A Conversation About Climate Change

Scott: Okay, so, a little while ago you wrote a pair of posts stirring the climate change pot a bit. It might be easy for some folks to see your writing as simple rabble rousing for the sake of rabble rousing, calling an overwhelming consensus into question because, well, it is important to question our overwhelming consensuses from time to time, to question our underlying assumptions. But it strikes me that you were doing more than that with your critiques of the so-called “green movement” and, more specifically, Al Gore’s (in)famous chart.

Engaging in a bit of a distilling exercise, what is at the core of your unease with what is an increasingly broad movement around addressing environmental issues and, specifically, climate change?

Erik: I think that for years – decades really – the green movement was in shambles. It had its isolated victories (Clean Air Act) but was really a ramshackle bunch of disparate causes with no unifying theme beyond some vague notion that we should treat the earth, or animals, or fish, or water, or air, etc. better. It was largely a fringe movement because it was largely a movement about activism. Now, with global warming the green movement has become an actual movement rather than an assortment of activist groups, and it’s entered the mainstream. Indeed, it’s become the new conventional wisdom, and those who may disagree with it or with the proposed solutions to it have become the fringe.

What leaves me feeling a bit disquieted about the whole thing is the speed at which the science, which isn’t that old in terms of science, has become accepted as fact, and really as belief. If you disagree either with the theory or the proposed solutions to that theory, you’re angrily written off as a “denialist” and given a scarlet letter to wear around town. But this is science we’re talking about, and science is something that should be discussed openly and with skepticism. Especially when the science in question has major policy implications with very real economic ramifications. The “Climategate” emails simply reinforce many people’s fears that the whole story isn’t being told, something that I’ve worried about for a long time. My post about Al Gore’s misleading chart was just one piece of the worry I have over this whole global warming thing. The limitations of cap & trade is another.

Scott: But what would be the threshold for you in terms of accepting the science? I mean, it is relatively striking how broad the consensus amongst a disparate cross-section of scientists is on this issue. And, as you mention, it’s not as though those scientists were at the forefront of driving the nascent stages of the “environmental” or “green” movement, it was, again, as you mention, primarily an activist oriented movement for many years (with, of course, some scientists involved, but not the degree of involvement now seen).

Doesn’t the chronology of that evolution in environmentalism as an item of social consciousness suggest a certain neutral bias that lends support to the science? And doesn’t it also strike you that it is rarely the scientists themselves and more often the activists of the green movement that lash out at “non-believers” in the angry fashion you describe? Should the science in question be tarred by the actions of activists who have, to be fair, endured years of ridicule and dismissive posturing? [Read more →]

In my recently concluded interview with Publius from ObsidianWings on the role of the administrative state, a central question was how citizens can better hold the executive and legislative branches accountable and prevent regulatory capture.  It seems clear to me (although Publius may disagree) that these issues are closely related to the issue of growth of executive power in recent years, as Congress increasingly abdicates responsibility for the quality of government to the regulatory state and we increasingly view the President as something of an omnipotent legislator-in-chief. 

I. The Problem

The result of this abdication is largely an inability for citizens to hold government accountable for its actions or inactions.  Congress winds up blaming the Executive Branch for just about everything as a means of justifying its own inaction to remedy past mistakes.  The President blames Congress for failing to pass his legislative agenda while largely ignoring the way in which the regulatory state that he oversees gets captured by narrow interests. 

Meanwhile, the President winds up being the sole person we are willing or able to hold accountable….if the economy is good, we credit the President; if the economy is bad, we blame the President.  We dislike Congress, to be sure, but high incumbent re-election rates show that we are unwilling to actually place blame on our own members of Congress.  At best, we vote out a couple members of Congress in swing districts as a proxy for the President’s popularity (which is in turn a proxy for the state of the economy and the perception of our geopolitical status). 

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority leader are hardly immune from criticism and are certainly higher profile than just about any other member of Congress, but even there, we have little ability to hold them accountable for how well they are doing their jobs as long as they remain reasonably popular in their home districts and states. 

II.  The Solution: Turn On The Speakers

There is a simple, if perhaps only partial, solution to this twin problem of abdication of responsibility by Congress and lack of accountability for the administration of the regulatory state: nationalize the election of the Speaker of the House. 

