The Immortals Grow Jaded With Their Endless Lives
Time was, and not just in DC, a blog party was a breathlessly exciting thing about which attendees wrote lengthy after-action reports complete with copious pictures. Now? Where are the shmoes of yesteryear? Loose ends and stray impressions from last night follow.
Joyner’s great. I hope my esteem doesn’t cost him credibility in the circles in which he blogs, but it’s true: fun guy to talk to and, in a just world, he would be the Dean of the Conservative Blogosphere and not just a prominent member.
The people love John Holbo! And Belle Waring too. How fortunate that John and Belle Have a Blog. Truly, a mention of Crooked Timber brought spontaneous proclamations of Holbo-specific admiration. And the one person who referred to Holbo as “sort of the Steven Den Beste of the left” meant it in a good way. Somehow.
In conversation with Will Wilkinson, he said if he had public policy to do over again he’d replace social security with mandatory savings accounts. I said, somewhat jocularly, “but that would represent the initiation of force, Will!” He simply said, “I’m not an anarcho-capitalist.” But I was too jocular. I have no interest in challenging Will’s libertarian bona fides – I’m no anarcho-capitalist either. I am interested in what kind of libertarianism is okay with forced savings. It’s not minarchism, nor Constitutionalism. That doesn’t mean it’s not something. If a libertarianism accepts or advocates mandatory retirement savings, what else does it accept or advocate in the use of government power. More importantly, what does it forbid?
Gene Healy talked some about ultimate fighting, and then blogged on the topic this morning. More importantly, seeing him reminded me that I meant to link an earlier, lengthy essay-item on war and how a real culture of life would regard it. (”maybe it would help if you thought of civilian casualties as extremely late-term abortions via JDAM.”) Powerful stuff.
I got to talk to Kerry Howley about her time editing a newspaper in – gulp! Myanmar. Both bloggers from Fey Accompli were there, though I think I only talked to Joanna. I met Dawn of the liberal blog “Clarify,” but I can’t find her URL!
Justin Logan is a great blogger not just because he bought me a drink, but he did buy me a drink. Regardless, there is no sole-proprietor blog I like better.
That drink was club soda, so I really have no excuse for the concept that hit me toward the end of the evening, and haunts me still: Tom Palmer/Justin Raimondo slash fiction.
I am so sorry.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
April 9, 2005 @ 11:01 am
Will Wilkinson is a good writer. I’m sure that he can characterize his position for himself, but I’d characterize the “if he had public policy to do over again he’d replace social security with mandatory savings accounts” as some form of pragmatic libertarianism. After all, if the point is to make the system more libertarian than it is now, why stick to doctrinal rationales? If mandatory savings accounts would work better, involve more libertarianism (however defined), and fill the perceived need, then why not?
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The problem with this approach is that one can no longer really set up an implicit contrast by calling other philosophies “statist” and by saying that you’re advocating something different in kind rather than in degree. As a liberal, I think that this is already true for doctrinal libertarians (who, as I’ve written here probably ad nauseum, do accept taxes after all) and that the pragmatic conversation about what works best is a better one in any case.
Comment by matthew hogan —
April 9, 2005 @ 4:52 pm
The best part of the above entry was the absence of “..and Hogan mooched yet another ride off me.” For which I am ever grateful — rides and absence of mention thereof.
Comment by Dave Lull —
April 10, 2005 @ 12:44 pm
“I met Dawn of the liberal blog “Clarify,†but I can’t find her URL.”
Dawn Summers’ Clarefied is here:
http://clarified.blogspot.com/
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2005 @ 1:09 pm
Thanks, Dave!
Comment by Missy —
April 10, 2005 @ 4:10 pm
I’m sorry to have missed the gathering. The DC blogoramas are always a great time.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2005 @ 7:18 pm
But how enjoyable will they be once the Doyen of the DC Blogosphere is the Doyen of the New York blogosphere? I’m telling you, Aldredge is NOT ready to step into the role.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2005 @ 9:52 am
As a liberal, I think that this is already true for doctrinal libertarians (who, as I’ve written here probably ad nauseum, do accept taxes after all) and that the pragmatic conversation about what works best is a better one in any case.
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Rich, the problem I see with this is that there is no “pragmatism” but toward some end. IOW, talk about “what works” is only sensical if you append “in the service of these values.”
Comment by Will Wilkinson —
April 11, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
The reason I’d implement mandatory savings is that I prefer on libertarianish grounds forced transfers of wealth between different stages of the same person than between different people, and those are, I believe, our options. If you push “government gets its hands off and everybody takes care of themself” then you’re really just capitulating to “government forces people with money to ‘take care’ of people who don’t,” because the “government gets its hands off” part of context-free libertarianism doesn’t have a chance absent a massive revolution of in our shared conception of the proper scope of the state. I don’t like the idea of the state coercively transferring my current earnings to my future self, but I like it better than the state coercively transferring my current earnings to somebody else altogether. And I’d prefer to receive transfers from my past self than feel like a charity case, even if the money’s only there because the state made earlier-me put it there.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2005 @ 3:57 pm
Will, I think I’m getting you. Dare I say that your reasoning suggests there could be a kind of Maslovian Hierarchy of Libertarian Values?
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2005 @ 3:58 pm
I ask because it’s an interesting concept – “libertarian is this ideal with these practical fallback positions.”
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I am wondering if many entitlements don’t survive as fallbacks more or less compatible with Epsteinian “Simple Rules for a Complex World.”
Comment by Will Wilkinson —
April 11, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
Why does your damn comments machine keep telling me I have invalid XHTML? Grr.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2005 @ 4:34 pm
{Will talking . . . ] Jim, yes, I think that a state with a relatively small bureaucracy, a well-designed safety net (reverse income tax or something), and some modest “we’re going to make sure you take care of yourself” structural paternalism, like mandatory savings-investment-insurance is a very feasible political state of affairs relative to guns and judges minarchism. Guns and judges gets a higher absolute liberty score. But once you discount for probability, its clear that minimal-welfarism’s discounted liberty score is rather higher, and thus a better place to invest one’s activist energy.
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Furthermore, my small-sample internal polling indicates that if this brand of Hayek-Friedman minimal welfare statism was what “libertarianism” connoted to folks at large, lots of “I like the market but don’t hate poor people” Democrats would sign up.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2005 @ 4:34 pm
Will, it was the ampersands. Sorry.
Comment by Will Wilkinson —
April 11, 2005 @ 4:54 pm
If the ampersand is not valid XHTML, then XHTML is not valid. So there!