Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism
2014-06-08 · Guest: Matt Zwolinski (Professor of Philosophy, USD) · 82:38
Bleeding Heart Libertarianism and Poverty Alleviation
Bob Zadek interviews Professor Matt Zwolinski on “Bleeding Heart Libertarianism,” exploring how libertarian principles can address poverty without the damaging effects of traditional government welfare. They discuss the philosophical justifications for a basic income guarantee, the distinction between poverty and inequality, and the coercive nature of both state and private power. The episode also touches on executive overreach regarding the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange and the economic impact of EPA coal regulations on the poor.
Topics: Bleeding Heart Libertarianism, Poverty, Inequality, Guaranteed Annual Income, Negative Income Tax, Property Rights, Minimum Wage, Executive Power, EPA Regulations, Rule of Law
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek – Host
- Matt Zwolinski – Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego
- Dino – Caller from San Francisco State University (Young Americans for Liberty)
- Barack Obama – (In recorded clip)
- Matt Welch – (In recorded clip)
- Rand Paul – (In recorded clip)
- Joe Manchin – (In recorded clip)
Introduction to Bleeding Heart Libertarianism [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at 9:00 AM. We are the only, the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. Thanks so much for listening. 800-345-5639. By now, I’m sure you have that number programmed in speed dial. That’s the way to join the conversation. We are the show of ideas, not attitude, looking at the world from a libertarian perspective. Thanks so much for joining me.
You may not have ever heard the phrase “bleeding heart libertarian.” It almost sounds as if it is internally inconsistent, a contradiction within the three words. Bleeding heart libertarian. Bleeding Heart Libertarian is a website, bleedingheartlibertarians.com, which was started by and co-blogged by Professor Matt Zwolinski. Professor Zwolinski is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, has a libertarian perspective on the world. He teaches, as I said, at the University of San Diego.
And he has—I met Professor Zwolinski when I attended a Mercatus weekend a few months ago and sat there in the back of the room rethinking a lot of the core beliefs that I carried with me. It was provocative, interesting, a refreshing and intellectually intriguing point of view. I was determined from that weekend, the Mercatus weekend, to find time to have Matt join me. And this is that moment. I’ve been waiting for this for months. Professor Zwolinski has written quite a bit about poverty in America from a libertarian perspective.
Libertarians in the extreme, if they are reviewed from the standpoint of perhaps Ayn Rand and other libertarians, are looked upon as being somewhat materialistic, selfish, I dare say. Ayn Rand, of course, has a point of view that invites those labels. But libertarianism is not at all—that’s a false label. It doesn’t apply at all, as you will see as Professor Zwolinski and I have this conversation this morning about welfare and poverty in America. What would be a libertarian point of view? What is a libertarian point of view? How would poverty be dealt with while being true to libertarian values? Matt, thank you for joining me on this Sunday morning.
Matt Zwolinski: Bob, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Bob Zadek: Appreciate it. Now, Matt, you have written quite a bit and thought extensively about the issue of poverty in America. And of course, a somewhat simplistic libertarian approach would be that the role of government—which, of course, is what we are talking about—the role of government in dealing with poverty, a perhaps somewhat simplistic libertarian approach would be: government should get out of the way, provide maximum economic freedom, not impose impediments to anybody being able to improve their lot, and then have the citizens have at it, do the best they can and achieve all they can, and individuals acting individually will help those who lack the resources or not, as they see fit. Is that consistent with your worldview, or does government have a somewhat more active role to play?
Matt Zwolinski: Well, I think there might be a somewhat more active role for government to play, but I don’t think that that should be the start of the conversation about government and poverty. I think we can talk about social safety nets—I think we should at some point in this conversation talk about social safety nets.
Bob Zadek: Oh, for sure we will.
Matt Zwolinski: But, right, I think it’s a mistake to make that the primary focus of a conversation about poverty, as though that was the most important thing to settle on. If what we actually care about is results, if what we actually care about is getting poor people out of poverty—if that’s what we care about, then I think the conversation has to start somewhere else. And I think where it starts is with what you just said, namely getting the government out of the way.
Government’s Role in Poverty [04:48]
Bob Zadek: So we certainly agree on that, that government sometimes simply because it’s an intended result, sometimes because government has very often ineffective programs, they might have—or the government, and it’s hard to say “they” when you’re talking about a government, it’s too complex—but government programs often have a stated goal to alleviate poverty, but they simply are ineffective and do a bad job at it. And sometimes the goal is other—there are other goals, and it hurts as collateral damage poor people more than others. Examples would be, for example, a small example would be price supports on milk, where government, in an attempt to help milk farmers and the dairy industry, will artificially support and keep the price of milk up, which problem falls upon poor people more than others. That’s a small example. So government sometimes actually hurts poor people in their policies, and other times they simply are ineffective, like welfare before welfare reform, in helping poor people even though that’s the goal.
Matt Zwolinski: That’s absolutely right. And if you look at what libertarians have talked about—I’m writing a book right now on the history of libertarian thought, so my thoughts are often deep in the 19th century.
Bob Zadek: That’s going to be a thick book.
Matt Zwolinski: Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s more than you might think. And a lot of really interesting thinkers in the 19th century who were libertarians, or at least kind of early proto-libertarians.
Historical Libertarian Views on the Poor [06:59]
Matt Zwolinski: And they wrote a lot about the poor and what government was doing to create poverty and keep poor people poor and keep them from escaping poverty. And even back then, they saw a lot of the same things that we see today, namely that government policies were largely responsible for the continued existence of poverty in a sort of—amidst this sea of economic growth and prosperity.
Right, so today we can point to things like agricultural price supports, like rent control, like occupational licensing laws. Back in the 19th century, a lot of the focus was on the banking industry and government restrictions on the extension of credit to the poor, government restrictions on interest rates. Right, so you couldn’t charge more than a certain amount of interest for a loan, which meant that poor people who didn’t have capital and collateral to use as collateral often were just blocked out of the credit market, which means they were trapped, in a sense, in a place where all they could do to support themselves was to sell their labor to some greedy capitalist.
