based on what he or she contributes to the rest of society.

Libertarian Party: 2008

Today's Libertarian Party is extremely interesting. For such a small party, the internal divisions rival those of the larger parties, if they don't surpass them. There seem to be two rival factions: the Left-Libertarians and the Right-Libertarians. By Left-Libertarian I don't mean the Noam Chomsky Libertarian Socialists, those guys don't really fit in here.

The Right-Libertarians tend to share the social outlook of the conservatives. They are the type of person who believes that the moral fiber of society is being eroded by government intervention - i.e., social security breaks up multi-generational homes, the government through welfare makes the nuclear family unnecessary, etc. Right-Libertarians are less likely to stand up for gay rights, and are more likely to be pro-life. To their credit, they are unlikely to want to enforce anything via the federal government.

The Left-Libertarians share the same goals as extreme social liberals, but do not believe that they can be accomplished by government intervention. Their primary goals include the abolition of poverty, the empowerment of women, the queer community, and of minorities. They support things like affirmative action in spirit, but not practice, because they realize that the use of government to pursue these goals just gives the establishment more power which hurts any positive social cause in the long run. They believe that the best way to fight poverty is to create wealth - and the best way to do that is through a laissez faire, capitalist system.

This is my perception of the two sides; I don't know how correctly I've characterized them.

For this presidential election, the Libertarian nominees were, on the Right: Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root. On the Left: Mary Ruwart, Steve Kubby, George Phillies, and maybe Mike Gravel (though Gravel was less enthusiastic about the free market). These sides are clearly not fixed; Mike Gravel did end up endorsing Root, which surprised me. For the most part, through the six ballots, the votes stayed on the same side. As Kubby, Phillies, and Gravel were eliminated, their support went to the strongest Left-Libertarian candidate, Ruwart. Root and Barr were fairly strong throughout, and once Root was eliminated most of his support went to Barr, which was enough to push him over the edge.

There has been surprisingly little backlash against Barr. The Left-Libertarians realize, that for all their philosophical differences, they agree about what the government should do 95% of the time. Even though the ticket ended up being Barr/Root, the schism between the left and right hasn't hurt the party too much.

Henry George

In a libertarian world, where do taxes come from? Income taxes violate the most fundamental of rights; the right of a person to his or her own body, and the labor that it produces. They also have the negative effect of disincentivising work; if people get to keep less of what they produce, they'll produce less, especially in a progressive income tax system, which punishes people for producing the most.

Sales taxes have the same problem; they punish people for trading, which is the last thing you want to do in a free market system. So do tarrifs, etc.

What remains is property tax. This is where Henry George comes in - to digress slightly, a problem with libertarian philosophy comes with the ownership of land. The ownership of private property, or anything that is the product of one's labor, can morally be assigned to whoever produced it, or whatever they traded the product of their labor for, etc. Land was produced by no one; natural resources were produced by no one. Therefore, the only way one can claim ownership of them is by showing up before anyone, or by using coersion to claim ownership. Neither is tenable under libertarian philosophy.

So, a legitimate form of government is the collection of rent from a resource that cannot be morally owned. A good primer for this is here.

Windfall Profits

There is no greater indication of a widespread ignorance, if not sheer loathing, of economics is the concept of a "Windfall Profit Tax." Generally levied on oil companies as a way to take anger out on someone, these taxes are perhaps the most irrational taxation of all. 'Windfall Profits' happen when one of two things happen: the supply of a good shoots down, driving prices up and rewarding those with inventory, or the demand shoots up with an inelastic supply curve, meaning price rises inordinantly.

To bring the price of a commodity back down to the market rate, the industry so affected must invest in new forms of production. To do this, the companies will invest in capital and labor, increasing their supply. They use their 'Windfall Profits' to return the good back to its equilibrium price.

Of course, if the government slaps a 'Windfall Profits Tax' on the industry, less of this investment will happen, so the government keeps the price artificially high for a longer period of time. This is what the government wants to do to the oil industry; though to be fair, they receive subsidies from the government, so they kind of asked for it.

One of the industries that is experiencing the most 'Windfall Profit' right now is the farming industry. The government, instead of slapping a tax on them, is rewarding them with the biggest subsidy of all time (I think). Now that's just stupid.

Health Care

The biggest benefit of the free market is that it gives each person the ability to allocate their time and resources in the way that benefits him or her best. In the market, this means that producers have to provide the highest quality goods at the lowest possible price, or people will go somewhere else. This system would of course be best for health care, as well... but in America today, does such a system exist? Not at all. If the cost of health care is rising, and the cost of providing care isn't rising, then this cannot be a free market system.

What is it then? Our system seems to have the downsides of a bureaucratic system with the downsides of a free market system, and few of its benefits. The problem stems from WWII wage controls (see, the government removing choice from the people) - sometime during the war, the government imposed a wage freeze, looking to provide stability in the labor markets, most likely. Of course, this didn't work. Some businesses were still expanding and were willing to pay more for employees - so they offered non-wage benefits that were tantamount to a pay raise. Now we have employer provided health insurance. This is stupid for several reasons: it impedes the freedom of workers to go to the best jobs, out of fear that something will happen in between jobs, making them uninsurable. It's also stupid because insurance came to cover everything - the price signaling that is so important in a free market does not exist when the customer never sees the price tag; why go somewhere that charges $100 for a physical, when you can go somewhere where it costs $300 - it makes no difference to the consumer, because the insurance just covers it. It makes sense to have insurance for emergency situations, you aren't going to shop around for the lowest price if you're having a heart attack.

What are the solutions offered? There's single payer nationalized health care, where we just decide to end the market for health care. Prices go up (though consumers don't see it directly - only through their taxes), quality goes down (and consumers can no longer decide not to patronize the poor quality places, since they would all be the same), and waiting times go up, and people have no incentive to take care of themselves, since no matter what there will be no cost to taking care of them. The benefits: everyone has access to at least some health care. The rising prices under the employer-based system, which hurts the poor most, would be taken care of.

I think the two front Democrats' system is that the government would become an alternate health care provider. The government offers health care at an artificially deflated price, and you can choose between that and the current options for health care. (Under Barack's system, you still have the option to decide not to have insurance, but you must cover your children somehow. Under Hilary's system, everyone's a child and has no choice but to get some sort of insurance). This doesn't solve any of the problems of the increasing price of health care, and has the further disadvantage of screwing up the market for health insurance. The advantage seems to be that there would be fewer uninsured people demanding care, who drive up prices by being unable to pay; health care would be available to a lower class of people (but it doesn't solve the problem of illegal immagrents being uninsurable).

I think both of these alternatives are worse than our current system. What needs to happen is insurance needs to be shifted to covering only emergencies, and it needs to be moved out of the hands of employers. It wouldn't cost workers more: their wages would go up, as the money that was spent on insurance would instead be given out as wages. People then have greater choice in getting insurance, and can buy a program that best fits them, and they are no longer tied to their employers (how lame would it be if you got a car and house leased to you by your employer? Noone would ever change jobs). We would see prices drop - this would make health care accessable to even more people, and it would give everyone more wealth. For those who truely cannot afford the bare minimum of health insurance, charity would be able to cover this (as it is now, the high price of care makes the government the only charity that can possibly afford to cover everyone). I think our system is slowly moving this way, and is likely being impeded my the government, and the health lobby's control over regulation. The best thing the government can do, if it wants to improve the quality of life for people, is to do nothing.