Reason Magazine - Topics > Civil Society

Libertarianism and Civil Disobedience

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:23:00 EST

Arnold Kling at TechCentralStation thinks libertarians should give civil disobedience a chance:

I am thinking more like open, nonviolent defiance of laws that require licenses, paying onerous taxes, and so on....like Gandhi in the sense that we would be counting on a civilized society not to engage in severe repression. We would have the same idea. Millions of ordinary, decent Americans engaging in peaceful disobedience, making it awkward for the government to engage in repression.....Run a small school without a license. Do some health care services without a license. Run a small part-time business without complying with the payroll tax.

Kenneth Silber thinks that's nuts. Kling begs to differ, natch. Kling's blogging partner Bryan Caplan weighs in.

reason contributions from Silber and Caplan.

Creative Capitalism = Compassionate Conservatism?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:43:00 EST

Bill Gates spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, and touted what he calls "creative capitalism":

...where governments, businesses, and non-profits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit or gain recognition doing work that eases the world’s inequities....

This system, [capitalism], driven by self-interest is response for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.

It's always good to see an important person speak so highly and at such great length about the wonder working powers of market forces and describe "self-interest" in such glowing terms. But the whole "creative capitalism" concept has a certain echo of "compassionate conservatism," which wound up being the worst of both worlds (At last! The state funding religious charities, plus a massive new Medicare entitlement! Just what we needed!).

Can Gates-style "creative capitalism" avoid the same trap? (At last! Governments bullying corporations to do good and massive new aid budgets!)

Cross posted at reason.tv

Google Latches on to Political Society

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:17:00 EST

Apropos of my article today, we get news of Google's fancy soiree this past weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't to announce a new service, the company's much-anticipated foray into cell phone service, or to demonstrate some other bit of newly-minted Google genius. It was, regrettably, to celebrate the opening of Google's first D.C. lobbying office.

The Cato institute's David Boaz has a standard op-ed he writes on each sad occasion that an upstart company setting the world on fire has to take the unfortunate step of protecting its interests from predation by hiring a cadre of lobbyists, consultants, and lawyers to fight in Washington—money the company could otherwise be giving to engineers and developers instead of pissing away into the parasitic Beltway economy.

You can't blame Google for protecting itself, though I'd guess it's only a matter of time before even don't-be-evil Google begins to play the rent-seeking game, too.

How Do We "Fix" the Inherent Problems With Elections?

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:03:00 EST

Pundits, pollsters, and election watchers say Hillary Clinton may have won the New Hampshire primary because she cried. Or perhaps because women caught Barack Obama condescending to her during the last Democratic presidential debate before voters took to the polls.

On the Republican side, John McCain may have benefited from independent voters who migrated to the GOP side of the ballot after already determining in their heads that Obama had the Democratic nomination locked up.

Over the coming months, expect to hear much discussion about Obama's race, Clinton's gender, and Mitt Romney's religion. We've already heard discussion about how Fred Thompson's attractive wife and acting career might factor into the campaign. You might also remember back to 2000, when the presidential election seemed to turn when TV cameras caught Al Gore rolling his eyes and making exaggerated sighs during one of the debates.

In 2004, John Kerry lost credibility with voters after being photographed while windsurfing, which confirmed heartland America's vision of him as an elitist New England snob.

There's little if anything substantive about these campaign-changing moments. Pundits drone on and on about what issues voters will think are most important but presidential campaigns have almost always turned on gaffes, personality quirks, or some other completely unpredictable campaign event that has little to do with policy.

Think back to the photo of Michael Dukakis looking ridiculous with his beauty-shop-coiffed head popping out of a tank. Or Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no John Kennedy" line to Dan Quayle in 1992.

It's a safe bet that 2008 won't be much different. This election will likely be decided not on the wisdom of the war in Iraq, the economy, or the merits of one candidate's immigration plan over another. It will come down to something far less important. This is how we choose leaders in America. It's pretty unsettling, particularly when you consider that the winner gets to oversee a $3 trillion federal budget, commands 2.6 million federal workers, can send 1.4 million active troops off to war (as well as another 1.4 million reserve troops), and takes the reins of the most powerful office in the history of man—one that's only growing more powerful.

