Do you know WHY you support the issues you support?

I was listening to some discussion of Supreme Court Justice Stephens and his approach to the law and it got me thinking (what else is new?). According to the commentator, Justice Stephens is a supporter of abortion rights, but not because of the “Right to Privacy” that was in the original Roe v Wade opinion. A right to privacy means that the government should not pay attention to what you are doing in private. You could make the same case with the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Law enforcement can’t come in to your home or car (or body) without probable cause of a crime. But Justice Stephens justifies abortion rights using the Right to Liberty. The government should not get involved in your activities unless you are infringing on the rights of others. Since the fetus is not a person with rights, abortion does not infringe on the rights of anyone and so the government would need a very significant reason to prohibit it.

In the case of abortion rights, both philosophies support the rights. But other domains are different. Take same-sex marriage. A Right to Liberty would support same-sex marriage because it does not infringe on the rights of others. Some say that just the existence of these unions hurts the institution of marriage, but there is no substantial evidence of that that I have seen. But the Right to Privacy says nothing about same-sex marriage. Marriage is a public contract. It is done before witnesses. It comes with legal benefits and responsibilities. So if you support same sex marriage, you must believe in the right to liberty rather than privacy (of course you can believe in both if you want).

So here is what I was wondering. Take a third domain: single payer health care. To make this work, we would have to tax those with higher incomes to cover a substantial amount of the health care costs of those with lower incomes. In general, progressive income taxes can be justified in a variety of ways. Richer individuals benefit more from the trappings of society, so they should pay more for it. They have more to lose in an armed conflict, so they pay more for national defense. And so on. But with a single payer health care system, this would not be the case. Everyone would be eligible for the same care and the same medical benefits.

So we would be infringing on the rights of the more wealthy to pay for the care of the less wealthy. This goes against the basic right to liberty. That is OK, if you can justify it with a different right that you believe in and believe that it is a stronger argument here than liberty is. But if you support same sex marriage, it means that a single payer health care system violates a right that you believe in. So if you want to support both of these issues, you need to think of a different right that supports single payer but doesn’t contradict your other beliefs.

Do you have one? I know many liberal/progressive individuals who support same sex marriage and single payer. But most of them I think are just making instinctive decisions about how they would like things to be. But when one issue that you support contradicts another issue that you support, either you are being hypocritical or you have a third belief that resolves the issue. I am not calling anyone a hypocrite, I am encouraging you to think about your beliefs and figure out how you resolve the conflict. Do you think it is OK to infringe on the rights of the wealthy, but not homosexuals? That doesn’t seem right (and what about homosexual rich people)? If you can’t think of anything, then . . . .

Some rambling about dumbass government proposals

Anyone who knows me or has been following my blogs knows that I am a strong believer in open free markets as long as two things are true:

> people are given enough information to make informed choices
> there are no externalities that cause my free choice to harm someone else or
prevent them from making their own free choice.

My background in human factors also gives me a good insight into the predictably irrational (thanks Dan Ariely) nature of a lot of human behavior.

This combination often makes me cringe about the workings of government. I know that politicians are not also experts in things like economics or human factors. So I could excuse them if they, as individuals, didn’t understand some of the consequences of their proposals. But they had staffs loaded with people who can look this stuff up. They can call in experts from any field for advice, either informally or to testify at Congressional hearings. And yet, we still get these foolish proposals day after day.

I heard that Nancy Pelosi today decided that the solution to the health care crisis is a windfall tax on health insurance companies. I wish the term “windfall tax” would be removed from the lexicon completely. Profitability and success should never be a criterion for higher corporate taxes.

There is also the FCC’s drive for net neutrality. A good neutrality rule would allow bandwidth providers to charge based on the bandwidth used by the content provider, but to do it anonymously (hence the “neutral” part). But to say that they can’t differentiate on price in any way is simply ridiculous.

