Division of Labor Gone Awry

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Division of Labor Gone Awry

Here’s a letter that I sent today to the New York Times:

Two celebrated advocates of active and expansive government – President Obama and yourself – admit, quite accurately, that the security breach on Northwest Flight 253 represents a momentous failure of government (”The System Failed,” Dec. 30).

Ponder this fact carefully. Government’s core function is to protect citizens from violence. If Uncle Sam fails at this central, all-important task, what reason have we to trust that it will succeed at delivering less-costly and higher-quality health-care? Or at productively restructuring financial markets?

Surely, before government directs energy and resources to these and the countless other tasks that it now tries to do, it should first master its most fundamental duty.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

If the gardener isn’t up to the task of keeping the flowers properly watered, then it’s especially foolish to assign to him the additional task of mastering plant genetics.

UPDATE: Perhaps better is — If the gardener isn’t up to the task of keeping the flowers free of insects, then it’s especially foolish to assign to him the additional task of mastering plant genetics.

Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone

If Any of Us Showed Up to Work Like This, We’d Get Fired

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If Any of Us Showed Up to Work Like This, We’d Get Fired

Steven Horwitz

The next time someone tries, with a straight face, to tell you that the Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body and that elected politicians take their jobs seriously, or that reforming health care was a moral imperative that reflected the utmost in careful thought and planning, just show them this clip of Sen. Max Baucus (D – Montana) drunk off his ass debating health care on the Senate floor. Too drunk to drive, but drunk enough to argue for nationalizing a sixth of the US economy. Do we need an interlock system for the voting buttons in Congress?

Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone

The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia — by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Rafael Santos

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The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia — by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Rafael Santos

Many states in Latin America, Africa and Asia lack the monopoly of violence, identified by Max Weber as the foundation of the state, and thus the capacity to govern effectively. In this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence and the formation of the state. We build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate non-state armed actors (paramilitaries) in a democracy. The model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections. Since paramilitaries have preferences over policies, this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them. The model also shows that while in non-paramilitary areas policies are targeted at citizens, in paramilitary controlled areas they are targeted at paramilitaries. We then investigate the predictions of our model using data from Colombia between 1991 and 2006. We first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive. Next, we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the Presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well. These results illustrate that, consistent with our model, there appears to be a symbiotic relationship between some executives and paramilitaries. Finally, we use roll-call votes to illustrate a possible ‘quid pro quo’ between the executive and paramilitaries in Colombia.

Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone