“The Primal Prescription” by Murphy and McGuff

The Primal Prescription by Murphy and McGuff is a book about how the US healthcare system works and provides some health advice. The parts of the book I like are those about how the US healthcare system works. I am wary of health advice since most of it is faddish and difficult to evaluate.

Chapters 1-7 are about the history and economics of the US medical system. This history provides an illustration of how government controls cause problems and politicians respond to those problems with more controls that lead to more problems. For example, in chapter 1 the authors describe how price controls on medicine led to a reduction in the number of inpatient beds in hospitals and fewer doctors. The government responded to this by funding graduate medical training. This led to indigent patients being dumped in teaching hospitals. The Reagan Administration then passed a law called Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA):

EMTALA imposes three distinct duties on hospitals. First, ERs must provide a medical screening exam (MSE) on anyone who presents requesting care and determine whether an emergency medical condition (EMC) exists. This must be done regardless of the patient’s ability or intention of paying for care. Second, if an EMC exists, the hospital staff must either stabilize that condition or arrange transfer to another hospital that can. Third, if a hospital possesses specialized capabilities or facilities, they are required to accept transfer of patients in need of their specialized services (again, regardless of capability or intent of paying for these services).

…

Immediately after passage, critics warned that the law would be crippling for physicians and hospitals because of its vague definitions of an emergency condition, medical screening exams, and what constitutes “stabilization,” which the Act defined as “no medical deterioration should occur from or during the transfer.” As the law took effect and cases started to accumulate, it became evident that the courts interpreted these terms so strictly that nearly any patient could be considered unstable. This is because almost any complaint from an ER patient could conceivably be attached to a dangerous diagnosis that the originating hospital, per the statute, had to rule out before transferring the patient. For example, a complaint of a sore throat could be a retropharyngeal abscess or epiglottitis, and the complaint of a crick in the neck could be a vertebral artery dissection.

So the problem starts with price controls and ends up with doctors potentially ending up in court for anything bad that happens to a patient. Every step in this process spreads the problems caused by price controls to more hospitals instead of fixing the problem.

Chapters 8-13 provides advice about how to stay healthy and deal with doctors and hospitals and stuff like that. These chapters include some food fad diet stuff that I don’t think is much good. Chapter 14 is about free market reforms of the medical system and it looks okay.

“Economic Theory of the Leisure Class” by Nicolai Bukharin

A socialist on Twitter wrote that Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (ETLC) by Nicolai Bukharin is a criticism of Austrian economics that he is willing to defend.

I read the first chapter of ETLC and it is bad enough that I’m not going to read any more of it. Bukharin attacks methodological individualism but his criticism is wrong. In Section 1.1 he writes:

The starting point of the analysis is evidently not the individual member of a given society, in his social relations with his fellow men, but the isolated “atom”, the economic Robinson Crusoe. 

Later he continues with a quote from Bastiat:

We here find the standpoint once so neatly formulated by Bastiat, the “sweetest” of all economists. In his Economic Harmonies, Bastiat says: “The economic laws operate in a uniform manner, whether we are dealing with a totality of lonely persons or with only two persons, or with a single individual, obliged by circumstances to live in isolation. If the individual could live for a period in isolation, this individual would simultaneously be a capitalist, an entrepreneur, a worker, a producer, and a consumer. The entire economic evolution would be realized in him. By reason of his opportunity to observe every step in this evolution, namely: the need, the effort, the satisfaction of the need, enjoying the free use of profit of labor, he would be able to form an idea of the entire mechanism, even though it might be in its simplest form”. (Frederic Bastiat,Harmonies ́economiques, Bruxelles, 1850, p.213.) 