So this very phenomenon that people like Karl Marx were looking at from the left, people like Lysander Spooner—
Bob Zadek: I knew you were going to mention him. I’ve just discovered Lysander Spooner, and is it intensely pleasurable to read his writings.
Matt Zwolinski: He’s a wonderful, wonderful thinker and just really a joy to read. And it’s just fascinating how many of the same issues that we see today—you know, that people like Ron Paul identify with the Federal Reserve—he was identifying more than 150 years ago in a different context. But yeah, a lot of the problems—and you say it’s, I mean, it is true that a lot of the time it’s unintentional, it’s just that the government just isn’t very good at helping the poor, but it’s trying to do so. Surprisingly, some of the time it’s not unintentional.
Minimum Wage and Intentional Harm [09:15]
Matt Zwolinski: Some of the time it seems to be a deliberate result of government policy. I don’t go in for conspiracy theories generally speaking, but some of this stuff is just absolutely shocking. If you look at the history of, for instance, minimum wage programs. Right, today people on the right and libertarians argue against minimum wages by pointing out that if you keep the price of labor artificially high, you’re going to create unemployment, right? And you’re going to hurt the very people that you’re trying to help. And we use this as an argument against the minimum wage.
But if you look at what people in the early part of the 20th century, progressives and socialists like Sidney Webb, were saying in support of the minimum wage, one of their main arguments in support of the minimum wage was that it was going to create unemployment! Was that it was going to keep women and immigrants and people that we didn’t really want to succeed in the United States from being able to find a job. That was a feature, not a bug.
Bob Zadek: It was also a feature to keep minorities, mostly migrating blacks from the South to the Northeast, to make sure they didn’t, quote, “unfairly compete” by agreeing to work for less money than the white construction union members and force wages down. So that was a state—in fact, there was an exchange on the Senate floor between then-Senator Kennedy and Jacob Javits, a progressive Republican, a very, very liberal Republican senator from New York, where they both agreed—they were debating with the head of the NAACP—and they agreed that they had to raise the minimum wage. This was then-Senator Kennedy and Jacob Javits. They had to raise the minimum wage to keep blacks from unfairly competing. This was in 1947 or 1948 on the floor of the Senate. Or in fact, ‘50.
Matt Zwolinski: That’s absolutely amazing.
Bob Zadek: So you’re exactly right. Now, when you talk about the role of government, the hard issue for me, and where we, for the minute until you talk me out of my position—but for the minute, the starting point is: here’s where I disagree on the role of government. And we’ll get into important issues that you’ve written about: the guaranteed annual income, negative income tax, and those income support mechanisms.
But the hard issue for me is, in a conversation about what government should do, what I invite my listeners to do is to erase the word “government,” which is a euphemism, and put in the words—pick your word—“force” or “compulsion.” Government is not this benign theory. When we talk about government doing something, government is not doing something; it is forcing me to do something. And so in this conversation, as you explain what government could do or should do, it’s really forcing me, perhaps unwillingly, to participate in somebody else’s plan. And that’s where I am available to be talked out of my position, but that’s the bias that I start with.
And before you respond, Matt, this is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Professor Matt Zwolinski. We are talking about a libertarian view of poverty in America. What should or should not government do? 800-345-5639 is the way to join the conversation.
Defining Poverty vs. Inequality [14:40]
Bob Zadek: Matt, the role of government in alleviating poverty. Why—first of all, there will always be poverty. And maybe we should define terms. There will always be a lowest 10% or 20% or whatever. So poverty has to be defined in absolute terms, not in relative terms. First thought. And second of all, why is there any need to do anything? Why do we even care about poverty? There will always be a lowest 20%. So let it be; it’s natural. It’s like there will always be the shortest 20% or the least intelligent 20%. Why do we care?
Matt Zwolinski: Good, good. So I think the first thing that you said there is crucially important. And the way I would put the point is that we need to distinguish between poverty on the one hand and inequality on the other hand.
Bob Zadek: Great place to start. That’s a great place to start.
Matt Zwolinski: Right. There was always going to be inequality. There are always going to be some people who have more than other people. Whether there is always going to be poverty, on the other hand, is a separate question, it seems to me, at least if we define poverty in more absolute terms. Right, so if we define poverty in terms of the ability to provide for one’s basic needs, right, in order to obtain enough nutrition to keep oneself alive, in order to obtain shelter—how exactly you flesh out that idea is a little bit tricky. But I think we can find some more objective way of defining poverty that doesn’t simply have to do with whether you have less than somebody else. And I think philosophically, there’s much more reason to be concerned with poverty than there is with inequality.
Bob Zadek: So that’s a very important starting point, Matt, and I’m glad you expressed it just that way. Is that to the extent that we deal with inequality, we deal with envy, jealousy, class warfare, and that approach is just—it’s the wrong place to start. So poverty we are talking about: an objective level of existence, that there are certain minimum needs that must be met if you subscribe to this point of view, and society should make sure that all of its participants have this minimum. Of course, now we get to the minimum: does it include a car, a TV set, a cell phone, and all that stuff? And that’s like a fascinating conversation with widely divergent views. But you have to—if you can’t start there, you can’t have the conversation.
Matt Zwolinski: That’s right. That’s right. Right. So I think there’s very little reason to take seriously the idea that one person has a claim on another person simply by virtue of the fact that that other person has more stuff than you, that they have a bigger house or a faster car than you. You—that doesn’t give you any kind of moral claim to take their stuff by force or to have some other entity like the government take their stuff by force for you.
But poverty, I think, is somewhat more serious as a philosophical matter, and it raises some different questions. And even some questions I think that libertarians or people with libertarian sympathies should take seriously. Right. So for instance, let me just say a little bit about that before we go on.
