Author Archives: Travis

A crucial discussion about the fusion of conservative and libertarian ideologies to create a liberty-based movement that can win political elections – an idea called “fusionism” – is underway at www.cato-unbound.org. If you haven’t already, check it out. I nearly agree with the initial arguments made by all four writers, although I come to some different conclusions.

How It Could Work

Fusionism between conservatives and libertarians would have to begin where they initially agree: the free market. For the most part, conservatives understand that the market must remain free and open – even if they, from time-to-time, forget and support things like TARP, subsidies, and war. But they realize that in the economy, market exchanges are voluntary associations we undertake.

In practicality, completing fusionism would only work if libertarians could demonstrate to conservatives how civil society itself is a market. In the market economy, associations should be willfully made; we should be neither forced nor hindered in the economic choices we make. Libertarians would have to convince conservatives that a civil society functions the same way – that our social interactions depend on unforced, unhindered interactions. Voluntarily strengthening these relationships – that is, stressing their importance while (psst, this is important) guaranteeing their inviolability – shatters the need for government to do everything for us.

Essentially, conservatives would have to be persuaded to return the government of our transactions – that is, all transactions – to the lowest level, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1835 observations Democracy in America. Conservatives would also have to understand that, in a libertarian society, nobody would be forcing conservative social circles to accept liberal social activity within their circles, but instead, to accept their existence within other circles of society. Fears over an eroding culture must be countered with the recognition that current restrictions have had no influence positive on the cultural equilibrium – in fact, many of the activities they wish to outlaw have been forced underground, creating a lucrative market for criminal actors. Free transactions would help restore a proper cultural balance.

Likewise, free transactions made through international trade conducted with other free nations of the world often bring a lasting peace. Our free trade did not require approval of the political behavior within these nations. Restricting trade on that criteria, however, often leads down the opposite path to peace, and to unnecessary war; this a point often ignored by conservatives.

Why It Won’t

The problem is, I don’t see conservatives acquiescing the paternalism that affects their politics any time soon. I think this is largely due to two reasons:

1) As Neal Dewing demonstrated in his response to Jeremy Kolassa’s essay, conservatives don’t understand libertarianism as anything other than anarchism. Perhaps libertarians need to define our terms a bit better: An ideal libertarian government would be large enough to protect (a) our civil liberties and (b) our national security. Other than that, the people would largely be left alone by the government. That’s absolutely not anarchism.

This difference between the government and the State was perhaps best rendered in conservative parlance by Albert Jay Nock, in Chapter 1 of his 1935 book, Our Enemy, The State:

“Just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”

Educating conservatives on this point – that any government action above the protection of civil liberties and national security is not only unnecessary, but is subject to corruption – is possible, but unlikely, given the traditionalist nature of the conservative movement.

2) Too many conservatives simply do not understand what it means to respect others as equal to – or even above – themselves, even though most have learned otherwise in Bible Study.

Remember, the best example of modern fusionism we have – the Tea Party - was founded on the moniker found on the Gadsden Flag, “Don’t Tread On Me.” How large would the movement have been if the motto had been “Don’t Tread On Others?” Social conservatives and foreign policy hawks would have headed for the door.

Fusionism would depend on conservatives recognizing and removing the despotism within them. To quote the aforementioned de Tocqueville:

“Despots themselves don’t deny that freedom is a wonderful thing, they only want to limit it to themselves; they argue that everyone else is unworthy of it.”

I believe this to be the insurmountable roadblock to fusionism: those conservatives who believe in forcing their will on others – in both foreign and domestic matters - will not willingly release their grasp. After all, that’s why they are conservatives. Otherwise, they’d be libertarians already.

This past week brought forth a deluge of breaking news stories regarding scandalous behavior within various agencies and departments of the Obama Administration. They all seem to point to the same thing: government overreach. Furthermore, they all have been earning Obama a litany of Nixon comparisons.

In case you missed them, here’s my (link fest!) summary of events:

1) Last week’s Benghazi revelations were twofold: 

• First, testimony from State Department whistleblowers shed greater light on both the attack itself and the handling of the CIA’s talking points, which underwent 12 revisions from the State Department, scrubbing references to terrorism. Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa still has questions regarding both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions before the attacks, and the State Department revisions. See the revisions here, and read about it at United Liberty here and here.
• Press Secretary Jay Carney himself became ensnared in the controversy, as this account completely contradicts what he said in November 2012. Furthermore, Carney held a secret press briefing for select White House reporters on Friday, which – of course – ensconced other uninvited reporters.