Later in the same section the author writes:

However venerable this point of view may have become by reason of its age, it is nevertheless entirely fallacious. Society (as is consciously or unconsciously assumed) is not an arithmetical aggregate of isolated individuals; on the contrary, the economic activity of each specific individual pre-supposes a definite social environment in which the social relation of the individual economies finds its expression. The motives of the individual living in isolation are entirely different from those of the “social animal” (zoon politikon). The former lives in an environment consisting of nature, of things in their pristine simplicity; the latter is surrounded not only by “matter” but also by a peculiar social milieu. The transition from the isolated human to society is possible only by way of the social milieu. And indeed, if we were dealing only with an aggregate of individual economies, without any points of contact between them, if the specific milieu which Rodbertus has so appropriately termed the “economic community” should be absent, there would be no society. Of course, it is theoretically quite possible to embrace a number of isolated and remote economies in a single conception, to force them into a “totality” as it were. But this totality or aggregate would not be a society, a system of economies closely connected with each other with constant interaction between them. While the former aggregate would be one we had artificially constructed, the second is one that is truly present. Therefore the individual economic subject may be regarded only as a member of a social economic system, not as an isolated atom. The economic subject, in its actions, adapts itself to the given condition of the social phenomena; the latter impose barriers upon his individual motives, or, to use Sombart’s words, “limit them”. This holds true not only of the “economic structure of society”, i.e., of the production conditions, but also of the social-economic phenomena arising on the basis of a given structure. Thus, for example, the individual estimates of price always start with prices that have already been fixed; the desire to invest capital in a bank depends on the interest rate at the time; the investment of capital in this industry or that is determined by the profit yielded by the industry; the estimate of the value of a plot of land depends on its rent and on the rate of interest, etc. No doubt, individual motives have their “opposite effects”; but it must be emphasized that these motives from the start are permeated with a social content, and therefore no “social laws” can be derived from the motives of the isolated subject. But if we do not begin with the isolated individual in our investigation, but consider the social factor in his motives as given, we shall find ourselves involved in a vicious circle: in our attempt to derive the “social”, i.e., the “objective”, from the “individual”, i.e., the “subjective”, we are actually deriving it from the “social”, or doing somewhat worse than robbing Peter to pay Paul. 

I looked up the quote from Bastiat in The Bastiat Collection, which I recommend. In the same chapter (Chapter 7 of “Economic Harmonies”) as the quote provided by Bukharin, Bastiat writes (pp. 632-634):

Let us now vary the hypothesis, and place ourselves in the midst of the social order. Capital is still composed of instruments of labor, materials, and provisions, without which no enterprise of any magnitude can be undertaken, either in a state of isolation or in the social state. Those who are possessed of capital have been put in possession of it only by their labor, or by their privations; and they would not have undergone that labor (which has no connection with present wants), they would not have imposed on themselves those privations, but with the view of obtaining ulterior advantages—with the view, for example, of procuring in larger measure the future co-operation of natural agents. On their part, to give away this capital would be to deprive themselves of the special advantage they have in view; it would be to transfer this advantage to others; it would be to render others a service. We cannot, then, without abandoning the most simple principles of reason and justice, fail to see that the owners of capital have a perfect right to refuse to make this transfer unless in exchange for another service, freely bargained for and voluntarily agreed to. No man in the world, I believe, will dispute the equity of the mutuality of services, for mutuality of services is, in other words, equity. Will it be said that the transaction cannot be free and voluntary, because the man who is in possession of capital is in a position to lay down the law to the man who has none? But how is a bargain to be made? In what way are we to discover the equivalence of services if it be not in the case of an exchange voluntarily effected on both sides? Do you not perceive, moreover, that the man who borrows capital, being free either to borrow it or not, will refuse to do so unless he sees it to be for his advantage, and that the loan cannot make his situation worse? The question he asks himself is evidently this: Will the employment of this capital afford me advantages that are more than sufficient to make up for the conditions that are demanded of me? Or this: Is the effort I am now obliged to make, in order to obtain a given satisfaction greater or less than the sum of the efforts the loan will entail upon me—first of all in rendering the services that are demanded of me by the lender, and afterwards in procuring the special satisfaction I have in view with the aid of the capital borrowed? If, taking all things into account, there be no advantage to be got, he will not borrow, he will remain as he is, and what injury is done him? He may be mistaken, you will say. Undoubtedly he may. One may be mistaken in all imaginable transactions. Are we then to abandon our liberty? If you go that length, tell us what we are to substitute for free will and free consent. Constraint? for if we give up liberty, what remains but constraint? No, you say—the judgment of a third party. Granted, on these conditions: First, that the decision of this third party, whatever name you give him, shall not be put in force by constraint. Second, that he be infallible, for to substitute one fallible man for another would be to no purpose; and the parties whose judgment I should least distrust in such a matter are the parties who are interested in the result. The third and last condition is that this arbitrator shall not be paid for his services; for it would be a singular way of manifesting his sympathy for the borrower, first of all to take away from him his liberty, and then to lay on his shoulders an additional burden as the recompense of this philanthropical service. But let us leave the question of right, and return to Political Economy.