Autonomy and Private Coercion [18:34]
Matt Zwolinski: So one of the things that I think drives libertarians is a concern to see people freed from being bossed around by others. Right. One of the reasons we don’t like big government, one of the reasons we didn’t like the feudalist system, for instance, is because people weren’t in control of their own lives. Somebody else had this kind of despotic power over you to tell you what to do and where to go and when to do it. Right. And libertarians don’t like that. Libertarians like a world in which individuals are free to control their own destiny. And we think that a system of free markets, of private property rights, of freedom of contract, generally speaking, lend themselves to that kind of individual autonomy.
And in large part they do. Most of the gains in individual autonomy that we’ve had over the past 100 years, I think, have been due to those very institutions. But sometimes people fall through the cracks. Right. Sometimes people are still in a position where they are bossed around by others because, for instance, the market that they work in isn’t very competitive. Right. There’s a down economy, they live in a small town, there aren’t a large number of employers, and so they’re put in a position where they have to work for some employer or else they’re simply not going to be able to feed their family. And that means that that employer can tell them exactly what to do, how many bathroom breaks they can take an hour, who they can vote for in some cases, or else they’re fired, and that means you can’t provide for your family’s needs. And I think that that’s something that should be of concern to libertarians. And we should feel some pull, I think, to provide a kind of support mechanism so that individuals don’t find themselves in that kind of vulnerable position where they can be put under the despotic power of any other individual or group of individuals like a corporation.
Bob Zadek: That, of course, speaks to the issue of concentration of power, is that libertarians as a group abhor and fear any concentration of power, whether it is in the executive branch in Washington, whether it is through unfair business practices in a commercial setting. And you just give—you give one important example of simply a concentration of power that by whatever, whether by design or by accident, the business in your hypothetical ends up with disproportionate—that is, more than we believe is appropriate—disproportionate amount of power over a certain class of, a certain group of individuals. So it’s the power component in your hypothetical that really scares the heck out of us.
Matt Zwolinski: That’s right. That’s right. It’s that power component that gives rise to the potential for what I think we could describe fairly as a kind of coercion. When libertarians talk about coercion, we usually talk about the state, and we usually talk about people pointing guns at other people’s heads. And I think that’s right; that’s the paradigmatic case of coercion. And you, Bob, are right when you remind us that when we talk about government doing something or other, what we’re really talking about there is using coercion, using violence, using force to get people to do what we think they ought to do. And that should be really troubling to us, I think.
Bob Zadek: The one—just an observation, Matt, just a quick observation. The only distinguishing factor that distinguishes government from any other social institution is that government is the only institution that is permitted to use force. Therefore, when we talk about government doing something, it means it is the only organization that we concede, that we allow, can point a gun at us, deprive us of our liberty, lest we behave in a certain way. That’s what makes government special. So whenever we talk about government, we are talking about force and, as Matt said, coercion. Sorry, Matt, go ahead.
Matt Zwolinski: No, that’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. And I think that’s an absolutely important, a vital fact, in fact, to remember when we’re thinking about government. I might hesitate, though, to agree that government is the only institution authorized to use force. Right.
Market Competition as a Check on Private Coercion [23:00]
Matt Zwolinski: So I think one of the mistakes that libertarians sometimes make is that in thinking that if we’re worried about preventing coercion or if we’re worried about preventing force—and maybe those two words mean slightly different things—then all we have to worry about is government coercion and force. I think we do have to worry about that, but there is such a thing as private coercion and force, too. And that is something that libertarians should find equally troubling.
And this kind of—that sounds like an un-libertarian thing to say, I suppose, right? The idea that there can be such a thing as corporations coercing their employees. But you find that kind of analysis in standard libertarians going back to Lysander Spooner or going up to the 20th century in people like Friedrich Hayek. Usually market competition, I think, prevents corporations from exerting this kind of undue power, undue coercive power.
Bob Zadek: At least in the long run. They might be able to do it in the short run, but not in the long run.
Matt Zwolinski: Well, exactly, right. In the long run, in usual circumstances, corporations can’t exert too much power over their employees or their customers because if they try to, some other company’s going to sweep in, right, and offer them a better deal. But there are, again, these cracks, right? There are people and places where cracks emerge, either because there’s a downturn in the economy or some firm acquires temporary monopoly power, usually because government’s given it to them, but sometimes on their own. And in those cases, I think libertarians need to worry about coercive power being wielded by private firms, not just by the government.
Bob Zadek: Matt, we’re going to have to go to break for 60 seconds. This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Professor Matt Zwolinski. We are talking about a libertarian view of poverty. When we come back, we will discuss the guaranteed annual income, negative income tax. Should—is everybody entitled to a check from the government simply because they have a pulse? 800-345-5639 to join the conversation. Back in 60 short seconds.
The Case for a Guaranteed Annual Income [26:28]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show every Sunday at 9:00 AM. The only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. The show of ideas, not attitude, as we so proudly announce. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. 800-345-5639 to join my conversation with Professor Matt Zwolinski from the University of San Diego. We are talking about a libertarian view of poverty. What would—what should a libertarian approach to poverty in America, if it exists, what should that approach be? Do we even care?
Now, Matt, you have written a lot about the varying—their variations on a theme: guaranteed annual income, negative income tax. The general approach is, or the question is, should society—is it philosophically appropriate as a libertarian to propose that every citizen or every—whether it’s citizen or resident, we can skip that issue—but is everyone—should everyone be given a guaranteed annual income or negative income tax? They are variations on a theme with somewhat different implications. Should they be given a check, just a check, and let’s say in lieu of, not in addition to, all the other poverty support programs such as rent control and such as housing allowances and things of that nature? Should they be given a check simply because they are on the planet or in the country? Is that sound policy both philosophically and economically?
