May 6, 2009
This Socialism Stuff is Great!
A good friend of this blog (rhymes with violence-slew-wood) sends a link to a NYTimes magazine story by Russell Shorto.
The magazine length article is a thoughtful and well written look at the social model of Holland. I don't want to give away the ending, but Shorto is an ex-pat from the Keystone State who has gone native and enjoys the European safety net. My response is not well sructured -- it's a quick email to a friend with details to be sorted out over BBQ at The Old Man on 120th Avenue some day.
But I present the article and my weak response as a challenge. For all the benefits of First Principles and liberty, life in Europe can be pretty enthralling. It is not too well suited for digesting and responding when you're busy, but I think it will be important to "elevator talk" against this -- as this is clearly the model that our current majority political class has in mind. The best written response gets a free lunch at the Old Man. I said:
My first thought is to object on First Principles. Sure, people can be happy without being free, and people can have a certain level of prosperity for a certain time without being free. That may be fine for some. It strikes that all the happy folks quoted use an awful lot of government services. Me the writer, my friend the potter, he doesn't quote a childless hedge-fund manager who has to pay for everybody's schoolbooks.But these people are more subjects than citizens. Who chooses what schoolbooks qualify for reimbursement? Which procedures or medications are offered at the hospital? Who can stay in public housing? Do you get kicked out for assault? Thievery? Insulting King Gustav V? Insulting Allah? I associate that with the torpor he feels. At the very least, it is not what I would choose -- and why must I let my Dutch countrymen choose for me?
I have been thinking about your aversion to "unfettered Capitalism." Watching some BBC costume drama about just-barely-post-Dickensian mills in the North of England. I was struck by the "abundance of poverty." One can look back on Scrooge and Rockefeller as a failure of wealth distribution, but it is really just the complete absence of enough wealth to go around.
Yet Rockefeller brought heat and light to the masses. And the WSJ Ed Page loves to point out that Scrooge's non-fictional counterparts brought capital to the Industrial Revolution. Economies got to walk before they can run and the wealth was generated in the US, UK -- and The Netherlands -- through liberalism.
I think the Dutch are stealing future wealth from the next generations. If the progressive era had kicked off 20 years earlier and handed Rockefeller's, Gould's, and Vanderbilt's money to less productive citizens, we would be much poorer today. By the same token, I imagine what we might have had today had the TR-Wilson-FDR-LBJ axis not succeeded. It is a form of intergenerational theft to take growth from our children to make ourselves cushy today.
Then bla, bla, bla, let's go to lunch, bla, bla, bla...
Elevator Talk Posted by John Kranz at May 6, 2009 3:21 PM
I agree.
Posted by: Terri at May 6, 2009 4:29 PMPLUS - all that "free money" from the government is only available courtesy of the US military.
If Europe knew it was in full charge of defending itself and that the US was only going to be in charge of defending itself and only itself, then there wouldn't be any left over money for school books/health care and babysitting.
Terri's point on the military parallels one of mine on innovation. Europe's technology and health care systems benefit from innovative gains from the cowboy free markets of America. When we go socialist (which could be weeks now, it's not like it's imminent), there will be no free markets left to free ride in.
Posted by: jk at May 6, 2009 5:02 PMThe linked "case for euro-socialism" is persuasive only to feeling and not to thinking readers.
Example: "The Dutch seem to be happier than we [Americans] are." This claim is based on a 2007 Unicef study (biased?) of the "well-being" of children and the preposterous assumption that "children's happiness [I thought it was a study of "well-being?"] is surely dependent on adult contentment." And this malarky comes just 7 paragraphs after the writer cites a line from "Myth of Sisyphus" to describe his impression of Dutch adults: "A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive." For my part I would say he isn't alive.
The best case against emulating this example of citizens as "slaves to consensus and conformity" and "a cultural tendency not to stand out or excel" is this: Between comfortable socialism or risky capitalism, which system best encourages progress, innovation, prosperity? Is one more responsible for the modern "necessities" we all enjoy than is the other? Does aggregate productivity differ between the individuals under one system compared to the other? In times of natural hardship, which group would be more likely to starve? Ignoring popular stereotypes and comparing the two systems objectively, which would you consider to be "reactionary" and which would be "liberal?"
I've quipped before that 'socialism is for ants' and this favorable treatment of the Dutch system does little to refute the idea. But for 240 years Americans have not been ants - we have been men. Where the majority of us have taken Morpheus' red pill, the majority of Europeans chose blue. For the Dutch the social compact seems to be that they all agree not to try any harder than their fellow man. This is what really makes their mix of statism and individualism "work."
Posted by: johngalt at May 7, 2009 3:11 PMI am glad you responded, jg. I'll confess one of the reasons that I posted this link was my belief that you would not be able to resist it.