2) On Friday, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, apologized for targeting conservative organizations, front-running news that would otherwise break in an upcoming IRS Audit. In 2010, the IRS began targeting groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names for harassment. After Lerner objected in 2011, the criterion was modified to flag suspect groups for, among other things, ”Educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Mrs. Lerner first blamed on “low-level” employees in Cincinnati. But now it appears officials – including IRS Acting Chief Steven Miller - knew about it as early as 2011. See here, here, and here. What’s more, Senator Marco Rubio is calling on IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to resign. More to follow on this, for sure. Read more about it at United Liberty here.

3) As the Washington Post reported last week, the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius went “hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law.” While this is not illegal, Peter Suderman sheds some light on what such a request might sound like: “‘Hey, we’re short on money here. It would be nice if you could help with whatever you can, hint-hint, nudge-nudge.’ Or maybe just: ‘Hey, insurers. We just passed a law mandating that everyone in the country buy your product. So how about a million bucks? Or even a couple million?’” I encourage you to read the whole story here, or read about it at United Liberty here.

4) In a lesser known scandal, the Department of Justice, as part of an ongoing FOIA, released a document to the American Civil Liberties Union on government’s warrantless snooping on text messages completely redacted. See the blacked-out file here. This story goes hand-in-hand with the DOJ’s claim last week that it can read email without warrant. As Plato said, Silence gives consent. Read about that at United Liberty here.

5) Finally, (pfew!) the AP snooping story. In what the AP itself calls a “massive and unprecedented intrusion,” the Department of Justice secretly obtained phone records in a probe on leaks that targeted over 100 journalists on a “wide array of stories about government and other matters.” The AP protested the data gathering in a scathing letter to AG Eric Holder, in which they demand a response. The DOJ insists their probe was a matter of “national security” as it investigated leaks surrounding a “CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.” Apparently, Obama’s Department of Justice only permits that advances the White House politically; see here. As both Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and the Huffington Post have attested, this kind of thing has a “chilling effect” on media.

My thoughts:

While I think the IRS snooping case has the most potential to be found as unlawful, it’s quite possible none of these actions are technically illegal. Furthermore, I doubt any of the responsibility can be pinned specifically on President Obama himself. Nevertheless, the bubble of infallibility the White House has enjoyed for so long (especially with the media) seems to be bursting.

What we see here, over and over again, is this pervasive culture among these so-called “rogue agencies” of the Executive Branch, willing to sacrifice their integrity for political purposes. But where did these officials get the idea to engage in such unethical behavior, in order to “punish political enemies?” Perhaps from Obama himself?

Of course, President Obama would push back on such a claim, as he did yesterday regarding Benghazi at his press conference. Alexis Simendinger for Real Clear Politics reports:

“Sounding deeply frustrated with congressional investigations and GOP opponents, the president said, ‘We’ve had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton’s integrity, [United Nations Ambassador] Susan Rice’s integrity, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering’s integrity. It’s a given that mine gets challenged by these same folks.’”

What he doesn’t understand – because he’s so deep in it – is the culture of corruption that his expanded powers hath wrought. To end this, there are only two real solutions:

1. Roll back the laws that have allowed this amount of government overreach, specifically in privacy matters; in other words, shrink government.
2. Maintain these standards for officials regardless of party affiliation. Too often, political parties allow their representatives to get away with activities they would never allow of their opponents. This must end.

We must abandon the legalistic justification for government overreach in order to tackle this pervasive culture of corruption that has seized Washington for far too long now, and instead, embrace an integrity-based reciprocating political structure. Basically, we need to remember the Golden Rule.

“I think we always have to remember that people can be opponents, but not enemies. And there are enemies in the world. We just need the news media to help us delineate. And I think that’s where the failing is, that the culture of corruption in the media doesn’t allow us to delineate between enemies and opponents.”
~ Jon Stewart, 2010

For the past five months, an unnamed branch of the federal government has paid me to build “master schedules” for their organization. While I was selected for my experience with Microsoft Project, I had absolutely no experience doing anything like this before accepting this position.

The concept is simple enough: The master schedule captures all tasks performed by an organization. When complete, managers can analyze labor and measure it against the forecast; trends can be monitored trends in search of more efficient processes. As I had no experience putting something like this together, I basically developed a system from scratch to build these schedules, and did so, in keeping with the concept, as efficiently as possible.

In learning to measure other people’s work, I have, supposedly, found job security. But I’m not so sure.

Defining Labor

Albeit laborious, I will be the first to admit “measuring work” is not the same as “work.” But what is work? For the point of this writing, Bertrand Russell offers a working definition in his 1932 essay ”In Praise of Idleness:”

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given.

A more current definition would be that the Manager must shower before work, and the Laborer must shower after work. And before my argument slips into full-fledged class-based Marxism, such divisions of labor are necessary. Any recovery depends directly upon these divisions.

For decades our modern economy has needed fewer Laborers; it now needs fewer Managers as well. Into the 6th year of our economic slump, we have not seen a resurgence of jobs that usually return after a recession. Due in large part to our technological advances, there is simply not enough work for people to do.