I don't know how you change the election laws to make things any different. The great paradox of politics is that the set of skills and talents it takes to win a campaign are decidedly different than the set of skills and talents it takes to govern.

Perhaps the better solution is to tackle the other end of the problem: We need to make it so there's less at stake—so it matters less who wins the presidency, which party controls the Congress, or who's sleeping in the governor's mansion. We need to make politics less important.

There are two "societies" working side by side in America: a "civil" society, and a "political" society. Civil society consists of all the voluntary transactions and interactions we undertake on a daily basis. Going to the grocery store or to church, buying stock, seeing a movie—these are all things we do of our own volition. The people we're interacting with are also taking part voluntarily. Civil society is what makes free markets work. It's the collective of the billions of voluntary interactions we make every day. Both parties emerge better for having interacted.

Political society is what goes on in Washington, D.C. and, to a lesser extent, in state capital buildings and city council offices across the country. Most of it is involuntary. Decisions are made not based on mutual agreement, but on who has more power and clout. Political society decides how your taxes are divvied up. It is interest groups squabbling over who gets the bigger subsidy check. It is corporations fighting to get regulations written in a way that will hurt their competitors.

In civil society, underperforming companies go out of business; in political society, government agencies that don't fulfill their missions get bigger budgets, and more employees. In civil society, underperforming employees lose their jobs; in political society, it's nearly impossible to fire a federal employee, no matter how poorly they perform. In civil society, competition flourishes, markets constantly write and rewrite the rules, new ideas are tested, and innovators are rewarded; in political society, politicians write the rules, the same names get elected and re-elected, power becomes entrenched, and new ideas are dismissed as fringe and dangerous.

Our goal ought to be to keep as much of America as possible within the realm of civil society, and allow as little as possible to be tainted by political society. This makes elections less important. It makes politics less important. Less is at stake when we go to the polls. And less of our lives are then subject to whoever is ambitious, underhanded, or corrupt enough to emerge from the absurdities of a political campaign least scathed by the process.

The benefits of civil versus political society are clear: If there are no public schools, there's no debate over whether we should teach creationism or evolution. If government isn't in the business of sanctioning marriages, there's no debate over whether it should sanction gay ones.

Here's a more recent example: Over the last few months, civil libertarians have lashed out at telecommunications companies for cooperating with the Bush administration's efforts to eavesdrop on phone calls. The problem is that the telecos' biggest customer is the federal government. Those 2.6 million federal workers all need phones.

A company normally would never risk the backlash that would come with a plan to spy on its customers. But when your biggest customer is the one asking you to do the spying, your priorities change. Government distorts proper market incentives.

Unfortunately, things are only getting worse. Federal spending now accounts for about 20 percent of our economy. Government plays a role in just about everything we do. Higher education and health care, for example, have been growing less civil and more political for years. Health care in particular is likely to become wholly and completely political in the next decade. Meaning one of the most important part of your life--your very health--may soon be subject to who's done a better job manipulating the process come Election Day.

The worse news is that we may have passed the point of no return. There's now so much at stake in our elections for so many different interests, any candidate who runs on a platform of expanding civil society and shrinking political society isn't likely to find much support. In other words, we may have reached the point where there's too much at stake for most of America to have any interest in lowering the stakes.

Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason. This article originally appeared at FoxNews.com.

Bitten by a Radioactive Community Volunteer

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:33:00 EST

From the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, a thrilling, action-packed feature about self-proclaimed superheroes:

By most observers' reckoning, between 150 and 200 real-life superheroes, or "Reals" as some call themselves, operate in the United States, with another 50 or so donning the cowl internationally. These crusaders range in age from 15 to 50 and patrol cities from Indianapolis to Cambridgeshire, England. They create heroic identities with names like Black Arrow, Green Scorpion, and Mr. Silent, and wear bright Superman spandex or black ninja suits. Almost all share two traits in common: a love of comic books and a desire to improve their communities.

Among the heroes: The Cleanser, who "strolls around picking up trash," and Direction Man, who "helps lost tourists find where they're going." And then there's Master Legend, who relates this tale of crimebusting gone wrong:

One evening when Master Legend was on patrol, he heard a woman scream and ran to investigate. But when he located the damsel in distress, she thought he was attacking her and called the cops. "They wanted to know if I was some kind of insane man, a 41-year-old man running around in a costume," he recounts. "Apparently, they had never heard of me."

