Isegoria

Eric Falkenstein discusses the politics of insincerity:

A major problem in politics is that it is not optimal for any party to say what they mean. People pound the table as to how innocuous a certain policy is, and how ‘crazy’ anyone must be to be against it. Others highlight a different endgame, a principle, or the insincerity of the policy. This is why Michael Kinsley famously said a ‘gaffe’ is when a politician accidentally says the truth. Ignorance, and bad faith, make truth-telling a dominated strategy.

It is important to distinguish between private and public sphere here, as in my private life I can adopt a truth-telling strategy because when I encounter the ignorant and those of bad faith, I can simply avoid those neighbors and friends going forward. In contrast, one must build coalitions in public, and one cannot simply abstain from interacting with such parties. Thus, insincerity is needed much more in public contacts than private contacts [one still needs some insincerity in private, like saying 'your butt doesn't look big in that' to your spouse].

Ignorant people will misinterpret your assertions or plans. The idea that getting rid of the minimum wage helps the poor or that giving people money to destroy old cars is a waste of money, is a complex assertion that takes an equilibrium argument, and is primarily theoretical. The benefits are seen and the costs are unseen. Alternatively, the idea that it is optimal for governments to have 5-year plans for industrial production at one time seemed obvious, based on the fact one plans before building a bridge. In this case, the error is not in undercounting the unseen, but a flawed analogy.

Then there are those with bad faith. Often these aren’t people out to get you, but rather, see your immediate aim as not in the best interest of their overall plan, and so want to stop it at all costs. Your failure is not their direct aim, but rather, consistent with their objective. Their opposition can be direct (‘no new taxes!), but it can also be indirect, helping the ignorant develop antipathy by clever caricature (‘he wants to hurt small businesses!’).

Thus, people often speak in metaphors based on principles no one is against. For example, in litigation, when asked ‘what is your endgame?’, an honest response would state one’s direct claim against the defendant. This would be a specific demand, but that presents a problem. Perhaps your endgame is something that an ignorant person would find highly dubious or self-serving if discovered. For example, you could merely want to effect a noncompete agreement, stifling a new competitor. Perhaps your endgame is costing your ex-employee a lot of money to signal to current employees the futility of trying to negotiate for more within the firm. Clearly, these are not sympathetic aims, even if your plan for crushing some plebes is part of a greater good via using your ultimate booty to fund a charity in Africa. So instead of saying something specific you say ‘to protect our intellectual property and enforce valid contracts’. You start broad, and when pressed, get less broad, but always keep at a level where any Sunday school teacher would agree with your goals.

In health care, I think the bottom line is that most people see this as a foot in the door to greater government control of a large segment of our economy, one that will be used for more egalitarian, and politicized, allocation of resources. Democrats in this country like egalitarian redistributions, and ‘politicized’ is just a pejorative for ‘democratized’. Republicans emphasize the inefficiencies of egalitarian distributions, the violations of liberty. As health care is expensive and already highly regulated, it’s sort of like the Balkans of historical Europe, a good place to start a fight on this more fundamental issue.

Charles Murray was honored at the AEI a few months ago, and he gave a talk about happiness in the context of modern America:

His talk hit on an interesting paradox of welfare programs aimed at the poor, that it affects the satisfaction of life for those who are most likely to gain life satisfaction via non-vocational activities, such as faith, family, and community. Most liberals see faith as authoritarian delusions, and family and community needs the responsibility of the government. That’s not horrible if you have an interesting job you are proficient at, but if you are merely a hard working mensch, your paths to a meaningful and satisfying life are taken away.

In Murray’s words — but with my emphasis:

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent. That qualifies. A good marriage. That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours. That qualifies. And having been really good at something — good at something that drew the most from your abilities. That qualifies. Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith.
[...]
The sources of deep satisfactions are the same for janitors as for CEOs, and I also said that people needed to do important things with their lives. When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t. I could give a half dozen other examples. Taking the trouble out of the stuff of life strips people — already has stripped people — of major ways in which human beings look back on their lives and say, “I made a difference.”

Eric Falkenstein, who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative — that is, libertarian — offers a tenuous explanation for why Democrats tend to be more socially liberal, given their high-tax ways:

Before the modern personal income tax in 1913, liquor taxes accounted for about a third of federal revenues. Then came the income tax in 1914 and, on its heels, America’s entry into World War I. During the war federal revenues received through income taxation for the first time exceeded those from any other single source. By fall of 1917 Congress saw the income tax as its chief source of revenue, reducing the cost of voting for Prohibition in December 1917.

The Great Depression severely depressed incomes and tax revenues correspondingly plunged beginning in 1931. By 1932 federal income-tax receipts fell by well over a third from their level in 1931 and to almost half their 1930 level. Prohibition’s repeal in 1933 generated a big jump in revenues. As a percentage of federal government revenues, liquor taxes jumped from 2 percent in 1933 to 9 percent in 1934 to 13 percent in 1936.

Big government fans need money, and income tax revenues do face a Laffer curve effect at some rate. In this context, taxing underground activities is a no-brainer for most Liberals, and so big-government types are in favor of legalizing activities that conservatives think are best kept underground.

It looks like there’s a lot of money in legalizing marijuana.