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As many people should know, Obsidian Wings is often a bastion of worthwhile discussion and debate combined with unapologetic opinion in the sea of hackery and straw men that is the political blogosphere.  Over the last several days, the site’s most prolific blogger, as well as an expert on communications law and a passionate advocate of net neutrality, Publius (known in real-life as law professor John Blevins) was kind enough to indulge me (who once likewise blogged using a derivation of Publius as a pseudonym) in an exchange of e-mails on the interplay between regulation, legislation, and democratic accountability, and what the FCC’s recent actions on net neutrality say about it.  For the sake of the readers’ sanity, I should note upfront that the questions get significantly shorter and more focused as the interview wears on, and Publius may deserve sainthood for his ability to respond to the first question at all.

Mark: One aspect of American policy that tends to get little attention in our public discourse is that of administrative law, rulemaking, and adjudication, not to mention even more discretionary issues such as enforcement priorities.  Yet, at least on the federal level, this is quite often where the real “action” is.  With some notable exceptions, it seems (to me, at least) that it is physically impossible for government agencies to uniformly enforce all of the laws and regulations on the books, almost no matter how many resources we give to those agencies. Meanwhile, rulemaking procedures are often immune from the kind of democratic accountability that theoretically exists in the legislative branches – they are uniquely low-visibility, often – though certainly not always - attracting the input only of the most interested players with the biggest budgets.  Even where rulemaking succeeds in overcoming these more basic regulatory capture concerns, the resulting regulations are still inevitably of the one-size-fits-all variety, such that the largest players often wind up increasing their comparative advantage over small players, even where it was the malfeasance of the large players that created the impetus for the rule in the first place.  Additionally, the wide grant of quasi-legislative powers and enforcement discretion to administrative authorities has seemingly given Congress the ability to duck responsibility for its own action or inaction by allowing it to blame agency bureaucrats and appointees for various problems.  For example, we often hear GOP politicians argue quite plausibly against gun control legislation on the grounds that it is only necessary to enforce existing gun laws; meanwhile, to take another issue near and dear to my heart, Democratic politicians avoid responsibility for the nasty effects of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act by claiming that those effects are the result of an improper interpretation by the CPSC.

First, I do think the benefits of a strong administrative state outweigh the harms.  My vision of the administrative state isn’t quite as bleak as what you described, though I certainly share some of your frustrations and skepticism.

In general, I think problems with the regulatory state often reflect external problems.  For instance, if wealth and power are concentrated, then those disparities in political power will be reflected in rulemakings.  If, by contrast, there is less concentration, then rulemaking will benefit from more adverse, competing “vectors.”

Similarly, if one of our political parties views regulatory action essentially as a means to enrich industry, then that too will be reflected in the ultimate rulemaking and adjudications.  But that’s a problem with the intellectual state of the political party more than with the administrative state.

Finally, if the broad public isn’t organized and engaged (particularly at an institutional level), that too will be reflected.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Indeed, I think the FCC’s recent actions on open networks and net neutrality show the promise of administrative action, and undermines public choice skepticism (a topic we’ve discussed before).

First, the proposals show that you don’t necessarily need powerful rich industry groups to make change happen.  Open networks are the result of lobbying by underfunded, idealistic public interest organizations like Free Press.  The bigger content companies like Google aren’t doing much heavy lifting.  And I think, frankly, that Democratic policymakers are more attentive to policy at this point in history.

Second, the FCC’s actions show the importance of political mobilization and organization-creation.  In many instances, rich industry groups get their way simply because they’re the only people in the room providing information to policymakers.  In a sense, policymakers often read the brief from only one party.

With the rise of public interest and watchdog organizations, policymakers have more sources of information.  The process, therefore, isn’t hopelessly corrupt — it’s just that a lack of organization is depriving policymakers from hearing other voices.  Legislative and regulatory staffers are busy, and it’s an enormous benefit to receive useful information wherever they can get it. [Read more →]

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has a good piece up that explores some of the same ground I explored in my self-critique of libertarianism, although he unfortunately does so without the assistance of Monty Python.  Gobry’s central point is one that bears re-emphasizing, though: “one thing that often bothers me about US defenders of free markets is how easily they (and we) [forget] that free markets are created, maintained and curated by, well, the government.”*  Gobry goes on to note “that all markets are dependent on how they are structured, and they are structured first and foremost by the government.” This is, of course, a variation of this point from last week’s post:

In comments, Gobry also hits on something that was a bit of an underlying theme in my Monty Python post, writing: “I am not so much arguing against specific policy positions as I am arguing against a kind of rhetoric.”  This is critical – free market advocates, particularly in recent months, have tended to adopt pretty straightforward anarcho-capitalist rhetoric even though precious few of those advocates are actually anarcho-capitalists.