Public Choice in Action

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:49:00 EST

This U.S. Postal Service is opposing a "do not mail" list for junk mail because . . . well, I'll just let them explain it:

Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro said half of the mail his agency handles is direct marketing mail, and reducing its volume could cost thousands of Postal Service jobs.

This is terrific logic. Americans should be bothered with useless, unsolicited junk mail so that the USPS can continue to pay otherwise unneeded postal workers to deliver it. Makes sense to me.

I thus propose a federal "Agency for Digging Holes in Americans' Front Yards." Then, because of the holes-in-people's-front-yards problem that will inevitably result, I propose a second "Agency for Filling In Yard Holes."

These two agencies will create thousands of new federal jobs. And as we all know, new jobs are good for the economy.

The Sacrifice of Public Service

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:18:00 EST

A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an expose on W. Richard West, Jr., the founding director of the taxpayer-subsidized Smithsonian, the National Museum of the American Indian. Over the last four years, West racked up some $250,000 in globe-trotting travel expenses, hitting such obviously American Indian-relevant destinations as Athens, Bali, London, Hong Kong, Venice (four times), and Paris (12 times!).

West's defenders say his job requires outreach, and overseas travel comes with a museum director's fundraising, networking, and promotion duties. Fair enough, though that doesn't explain why when traveling on the dime of taxpayers and museum patrons, West always opted for business class airfare, first class seats on the train, and the plushest of hotel accommodations.

Now the Post reports that before West left, he commissioned a 48 x 34 portrait of himself to hang in the museum, forever reminding visitors of his legacy. The cost: $48,000. Under West's direction, the museum also spent $133,000 on a lavish going-away party for him, including $30,000 on a specially-produced DVD telling West's life story (which—and I'm just guessing, here—likely touted the splendid sacrifices West has made for a career in public service).

This is all particularly galling because by most accounts, West did a spectacularly crappy job with the museum.

Relevant factoid: Average annual income for Native Americans is about $12,900 per year.

Bonds for Babies

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:01:00 EST

You probably missed it, but there already was an “idea primary” in the 2008 election. It lasted two weeks and nobody won.

In September, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) strolled into a Congressional Black Caucus forum, belted “Brooklyn’s in the house!” to rev up some of her backers from New York, and fielded a question about Social Security. Clinton, who typically clings to her script as if it were the last raft off the Poseidon, got a little too comfortable and started to improvise.

“I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time,” she said, “so when that young person turns 18, if they have finished high school, they will be able to access it to go to college.” There were no more details; she mentioned the idea, and then she moved on.

Immediately, the Clinton campaign remembered why their candidate usually sticks to her lines. The Drudge Report mocked the idea in a yelping banner headline: “A BOND IN EVERY BASSINET: HILLARY PROPOSES $5,000 FOR EVERY U.S. BABY.” “Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee,” declared Larry Sabato, the ubiquitous pundit who directs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, “she may have handed a powerful issue to the Republican candidate.” One Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, announced that his rival thought “the American people are stupid.”

Ironically, Clinton had been poaching in a traditionally Republican territory. After all, she was proposing a bond that a child would own, something that would give him or her some sense of responsibility. This was not part of the traditional menu of Democratic ideas. Indeed, it has roots in an idea popular in free market circles.

In 1962 the libertarian economist Milton Friedman proposed a negative income tax, under which welfare bureaucracies would disappear and the government would simply send checks to people under a certain income level. Charles Murray, author of the seminal welfare critique Losing Ground, offered an updated version of Friedman’s proposal in his 2006 book In Our Hands. Both concepts started as thought experiments, and both reached the same conclusion: The recipients of transfer payments can manage that money better than a welfare state can.

Stung by the wide-ranging criticism, Clinton backed down. On October 9 she said baby bonds were “on the back burner,” and the next day her campaign staff assured reporters that the bonds were “off the table.” But another version of the idea was percolating in Congress: A few days later, Clinton’s colleague Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) held a press conference to introduce the ASPIRE Act. This legislation would create “KIDS accounts”: an initial endowment of $500 for each American child, to be funded by taxpayers and administered by the Treasury Department. Schumer had introduced an identical bill three years earlier with three Republican co-sponsors: Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.), and Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.).