A Capital which is composed of materials, provisions, and instruments presents two aspects—Utility and Value. I must have failed in my exposition of the theory of value if the reader does not understand that the man who transfers capital is paid only for its value, that is to say, for the service rendered in creating that capital; in other words, for the pains taken by the cedant combined with the pains saved to the recipient. Capital consists of commodities or products. It assumes the name of capital only by reason of its ulterior destination. It is a great mistake to suppose that capital, as such, is a thing having an independent existence. A sack of wheat is still a sack of wheat, although one man sells it for revenue, and another buys it for capital. Exchange takes place on the invariable principle of value for value, service for service; and the portion of gratuitous utility that enters into the commodity is so much into the bargain. At the same time, the portion that is gratuitous has no value, and value is the only thing regarded in bargains. In this respect, transactions that have reference to capital are in no respect different from others. 

This consideration opens up some admirable views with reference to the social order, but which I cannot do more than indicate here. Man, in a state of isolation, is possessed of capital only when he has brought together materials, provisions, and tools. The same thing does not hold true of man in the social state. It is enough for the latter to have rendered services, and to have thus the power of drawing upon society, by means of the mechanism of exchange for equivalent services. I mean by the mechanism of exchange money, bills, bank notes, and even bankers themselves. Whoever has rendered a service, and has not yet received the corresponding satisfaction is the bearer of a warrant, either possessed of value, as money, or fiduciary, like bank notes, which warrant gives him the power of receiving back from society, when he will, where he will, and in what form he will, an equivalent service. This impairs neither in principle nor in effect, nor in an equitable point of view, the great law I seek to elucidate, that services are exchanged for services. It is still the embryo barter, which has been developed, enlarged, and rendered more complex, but without losing its identity.

Bastiat has considered the effect of living in a society with other people and even has a discussion of whether freedom of trade should be restricted by politicians to help those without much capital. Since this discussion is in the very chapter as the quote Bukharin used he cherry picked a particular quote without mentioning the context, which means he is either dishonest or incompetent and I don’t see any reason to consider his criticisms further.

Restrictions on speech versus reach

Many people in positions of authority want to restrict speech. One of the problems with trying to impose such restrictions is that ideas have reach – they have implications for issues they weren’t invented to address as explained in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. So even if an authority picks a subject he thinks is safe he may end up discussing an idea he wants to restrict. This story from an interview by a sex worker provides an example:

Lydia: Do you remember when you first became aware that sex work existed?

Ramona: Sort of. I have two memories I can think of. One was when I was in school, I think in reception or year one (Kindergarten) we were learning a story from the bible about a man who spent all of his money on food and — I don’t want to say the word.

Prostitute? You can say it.

Okay, I guess. He spent his money on prostitutes, and a boy asked the teacher what a prostitute was and she wouldn’t tell him.

It’s also interesting that the teacher didn’t think that a bible story would have prostitution in it when the bible is full of sex and violence. If the teacher had been raised with the idea that discussing sex and violence is bad and the bible is good then he would have to avoid learning too much about the bible to avoid facing that problem.

Reisman and Praxeology

George Reisman’s book Capitalism is the best economics book available. Other books I have read on economics are less clearly written and include worse ideas. One particular example of this greater clarity is how Reisman explains what economics is about.

In Chapter 1 , Section 1 Reisman writes:

I define economics as the science that studies the production of wealth under a system of division of labor, that is, under a system in which the individual lives by producing, or helping to produce, just one thing or at most a very few things, and is supplied by the labor of others for the far greater part of his needs.

In Chapter 2, Section 2 he discusses some objections to this position on what economics is about:

The second challenge to economics’ focus on wealth is the mistaken claim that economics is a science of choices rather than a science of wealth—a science which studies the “allocation of scarce means among competing ends.” 

This contention rests on a logical fallacy. It does not see that what gives rise to economics’ study of choices and its concern with the allocation of scarce means among competing ends is the fact that people have a virtually limitless need for wealth but only a limited capability of satisfying that need at any given time. Thus, people must choose which aspects of their need for wealth are to be satisfied and which are not. Economics studies the determinants of human choice only insofar as they concern choices of how to spend incomes that are of necessity limited, and only insofar as they affect the attraction of capital and labor to the production of some goods rather than other goods. In other words, it studies the issue of choices for no other reason than that it is necessary to do so as part of its study of the production of wealth under a system of division of labor. To claim that economics is on this account a science of human choices rather than of wealth is to confuse an aspect of the science with its totality. To adopt this view is to be led to ignore all the really crucial matters that economics deals with and to seek esoteric extensions of the subject that have nothing whatever to do with its actual nature. Fortunately, those who adopt this view are highly inconsistent in its application and generally continue to devote most of their attention to the serious business of economics and leave the alleged necessity of extending the subject beyond the domain of wealth as a task to be carried out in the indefinite future.12

Reisman continues in note 12:

Regrettably, this criticism applies to the great von Mises and his efforts to portray economics as merely the “hitherto best developed part” of an allegedly wider science of human action known as praxeology. See Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 3d ed. rev. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966), pp. 1–10 passim. I wish to note, indeed to stress, however, that even when I have ultimately come to disagree with some position of von Mises, as in this case, I do not recall ever having read so much as a single paragraph of his writings that did not serve as the most powerful stimulus to my own thinking. Therefore, I urge everyone to give the most serious consideration to every portion of his writings.

So Reisman is criticising praxeology. In Section 1 of the Introduction to Human Action, Mises writes:

For a long time men failed to realize that the transition from the classical theory of value to the subjective theory of value was much more than the substitution of a more satisfactory theory of market exchange for a less satisfactory one. The general theory of choice and preference goes far beyond the horizon which encompassed the scope of economic problems as circumscribed by the economists from Cantillon, Hume, and Adam Smith down to John Stuart Mill. It is much more than merely a theory of the “economic side” of human endeavors and of man’s striving for commodities and an improvement in his material well-being. It is the science of every kind of human action. Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. The modern theory of value widens the scientific horizon and enlarges the field of economic studies. Out of the political economy of the classical school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology. The economic or catallactic problems are embedded in a more general science, and can no longer be severed from this connection. No treatment of economic problems proper can avoid starting from acts of choice; economics becomes a part, although the hitherto best elaborated part, of a more universal science, praxeology.

In Section 2 of Chapter I Mises writes:

Praxeology is indifferent to the ultimate goals of action. Its findings are valid for all kinds of action irrespective of the ends aimed at. It is a science of means, not of ends. It applies the term happiness in a purely formal sense. In the praxeological terminology the proposition: man’s unique aim is to attain happiness, is tautological. It does not imply any statement about the state of affairs from which man expects happiness.

In Section 4 he writes:

The teachings of praxeology and economics are valid for every human action without regard to its underlying motives, causes, and goals. The ultimate judgments of value and the ultimate ends of human action are given for any kind of scientific inquiry; they are not open to any further analysis. Praxeology deals with the ways and means chosen for the attainment of such ultimate ends. Its object is means, not ends.

I think Reisman’s criticism of praxeology is correct. 

Mises’ ideas about praxeology are esoteric extensions of economics and they’re also wrong. A person can have many different incompatible ends. Some socialists like the idea of hurting rich people, but this isn’t compatible with their stated desire to help the poor. Rich people get rich by providing goods that people want, and his customers often include many poor people. And if a business makes more profit it may be able to hire more people, including some poor people so more poor people would have the means to buy stuff they want. And there are other economic advantages to the government leaving rich people alone. So it is possible to criticise a person’s ends in terms of economics. A person can have many different goals and there is no guarantee of their compatibility so there are no ultimate goals.

Economics doesn’t require having a completely general theory of human action. Explaining the operation of a division of labour society is necessary for progress and a lot of progress has been made on that project. As Reisman points out later in Chapter 2, Section 3:

The fact that both the need and the desire for additional wealth are limitless for all practical purposes does not mean, however, that people automatically act to satisfy that need and desire. It is certainly possible for the need and desire for additional wealth to fail to result in the production of additional wealth, let alone in continuous economic progress. Indeed, history and most of the world around us are characterized by stagnation and poverty. The mere possession of a need or desire is never sufficient to ensure that the need or desire will be satisfied. In the absence of the influence of a rational philosophy establishing limited government and economic freedom and inculcating such convictions as that the material world has both reality and primacy, that it is intelligible, and that hard work pays, man is not able to devote himself sufficiently to the production of wealth.

It would be better to concentrate on more thoroughly explaining the good ideas of economics rather than working on bad philosophy in the name of praxeology.

Misfire

Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam by Orkland and Duryea is a detailed explanation of the problems with the M16 in Vietnam. American soldiers in Vietnam were outgunned by the Viet Cong who were being supplied with AK47s by the Soviet and Chinese governments. The Department of Defence in the US tried to fix this by giving soldiers M16s. The M16s were tested with a particular kind of ammunition and powder and they passed those tests. The US military had materials lying around that could be used to make a different kind of powder and ammunition and decided to use that instead. As a result of this decision, bullets sometimes got stuck in the rifles and had to be removed using a cleaning rod. This led to many soldiers being killed and to a shortage of cleaning rods. As far as I can tell the authors give an accurate account of what happened with the M16 and the government’s incompetence in dealing with the problem.

Unfortunately the book contains at least one major error. There is a section of the book about the role of the press in the Vietnam war. They then discuss what might have happened if WW2 had been covered the same way and they write (p. 201):

But the public’s parents and grandparents never had the opportunity in the 1940s to watch on not-yet-widely-available RCA, DuMont, Farnsworth, and Belmont television sets the February 1945 firebombing of the German city of Dresden. On that occasion, a combined force of U.S. and British heavy bombers incinerated and killed an estimated 25,000 old men, women, and children who lived in the historic German state capital on the Elbe River. Four waves of more than 1,300 allied heavy bombers dropped almost 4,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on Dresden, a city with no strategic importance whatsoever; its principal attribute was the manufacture of some of the world’s finest porcelain and chinaware. With the war all but won, it constituted a criminal act by the Allies (revenge of a sort for the Luftwaffe’s November 1940 firebombing of the British city of Coventry in an attack demonically code-named “Moonlight Sonata” by Reichsmarschall Herman Goering’s minions) that approaches every definition of a massive war crime.

The authors give no references for these claims about Dresden. In his book Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 Frederick Taylor explains that Dresden had a lot of factories before the war and that most of their productive capacity was converted to war production, including production of ammunition (see especially chapter 13). Dresden also had a rail junction used to ship material to and from Dresden’s arms factories and to send Jews to extermination camps. Taylor’s book was published in 2004 and has been available on Kindle since 2011. “Misfire” was published in 2019, so the authors could easily have checked their claim that Dresden has “no strategic importance whatsoever”, but they didn’t bother.

The authors don’t discuss Dresden further. They threw away their scholarly integrity for the sake of a single paragraph about a matter that wasn’t directly related to the point of the book. This is a common problem. Lots of books make claims that can be refuted by doing a little research so you should be careful and sceptical about the contents of books.

UPDATE A better way to understand the problems with the M16 is to directly read the Report of the Special Subcommittee on the M-16 Rifle Program of the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives. Then you don’t have to worry about mistakes from the authors of “Misfire”.

Hallucinations

Crit_rat asked a question about hallucinations on Twitter:

Is an inner monologue technically an auditory hallucination?

