“Shit, if this is gonna be that kind of party, I’m gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes” – cred

With all of the hubbub over AIG’s executive pay, you’d think the dipshits at CNN and in the media would at least have half a brain to stop and think about what they are reporting. Then again, it’s all being fed by dipshits in Congress.

The money quote of the day:

“Schumer: AIG employees should return bonuses or face high tax”

I don’t know about Schumer, but the last time I looked at my bonus check, withholding was running me around 40% on bonus monies. So for all of the wanton raving and frothing and foaming at the mouth, the government is going to get most of this money back – just not in the way it expected. Of course, a $600k after-tax bonus would be nice in my bank account. Then again, I don’t really want to pay that person’s tax bill.

So I’m guessing the bullshit on Capitol Hill will only get deeper as they rush to pass yet-another-dumb-stupid-stupid-stupid law that will have even more dire consequences than the prior law. Unfortunately, Congress is going to have to really cross the line on this one by singling out a single company.

The only thing that pisses me off even more is those who support these maniacal bailouts. You have absolutely no reason to expect an idealistic outcome when reality (and a ton of real coo-coo for coco-puffs libertarians) told you the outcome was going to be bad. Economics 101 people. Come on.

So long as the Democrats rule the political landscape in Congress and in the Executive branch, I’m willing to pull out my magical 8-ball to make a few predictions.

1. Obama won’t do anything for the economy. Don’t worry, we’ll hear how terrible our condition is and how we have such a long process to recovery but Obama’s policies will do very little to encourage anything remotely related to economic recovery. Economic recovery does not come from attempting to spend your way out of the doldrums. Trust me. I have a few thousand examples stacked up neatly in credit card bills that still arrive monthly. The difference is that I can’t walk away from my debt or ignore it or my credit rating suffers. Congress seems to think it has no credit rating.
2. Republicans will make a half-assed, half-hearted attempt to rally under the conservative banner only to mock it by electing more incompetant, mediocre representatives to office who are still bitter about homosexuals obtaining equal rights.
3. We’re going to gain a few civil liberties. We’re going to lose a lot more.
4. Democrats will raise taxes on the wealthy – only to realize the wealthy will only pay the same amount of tax if not less due to their incomprehensible economic policies.
5. Government will grow to new heights even leaving George W. Bush shaking his head at the size of government.
6. The war on drugs will continue to incarcerate a disproportionate number of minorities while ignoring the real costs and effects that it is leaving on our society. As long as Obama ignores the reality and complexity of the situation his presidency will degrade from historic to nothing more than the same.
7. Keynesianism will reveal its ugly head only to run into the same problems in created in the first place. You can’t spend your way out of debt. Balanced budgets don’t cut it when you have nearly 57 trillion dollars of debt piled up over the past 20 years or so.
8. A horribly neutered and irriducibly irrelevant health reform bill will make it through Congress that will be sure to make mediocre health care the standard rather than the occasional case. The only people who will be happy with it will be the insurance lobby and the medical community. A congressman will then tell us that we’re somehow better off now without ever substantiating the claim and ignoring the reality taking place right behind his back. (Think officer Brady from South Park)
9. All branches of government will continue to ignore the GAO.
10. Public schools will still be their mediocre selves.
11. Earmarks will reach a new height in dollars while the stupidity level of what Congressmen are earmarking funds for will remain the same (abyssmally high).
12. The Pentagon will pay some ludicrous sum of money for something ironic and moronic and then plead for more money to ensure they can equip our soldiers. The whole Rumsfeld painting is exempted – this was under Bush’s watch.
13. The Federal Student Loan system will teeter on the edge of failure only to be rescued by the same dolts who created it in the first place: government bureaucrats.
14. A giant corporation will collapse in a smoldering heap of failure after some stupidly arrogant crime is committed by an overpaid, well-parachuted executive. The executive will take a leap to safety on the parachute while stockholders will get bilked out of their equity. There will be plenty of fist shaking and a revision to SOX to ensure that all of those businesses who are doing honest business are punished for the crimes of a very small few.
15. Our tax system will continue to grow more complex leaving IRS employees more confused on just what money they are not entitled to.
16. The federal government will continue to pass off surplus and used military gear to local police departments who will be more than happy to deploy anti-personel armor and weapons for no-knock drug raids only to find a small amount of marijuana residue and a violently dangerous dog who was shot running away from the officers assaulting the home.
17. Police officers will continue to be held to some other standard rather than the law. The “Blue exception” to the law will prevail more often than not.
18. Paul Krugman will continue to write political pieces while completely ignoring the laws and rules of the very academic science he is known for: economics. He will violate at least 3 different economic laws or make at least 3 arguments that violate economic fallacies. To go one step further but not included in this prediction – I’ll guess he’ll violate the such staid axioms of economics like the “Broken window fallacy”, “The law of supply and demand”, and, oh, let’s say a contradiction of “opportunity costs”. The media will be quick to point out that he is a Nobel Laureate without paying attention to the fact that whatever he is commenting on directly violates one of many rules of the science of economics for which he won the Nobel.
19. A new drinking game will evolve from Obama speeches in which the rules dicate you must drink once every time Obama says “hope”; two drinks when he says “change”;  drink whole beer every time he attempts to relate to some historical situation as if today is as hard (or harder) than the past.
20. And one for the technology crew: Some new-fangled Internet service will take 10% of the population by storm. This service can do one stupid thing pretty damned well. Someone or some company will buy this other company only to realize that they have no way to monetize the damned thing and have a giant, gaping whole in their books where something like revenue or profit should be.