Schumer’s accounts would be tax-free, and the owners—every kid born in 2006 or later—could start tapping into them at age 18 to pay for their education, to buy a home, or to set up a retirement account. Children below the poverty line would be eligible for an extra $500 for their accounts. Wealthier kids could receive dollar-for-dollar matches for the first $500 they invested each year.
When I asked Hill Republicans about Schumer’s proposal, the reaction was indifference. “I’m not familiar with this,” replied Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a prominent conservative. “But I’d say, generally, if Chuck Schumer is introducing it than I’m not going to like it.”

Murray doesn’t like the idea either, despite the superficial similarities to his proposal in In Our Hands. The KIDS accounts, like Clinton’s baby bonds, would be a brand new entitlement, he points out, not a replacement for the present welfare state. “Add-ons to the current system will keep all the bad features of the current system,” he explains. “All of the dynamics among families and communities that would make my plan work are destroyed if the present system of transfers is maintained.”

Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, agrees that ASPIRE-style accounts are “the wrong answer.” But he also credits their supporters for asking “the right question.”

Baby bonds, Tanner argues, are a sign that Democrats finally recognize the role personal investment can play in battling inequality. The conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks goes farther: ASPIRE-style accounts, he wrote in 2005, are a worthy idea that anticipates the coming entitlement crunch and adapts to it. Such “asset-based welfare,” he declared, “might pave the way for other asset-based programs designed to give young people a better start in life, not just secure their retirement.” Today, by contrast, “people in the bottom half of the income scale don’t get to join in to take advantage of compound interest. They don’t get a share of the growing national economy. They don’t get the psychological benefits of ownership.”

That, you’ll recall, was the thinking behind Social Security privatization. Privatizers wanted to change the way people thought about Social Security: Instead of pooling their wealth and getting some back when they retired or needed aid, they would build their own assets over the course of their lives.

Even if they don’t replace the current Social Security system, “baby bonds” could have a transformative political effect. The kids who own those bonds won’t just be counting on the government and the Social Security Administration to take care of them. They’ll be investors. They’ll see what happens to their accounts, they’ll look at what’s happening to the transfer payment system, they’ll make the obvious comparison, and they’ll be less likely to vote for the traditional welfare state.

Such ideas have affected Republicans’ political calculations. Grover Norquist, a vocal supporter of private Social Security accounts, argues that “every American who owns his own mutual fund is decreasingly susceptible to the siren call of class warfare” —and transfer payments.

But Democrats are making political calculations of their own. Clinton clearly thought asset building could fit snugly into a plan to lift up poor Americans. She brought it up to get some applause at a meeting of black, mostly urban Democrats. Similarly, Schumer recognizes that ownership is an idea that sells. Slowly, incrementally, the idea is traveling from the right side of the political spectrum to the left.

No one old enough to ride a bike or dress up a Barbie thinks presidential elections are about ideas. But sometimes ideas can shape both a campaign and the agenda of the winner. Ronald Reagan won the election in 1980 after adopting the Kemp-Roth tax cuts and pounding them at campaign stops. Steve Forbes lost the Republican nomination in 1996, but he turned into a credible candidate as he relentlessly pitched his plan for a low universal flat tax. That plan never made it to the floor of Congress, but it has crept into the conventional wisdom of tax reform. Even the Democrats, facing the prospect of power in 2009, have started to consider it when they contemplate tweaking the alternative minimum tax and fixing the code.

When Brooks endorsed ASPIRE-style accounts in 2005, he predicted they “would cut across left-right polarities and prove an irresistible political force.” It hasn’t worked out that way. In their October debates and campaign tours, front-running Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson started saying that Social Security was en route to a collapse and that Americans needed to look, one more time, at private accounts. Democrats howled. Meanwhile, Democrats called for young Americans to start owning assets instead of depending on handouts, and Republicans shoved the idea off the table. Is everybody missing the big picture?

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

The Kremlin's "Love Oasis"

jblanks@reason.com (Jonathan Blanks) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:37:00 EDT

Facing a dwindling population crisis, Vladimir Putin has created a program eerily similar to the Hitler Youth movement:

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where [young Russian couples] can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.
Nashi's annual camp, 200 miles outside Moscow, is attended by 10,000 uniformed youngsters and involves two weeks of lectures and physical fitness.

Complete with veiled racist overtones, the organization resembles the Sturmabteilung (SA) and its intimidation tactics before WWII:

The group's leaders insist that the only connection to officialdom is loyalty to the president. If so, they seem remarkably well-informed.

In July 2006, the British ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton, infuriated the Kremlin by attending an opposition meeting. For months afterwards, he was noisily harassed by groups of Nashi supporters demanding that he "apologise". With uncanny accuracy, the hooligans knew his movements in advance - a sign of official tip-offs.

Even when Nashi flagrantly breaks the law, the authorities do not intervene. After Estonia enraged Russia by moving a Soviet era war memorial in April, Nashi led the blockade of Estonia's Moscow embassy. It daubed the building with graffiti, blasted it with Stalin era military music, ripped down the Estonian flag and attacked a visiting ambassador's car. The Moscow police, who normally stamp ruthlessly on public protest, stood by.
...
Yet, by comparison with other outfits, Nashi looks relatively civilised. Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers.
These showed a young blonde Russian refusing a ride from a swarthy, beetle-browed taxi driver, under the slogan: "We're not going the same way."
Such unofficial xenophobia matches the official stance. On April 1, a decree explicitly backed by Mr Putin banned foreigners from trading in Russia's retail markets. By some estimates, 12 [million] people are working illegally in Russia.

Put mildly, this movement toward fascism in Russia is troubling. It is also disturbing that this story is not making more headlines here in the States.

EquuSearch and the Power of Volunteers

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:25:00 EDT

The excellent blog Classically Liberal has a stunning post up about the creation of TexasEquuSearch, a volunteer search and recovery team that tracks down missing people. The group came about after family members of missing persons grew frustrated by often dismissive and ineffective police efforts.

Bob Smither, the Libertarian Party candidate who had a good run for Rep. Tom DeLay's old seat in Texas, was instrumental in the group's formation by Tim Miller.

Laura's father, Bob Smither, is a Libertarian Party activist and believes in the power of private co-operation to solve problems. He and his wife, Gay, founded the Laura Recovery Center to assist in the search for missing persons. The Center is also an entirely private organization that takes no tax funding.

One day Miller was working with Smither at the Center when they started talking. Smither suggested to Miller that, since he was an avid horseman, he might be able to organize a volunteer horseback search team. Miller agreed and word was spread. Soon Miller had 45 people regularly attending monthly meetings.

But some volunteers didn't have horses. But they had boats, planes, even helicopters. Others had all terrain vehicles with night vision and infrared equipment. Some were certified rescue divers.

Out of his own frustration with the police, and from Bob Smither's libertarian vision for solving problems, Texas EquuSearch was born. It now has 2,500 members and has helped people, not just in Texas, but around the world. Miller says that their goal is that "no family has to experience the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness if a loved one should ever disappear." It is a mission they take seriously and one they perform long after the police have moved on to other matters.

More here.

Hat Tip: Jim Peron of The Institute for Free Enterprise.

[Verboten Racial Slur], Please!

jblanks@reason.com (Jonathan Blanks) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:00:00 EDT

Yesterday, the NAACP laid to rest one of the most-beloved objects of Hip-Hop -- the N-word :

The "n-word" is dead according to the NAACP, which staged a mock funeral for the racial slur during its annual convention in Detroit yesterday, complete with a horse-drawn caisson, black roses and a plywood casket.

"Today, we're not just burying the n-word, we're taking it out of our spirit," Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick told hundreds of enthusiastic mourners, who slowly marched in the quarter-mile-long procession downtown.

As a black man who is also of Irish descent, I have to appreciate a man named "Kwame Kilpatrick." And while I hate the word as much as anyone, and probably more than most, I can't get over this ridiculousness:

"We gather burying all the things that go with the n-word. We have to bury the 'pimps' and 'hos' that goes with it. Die, n-word, and we don't want to see you 'round here no more," Mr. Kilpatrick said.

If the NAACP really wants to confront language issues, perhaps they should focus on the importance of subject-verb agreement and promoting education in the community instead of "burying" words that 'ain't goin' no where.'

"Come as you are"

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:15:00 EDT

David Cassel of the invaluable 10 Zen Monkeys points to a strong market reaction to web dating service eHarmony's straights-only policy:

Chemistry.com has been attacking eHarmony's policy directly, in a new multi-million dollar ad campaign which shows people describing their experiences of rejection from eHarmony. It reports that over 1 million people have been rejected by eHarmony.com, then touts their own slogan - "Come as you are."

eHarmony is currently facing a legal challenge to its policy, but Cassel writes, "Should eHarmony be forced to offer online match-making to gays and lesbians if they don't want to? It looks like the market is already sorting that out -- with some fierce and funny attacks on eHarmony's position!"

More here.

The commercials are at YouTube:

This follows the formation of myPartnerPerfect.com, which specifically catered to groups left out of eHarmony's lovefest. Katherine Mangu-Ward discussed the implications here.

Hurricane Katrina: A Full Employment Act for Federal Fraud-Busters

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:59:00 EDT

More than 18 months after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, authorities are chipping away at a mountain of fraud cases that, by some estimates, involve thousands of people who bilked the federal government and charities out of hundreds of millions of dollars intended to aid storm victims.
The full scope of Katrina fraud may never be known, but this much is clear: It stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast, like the hurricane evacuees themselves. So far, more than 600 people have been charged in federal cases in 22 states - from Florida to Oregon - and the District of Columbia.
The frauds range in value from a few thousand dollars to more than $700,000. Complaints are still pouring in and several thousand possible cases are in the pipeline - enough work to keep authorities busy for five to eight years, maybe more.

The AP reports that 150 to 250 new cases continue to be referred to investigators a week and that some 9,600 cases are being investigated. More here.

In a special section in our December 2005 issue, Reason looked at Katrina and the failure of public policy. And in our December 2006 issue, Neille Ilel looked at how unconventional groups plugged the gap left by traditional aid groups in New Orleans. Read all about it here.

The Anarchy Advantage in Somalia

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:00:00 EST

As Ethiopia invades to break the power of the Union of Islamic Courts over Mogadishu and much of Southern Somalia, Benjamin Powell over at the Independent Institute argues that Somalia has been doing better without an effective central government of late than it was with one. The heart of it:

In conducting research for a new study comparing Somalia’s economy relative to 42 other African countries, my coauthors and I examined 13 different measures, including life expectancy, immunization and disease rates, access to various telecommunications, and access to water/sanitation.
In 2005, Somalia ranked in the top 50 percent in six of our 13 measures, and ranked near the bottom in only three: infant mortality, immunization rates, and access to improved water sources. This compares favorably with circumstances in 1990, when Somalia last had a government and was ranked in the bottom 50 percent for all seven of the measures for which we had that year’s data: death rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, main telephone lines, tuberculosis, and immunization for measles and DTP. Furthermore, we have found that during the last years of Somalia’s government, 1985 to 1990, their performance was deteriorating compared to other African nations as their relative ranking fell in five of these measures. Since their government’s collapse, Somalia has seen its relative ranking improve in four of these measures and deteriorate in only one: infant mortality.
Perhaps most impressive is Somalia’s change in life expectancy. During the last five years of government rule, life expectancy fell by two years but since state collapse, it actually has increased by five years.

Powell's full study on Somalia.

An earlier short report by me on a World Bank study coming to similar conclusions. (You will note I mistakenly referred to Somalia as a West African nation in that piece--it is, of course, in East Africa.)

The Giving Gap

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 10:52:00 EST

'Tis the season for giving—and it turns out that conservatives and like-minded welfare skeptics more than hold their own when it comes to charity. So says Arthur C. Brooks in his new book Who Really Cares?: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. Brooks, a public policy professor at Syracuse University, sums up his own results thusly: Giving is dictated by "strong families, church attendance, earned income (as opposed to state-subsidized income), and the belief that individuals, not government, offer the best solution to social ills--all of these factors determine how likely one is to give."