The Supreme Court has some important issues on its plate this term as well. My free market principles tell me that government should not ban any activities without a very good reason. So what about Chicago’s ban on handguns? I think there are reasons for some kinds of gun bans. Even though “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” there is very little reason for someone to have an assault rifle, even for hunting. So banning these seems like it is worth losing a little freedom for the great benefit of getting these off the streets. But to ban all handguns in the entire city? This might be going a bit too far.

And there is also the case regarding the government ceded a small bit of a park to the VFW so the cross can be maintained without violated the separation of church and state. This seems pretty underhanded to me. The government gave only the few square feet of land under the cross to the VFW and only on the condition that they keep the cross there and do whatever maintenance is required. The rest of the park is still government territory. But because the government now doesn’t own the land, there is no first amendment problem. If this is permitted, the government can get around just about every limitation on government action there is, just be privatizing some piece of the process. I usually don’t buy the slippery slope argument, but this would scare me a bit.

Finally, there is the new evidence regarding the NY city law about having nutritional information posted in restaurants. I have blogged about this before, and now we have a real life example of what I have been talking about. It turns out that surveys of NY eaters say that the posted information does affect their choices. But not how you might think if you haven’t read my other blog posts. Just as research has shown, people order main courses with fewer calories. But then they reward themselves for their good choices by ordering more high calorie side dishes, drinks and desserts. So the net change is minimal, or even higher calorie in total. Oops. But the people who may be helped by this are people who really care about their nutrition who can now make truly informed decisions. They eat less because previously they had no clue just how bad some of those meals are. Maybe that’s an OK tradeoff.

Social Sustainability – can’t we all just get along?

The focus of sustainability almost always seems to be environmental sustainability. This is perhaps the most important dimension because if we destroy our environment we could all be dead. But there is more to it than that.

The way our culture seems to be going, we need to focus a little bit of our attention on social sustainability. Think about it.

Politics: Didn’t our politicians used to get together when there were really big problems to solve and work together? I know there have always been conflicts, controversies, and other sources of purely partisan gridlock. There are even some great stories about conflicts among our Founding Fathers. But when push came to shove, they got together. Now it seems like many of our political leaders, while sometimes liking individuals on the other side on a personal level, hate the other side politically and are unwilling to talk, let alone compromise. How could Senator DeMint publicly hope that health care is Obama's "Waterloo"? He should be hoping that Congress and the President can craft some health care reform that works. And he should be helping out in the process.

Media: The recent passing of Walter Cronkite really highlights how the news media has changed. Our leading journalists and news anchors had credibility with politicians and citizens on both sides of the aisle. Now, it seems like all we have are extremist demagogues like Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann who have lost any sense of civility. I think I have blogged on the research that shows that this kind of coverage really hurts the general public’s ability to respect their leaders.

The town hall meetings over the health care debate are good illustrations of what we have to look forward to unless some major changes are made. This is really scary. Sarah Palin’s comment that a “death panel” would have decided if her Down syndrome son Trig merited treatment is just irresponsible. And shouting down the Senators and Representatives trying to host these town halls is not just rude but counterproductive to positive debate. But I suspect that is not the shouters’ true purpose anyway.

I call this social sustainability because I see us on just as much of a downward slope in our civil discourse are we are with global climate change. At the pace we are going now, the environment could be so far gone in 10-20 years that we won’t be able to stop it without significant pain and suffering. I am afraid that the same thing is happening in society. Something has got to give.

How do YOU define a crisis?

Dean Kamen (the incredibly successful and therefore wealthy inventor) has a great comparison. In the health care debate, the $260 billion we spend on pharmaceuticals (including marketing and profit) is called a "crisis." But we also spend $409 billion on professional sports and $121 billion on soft drinks. Everything is relative.

Charlie Crist's turnaround shows what is wrong with DC

Charlie Crist used to be a free thinker who did what he thought was right. As Florida Governor, he didn't feel constrained to follow the Republican platform. He did what was best for Florida.