Matt Zwolinski: Right. I think that’s a great question, and it’s one I’m still toying around with in my own mind. But I think there’s a much stronger case to be made for the policy than most people think, and than most libertarians in particular think.
Bob Zadek: Make the best case. Make the best case.
Matt Zwolinski: Okay. Well, here’s the strongest case for it, right? The strongest case is it’d be a lot better than what we have right now. Okay. So right now, we have over 100 different welfare programs—where by welfare, I mean programs that transfer either cash or services from one group of people to another group of people. And those welfare programs—every one of those over 100 welfare programs comes with its own bureaucracy, its own bureaucracy trying to expand and grow that program every year, regardless of whether it’s in the best interest of the people it’s trying to help. And those programs spend a tremendous amount of money, over a trillion dollars a year, over $20,000 per person who is helped by these programs.
So step one is, I say, scrap those programs. And instead of spending $20,000 on a bureaucracy and some of that money maybe on some poor people every once in a while almost by accident, let’s instead just write people a check. Right? Cut the number in half. Cut that $20,000 in half, write everybody a check for $10,000, and let them do with it what they want. I think that’s a libertarian policy in a lot of ways. Maybe not a first-best libertarian policy, right? Maybe you’d like to get rid of the welfare state altogether. But there are a lot of things that are attractive about that policy from a libertarian perspective.
Right, so step one, you’re eliminating that bureaucracy.
Bob Zadek: And the cost. And the cost.
Matt Zwolinski: And the cost of it, right? And on the cost of that bureaucracy, you’re shrinking the power of government to intrude themselves in people’s lives. Right? The welfare state is an incredibly paternalistic and intrusive aspect of government, and I think that we as libertarians should cheer its demise on those grounds alone, quite apart from issues of cost.
And second of all, you’re giving people money that they can do what they want with. You’re not telling them how to live their lives. You’re not trying to guess what’s going to be best for them, whether it’s this or that kind of medical care, or spending it on rent or spending it on what kind of food products. They get to make their own decisions. And then if they make bad decisions, well, in a sense, too bad. Right? I mean, that sounds a little cold-hearted, but I mean, too bad in so far as the government is concerned. We’ve done our duty by you by giving you the opportunity to support yourself. If you squander that opportunity, then we do not owe you anything further as a matter of justice. We might, as a matter of charity, still want to help you as a voluntary kind of system of aid and beneficence, but we don’t owe you anything further once we’ve established that basic opportunity to support yourself in society. And so I think you can make on libertarian grounds a pretty good case for this policy, certainly as being better than what we’ve got, even if it’s not the ideal system from a libertarian.
Property Rights and the Social Contract [33:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, here is my non-bleeding heart—my heart doesn’t bleed—non-bleeding heart libertarian response. You really are offering two proposals at the same time. Proposal number one is get rid of what we have. And I say, “Right on.” Proposal number two—that’s the easy part—proposal number two is give poor people money. Now, what is, as to the second part, just the second part, what is the moral—if I can use that word—the moral, the philosophically sound justification for the second part, remembering it is coerced? It is coerced charity. I am being forced, coerced, point of a gun, to give my money to somebody else simply because they don’t have enough. Speak to that second issue on philosophical or moral grounds.
Matt Zwolinski: Good. That’s the hard question, and let me do my best at answering it in a relatively concise way. I think the best case to be made for that kind of argument is this, right? We have an obligation—and I know libertarians don’t like to talk about “we” very much, but—
Bob Zadek: Or, by the way, or “obligation.” There’s not a “we” nor an “obligation,” but go ahead.
Matt Zwolinski: I think we as a society have an obligation to ensure that each individual in society has a fair chance to succeed, at least in terms of being able to meet their basic needs. Right? Why do we have that kind of obligation? Because we as a society impose coercively a set of institutions on everybody who lives in society. Right? And we have an obligation to ensure that these institutions that we impose upon people coercively do not so disadvantage those people that they are unable to carve out a decent life for themselves.
Right? So this is the part of the argument that I think might be appealing to libertarians if they think about it, right? But it’s—I think it’s not a way that libertarians are used to thinking about these sorts of systems. If you think about what property rights are, right, property rights are a kind of coercively imposed system. They are—you know, when you carve out a fence, right, around a piece of land and you say, “This is mine and nobody else gets to trod upon it without my consent,” you are imposing a kind of coercive institution upon other people and saying, “If you try to cross this line that I’ve just drawn in the sand, I’m going to use a gun to stop you, or I’m going to get the agent of the government over here to use a gun on my behalf.”
Now, I think property rights are coercive, and in that sense, the Marxists and the socialists were right. These property rights are a kind of coercion. I think it’s a justifiable kind of coercion. I think property rights are great. I think the benefits that we get from property rights are tremendous. But they do have this element of coercion to them. And like any kind of coercion, we’ve got to justify that. Right? We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got good reasons that we can offer to each and every individual who is subject to that coercion for why they should accept it.
And the standard reason is, well, it’s good for you, right? I mean, it’s in the long run—this is the reason that you get in Locke, right? When you go back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government and you ask why it is that property rights are justified. And the short version of the answer is because it’s good for everybody in the long run. Right? The world is going to be a much more productive place if we allow the planet to be divided up into these private parcels. And I think generally speaking, again, that’s right. But there are people who are going to slip through the cracks. There are going to be cases where it’s not good for somebody. And I think something like a basic income or some kind of social safety net can ensure that the system as a whole works to everybody’s benefit.
Bob Zadek: Why don’t you trust individuals acting individually to, through charity—a word that somewhere along the way has gotten a negative connotation? I think it’s amazing that it’s a negative word, because it is one of the highest activities one can engage in, both as a recipient and as the giver in charity. But it’s become somewhat pejorative. Why don’t you trust individuals acting individually through charity to provide that safety net at the level they are comfortable, rather than have a governmentally set safety net where your standard, which may be more generous than mine, is imposed upon me?