Brooks shows that those who say they strongly oppose redistribution by government to remedy income inequality give over 10 times more to charity than those who strongly support government intervention, with a difference of $1,627 annually versus $140 to all causes. The average donation to educational causes among redistributionists was eight dollars per year, compared with $140 from their ideological opposites, and $96 annually to health care causes from free marketeers versus $11 from egalitarians.

A 2002 poll found that those who thought government "was spending too much money on welfare" were significantly more likely than those who wanted increased spending on welfare to give directions to someone on the street, return extra change to a cashier, or give food and/or money to a homeless person.

Brooks finds that households with a conservative at the helm gave an average of 30 percent more money to charity in 2000 than liberal households (a difference of $1,600 to $1,227). The difference isn't explained by income differential—in fact, liberal households make about 6 percent more per year. Poor, rich, and middle class conservatives all gave more than their liberal counterparts. And while religion is a major factor, the figures don't just show tithing to churches. Religious donors give significantly more to non-religious causes than do their secular counterparts.

But far more striking than conservatives outbidding their liberal pals for charity points is what Brooks finds about class distinctions. Brooks finds that in families with incomes of less than $14,000 annually, working poor families gives more than three times as much as families on welfare. They also are twice as likely to give, and twice as likely to volunteer. "It is not poverty per se that makes people uncharitable—but rather the government's policy for eradicating it," says Brooks.

There is an appropriate intuition that American people are really generous, and they are. But you'd think that people give away a higher percentage of their income because they can afford to, and that's not true. It turns out that the people who give the biggest percentage of their income away are the working poor in American today. Now the "working" part is key, because the non-working poor who have the same incomes give the least. But the working poor who have low incomes but employment, particularly stable employment give like crazy and we should all take a giving lesson from them. They're also very income mobile and so there's this virtuous cycle of giving and success. These people are also hugely interested in issues of freedom and pretty hostile to government income redistribution. We are told that the poor are a homogenous group in America and they neither homogenous behaviorally, nor attitudinally.

Asked about the relationship of the belief in freedom to the levels of giving, Brooks responds quickly: "Freedom and opportunity are the sister virtues to charity," he says. "People who do not value freedom and opportunity simply don't value individual solutions to social problems very much. It creates a culture of not giving."

Of course, conservatives have a stake in proving that private charity works, and liberals have stake in proving that government solutions work. So there may be two sides to this coin. Sure, liberals don't give to charity, but when conservatives are put in charge of social services, they tend to do a pretty awful job. No one needs to be acting in bad faith for this to be true. It's simply human nature not to focus your energies where you think they will not be best rewarded.

The people who give the least are the young, especially young liberals. Brooks writes that "young liberals—perhaps the most vocally dissatisfied political constituency in America today—are one of the least generous demographic groups out there. In 2004, self-described liberals younger than thirty belonged to one-third fewer organizations in their communities than young conservatives. In 2002, they were 12 percent less likely to give money to charities, and one-third less likely to give blood." Liberals, he says, give less than conservatives because of religion, attitudes about government, structure of families, and earned income. The families point is driven home by other results from Brooks. He writes that young liberals are less likely do nice things for their nearest and dearest, too. Compared with young conservatives, "a lower percentage said they would prefer to suffer than let a loved one suffer, that they are not happy unless the loved one is happy, or that they would sacrifice their own wishes for those they love."

Not to worry, though. The problem is one of age, not generation: "When people age," says Brooks, "they get better. I don't know exactly why that is, but one of the ways that they do so is they figure out what makes them feel good and what is good for other people and most pursue more of those activities. Giving is healthy and pro-social and so you see more of it as people get wiser."

There's something fundamental about the urge to give. Brooks explains the "helper's high" occurs when our brains reward us with pleasure-producing opiods when we help someone out—this factor, he says, promotes a virtuous cycle: "Tangible evidence suggests that charitable giving makes people prosperous, healthy, and happy. And that on its own is a huge argument to protect institutions of giving in this country, as individuals, in communities, and as a nation. We simply do best, as a nation, when people are free and they freely give."

"There's something incredibly satisfying, inherently, about voluntary giving," says Brooks. "And nobody has ever reported any brain science suggesting that you get an endorphin rush when you pay your tax bill."

Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor for reason.