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~by jfxgillis

Okay. So here’s the thing about the health care industry in the USA, especially the insurance sector. It stinks. Everyone knows it. Everyone feels it. We pay more for what we get, and we get less for what we pay for, than virtually any other developed country by any systemic measure. Even people with gold-plated policies they have by virtue of highly remunerative employment know those policies are overpriced even as they benefit from them.

The old World Health Organization rankings rated us 37th in the world. Granted, there’s honest dispute about that, but still, massaging the figures in our favor doesn’t get you that far up the rankings. We still stink. And the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking of 19 developed countries puts us dead last. And I do mean dead.

I believe in USA Number One!! and all, but I could live with it if we were say, fourth or ninth, or maybe even just outside the top ten, but  being number one only in per capita health care expenditures while last in health care outcomes isn’t just atrocious. It’s irrational. It’s a mystery. The odd thing is, the resolution to the puzzle doesn’t seem to be amenable to ideological explanation. On the one hand, we spend more on taxes on provision of health care through the public sector than many of the nominally more socialist countries ahead of us on the Commonwealth Fund chart. On the other hand, our health care is more dominated by the private sector than any other country on the list. Both Left and Right can agree that there’s something weird about being last in outcomes and first in expenditures. [Read more →]

[N/B: See below for a significant update/clarification]

One of the criticisms levied at the alternative health care proposals discussed by E.D. and I over the last few weeks has been that these proposals, which rely heavily on vouchers and/or subsidies, are irrelevant to the debate that is actually taking place.  Yet this is not really true – in fact, as it turns out, these proposals are quite similar to Senator Wyden (D-OR)’s bipartisan proposal, which has 14 co-sponsors in the Senate.  A good summary of this proposal is here (Wyden’s proposal appears to rely on tax credits, as commenter Willybobo has advocated, rather than vouchers, but the premise is the same).  A better discussion that places Wyden’s proposal and the more-dominant “public option” proposal in context is here.

Yet this proposal, despite bi-partisan support, has exactly zero chance of going forward.  It has, so far as I can tell, been largely ignored by grassroots advocates of health care reform, who have largely jumped on the “public option” bandwagon, however flawed that legislation will be if it is to become law. 

What is so particularly strange about this is that the legislation that is most likely to actually pass will ensure that our health care system places even more emphasis on employer-based health care coverage – even though the employer-based nature of our system is the single biggest cause of that system’s problems. 

For all the comparisons between European and American health care, the employer-based nature of the American system is the one element that both sides of the higher echelons of this debate seem to ignore consistently.  Yet it is the one element that actually distinguishes the American system from just about any system in the world – and not in a good way. 

As Wyden points out in the Slate article above, the employer-based system traps people in jobs that they would otherwise leave, which reduces labor flexibility even as the capacity for employer mobility increases at breakneck speed.  Beyond that, as I’ve tried to point out on numerous occasions and as our friend Kip recently pointed out, the employer-based system ensures that the consumer and the customer are two very different entities with two very different sets of interests.  Meanwhile, the leading proposal adds ever-more complications to the already too-confusing tax code to raise money to pay for the additional expenditures – and, importantly, these complications are not just as a result of the surtax on the wealthy.

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Thanks to John, I am pointed to these two rather strange arguments in favor of the Drug War and against libertarian use of statistics on race against the Drug War from Jonah Goldberg.  John does a pretty good job explaining why Goldberg’s arguments are so strange.  The only thing I’d really add is that the notion that libertarians don’t normally give a crap about race and poverty is a notion that is borne out of the coalition of libertarians with conservatives - libertarian and classical liberal philosophy, when divorced from coalition politics, actually have quite a bit to say about the problems of poverty and laws that disproportionately single out politically less powerful groups. 