Matt Zwolinski: Right. Right. Good. So let me just step back a second to put this in context. So we’re talking here about an institution of last resort, what I think should be an institution of last resort. This social safety net that I think can be justified on libertarian terms is this last bulwark to ensure that nobody slips through the cracks, that nobody is so disadvantaged by the institutions of society that they can’t carve out a decent life for themselves.
But we shouldn’t, again, like I said at the beginning of the conversation, I don’t want to make that the primary focus of the “what should we do about poverty” question. Right? I think redistribution, social safety nets, and voluntary charity even, that’s all stuff that is important. We should think about it, we should talk about it, we should do something about it at the end of the day. But if you really care about poverty, right, no amount of redistribution, no amount of carving up the pie differently is going to bring about the result that you want, right, if what you want is to get people, get everybody out of poverty. The only way you’re going to get that is the way we’ve actually done it, right, in the last 300 years, which is incredible and sustained economic growth buttressed by the institutions of a free society.
Bob Zadek: When you put it in terms of the last resort, not the substitute for charity, but the very last resort, the bottom—the thing that’s between somebody who can’t sustain themselves and—I don’t want to be dramatic, but—death. Something as a last resort. Thank God it’s there. Then, as so long as it doesn’t become too high—whatever that even means, but that’s for the political process—I’m comfortable with it because it’s low enough not to be damaging to any principle. It provides for a degree of flexibility. It concedes something, and therefore I can sign on to that.
Unless it becomes—and the danger, of course, as we both know is, it becomes the starting point. And then they start to add on all the other programs that we have carefully gotten away—gotten rid of. They start to come back because these people are getting the $20,000 a year, but it’s not enough for their healthcare, so then we throw at a healthcare component and a rent subsidy component, and we’re back now with welfare system plus. And that’s the political danger.
Matt Zwolinski: Yeah, that is a tremendous problem. It’s a very worrisome problem. Politically, the only way I see something like this working out—and I recognize right up front it’s a real long shot, right—I think the only way to really get it hammered in solidly is through a constitutional amendment where we say, “Look, here’s the deal: we’re giving up the welfare state as we know it, we’re replacing it with a check, with a negative income tax, a basic income, and that’s it. Right? If you want to add something on, you’re going to have to go and amend the Constitution to do that.” Right? But you’re setting the rules of the game in such a way that you’re limiting the natural tendency of the political process to just expand and expand and carve out exemptions here and additions there. Because if you don’t do that at the constitutional level, I think what you predict is exactly what’s going to happen. And it’s what happened with Milton Friedman’s proposal for the negative income tax, right? He had a great idea that he proposed in Capitalism and Freedom for addressing poverty in a way that’s similar to what I propose. But as it worked its way through the political process, it became so bastardized and so tacked on with amendments and exemptions and this and that, that by the end of the day, he didn’t even recognize it and wasn’t willing to endorse it.
Bob Zadek: Matt, you had mentioned that you had other engagements that you had to sign off before the end of the hour. Are you going to be with us for another 10 minutes, or are you getting close to signing off?
Matt Zwolinski: I’m afraid I’m going to have to go in a couple minutes here, as much as I’m enjoying this conversation. This has been a lot of fun.
Bob Zadek: And I am too. So Matt, what I’ll do is we’ll just—I have a caller waiting. We’ll just, you and I will finish up, and then we’ll say goodbye for the moment, and then I’ll take the callers who are waiting. Now, Matt, one other comment by which I could live with a guaranteed annual income or negative income tax—and I’ll explain that after you leave, the difference between the two—is that obviously I have a stake in avoiding civil unrest, in not having protests in the street. And therefore, to the extent that not providing any safety net, whether it’s the existing patchwork of inefficient welfare programs or a guaranteed check, to the extent that removing both would cause civil unrest—something called a public good, we want civil quiet—to that extent, it’s like, in a way—I don’t mean to be crass and cold-hearted—but it’s like building a road. It is for the good of society that we keep everybody non-agitated and not angry. So to that extent, it can be clearly justified. Now, it sounds coercive, almost extortionist, but that may be a reality.
Matt Zwolinski: Yeah, that’s a reality that I think libertarians tend not to take into sufficient account. And another kind of similar reality, I think, is that, look, you know, we libertarians have a certain vision about what the best ideal society would look like. But most people aren’t libertarians, right? As you and I well know.
Bob Zadek: They are; they just don’t know it. They are; they simply don’t know it.
Matt Zwolinski: Well, you’ve got more optimism in humanity than I, perhaps, then. But we have to live with these people, right? We have to live in society with these people who have often radically different views of what a just political order would look like. And we can say, we can sort of stomp our feet and say, “Well, we’re right and they’re wrong and they just have to deal with it.” But in the long run, that’s probably not a very likely proposal for generating a stable social order. Right? So libertarians, I think, have to take seriously the reality of political compromise in a way that most of us are quite, I think, reluctant to do. We like to build our castles in the sky. It’s a lot of—and I’m a philosopher, so I’m more guilty of this than probably anybody else—but it’s a lot of fun. But when it comes to politics, we have to recognize the fact that there are other people in the world and they don’t always share our views.
Bob Zadek: Matt, I want to respect your time constraints. Thank you so much for being generous with your time. As I said, since we met in Mercatus, I’ve been dying to have you on the show. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
Matt Zwolinski: Oh, Bob, it’s been a delight. Thank you so much.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot, Matt.
Caller: Dino on the Fair Tax and Labor Reform [41:12]
Bob Zadek: And now, Dino, thank you very much for waiting for so long on the show. Sorry to keep you waiting. Good morning, and what’s on your mind?
Caller (Dino): Yeah, hey, good morning. I’m—I go to San Francisco State University, and me and a couple of other libertarians have started a club, Young Americans for Liberty at SFSU. And—
Bob Zadek: I love the group. I love YAL. I’m a big supporter of theirs. You’re doing great stuff.