What Are Our Options?

As we’ve seen in this funk, the societal urge in a downturn is to 1) devote stimulus funds to projects designed to employ, or worse, 2) provide monetary stimulus to “juice” the economy so it will uncover stimulus projects on its own. But 1) if stimulus projects were a priority, the economy would not need central planning to pursue them, and 2) as we’ve seen, monetary stimulus ends up in the pockets of the banks. As both of these happen at taxpayer’s expense, and both result in consolidation of power at the highest levels, I don’t support either of these strategies for economic revival.

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but here are some ideas.

1) Ending Busy Work. All work should have virtue. Busy work breeds a degrading cynicism and robs people of job skills acquired in virtuous work, whatever those activities are.

Aristotle defines “eudaimonia” in his 350 BC classic Nicomachean Ethics as the well-being associated a with specific activity, or work, which exhibits virtue in accordance with reason.  Not only does eudaimonia require good character, but a perfect exercise of rational activity. Throughout Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle refers to the ditch digger; if his labor is not of excellent quality, then it lacks virtue – that is, moral excellence – as it did not fulfill its use.

Virtuous work can be – but does not have to be - laborious. Our standards should be altered to accommodate our new economic reality. In the workplace, this may seem heretical at first. More people doing “something,” even if it’s not very lucrative, leads to creative bursts and innovation. That’s why the largest technology corporations essentially pay their employees to slack off.

2) Caution with Cost Cutting. In difficult times, many businesses pursue efficient work practices, or “cost-cutting” in pursuit of sustained profits. But cost-cutting can drive out profits if product quality is compromised, thereby inducing the consumer to look for better alternatives. In short, efficiency kills. And in doing so, it unemploys doubly.

Pursuing profits is similar to the pursuit of happiness, in that it can never be found if pursued directly. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and Raj Sisoda discuss this “Paradox of Profits” in their new book, Conscious Capitalism:

Just as happiness is best experienced by not aiming for it directly, profits are best achieved by not making them the primary goal of the business. They are the outcome when companies do business with a sense of higher purpose, build their businesses on love and caring instead of fear and stress…

If a business seeks only to maximize profits to ensure shareholder value and does not attend to the health of the entire system, short-term profits may indeed result; perhaps lasting many years, depending upon how well its competitor companies are managed. However…without consistent customer satisfaction, team member happiness and commitment, and community support, the short-term profits will prove to be unsustainable over the long term.

Regarding my first point contrasting busy work and virtuous work, Mackey and Sisota offer the following:

The difference in business impact and personal happiness between a team member who is inspired, passionate, and committed and one who merely shows up for a paycheck is enormous. The blame for this does not lie with ‘lazy and unmotivated’ workers but with companies that fail to create workplaces in which people are given the opportunity to find meaning, purpose and happiness.

To tap this deep wellspring of human motivation, companies need to shift their emphasis from profit maximization to purpose maximization. By recognizing and responding to the hunger for meaning that is at quintessential human companies, companies can unlock vast sources of passion, commitment, creativity and energy that lie largely dormant in their team members.

But what shall we do, as we approach what is referred to hypothetically as the Singularity, where technology begins to ration unilaterally, without human aid? The concept often causes fear and malaise. Maybe it shouldn’t.

Technology is a hammer. We should never be afraid of it. Technology, like a hammer, can be used for good or evil. And like a hammer, technology can be used for employment and recreation purposes. Observing all this, the smartest people would design and manufacture hammers. That being said, we can’t all design and manufacture hammers.

Is technology permanently unemploying us? And if so, is that a bad thing? I mean, generation after generation tells their children, “I hope you won’t have to work as hard as we did.” Did they actually mean that?

Businesses who can afford it should consider using the Four Day Work Week model, in which 40 hours of work occurs, just on an abbreviated schedule. There are of course some pitfalls to expecting the same amount of work in less amount of time. For starters, 10 hour work days are not for everyone. But studies have shown that people are generally happier on this schedule.

Even still, working fewer hours should remain an option. In this environment, furloughs are better than layoffs, as tacit organizational knowledge is retained and job skills continue to be built upon. Something this radical takes a great amount of sacrifice; like all good sacrifice, working part-time should be made optional to employees. In so doing, people will be allowed to pursue their own eudaimonia, outside of work.

The concept is not new. In his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Henry David Thoreau, according to the Thoreau Society, embarked on “an economic experiment to see if it were possible to live by working one day and devoting the other six to more Transcendental concerns, thus reversing the Yankee habit of working six days and resting one.  His nature study and the writing of Walden would develop later during his stay at the pond.”

Society must judge whether Thoreau contributed more to it with his work in a pencil factory, or by writing Walden.