Now he is running for Senate on the GOP ticket. It is amazing how fast he has changed. He switched from supporting Sotomayor to opposing. He switched from supporting cap and trade to opposing. And on and on.

Regardless of what you think about these policies, the fact that he reversed 180 degrees on them all when he decided to run for Senate is a great illustration of what is wrong in Washington. Governors have some latitude. The special interests are somewhat less entrenched and governors do not have to conform to the party leadership to get anything done. They don't have to be independent thinkers, but at least they can be.

But in the Senate, this entrenchment and top down leadership style is suffocating. Both parties do it. It is the heart of what is wrong with US politics and why I have become very cynical about the government's ability to get anything positive and productive accomplished over time.

Pigouvian taxes for obesity?

I have always been a supporter of Pigouvian taxes (to replace other kinds, not in addition to them). The basic idea is that you tax things that have negative externalities to compensate society for the extra costs. If a company emits greenhouse gases, you can either fine them directly for the amount of the cleanup (if you can calculate it) or indirectly as a carbon tax. If someone smokes, you can tax their cigarettes based on what you expect them to cost society in added health care costs (i.e. Medicare). The added benefits of this approach is that people are discouraged from doing these things, so you get less smoking and less emissions.

Some recent debates have got me thinking about how to apply the idea in reality. There has been a lot of debate lately on curbing obesity because of the $150 billion per year that obesity costs the US healthcare system. Can we use Pigouvian taxation? We would have two choices.

We can be proactive by taxing foods that the best science tells us lead to obesity. But this gets tricky for several reasons. First, is the science reliable enough to tell us? Nuts are very healthy in moderation, but not in excess. Should we tax those? Second, what about skinny people who enjoy a Big Mac and never get fat? Why should they have to pay taxes for externalities they never create? My biggest fear is that lobbyists would have a field day influencing Congress on which foods to tax (or not to). McDonalds v the pork industry v Coke v Hostess . . .

The second option is retrospective. We can charge higher insurance premiums for people who are obese and use the extra money to pay for the externalities that these individuals create. This is more direct and therefore more fair economically. But of course there would be a huge debate as to whether this is discrimination. We would have to have very accurate actuarial data on the increase in costs. The second problem with this approach is behavioral. It would not be nearly as effective in reducing obesity because it is unlikely someone would push away from the McDonalds counter because of the fear of future increases in insurance premiums. A tax right then and there would be more salient.

Despite all these challenges, I suspect that either one is better than using income taxes to raise the money that pays for obesity related costs. But because of the complexity, I have this nagging feeling that Congress would find a way to make it worse.

Congress, please stay out of executive pay

There are several reasons why the government should not get involved in executive pay .

1.From a purely philosophical point, the government has no business interfering with private contractual agreements between people or groups of people. With the bailout funds, they have some excuse for this limited set of companies. But otherwise, it’s simply not their job. I agree that encouraging companies to switch to long term goals for bonuses is a good idea, but it’s not for Congress to mandate.

2.Even if you disagree with #1, the government has competing objectives. You can’t expect any bill coming out of Congress to be effective because they would be trying to serve way too many masters in constructing the bill and it would turn into a mess.

3.Even if #2 didn’t happen at first, in order to get anything passed the legislation authors would have to do enough horsetrading to make a small mess into a big mess.

4.Even if the legislation turned out OK, the private sector is excellent at finding loopholes. This is how we got into the current financial mess in the first place. By discouraging executive salaries, Congress encouraged the use of stock options. These are easier to give out, so companies gave out more of them.

5.Even if none of the above happened and the legislation started out effective, Congress can’t react quickly to changes in the marketplace. So over time, it would get outdated. The harm it could cause in our unknown future is likely to be greater than the short term benefits we see in the present.

So given all this – please Congress, please stay out of executive pay except in very limited circumstances (temporary limits on TARP recipients maybe).