Roger’s Rules

Email This to a Friend

November 9th, 2008 9:19 am

“Typical American style” or, lessons from Mustang Ranch

For the last several days, while ferrying young master Kimball, aetat 10, from point A to point B and back again, we’ve been listening to an audio tape of Jules Verne’s classic Around the World in Eighty Days. It has been a great hit with the prop and support of our old age. Most of my readers, I expect, will recall the story of the super-phlegmatic Phileas Fogg, “one of the most noticeable members of The Reform Club” in London, who bets £20,000, half his fortune, that he can circle the globe in 80 days. Fogg sets off with his trusty servant Passepartout on an adventure that takes them on steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, and elephants, from London to Egypt, India, Japan, San Francisco, New York, and back again to London.

Verne had an encyclopedist’s delight in the exhibition of precision and local detail. Eighty days, says Fogg on accepting the bet, that’s “nineteen hundred and twenty hours, or a hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred minutes.” When the the Henrietta leaves New York Harbor, the ship passes “the lighthouse which marks the entrance of the Hudson, turned the point of Sandy Hook, and put to sea.” Trust Verne to know about that lighthouse and Sandy Hook. Trust him to know that the railway from San Francisco reaches its highest elevation–”eight thousand and ninety-two feet above the level of the sea”–at Evans Pass, Wyoming, before it lumbers onward to Nebraska where, on October 23, 1867, the Union Pacific Railroad was inaugurated “by the chief engineer, General Dodge.” Verne’s eye for detail domesticates the fantastic, endowing his fiction with the seductive authority of fact.

It’s an engrossing tale, full of local color and period exactitude. I was struck not only by the confident, allegro velocity of the story but also by some of Verne’s offhand sociological observations. Describing the construction of the transcontinental America railroad in the 1860s, for example, Verne remarks that this stupendous engineering feat was accomplished in “typical America style, without too much paperwork or bureaucratic fuss.”

“Typical American style” circa 1870, perhaps. How about now? Have you filed a tax return lately? Tried to start a business? Looked into the size of your Congressman’s staff? A news story today tells me that “The world’s leading economies, including emerging powers like China, agreed on Saturday on the need to take measures to stimulate growth and fight off the threat of a global recession.” Good idea, gents! One measure might be to cast a beady eye on the passion for over-regulation, “paperwork” and “bureaucratic fuss” that seem to be a déformation professionelle of homo politicus, at least in his contemporary incarnation. Another might be for Barack Obama to reevaluate his campaign promise to shift some money from your pocket to the 43 percent of tax filers who do not currently pay income tax as well as his proposal to remove the cap on Social Security taxes and raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

Stimulating growth is a great idea. You do that by allowing individuals and business to operate in environment that is from from needlessly burdensome governmental regulation and to allow them to keep as much of their wealth as is consistent with the efficient running of the government.

Over the last couple of months, the U.S. Government has gone into the banking business, the investment house business, and the insurance business. There are now government bureaucrats sitting on the boards of those companies: how long before they start meddling and telling them how to run their business? Nancy Pelosi & Co. are even now contemplating going into the automotive business, with huge bailouts for the bloated, irresponsible American car industry, which for years has been making cars that the consumer doesn’t want at prices he is loathe to pay, all the while carrying the crushing burden of pension benefits that add some $1800 to the cost of every car that rolls of the Detroit assembly line. A serious administration would be looking not for ways of bailing out the car industry with more of the taxpayers’ money but ways of renegotiating those ruinous pension obligations.

In any event, anyone interested in the prosperity of the US financial or automotive industries will want to get the government’s claws out of them as soon as possible. We know “par expériences nombreuses et funestes” (as the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace put it in another context) that involving the government in running a business is a prescription for disaster. A friend recently called my attention to the story of Mustang Ranch, the famous brothel in Nevada that the IRS seized for non-payment of back taxes and then, as stipulated by law, tried to run. Of course, they failed and the once thriving establishment closed. Do we really want them mucking up things at places like Goldman-Sachs, Citibank, and General Motors?

Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:

1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.

2. Stay on topic.

3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.

4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.

5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.

The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.

These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.

10 Comments

1. heather:

Bush was so wrong when claimed that all people want ‘freedom.’ Nope, we want ’security.’

Bureaucracies promise ’security.’ Of course, that promise is fairy-gold: pretty in the evening, but but a dried out leaf in the morning.

I really don’t see any decrease in these bureaucracies, except a new civilization. Even Hitler couldn’t decrease bureaucracy, all he did was set of several competing bureaucracies which spent a lot of time at each other’s throat. And you have to admit, Hitler had a lot of room to move, being totally ruthless and powerful.

Nov 9, 2008 - 2:38 pm 2. Michael Lonie:

If a nation’s government is totally destroyed you can get rid of the bureaucracy. That happened to Germany in WWII, and played a major role in enabling Ludwig Erhard’s Economic Miracle, the Wirtschaftwunder, of the late 40s and early 50s.

If we reduced the civilian Federal government by 2/3 and reduced taxes proportionately we could turn the economy inot a powerhouse. But too many influential people would have their rice bowls broken or their patronage disappear, so it won’t be done. Obama is a rent seeker, in economic parlance, has been all his life. We’ll just ge more of the rent seekers taking over under his watch.

Nov 9, 2008 - 9:45 pm 3. JMH:

Heather, people do want freedom. It’s just that too many Americans think freedom just happens and that it’ll always be around, regardless.

Nov 9, 2008 - 10:45 pm 4. Paul:

Don’t knock runnng a whorehouse until you’ve thought a little about what’s, well, entailed in the business.

Nov 10, 2008 - 8:48 am 5. Andrew:

“Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself; the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies. When the mass suffers any ill-fortune or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent, sure possibility of obtaining everything–without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk–merely by touching a button and setting the machine in motion.”

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Nov 10, 2008 - 12:40 pm 6. Steynian 282 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] THE AMERICA CORP. Family of Companies: “Over the last couple of months, the U.S. Government has gone into the [...]

Nov 10, 2008 - 12:53 pm 7. Brent:

More than quietism, less than activism

Roger,

You remark that, as we confront—inter alia–the economic mess before us, one measure we should be mindful of “… might be to cast a beady eye on the passion for over-regulation, “paperwork” and “bureaucratic fuss” that seem to be a déformation professionelle of homo politicus, at least in his contemporary incarnation.”

Having worked in government paper mills for some 40 years, I could not agree more. To reference one of your favorite authors, Foucault, one can aver that the infinitely expanding micropractices of controlling bureaucratic paperwork become the Iron Cages of our brutish existence. For where there is federal largess there is always the distress of ever more control. It’s built into the bureaucratic mind usually disguised as the democratic logic of accountability–a veritable Death of Common Sense swamped by ever growing pyroclastic flows of a regulatory esprit de geometrie.

Yet, there are a number of vexations that weigh against my libertarian instincts. First, much of the modern regulatory malaise is rooted in the moral turpitude of the market place. We would not need an FDA if food and drug manufacturers would do their civic duties; we would not need an SEC and other financial overseers were financial institutions to act like responsible grown-ups; we would not need a consumer regulatory agency were producers to halt infusing all products great and small with lead and other toxic delights; we would not need onerous zoning laws if developers would not seek to located their latest abattoir or waste disposal facility in residential neighborhoods. If greed, as Gordon Gekko told us (not to mention the other six deadly sins), was not the operant virtue of many of our institutions, then the political class would have less cause to regulate.

This is not to argue that all regulatory problems can be laid at the door of the private sector. For second, there are the megalomaniacs, er…Command and Control politicians qua ideologues who want to impose their will on the world who also cause more than their fair share of our unfreedoms.

Third, social or individual dysfunctions like addictive behaviors or waiting for the Nanny (State) to save me do not help either.

Fourth, there are businesses who live for if not by the dole like agribusiness who gets billions a year so that they can prop up food prices, to name but one type of welfare for business.

A fifth vexation concerns market failure. Not all markets function well Thus we have antitrust legislation, pollution control (can the upstream paper mill contaminate downstream municipal water systems?), and government interventions in the health care markets (are you 55 and do you have a pre-existing condition?; if so, good luck getting health insurance). Our choice is to do something about market failures or just sit back and enjoy it while we howl at the moon and bray about our rugged individualism.

And last there is Hayek’s question of what to do with the wisdom of self-regulating markets versus the inherent limits of information and the therefore failure of any overly planned economy. Markets are instances of what Hayek called catallaxy, or self-regulating social systems—a kind of autopoesis of the market place. I am not questioning the apparent self-organization of markets or social systems—provided that we do not hypostatize them into an independent metaphysical realm by ascribing free will to these systems. Rather, I am concerned with the outcomes of markets and other social instrumentalities that produce havoc as they let slip their dogs of war on the innocent. Does Wilmington OH deserve its fate? Should GM employees suffer the slings and arrows of management’s incompetence? Surely they will, but me thinks that as a civilized society we should devise systems, as we have, to help families cope and change. Hayek himself believed this was an appropriate role for government.

We can just learn to live with the ravages of catallaxic systems–we can let farmers flail in the wind when crop prices crash, we can let hurricane survivors fend for themselves, we can tell vets that there maladies are all in their heads and that they should just shape up or ship out, we could, in short, just let Being be as in some sort of nightmarish Heideggerian Quietism. Or we can compensate for these ill winds that carry the spawns of their hell to all corners of the earth.

In short, these vexations are such as that we need to confront these dysfunctions but we should do so with the least amount of heavy handedness possible. For it is like unto the master/slave dialectic, a paradox of freedom to let social instrumentalities and the physical world around us work their “will” on us when we can have them do otherwise. It is equally a paradox of freedom to regulate our worlds such that the space of action becomes a space of mindless and endless rule following. By acting to balance the vicissitudes of autopoetic systems and our will to control all in the name of an enslaving freedom, we do not decrease our liberty but—if done well—we enhance our ability to choose and follow a life we want to lead, for it would seem that we are more than mere rudderless ships driven by winds and waves to a farthest coast of darkness, and we are less than the captains and commanders of all we survey.

Nov 10, 2008 - 8:00 pm 8. Anton:

Brent,

“these vexations are such as that we need to confront these dysfunctions”

“one can aver that the infinitely expanding micropractices of controlling bureaucratic paperwork become the Iron Cages of our brutish existence”

etc, etc, etc

The points are good. The rhetorical flourishes are simply annoying.

Nov 13, 2008 - 4:53 pm 9. joy:

Brent,
What you write is both accurate and beautifully written.
Anton,
Live with it.

Nov 22, 2008 - 12:30 pm 10. Roger’s Rules » A tale of two pundits: Sowell v. Huffington:

[...] dollars to Detroit. Washington might as well have shoveled the money into the toilet. As I’ve said before in this space, Chapter 11 bankruptcy was custom-made for the likes of GM: it would

Dec 23, 2008 - 7:12 am