Goldberg also makes this odd statement:

A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

This is particularly puzzling because Goldberg has argued that anti-statism is at the core of conservatism and is also why libertarians should continue to coalition with conservatives.  Obviously, increasing drug prosecutions is not only inconsistent with any conception of limited government, it’s also an expansion of the size of government.  And not an insignicant expansion either, given that this can definitionally only be achieved by pursuing people with enough resources to put up a tough fight against drug prosecutions (a fact that at least partly explains the socioeconomic discrepancies in such prosecutions in the first place). 

Goldberg’s statement does indirectly suggest one point worth exploring, though – that human liberty is increased when laws are enforced more uniformly; unfortunately, he takes this point to be a justification for the expansion of drug prosecutions. 

Much has been written of late about the difference between small and limited government – specifically, small government refers only to the fiscal “size” of the government, whereas limited government refers to the government’s actual powers.  If you accept that the State must exist, as even most libertarians do, then one must have a desire that the Stated do well that which it is authorized to do.  If the State does its job poorly, then it will actually have a more negative impact on individual liberty than if it does its job well, because at that point enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary and based on one’s ability to curry favor with the State in some other non-germane arena. 

If, on the other hand, the State does its job well, then people may act in reliance upon the law being enforced equally without regards to other issues.  So there may be a marginal decrease in liberty due to the existence of the law in the first place, but this is mitigated by the fact that uniform enforcement ensures that people may act in reliance upon the law and without having to curry favor with the State in some other arena.  This means less State corruption, less connection between wealth and power, and less fear of interference from the State more generally. 

The trouble is that very often uniform enforcement is simply not possible due to the State’s limited resources.  Put another way, in the words of the inestimable Wirkman Virkkala, “regulation is not scalable.” 

In the case of the War on Drugs, this problem is particularly apparent.  For any given drug, there are going to be potentially millions of users spread out over a vast country.  The only way to have uniform enforcement of the drug laws in such a situation is to have an incomprehensibly large budget far bigger than the already-incomprehensibly large Drug War budget we have.  Other programs, some of which may or may not be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion will need to be  scaled back (and thus enforced more arbitrarily).  Short of that, given the nature of prohibitions on the possession of banned personal items, the only way to truly enforce the law uniformly would be to turn our neighbors and friends into de facto secret police.

Still, under some circumstances, I suppose it’s possible to enforce such prohibitions in a more or less uniform fashion without creating a de facto secret police force – whatever Singapore’s flaws (and it has many), drug use is not something that flourishes there.  Part of that, though, is that Singapore is a tiny nation geographically, and another part of it is that it spends very little on many other types of restrictions, such as economic regulation. 

Which brings me to my final point – even regulations that are not outright prohibitions can be uniformly enforced only if they govern a sufficiently small number of actors or if the enforcing agency has the very substantial amount of resources necessary to enforce the regulations uniformly over a large number of actors.  Again, they are not scalable.  If the regulations are to apply to more actors than the agency has the resources to oversee, then the only solution an agency may follow will be to make the regulations so restrictive as to ensure the reduction of the number of actors over whom they have jurisdiction.  In other words, regulatory capture doesn’t just benefit the capturing business – it also benefits the captured regulator.

There is, I think, a solution to this problem: terminate any set of laws or regulations that cannot be uniformly enforced without an unrealistic budgetary expansion, and fully fund those laws or regulations that can be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion.   Unfortunately, this is impossible in a two-party system where the Executive is increasingly viewed by both supporters and detractors as omnipotent and where few are willing to admit the unrealistic nature of their pet programs.

Cross-posted at Donklephant.

I found this post to be a good rundown of why the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad law. As someone who has been madly in love with books in general and old books in particular since as long as I can remember, a law declaring that bookstores and libraries have to get rid of books from earlier than 1985 chills my blood. I guess I can imagine a library with no old books, but I really don’t want to. (The good news is that it appears a stay has been ordered on that specific issue.)

None of this is to say, of course, that we shouldn’t try to keep lead-tainted toys out of the mouths of three year olds, and I don’t think it necessarily follows that you couldn’t write smart, effective regulation that accomplishes that. The CPSIA, though, is most certainly not such regulation. Worse, it makes it that much more unlikely that we will have such regulation in the future. Every piece of stupid, ham-handed, counterproductive regulation makes it harder to pass effective and smart regulation, if for no other reason than that it erodes public trust in regulation as an institution. Regulate where prudent and necessary, but regulate intelligently, for goodness sakes.