I replied: 

No. Hallucination is a pseudo-scientific psychiatric term for self conversation that is unwanted for some reason, see Chapter 1 of “The Meaning of Mind” by Thomas Szasz and

Szasz’s position is that psychiatrists have been given the power to lock people up without trial in mental hospitals and to drug them without their consent without trial and that this is a violation of their civil liberties. In the UK in 2018-2019 the NHS reports that 49988 people were detained under the mental health act so this isn’t a minor violation of civil liberties. Psychiatrists use this power as a tool of social control to deal with behaviour that they deem to be undesirable and they call that undesirable behaviour mental illness. This undesirable behaviour may or may not be criminal. A hallucination is self-conversation that is unwanted by the person having it or by somebody else such as a relative or psychiatrist. The idea of mental illness is an excuse employed strategically by psychiatrists, mental patients and others to pretend that these institutions are scientific. Szasz has made suggestions for reform that have been rejected wholesale by psychiatrists and the government because they are attempts to reform toward individual liberty and responsibility. A longer summary with some suggested reading can be found in my Fallible Living Szasz essay.

The psychiatrist Michael Golding replied:

I hope a friend of yours is never in the ICU and hallucinating, while pulling out his life-sustaining breathing tube, when the doctor says that his hallucinations of someone saying he is being choked with a feeding tube is “unwanted”…”self conversation”

I replied:

If a patient has a breathing tube down his throat he can’t speak. So how do you know why he’s pulling it out? Also, the case you describe involves self conversation and you don’t want it to happen. So it doesn’t refute Szasz’s description.

Golding replied again:

They can write, you often can tell behaviorally that people are hallucinating, and they can tell you later, after you get them on the IV meds that stop the hallucination and returns them to their right mind.

I’m not keen on continuing this discussion on Twitter because it’s not good for discussion: explaining ideas in 280 character chunks with bad threading is not a good setting for discussion. I have offered to discuss the issue off Twitter on this blog or in any other venue he would prefer but Golding hasn’t taken me up on that offer. I’m still not very clear on Golding’s position. I think he disagrees with Szasz’s position, but  he hasn’t pointed to a particular essay, paper or book that provides a criticism of Szasz that he’s willing to explain and defend. His tweets remind me of the statemnent on Rearden Metal by the State Science Institute described on p. 183 of Atlas Shrugged in Part One, Chapter VII.

Golding also hasn’t clearly explained the relevance of this example. If a person is taking an action, such as pulling out a breathing tube, then he has a reason for doing that. His arms aren’t flailing around randomly. He is acting to produce a specific result. He has thought about what he is doing. That thought might be as simple as “I don’t like having this tube, so I’m going to pull it out” or it might be more complicated. All you know about what he is thinking is a result of trying to explain his actions and what he communicates about those actions in speech and writing. If he is trying to pull out the tube then he has decided to try to pull out the tube. If a doctor doesn’t like that decision, then these thoughts and actions are unwanted by the doctor. Calling the patient’s thoughts a hallucination is an example of “hallucination” being used as a label for unwanted self conversation. Golding doesn’t state whether he agrees or disagrees with this way of looking at the issue.

I think Golding’s position is that pulling out the tube is undesirable. I think the desirability of the tube being removed depends on the context. If a person wakes up in a hospital bed with a breathing tube he might be confused about what’s going on and try to pull out the tube because it is uncomfortable or because he thinks it is a feeding tube and doesn’t appreciate that he might die if he removes it. Under such circumstances it might be a good idea to restrain the patient from doing that until you have explained the situation to him. If he knows what the tube is and decides to remove it that’s a different situation and nobody should stop him from removing it by force. I think a person shouldn’t be forced to live because another person wants him alive. Does Golding want to force people to stay alive? Is he aware of Szasz’s criticisms of trying to prevent suicide by force and does he have an answer to them?

There is another complication to this story: people can lie and in this case the patient may have an incentive to lie. A person can be involuntarily committed if he attempts suicide. So if somebody is caught in the middle of a suicide attempt that involves pulling out a breathing tube he might say that he thought it was just a feeding tube to try to avoid being committed.

I have another question about this example. The patient claims that he thought the breathing tube was a feeding tube. Did the patient have previous experience with feeding tubes? If so, did he have a feeding tube voluntarily or was he forced to have a feeding tube?

I have nailed this particular piece of jelly to the wall to the best of my ability. But a clear explanation would make it easier to work out what Golding’s position is and whether it answers Szasz’s criticisms of psychiatry and the idea of hallucinations.

Note on “The Color of Law”

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is about anti-black government policies imposed by federal and state governments in the United States that segregated housing in the United States by race. I will discuss a couple of examples of topics covered in the book.

