Thoughts on Government and the Economy, Part I

When we were first hit with the big crash this fall in the wake of Lehmann Brothers' collapse, commentators immediately began to blame, with general public concurrence, deregulation and laissez faire economics. "This is what you get," they said, "when you let those rich, Wall Street bankers run the show, restrained only by the limits of their own ambition and selfishness." The answer, of course, was more regulation. Yes, we let capitalism have its go at things, and because it failed, we must move toward the alternative of reregulation, of a government-restricted economy. Gotta force more disclosure, limit executive compensation, restrict further the types and amounts of loans banks can make, and tax their profits at higher levels.

But I'm not so sure this is true. Let's assume that the critics are right, and this whole economic mess is a necessary consequence of unrestricted, Bush-era capitalism. However, it no more follows that we should further regulate the economy because capitalism had some side effects than it does that we should go see a witch doctor because the chemotherapy didn't work. 

The fallacy is in the base line from which we measure success. If the base line requires every citizen to be middle class or better, well-educated, with a prescription drug plan, a home, and job security, then it would appear that capitalism has failed its mission of bringing society up to this standard, and maybe we ought to turn to regulation instead. But that can't be the standard - when have we ever seen such a thing, and what evidence do we have that it is possible through regulation? The actual base line is probably something more like Locke's state of nature. In what condition do we find Man, and which governmental and economic system will best improve that condition? This kind of measurement does not seek to attain perfection, but rather asks what is the best possible solution. 

Capitalism certainly has its defects; you can't premise an entire economic philosophy on human selfishness and always expect rosy results. But that doesn't mean regulation can do anything better. In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary. First, the market knows more than any set of regulators possibly can. Because the market knows more, if a problem can be anticipated, the market will anticipate that problem out of self interest, while a low-paid group of government regulators is less likely to anticipate the problem, having much diminished resources and incentives to approach it. 

Second, the market is more flexible than regulators. While the market can quickly adjust to an unanticipated problem (and even find a way to make a buck on it), government is a slow-moving behemoth with a muddling bureaucracy that takes months to address a problem. Consider, for instance, that the FASB mark-to-market accounting standards are still in effect for publicly held companies even six months after the crash. 

Lastly, regulation is often unnecessary, because the market learns from its own mistakes. For example, in the wake of this collapse, it will likely be unnecessary to tell banks to keep higher reserves, to be more careful with their lending practices, and to stay away from mortgage-backed securities, because they will all take those measures of their own accord. All the government could do would be to codify what will naturally develop as best practices among financial institutions. The government's new rules won't help anything, but will simply create a legal hurdle that may later prove an obstacle when we are faced with the next economic crisis.

As Obama is fond of saying, we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So off with idealism, and let us return to capitalism, that great engine of human selfishness, to propel us out of this turmoil and back into our GED'd, lower-middle-class lives, where we still rent our homes. 

Duplicity

Someone took advantage of the subway ads for the upcoming romantic comedy/action film Duplicity (see below) by making the following political statement.

This sort of sentiment - which is pervasive in New York - is just not credible. So you didn't like the man's tenure in office, and you did what our country was set up to do - you voted in the guy who ran against Bush policies. End of story. But that's just not enough for us. Bush was the man we loved to hate, and we're sorry to see that love pass, so we cling to him and the memory of him. We yearn for his presence, but only that we may chastise him. Ads for the DVD release of Oliver Stone's W similarly crowd our subway cars. I think Obama has actually taken the high road on this issue - just as Bush did with his predecessor - of leaving the losses where they lie and not sending Eric Holder out to hand down indictments. The greater good of the country is not served by an inquisition, but by respect for the service, if not the policies, of our forbears, that we may, as that famous dot-org website has been urging us to do for 8 years, move on.

Indeed, the very flamboyance of this gesture shows that it lacks weight. If Bush had really been the murderous dictator we had made him out to be, there would have been a coup instead of an election, and a lynching instead of this hipster theatricality that smacks of someone who took V for Vendetta too seriously. Sometimes it seems we actually wish America were an awful place - with an oppressed proeletariat, instead of the fat, comfortable working class we actually have, and genocide instituted by the hand of the state, instead of the chore of having to deal with a war on terror that we're not so keen on - because then we could rally together with the downtrodden and rage against the machine, and wouldn't that be sweet?