Now if you made it this far, you’ll realize that I think I can have most of these crossed off as accomplished in about a month or so. My larger point is that if you expect there to be some great change afoot, you’re probably more wrong than I am.

One of my favorite anecdotes that exemplifies unintended consequences is one call “Bootleggers and Baptists”. Wikipedia has a decent explanation.

If you want to skip the link and get the summary it goes something like this:

It isn’t often that you find bootleggers and baptists on the same side of the fence. Consider moral laws that prevent merchants from selling booze on Sunday. Now a baptist would wish alcohol not be sold at all, and especially on the day God rests. Afterall, would you really want drunks out on the road while all of the fine church-going folk are spending time with their families?

The problem that most people miss is that the bootleggers are more than happy to sell alcohol when the churchgoers are busy praying and singing. They could charge a markup specifically because the law does not permit alcohol sales on Sundays.

If you’re not too slow, you might see the bit of the paradox arising. If someone were to challenge the law because it is absurd on its face, you end up with the bootleggers and the baptists on the same side of the voting booth. Bootleggers would end up with very little money and the baptists would lose out on forcing their moral superiority on anyone who doesn’t agree.

A bootlegger therefore has to do very little if the baptists pursue keeping alcohol sales illegal on Sunday. In fact, they will throw as much support behind the baptists as possible if they were smart.

Whodathunkit.

Mathew Yglesias replies to a recent Cato unbound topic here.  While I can humbly accept many of Mathew’s points, the one part I am generally confused by is this:

The libertarian utopia is no more realistic than the socialist utopia of a perfectly informed and perfectly benevolent central planner.

I’ve heard this argument before. Typically it will launch into a degrading debate on “it’s never been tried before” by libertarians who will then put themselves into the position of supporting a fallacy that is far too common at the Internet-level of discussion.

The argument I raise is that where we have some factual examples of socialism at work throughout history. We know through historical study and the realistic outcomes of socialist (and communist) utopianism that it falls far from its promises. The reality of socialism requires compulsion, if not force, to ensure the ideal can meet fruition. By some course of action, you must dehumanize man to compel him to betray his own natural ways.

Libertarianism is far different. I must acknowledge that I’m painting with broad strokes, so my argument is may not fit everyone’s bucket. Matt illustrates one area where progressives fail to understand libertarians. Libertarian utopianism is not modeled on a perfected society – nor does it fit the conventional assumptions made of the ‘utopian’ definition.While there is an ideal libertarian state, it is far removed from the trappings of “perfection” or an “ideal society”. What a progressive labels as libertarian utopianism is nothing more than an assertion of the nature of man and the constraints of an individual within society. Libertarianism makes no claim on the form or motives of any given society. Rather, libertarianism deals specifically with the individual actor in the socio-political economy.

I fail to see where Yglesias derives his concept that libertarian utopianism is “no more realistic” than a socialist one. My question to Mathew would be: why? Given, progressives have, for the most part of a century, ruled the American political roost while wearing the stripes of both political parties. For all the evidence we have, given America’s hell-bent adherence to a mixed economy, we can say that progressivism has failed to achieve its own unrealistic utopianism of a well-managed government with a highly regulated and efficient business environment. Why? Because progressivism ignores many basic facts. You have to be willing to suspend belief in unintended consequences, ignore the reality of scarcity, and be willing to negate individual liberty if it suits the needs of the majority. If anything, progressive policies attempting to deliver on progressive utopianism have failed on a greater order of magnitude. Yet few progressives are willing to admit this, if even to themselves.

When Congress was granted certain powers to regulate trade those powers created the incentivization system. As politicians worked the system, it brought new mouths to the trough – both consumers and businesses alike. Every subsequent regulation that occurred was nothing more than dealing with the unintended consequences of its own predecessor. If the regulation did not have a predecessor, child regulation would evolve to counteract the unintended consequences of the parent.

Progressivism has never and will never deal with the reality of the position they advocate. They can hurl insults against the wealthy and businesses but they still can not come up with a plausible and sensible argument supporting wealth redistribution or provide any means of thanks for all of the loot plundered. Progressives never quite stop to ask whether forcing someone to give up what they rightfully own is truly right or virtuous. Instead, the argument is largley nothing more than “deal with it.”

Progressives and libertarians are often at odds simply because progressives have been winning the debate in which they, not libertarians, frame the statements to be argued. Again, to be progressive, you need to ingore certain facets of reality. When progressives attack big business, libertarians often come to the defense largely because progressivism attacks the defensible parts of business. Libertarains know and distrust businesses seeking enrichment at the public trough. But the argument is never quite framed this way.

No one questions progressives on who supports the public trough or why they believe it can be effectively managed or remedied when the same entities running government are the same entities running corporations: humans. Progressives and the ever-optomystics (sic) relentlessly badger and harp on just how horrible corporations are. Most libertarians would not disagree. A business is only as “good” or “evil” as its employees make it. Except the libertarian solution isn’t quite good enough. Where libertarians would dis-incentivize the political world by removing regulation and the ability of government to create new incentives that breed rent-seeking. Progressives would rather perpetuate this system with a few tweaks to the rules of engagement.

Progressivism clings to this notion that human idealism established and pursued through government is somehow more noble and less afflicted by the reality of self-interest. All this comes on the back of a promise that you can and will have your cake and eat it too.

Admittedly, the libertarian philosophy can be tough on the outside. Progressives have pursued a policy of education without question – take everything at face value and thrive on emotion over appying reason; libertarianism pursues education through individual pursuit and reason applied prior to emotion.

Libertarians often apply boiler-plate arguments, not because they are unreasoned, but because they are reasoned (to some degree) as truths. Progressivism holds that there can be no truths, only variations oof truths that can be adapted to fit the situation. And in this sense, Progressivism does win many arguments. Progressivism panders to idealism. Libertarianism panders to reason.

Idealism itself isn’t bad. However when you apply progressive thought on the subject, you often find progressivism, not libertarianism, is unbounded by reality. The failures of progressivism are not those of libertarianism although many progressives would ask you to believe otherwise.

I’m reminded of that scene in “Little Miss Sunshine” where the family is on the road to the pagent and Duane and the little girl are doing eye tests.  It ends up being that Duane is color blind. All Duane wants to do is fly fighter jets in the military. Duane’s uncle turns around and tells Duane that he won’t be able to fly jets.

Libertarians tend to point out the reality of the situation. Progressives would continue to push the fantasy forward no matter how improbable the goal. The exception is that living in the fantasy is fun for a long time – until reality sets in and takes its course.

But hey, that’s just my unqualified opinion.

Wonder why libertarians are so against taxation? Read how one family may lose their house over a $1.69 tax bill that never reached them. Yes, government will try to seize your property, regardless of the amount of money you owe.