In Chapter 2 the author explains that there was a shortage of housing in the US from the 1930s to the 1950s because of the Great Depression and WW2. A New Deal agency called Public Works Administration (PWA) built housing . The PWA adopted a rule that the racial composition of the residents of its new housing should match the previous racial composition of the neighbourhood. The PWA often broke this rule and reserved the housing it constructed for white people. In chapter 9 the author explains that when a black family tried to move into a neighbourhood mobs of their neighbours would sometimes attack their persons and property and the government would refuse to enforce the law against the mobs. 

In chapter 5 the author explains that many developers required people who purchased their houses to sign covenants saying that they wouldn’t sell the house to black people. Governments often enforced these covenants at the expense of black people who tried to purchase such properties. I don’t think such provisions should be enforced either now or in any future ancap society. The purpose and effect of these provisions is to hurt people for stupid reasons not to facilitate cooperation. Also the supposed reason for excluding black people was that black people would lower property values, but the response of neighbours to black people moving in was to throw bricks through their windows, burn crosses on their lawns and use physical violence. Did the people who acted this way think that having different colour skin would lower property values but not threats, violence and vandalism? We shouldn’t concede anything to this kind of stupidity and evil.

The book has some weaknesses. The author thinks minimum wage policies are good when in reality it leads to unemployment among people with low pay (see Capitalism by George Reisman, pp. 382-384). He claims that income and social mobility have stagnated in the US which will make fixing the lack of integration between black and white people more difficult. So he wants the government to try to fix this problem by incentivising black people moving into white neighbourhoods with tax policies. It might be a good idea to arrange compensation in cases where there is an identifiable wrong to some identifiable person or group. Also, the market works to correct mistakes in the way resources are being used. Anyone who isn’t productive has to sell goods to maintain his life which will be bought by those who can use them productively (see Capitalism, pp. 316-319). The government doesn’t know how to do this and allowing it to try will only benefit those with political pull, not people who have been mistreated.

Szasz Discussion

This is a post whose comments can be used to discuss Thomas Szasz. Sometimes people say or write something critical about Szasz on a platform that is unsuitable for discussion like Twitter. This post is a more suitable place to discuss Szasz.

I have written a brief account of Szasz’s ideas and some references on the Fallible Living site.

I am willing to discuss the contents of that article and Szasz’s ideas more generally here. I would prefer that people who come here to discuss should have an account of their criticisms of Szasz that they’re willing to discuss and defend for reasons explained in Elliot Temple’s Paths Forward essay.

The state is not your friend

I sometimes post stuff like “the state is not your friend” on twitter and somebody asked me about it. As an example, I wrote:

The government is not your friend. They’re not providing services. They’re not trying to help anybody. To them you’re just a peasant and if they think you’re too uppity they’ll try to destroy you. I wish Grimes good luck. He’ll need it.

This was in response to the government threatening a man called Darren Grimes with prosecution for doing an interview in which the historian David Starkey referred to black people in a way that has been interpreted as derogatory. The government previously tried to prosecute Grimes for an alleged violation of election law during the brexit referendum. The attempted prosecution didn’t result in a conviction because there was no evidence of any criminal intent from Grimes. The government’s actions toward Grimes are malicious. The British government prosecutes lots of people for speech it doesn’t like. The British government is dangerous.

The government raises money by taxation and inflation, which amount to taking money from people without their consent. They claim to provide services in return for doing this. They are not serving anybody by threatening Grimes. The government has cut the budget for the justice system despite the fact that it seems to be falling apart. This isn’t an isolated example. On every area of policy they have terrible and destructive ideas. For example, the government announced a policy to let first time buyers get property with a 5% deposit. Are banks going to be forced to provide such mortgages? What effect will that have on incentives to build? Will the government subsidise these mortgages? What happens to the people with those mortgages if and when the government withdraws the subsidy? What happens if property values go down or interest rates go up and people with these mortgages are left with a mountain of bad debt? Ten years ago the US had a crisis caused partly by the US government trying to get mortgage providers to “help” poor buyers. Why is this new policy not going to be a repeat of that disaster? The government takes money for services that it can’t provide competently.

I don’t think this can be ascribed solely to ignorance or stupidity. The conservative party is aware of the work of FA Hayek and has been aware of him since the 1940s. And if you’ve read Hayek you know of the existence of Mises and could look up criticisms of government intervention in the economy. So why has the conservative government done nothing about government intervention over the past ten years? It’s not like they have a reply to Mises pointing out flaws in his ideas. They just don’t make any effort to explain why government intervention is bad, or to reply to criticisms of government intervention and they make no effort at reform either. Politicians in other parties also know of Hayek by virtue of the fact that they have heard of his existence from the conservatives, so they have the same problem. And anybody working for the state also has that problem.

Many people in the UK worship the state and even when they disagree with the government in power. Their idea is that the state is the solution to every problem and that government employees are great people. If people keep thinking like that then the government will continue to function as a giant burden if it continues to function at all. We have a lot of very serious political problems in the UK and the government is contributing to making them worse without addressing known problems with their conduct. 

“The government is not your friend.” They’re being hostile to a lot of people for bad reasons. “They’re not providing services.” Does trying to do a lot of things incompetently count as providing services? “They’re not trying to help anybody.” Does acting incompetently or maliciously while creating many new problems count as trying to help? Overall I think people should avoid contact with the British government as much as possible and should not sanction it. Is there something wrong with what I’m saying?

The Secret Barrister

The Secret Barrister:  Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken by The Secret Barrister is a book written by a barrister about the state of the British legal system. The short version is that the British government isn’t providing adequate law enforcement services. The government has cut funding for the police, the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and legal aid (the government paying defence costs for defendants who can’t afford a lawyer). One result of the cuts is that the police and the CPS often don’t provide information that is needed to prosecute defendants so many of them are released. And since legal aid has been cut many middle class people representing themselves because they can’t afford lawyer fees. Since these non-lawyers aren’t familiar with the law or with court procedure, their misconceptions cause problems in court that make the case take longer. The incompetence of people who represent themselves also leads to more convictions. The book has lots of illustrative stories about the British justice system going wrong, as well as history and statistics illustrating the impact of the government cuts. For example, in Chapter 4, the author tells the story of a woman called Amy whose partner Rob beat her up (p. 120):

Amy had sustained a multiplicity of injuries in the course of the assault. She had suffered a fracture to the left wrist, a fractured eye-socket, a broken jaw and extensive bruising and grazing where she had been dragged through the flat and out to the front garden. And she had given her account of what had happened to the police. 

But I know this – and the details of the assault and Amy’s history as set out at the beginning of the chapter – only because it all appeared on my brief in the MG5. This is the document we encountered earlier, composed by the police and (theoretically) containing a precis of what the evidence shows. 

The problem was that the actual evidence itself – the statement presumably taken from Amy and the medical records from the hospital – was nowhere to be found on my brief. Now, evidence not appearing on a prosecution brief is far from unusual. Often it will exist on the CPS computer and will just have been missed off the brief. Other times it will still be in the possession of the police, who upon prompting will forward it to the CPS to pass to the barrister. But it became apparent upon reading the notes of the previous hearings by the in-house CPS advocates that, in this case, the evidence had simply . . . gone. It had never been served on the defence. It had never even reached the CPS.

The evidence never turned up, so Rob walked free without a trial.

The government raises money through taxation and inflation, both of which involve the use of force. If you don’t pay taxes or you don’t obey legal tender laws, then the government will prosecute you. The police and courts use force to arrest people, fine them and imprison them. The only legitimate reason to use physical force is to respond to somebody else who has initiated the use of force. Some of the existing laws are about preventing the initiation of force: laws against attacking or damaging persons or property and laws against theft and fraud. So by cutting the budget of institutions for enforcing laws so they non longer work the government is sacrificing its ability to engage in the only activities it performs that are legitimate.

My guess is that the situation would improve if the government increased the budget for the police, the courts the CPS and legal aid. With enough public pressure maybe this will happen. But it is instructive that the government is so bad at deciding priorities that it cut one of the very few activities it undertakes for which the use of force can be legitimate. This is an illustration of Mises’ argument in Bureaucracy that without the profit and loss system the government is bound to be very bad at prioritising.