Caller (Dino): Oh yeah, oh yeah. And you know, we’re hitting them hard. We just had a really good debate recently last—this last semester in April where we pretty much annihilated the Democrats. But anyways—
Bob Zadek: I hope you mean intellectually. I hope you mean intellectually, Dino.
Caller (Dino): Oh, intellectually, economically. I mean, we have some really good guys in our group. You know, we try to make sure we do our reading, you know, when it comes to the classics and then even more recent stuff. So what—I mean, I do understand the whole, you know, we should have our ideal society, and I do understand your guest’s point about having compromise and a policy where we could take further steps. One of the things that we—we were about to advocate for this next semester is a Fair Tax, national sales tax to, you know, take away all the other tax codes and mixed with the guaranteed income. Not necessarily the negative tax, but a guaranteed income like, you know, you said you’re going to make the distinction. And we’re going to advocate that, but also with the guaranteed income, what we want to advocate is more—like repealing more labor regulations. When you talk about minimum wage, when you talk about the power that unions have over collective bargaining rights—you know, if you have a guaranteed income, it does give a certain amount of leverage to the employee because they have an option to not work. So the employer would have to be forced to offer higher wages or, you know, better benefits, maybe get two-hour lunch break or something or get food on the job, you know, stuff to accommodate them to actually work for you. So it does shift leverage, but in order to give employers more flexibility, we’re more advocating for repealing a lot of labor regulations.
Bob Zadek: Including, including promoting right-to-work states, which of course remove the compulsion—the compulsion that if an employer has signed a contract with a union, you have to join the union. States that don’t require that are called right-to-work states. We did a show on that a number of years ago. Now, you mentioned the Fair Tax. Just for the benefit of folks out there who may not be familiar with the Fair Tax, a Fair Tax is, simply put, a type of national—it’s a flat tax on your income. It comes in various forms. Sometimes national sales tax, sometimes it is a flat tax, no deductions, no exemptions. You pay a tax—I’m sorry, go ahead, Dino.
Caller (Dino): Well, the one that we’re talking about is a national sales tax.
Bob Zadek: National sales tax, which is not the Fair Tax, quote, “F-A-I-R,” but rather it is a national sales tax. And the advantage—there are disadvantages and advantages of a national sales tax. The advantage is you don’t need the IRS. Sales taxes are collected by the seller with a somewhat minor bookkeeping task. They remit to the government, but then there’s no tax returns to be filed and therefore no economic decisions that individuals make because of the, quote, “tax benefit.” So it provides for the better allocation of taxes, of capital. The disadvantage, Dino, as you know, of course, with a national sales tax—although there’s a fix—is that it falls disproportionately on the poor because the poor pay—
Caller (Dino): Well, see, that’s why we advocate for the guaranteed income to offset that regressive nature of the sales tax. But also with the national sales tax, since it’s a tax on consumption, it’s less susceptible to the business cycle as far as fluctuations go. So you have a more stable form of revenue for the government and, you know, you don’t have to—if we have a downturn, revenue decreases. It gives more stability because it’s based on consumption.
Bob Zadek: And states like California, as we know, California, which is heavily dependent upon an income tax, has wild fluctuations in its revenue based upon capital gains, the health of the tech industry and other growth industries. So it enables states as well as the federal government to plan their expenditures because their level of income is more predictable. So Dino, thank you very much for your observation and for the good work being done by YAL. It’s a great organization, and thanks for listening to the show.
Caller (Dino): Thank you.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot.
Executive Overreach and Bowe Bergdahl [53:05]
Bob Zadek: Before we go to break, a few parting thoughts on my conversation with Professor Zwolinski. When we come back, we’re going to discuss implications of the Bowe Bergdahl controversy, a libertarian point of view that you haven’t heard in mainstream media. There’s a whole far more important story than whether or not he was a deserter. There’s a lot more significant implications to us as a country that is underreported by the media. I will cover that when we come back. Also, we must spend time when I come back talking about the new EPA coal regulations and its impact upon the poor. Will it increase poverty in America? 800-345-5639 to join the conversation. Calls are always welcome. I’ll be back very shortly with the third and final segment of my show. Please stay tuned.
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show every Sunday at 9:00 AM. The only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. The show of ideas, not attitude, as we so proudly announce. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. 800-345-5639 to join my conversation.
All over the media has been the controversy—dare I say growing controversy—involving Bowe Bergdahl. As of course you know, Bergdahl was allegedly captured—he was certainly held in captivity by forces unfriendly to the US in Afghanistan. He wandered off his post. He was—his freedom was obtained in exchange for the Obama administration releasing five allegedly high-level, high-ranking terrorists under somewhat murky—a murky situation where they were going to be placed under the informal control of the government of Qatar in the United Arab Emirates. They were supposed to stay there for a year. Qatar was going to sort of keep an eye on them, make sure they didn’t get back into the fray. That, of course, is all very murky, probably questionable, and we have to take that part of it, that part of what the Obama administration said, with a grain of salt. It does seem mighty strange to me, but put that aside. That’s for another day, perhaps.
More important to me as a libertarian, and as I mentioned in my last segment with Professor Zwolinski, is of very special concern to me as a libertarian is any movement which has the effect of concentrating power. Whether it’s power in an individual, in a company, in a union, in a governmental entity. Our founders lived in intense fear of any concentration of power because the temptation is simply too great for anyone holding that power to accumulate more and to abuse it. The whole system of checks and balances we learn about in public school, as we learn about the structure of our—any sound government, we learn about that checks and balances are simply checks on the accumulation of power. The whole system was built upon that system of making sure that we have three co-equal branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial, and each one of which acts as a check on the accumulation of power of the others. That was the hope and the design of our founders.