But the reality is that if we were in that position - as so many societies have been throughout the ages - we probably wouldn't have our MacBooks and our free speech and our double-wides and our Fourth Amendment. It would be way less cool than it looks in Steven Soderbergh's Che. It may feel awesome to bring a righteous complaint against the state, but just because you complain against the state doesn't mean you're righteous. Everyone who wishes to dwell on these Bush-as-Hitler comparisons ought to take a look around and realize that we live in a blessed society, where our greatest fear is, at the moment, 10% unemployment.

Warning

Do not see Watchmen.

Correction

He who heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof goes astray.

Proverbs 10:17

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my adolescence was to love correction. It used to be pretty hard on me, and I was often (shamefully) reduced to tears simply by the fact that my father pointed out something I was doing wrong, even if no punishment were given. More than that, I felt, as many surely do, that there was nothing more loathsome than receiving rebuke from someone who notoriously struggled with and succumbed to the same sin. Neither could I stand it when I went to a friend for sympathy, to vent, only to find them refusing to take my side and instead correcting me for my wrongs in the situation - however minimal I perceived those wrongs to be.

But I only harmed myself by scorning correction. A wise man listens to advice and rebuke no matter what its source. To emerge from my old habits, I started to tell myself, when corrected, that I could use the correction as another opportunity to improve, notwithstanding the hypocrisy or clumsiness of the corrector. What were their sins to me? Similarly, I began to see that if I went to someone to air my grievances and found myself instead upbraided for my own wrongdoing, it was more important that I learn to correct my own mistakes than that my confidante agree with me about someone else's sin. Without regard to their lack of sympathy or lack of tact, if they had something valuable to say, I should have been ready to hear. It takes humility to do this - a humility I was sorely lacking - but now it has become my reflex to accept correction, even to yearn for it. If anything, I accept it too readily (such that my friends feel free to blame me for everything that goes wrong in their lives, since I will gladly take it).

Now the lesson I have to learn is on the other side of things - knowing when to give correction. The Scripture indicates nowhere that we are to have the same eagerness to give reproof as we ought to have to receive it. My father has consistently identified my choleric tendency to, without warrant, "make a federal case about everything" (which perhaps explains why I've become a lawyer). His path has been much wiser: he will only issue correction after the putative correctee has had some time for the sin to sit on his conscience. Only if the correctee's conscience proves defective, or unable to overcome his pride, will my father ever say something admonitory. He has earned a lot of credibility capital by correcting sparingly, and I hope to uphold the same integrity in my own life.

Clarity

Courtesy of Manisha, she and I went to see Jimmy Eat World give an exceptional performance at Terminal 5 this evening to  commemorate the tenth anniversary of their album "Clarity," which preceded their mainstream breakthrough "Bleed American." They were in great form, and didn't miss a note as they played through the entire album front to back, winding up with some favorites from "Bleed American" and "Futures." I was blown away by the glassy purity of Jim Adkins' voice, which carries through as well live as it does on the album, and with heightened sincerity. Even as they hit the powerful, wide bridge on "Table for Glasses," I wondered whether Jim Adkins' life has just been a string of failed relationships out of which he hopefully emerges, yearning for something better, because it seems that's all his songs are about. I remembered all the nights I spent alone listening to "Futures," wishing I had a screwed up romance like Jim so I could ache along to his melodies sympathetically.

But this last weekend, I got engaged to Manisha, and I honestly (and happily) can say that I don't feel that way about life anymore. When I think of my relationship with her, I don't long for the pangs of conflict, I simply want peace. As my father has said, ever so wisely, it is far better to have love than romance, for romance thrives only on loss and misunderstanding, which are much more enjoyable to perceive in an aesthetic portrayal of the experience of another than to live through oneself. I hope and pray that God will lead me to be a good enough man that I can avoid those pitfalls and lead Manisha in security, comfort, peace, and most of all, godliness, such that she laughs at the time to come. I do not need the drama for myself; I will simply put "Futures" on the stereo for the occasional fix. 

