Category: Political Science

If I were in charge of the budget, we would massively reform entitlements, transforming Social Security into a system of forced savings combined with a means-tested fallback for those too poor to save, or whose investments tanked at the wrong time. We would kill the whole Medicare/Medicaid debacle, along with the tax deduction for corporate-provided health care benefits, replacing it all with catastrophic federal insurance for those whose medical bills exceed 15-20% of gross income (phasing out for those whose incomes put them in, say, the top .1% of earners) and another means-tested benefit for those who genuinely cannot afford to spend 15% of gross income on health care benefits. I would combine this with the Jane Galt Tax Plan to save the government a whole mess o’ money, while making the economy more efficient, and increasing the incentives for everyone, rich and poor alike, to create value for society. Forget Win-Win . . . that’s like Win^win!

Here is the link; there is much more.  Elsewhere in the blogosphere, it is also worth reading Dan Drezner on Asian exports.

If you want to argue for optimism, try the following:

Iranian nukes will create an Israeli-Iranian alignment of political interests.  Iran is more hated by the Arab states than is often let on.  Iranian nukes increase the chance that Arab terrorism will be directed against Teheran rather than Tel Aviv or Manhattan. 

Iran with nukes will carve out a greater sphere of influence, in part at the expense of Israel and America.  But it will seek to stabilize that sphere, and "Israel" and "stability" likely will be seen as complements.  Iran won’t want Iraq under the control of al Qaeda.  Israel and Iran would work together, albeit covertly, to limit further proliferation in the region.

Some of the Arab nations would find themselves forced into a de facto alliance with israel, if only to resist Iranian power.  This is not obviously a bad outcome.

Most politicians — whether religious fanatics or not — are pragmatic.  The status of a nuke could be a substitute for the status earned by Iran from supporting terrorism and bashing Israel.  More importantly, nuclear powers do not generally want to transfer much power to decentralized, hard-to-deter terrorists. 

Iran tends to be ruled by councils rather than lone maniacs, a’la North Korea, a far more worrying example.  Groups are conservative by their nature.  I am aware that the Iranian president sometimes sounds like Hitler, but the talk could be geared to appeal to the Iranian public. 

Yes I do fear nuclear proliferation — greatly in fact — but Iran getting nukes is neither a) a fact which causes me to up my priors on how bad proliferation will be (which is very bad), nor b) an undeterrable nukeholder.  They are a big fat sitting duck, and their history is to seek regional power against Arabs and into central Asia.

Let me sum up the underlying theoretical reasons for relative optimism: 1) the quest for status is often quite local in nature, 2) Arabs and Iranians often distrust each other, 3) it is not all about us; often the U.S., or Israel for that matter, is a symbolic token in local struggles rather than the real target, 4) politicians tend to be pragmatic, and 5) international political coalitions are often more fluid than the rhetoric of politicians would suggest.

Here is Thomas Schelling on Iranian nukes.

But if you wanted to argue it the other way, I would suggest the following:

1. Iran will face another civil war and the losers might lob a nuke at Israel as a kind of going-away present.

2. Israel feels secure with its current nuclear deterrent only because it knows that no hostile country has a counter deterrent against Tel Aviv.  If Israel felt less free to use its nuclear weapons, it would feel less secure.  It would be subject to repeated regional military taunts, which would eventually lead to war, nuclear or otherwise.  The new book The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What It Means for the World — highly recommended by the way — is excellent on this issue.

3. Western crazies will someday sneak a small nuke into Teheran, leading to Iranian retaliation.

4. Iranian early warning systems may be unreliable, or subject to manipulation, and erroneously report an Israeli first strike.

Here is a send-up of the latest French attempt to play Tocqueville and dissect the United States.

Here is more MRI evidence.  Apparently we get little squibs of pleasure from rejecting evidence contradictory to our views.  Here is my earlier paper on political self-deception.

Until a stable nuclear statelmate with the United States is restored, Moscow and Beijing will surely buy deterrence by decentralizing their command-and-control systems and implementing "launch on warning" policies.

That is Benjamin Schwartz from the January/February 2006 Atlantic Monthly.  As for the other interesting article in that issue, I would like to see someone estimate the welfare gains of this "epidemic," not just complain about the costs.

Here is the abstract:

To participate in establishment political culture one must win recognition by the establishment. Classical liberals have to choose between forthrightness and establishment respectability. Klein will present a framework for distinguishing three types of classical liberal prophets:

• Challengers focus on fundamentals and point to major policy reforms, notably abolitions. They attack the establishment and its entire culture, and seek to influence the young. Examples: Thomas Paine, Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Thomas Szasz, and Murray Rothbard.
• Bargainers point to incremental liberalization and obscure the deeper principles. They enjoy mainstream position and seek to influence the currently influential. Examples include Friedrich Hayek, Aaron Wildavsky, Richard Epstein, and Tyler Cowen.
• Royalty: Whereas the first two types are critics who feel somewhat alienated from establishment culture, royalty are those who enjoy cultural pre-eminence, particularly high academic prestige. Royalty ride a sense of ascendancy. They downplay radicalism. The leading examples are Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.

        Klein will develop two ideas:

1. In the current ideological climate there is little prospect for classical-liberal royalty. In fact, Milton Friedman was something of an aberration.

2. Challengers and bargainers sometimes regard each other with disdain and mistrust. But both are vital to the advancement of their common cause.

Here is the full paper, entitled "Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard." 

I view my own writings as less strategic and less "negotiating" than Klein’s analysis would indicate.  Of course Klein has the right — I would say the duty — to read an author as he pleases and not as that author would self-describe.  After all, we all know that Melville’s "Bartleby" is really about the contagious nature of homosexual obsession.  It really is.

Addendum: Dan Klein informs me this is an abstract for a related talk, not for the paper itself.

"Elka leans against a wall, wearing only a carpenter’s tool belt. She’s hot. Believe me."

"Katsumi arches unnaturally over a coffee table. You can see the whole thing."

"Anja’s Mediterranean skin is a warm brown, like the craft paper Playboy you’re reading with your finger."

This article is fascinating.  Excerpt:

…it was the “switchers” who provided the most compelling evidence. By examining declared voting preferences for the period 1991 to 2004, Professor Oswald and Dr Powdthavee found that 539 people switched from Left to Right, and 802 switched from Right to Left. The most significant difference between these two groups of switchers? The voters who swung from Right to Left had borne, on average, more daughters.

Read about the cross-sectional results as well.

Here is Cato Unbound, a cross between a monthly magazine and a blog.  Here is how Cato Unbound works.  Here is James Buchanan, placing a great deal of weight on constitutional constraints.