I cannot say, however, that I am completely sated with your answer. I personally agree with every thing you say. Completely.
But the challenge was not to convince me. The challenge is to persuade the blue pill folk (I confess I have not seen the movie -- pardon if I mis-allude). One of the things you and I must accept in this argument is the appeal of European life and the comfort that Shorto describes.
I winced at the happiness study as well. You're right that that is totally specious. What is not is the general contentment of a typical European with his circumstance. The Obama supporter says "this time it won't be Lenin and Pol Pot. We're going to 'do it right.'" You and I say "Where? It cannot be 'done right.'" Now they say "Holland."
Boring argument. But if you don't value liberty qua liberty (and most do not) what do you lose to have health care for everybody, six weeks vacation, and subsidized school supplies? You say freedom I say half the rate of growth of GDP and double the unemployment.
I'm with you and liberty qua liberty. But a hundred people I know are still dissuaded. Even if I were poorer, they say, I would still be content and I would not have to worry about things and I would feel good knowing that the little kiddies were all getting their school supplies and health care.
A ThreeSources commenter once asked me on Facebook "Why in the world I would live in Boulder?" I'm a mile East of the County Line now, but in truth I will live in or near Blue counties as long as I live. I'm not trading Starbucks for Dunkin' Joe whatever the tax rate. Holland is an extrapolation. One I wouldn't make no matter how good the coffee. But one I find it harder and harder to contradict as a "thinking reader."
I feel peculiar to have harshed on something I agree with. As a peace offering, I truly thought your Twentieth Century Motors link was a superb response. Maybe this Cliff fellow who writes those notes gets the lunch.
Posted by: jk at May 7, 2009 7:02 PMYES! I knew there really was no such thing as a free lunch!
JK said, "The challenge is to persuade the blue pill folk." Yes, you really must see the movie. Once they choose the blue pill they no longer have any knowledge of the alternative they rejected. It's analogous to the story told by a "TEA Partier" of her neighbor who has actually "blocked" Fox News from his cable box - as though it were pornography or something. I like the way Rand put it: "Reason is not automatic. Those who deny its existence cannot be swayed by it."
The "blue pill crowd" isn't really as big as it looks. It only seems that way if you watch television or read newspapers (or in your case, go to family reunions.) And before you can even begin to "reach" them you must first get them to admit that A is A (or that the real world exists with real consequences and is not merely a Platonic computer program playing out in our brains.) If that basic step is unachievable then you may as well just walk away.
Forget about "persuading" everyone. Instead, focus on the 70 percent of Americans who believe we're better off in a free market economy. Brooks (and PE and dagny) have it right: Ethical behavior is still popular; redistribution is immoral; individual freedom is the only standard of good that should be applied to governmental decisions.
What I tried to explain in my previous comment is that most Americans really do want to participate in the risk/reward game of life. These people only buy in to the government's 'social safety net' business out of abundance of compassion for others, not for whatever goodies it may pay out to themselves.
Finally, don't forget that the Starbucks closest to you is actually in Weld County, not Boulder.
Posted by: johngalt at May 8, 2009 12:21 PMOkay, that's really good -- I'd say you have earned lunch. I should perhaps get permission to share some of the email thread that ensued between me and Silence. I sent the Cliff's Note link and the Forbes article on the right to contract.
Our friend says [I am going to start paraphrasing without permission here, please direct any hostility at my providing devil's advocacy] he is becoming more socialistic as he gets older because his time in corporate America has shown that the best projects do not get funded, the best people do not get salary increases, the best products do not get to market. Much of my love of liberty is predicated on meritocracy. If -- as Taleb posits -- there is too much luck (or too many Black Swans) then the foundational logic crumbles.
Said friend is not immune to logic. We should go to The Old Man and see if we might reason with him.
Posted by: jk at May 8, 2009 4:17 PMSocialism is inherently seductive, and its modern purveyors are better than ever at selling it. Caring, thoughtful, and even pro-competition people can easily be taken in by the promises of "social security and reasonable liberty kept in a careful, modern balance." But even the caring and thoughtful among us, and I do count myself in that category, owe it to ourselves and our posterity to recognize the fundamental flaw with socialism - the lack of an inherent controlling feedback mechanism. The only thing that can possibly preserve "balance" is bureaucratic control, and those animals will ALWAYS act to make themselves and their favorites "more equal than others."
The counter argument you made to free market capitalism is that socialism is an appropriate cure toward funding "the best" products or better compensating "the best" people. That it is somehow an antidote to corporate cronyism. But what is socialism except government cronyism?
The market for products and the less tightly-coupled market for corporate investment are not perfect, but they do impose a natural cause and effect relationship between merit and reward. Socialism, in contrast, offers only influence peddling as a mechanism for seeking and granting reward.
Posted by: johngalt at May 9, 2009 1:34 PM | What do you think? [7]