The Post Cartoon

If you haven't been following the NY Post cartoon scandal, let me bring you up to speed. In the wake of the signing of the stimulus bill and the story about the house-trained chimp in Connecticut that bit a woman's face off before being shot to death by police officers, the NY Post ran this editorial cartoon. Furor followed. Al Sharpton decried the cartoon, saying that it exploited an offensive racial stereotype, and he organized a rally to picket the Post's offices. Reverend Al advised us that "Mr. Murdoch [the Post's owner] got a waiver from the FCC so he could own two radio, two television stations and a newspaper in this town. We will ask the FCC to review that waiver."

Said one woman, ripping a copy of the Post in two, "How dare you violate the president of the United States!" Another nationally syndicated cartoonist remarked, self righteously, that "When I draw a cartoon I do it to tell the truth or to build bridge between people or to fight the power. I wouldn't use a cartoon for this offensive purpose." Another woman, who had not been to a protest in 40 years, was roused to reignite her civic duty by this cartoon, asking rhetorically "How could they print this? This is about violence." The Post initially retorted to the outcry with a middle-finger-to-Al remark, brushing him off as a pathetic publicity hound, but eventually caved in and apologized "to those who were offended by the image."

This whole mess is ironic on a number of levels. But before we get to that, a word about the cartoon itself. I honestly believe that you would have to be looking pretty hard to find a racist message in this. First, anyone who has been following the news or who has an even elementary knowledge of American government knows that the President didn't draft this legislation, Congress did. Thus, the only way you could be offended by believing that it was meant to reflect on President Obama is if you are ignorant. Second, if the cartoon was making any effort to elicit a comparison to President Obama, it would not have been drawn as it is. The monkey just looks like a monkey, and about as unlike President Obama as possible. Third, the presence of the monkey in the cartoon, rather than some other animal, was simply drawing on a well-publicized news event, namely, the shooting of a crazed chimp in Connecticut who had bitten a woman's face off. Fourth, and finally, it is silly to presume that bigoted references to African Americans are the only purpose for which monkeys can be used in political art - here, the monkey simply illustrates the old fable about a million monkeys at typewriters (who, if they were given two weeks, could probably come up with a better stimulus bill than what the 535 or so monkeys on the Hill gave us).

Now for the irony. I particularly like the woman's line about how dare you violate the president, as if that office has suddenly taken on some irreproachable quality, untarnished by Clinton's lurid escapades and eight years of the Left comparing Bush to Hitler. Then there's the cartoonist's remark that he only draws to speak truth to power, not, as the Post, to be offensive. But in fact that is exactly what the cartoon was doing, speaking truth to power about the stimulus bill, without any conceivable intent to offend anyone, other than, perhaps, the owner of the dead chimp.

What is most interesting, however, is the First Amendment dimension to this. Consider the old protestor's remark that this cartoon should not have been printed because it is "about violence," or, more importantly, Al Sharpton's veiled threat to seek the revocation of Mr. Murdoch's media licenses over this fiasco. I thought Al Sharpton believed in civil liberties! And yet here he is, seeking government intervention and punishment because he thinks someone has expressed an impermissible opinion (though the Post did no such thing). This is not action that is ever considered in a free nation, but rather finds its home in totalitarian states that carefully control the thoughts that one may think.

Perhaps President Obama has become so sacred to us that he is the only one who cannot be lampooned - he who dwells in such inapproachable light that we cannot even say something that could possibly be construed (by a moron) as detracting from his greatness in any way! Attaching that much sanctity to anyone, let alone deeming it violated over something as silly as a cartoon (and an irrelevant one at that), reminds me of the whole Mohammed cartoons fiasco of a few years back, thus establishing Obama's peripheral connection to Islam in a way that I would never have expected.

Apologies

I am very sorry for all the stupid linking (or stupid Lincoln) issues that have been present on this blog of late. I will make an effort not to bungle it up every time I hit Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.