What does this have to do with Bowe Bergdahl? One of the—and for me, perhaps the most frightening parts—or attributes—of the Obama administration has been—and the Bush administration was to a fair degree guilty of this as well, but Obama is doing it on steroids—it’s the accumulation of power in the executive at the expense of the legislative and to some degree at the expense of the judicial. Now, it’s disturbing to me because obviously as the executive, which means one person, accumulates power at the expense of the other branches of government, we create—it starts to feel despotic. It starts to feel as if we are governed by a king. I don’t want to be dramatic about this and go back to King George in the American Revolution, but it has that feeling that we have one person making decisions unchecked by the other branches of government. And that is mighty scary stuff, at least it is to me.
Bergdahl Controversy: Ignoring the 30-Day Notice Law [58:00]
Bob Zadek: And the Bergdahl, the Bowe Bergdahl controversy is a very, very important and dare I say blatant example of that. One of the many aspects of the Bergdahl story was the fact that Congress enacted a statute, which the president signed, which required that any president who intended to release prisoners from Guantanamo had to give certain members of Congress 30 days’ advance notice. That was in the statute. There isn’t any wiggle room, there isn’t any exceptions to the rule. That is the law. That is the law. The Obama administration simply ignored that law. Did you hear what I said? They ignored it. They simply said, “We don’t choose to honor it.”
Now, there’s more to this story, but if I just stop there, that sentence should have had lots of exclamation points. No one, no person, regardless of their position in government, is above the law. We are, as we all know, a country of laws, not of men. No one is above the law. And Obama chose to ignore the law, which has created quite an outrage. And to me, as an example of the outrage, I’d like to play a clip. The clip you’re going to hear is from Matt Welch. Matt Welch works over at Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation, and he is one of the participants on a television show supported by Reason, with a lot of Reason personnel on the show, and it is called The Independents. It’s on Fox every weekday evening. Raymond, if we can play the soundbite of Matt Welch showing his almost uncontrolled rage at the Obama administration ignoring the law on Bergdahl.
Matt Welch Clip [61:30]
Matt Welch (recorded clip): This is our constitutional scholar who was elected to restore balance to the runaway executive branch of the United States government. That’s what it’s really come down to, period, full stop. I’m going to disregard the statutory authority that the executive branch has to inform Congress 30 days’ notice instead of like five hours before or after the fact, like, “Oh, sorry, we’re going to do this.” This shows how far the president has come unmoored and his supporters have come unmoored from the very basis of his presidency to begin with, which is to roll back the Bush-Cheney expansion of executive power. This is egregious. And the fact that everybody, including the president’s supporters like Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, say, “Yeah, it’s illegal, but…” The fact that people are shrugging at it shows what kind of poison partisan mindsets have.
Bob Zadek: Here we have a president who takes an oath to uphold the law, uphold the Constitution and the laws of our country, simply ignoring the laws. Now, his reason—it reeks of arrogance—his reason for ignoring the laws is he said there was a danger that if the word got out that Bergdahl would die. In other words, Obama says, “I cannot trust members of Congress to keep this secret.” Therefore, since members of Congress are far more irresponsible than the White House, I don’t dare trust them with this information.
Can you imagine a president saying to a co-equal branch of government, “You cannot be trusted to protect the life of an American soldier, therefore I am going to break the law and exclude you from the conversation”? That is so disingenuous. First of all, first of all, what is there about the staff of the White House who knew about this, where they are not going to spill the beans? What makes them per se more trustworthy than elected members of the Senate and the House? The staff of the White House who knew about this are not elected; they are picked by Obama through the exercise of his discretion, and the members of the White House are not confirmed by Congress. Members of the Senate and the House are selected by us, the voters. And Obama says as to those people selected by the voters, “I don’t trust them.” As to those people which I select, “I trust them,” and therefore they are in the loop, but not Congress. And for that lame, lame basis, that’s the justification, the president chose to exclude Congress from the conversation.
Now, of course, the president said I didn’t have time, things were in a hurry. Of course, that’s utter nonsense. That’s a lie, because the president knew this was going on back in December and in January. He had five months to bring Congress in the loop. So he had all the time in the world. So to me, the Bowe Bergdahl controversy is not about whether Bergdahl is a deserter—I just don’t care that much about that. I care about the core operation of our government and the accumulation of power in the executive to the expense of the legislative. It messes up the very delicate balance created by our founders.
Now, to some degree, to some degree, Congress is at fault. The recent history of Congress has been they have ceded power to the executive. In Dodd-Frank, in the Obamacare legislation, in these massive statutes, Congress has allowed the regulatory system, all run by the executive branch, to make all of the rules. So in a very strange way, Congress has been complicit in their own weakening of their power. They have ceded power to the executive. So to some degree, they are at fault. But this is not about who’s at fault. This is about me as a student of government finding myself very distressed at the impunity by which anyone, the president or anybody else, can simply say, “I choose, I choose not to obey this law.” Imagine anybody else in the country simply saying, “I choose not to obey a law.” The president has no greater right to do that than anyone else. And this ought to cause chills to run up and down the spine of every American when the president says, without fear of criticism or any other consequence, “I choose not to obey this law because that’s what I choose.”
Now, we went through, of course, a lot of this during the Obamacare controversy, when President Obama would extend deadlines and the like, saying he had the power to do so under the Obamacare legislation. I don’t know if that was true or not, but that certainly was another indication of the same symptom. And to me, I implore us, all of us listening, whenever anyone in the country can get away with the statement, “I choose not to obey the law,” my goodness, that ought to frighten us because of what it portends. And it’s not just Obama. The next president, who he or she may be, will inherit a straightened presidency, and they build upon that. And power keeps on drifting from the legislative and to some degree from the judicial to the president. And that is not how this country has been built. It is scary. President Obama must obey the laws.
EPA Coal Regulations and the Poor [70:23]
Bob Zadek: Also in the news this week has been the—and this has been a headline grabber—is what’s going on over at EPA. The EPA is using the Clean Air Act, a massive piece of federal legislation—another piece of legislation, by the way, I should mention, by which Congress has ceded enormous power to the executive, specifically to the Environmental Protection Agency. Enormous power to regulate every part of our life. You remember earlier today I was talking with Matt Zwolinski about how much us libertarians cherish the regrettably in many ways declining freedom that we have over our lives and over all aspects of our life.
Well, the EPA, using the Clean Air Act, has just promulgated massive regulations which will—it’s been called the “war on coal.” That is a bit of hyperbole used, I dare say, effectively by the coal mining and coal burning states in the country. The war on coal. The problem with coal—the alleged problem with coal—is that coal emits carbon. Carbon fouls the air. Carbon causes what used to be known as global warming. After a cold winter, global warming lost its appeal, and now it’s simply climate change. And as an aside, by the way, I wonder: those of you who oppose climate change, what’s the opposite of climate change? Climate never changes? So do we all want, like as that wonderful old movie, that surfer movie, The Endless Summer? Is that what we want, the endless summer or the endless winter or the endless fall? We’re going to always have climate change. That’s why they have climates, so they can change. Without climate change, there are no climates.
But those in the extreme left who live in fear of, quote, “climate change” are encouraged by the EPA, which has just promulgated—right now they are in draft form, they’ll be finalized next year—they promulgated very strict rules on controlling carbon emissions. Now, whatever you may feel about carbon emissions as an activity, keep in mind the following: that whatever we do as a country will have a de minimis effect, will have almost no effect on the planet. We are a relatively—in terms of planetary—we account for a small and declining portion of carbon emissions. So whatever we do as a country will have almost no effect on the planet. So this is all to some degree feel-good activities with no long-term planetary effect.
Now, yes, we’re doing our share. It’s imagine as if we didn’t have the Obama administration or Washington regulating the size of our showerheads, which of course they now do, or how much water our toilets can use in a standard flush. And if one or two or a hundred of us decided to have smaller showerheads to, quote, “save water,” close quote, whether or not that would have any effect. Of course it wouldn’t. We would feel good, we’re sort of doing our share, like driving a Prius. We’re doing our share and we feel good, and people like us more and they honk and wave to us if you live in Marin County because you’re driving a Prius and you’re helping the planet and—but it has no long-term effect.
Well, the same with what the EPA is doing. If we got rid of all the coal-burning plants in the country, the effect on climate change over a 20 or 30-year period would be to affect it by less than one-tenth of one degree of change. So therefore it’s insignificant, unless the rest of the world goes along with us. What we are doing is pointless. But it’s not without effect. The EPA plan will incrementally harm Americans. It will profoundly affect the poor negatively. Because most of the cost of these regulations will fall upon the people least able to afford it, which is the poor people, the people closest to the level of poverty. So this is a feel-good program which will adversely affect those people who can least afford it.
Now, the argument is growing against the Obama policies. We’re regrettably running out of time, but if we can play the opposition to the EPA plan. Raymond, play opposition one. This will be Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Rand Paul. Opposition one, Raymond.
Barack Obama (recorded clip): That’s why a year ago, I directed the Environmental Protection Agency to build on the efforts of many states, cities, and companies and come up with common-sense guidelines for reducing dangerous carbon pollution from our power plants. This week, we’re unveiling these proposed guidelines, which will cut down on the carbon pollution, smog, and soot that threaten the health of the most vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly.
Bob Zadek: That was President Obama supporting the plan. Now, Raymond, if we can play the opposition, opposition one.
Joe Manchin (recorded clip): Coal state lawmakers are now speaking out. They’re saying that President Obama has overstepped his authority by imposing strict new emission limits on power plants. Senator Rand Paul says that the Obama administration is caving, in his opinion, to extremists.
Rand Paul (recorded clip): I think what it shows is a lack of balance, and it shows that environmental extremists are really guiding the policy of this administration. It’s the same thing with the Keystone Pipeline, something that can create tens of thousands of jobs. He’s like, “No way,” because some far-out-left environmentalists oppose this. It’s the same way with this.
Bob Zadek: And Raymond, before we—the hardships on the elderly and the poor, it’s opposition two, please.
Joe Manchin (recorded clip): The reliability. You know, summer’s coming, it’s going to be quite hot in some areas. Are people going to be able to have the reliability of the system, basically the grid? When they flip their heat down or their cooling down, is it going to come on? Do you have the reliable power and dependable power that you’ve always depended upon? In the polar vortex we just had, with not—if we would not have had the reliability in the system, would people die? And mostly your frail, your elderly, and your youth, your young, and the poor. And those are the things we’re talking about, and not even taking in consideration whether you can afford it or not. The average utility bill across the country since 2005 has increased more than 30%, some states as high as 40%.
Bob Zadek: So the cost of this legislation, this complex legislation, is falling disproportionately on the poor. Now, there are so many things wrong with these EPA regulations. Number one, as I said earlier, it was the abdication of Congress, ceding too much power to the executive. And then the executive jumping all over this and proposing this feel-good legislation just so we could do something without any material effect upon the planet. It is so misguided. Hopefully, the next administration will be able to undo some of this.
James Madison and the Rule of Law [80:05]
Bob Zadek: The fault, of course, is complex legislation. James Madison spoke about the adverse effects of these complex and confusing bills that nobody can understand. I’d like to close my show today with some thoughts from James Madison. Raymond, James Madison on the rule of law.
James Madison (recorded clip): It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known and less fixed?
Bob Zadek: How can that be a rule which is little known and less fixed? How did he know? The wisdom of James Madison. This is Bob Zadek. Thank you for listening to my show today. I’ll be back next Sunday for another 90 minutes of libertarian thought and seeing the world from a libertarian perspective. I’ve enjoyed spending my time with you. I sure look forward to next Sunday. Thanks so much.