Comments Elsewhere

Roderick:

but Bryan wasn’t just asking about regulations that harm tenants; he was asking specifically about cases of ostensibly pro-tenant regulations that harm tenants.

Right; but my point was about the overlap of your type (a) and my type (2). If we have a regulation that does succeed in doing just what Bryan claims it will do — unilaterally drive up risk or fixed costs for the landlord, to the benefit of that individual tenant — then that regulation has an unseen effect, in addition to its seen effect: the ratcheted-up risks and fixed costs raise artificial barriers to entry against marginal competitors. In the nonce, the individual tenant who actively makes use of the regulation may be better off for it, but of course that doesn’t settle the question about whether tenants in general are better off for the existence of the regulation. That depends on (among other things) how accessible the “protections” really are for the average tenant, and how much the average tenant is harmed by an anticompetitive rental market. So even given a regulation that provides an ideal case for Bryan’s claim, the “pro-tenant” regulation’s effect on competition could perfectly well produce results much like putatively “pro-worker” minimum-wage or occupational-safety laws produce in the labor market, where the “benefit” to a limited subset of workers comes at the expense of (among other things) a harm to all other workers, who are shut out of opportunities by the increase in prices and reduction in employment.

Roderick:

… regulations that purport to help the weaker party generally fall into one of two categories: either a) they actually benefit the stronger party instead, or b) to the extent that they do benefit the weaker party they are outweighed in their effects by other regulations …When it comes to regulations purporting to protect tenants, I can think only of examples of (b); there may be examples of (a), but none comes to mind offhand. (Suggestions, comrades? Rent control is an example of a purportedly pro-tenant policy that actually hurts tenants, but it hurt landlords too as far as I can see.)

One point, which I’m a bit surprised you didn’t raise in this post, is that regulations may prop up the interests of actually-existing landlords, at the expense of tenants, in one of two ways: (1) by directly enabling landlords to screw tenants over; or (2) erecting regulatory barriers to entry that artificially suppress competition among landlords. (2) comes at the direct expense of the marginal would-be landlords who are shut out of the market, rather than at the expense of tenants. But of course it also indirectly harms the tenants, in that they are not able to form alternative exchanges that would have better met their needs than the actual exchange that they made under actually-existing rigged-market conditions.

Bob Nelson: “These people appear to be hardcore anti-American Communists …”

Let’s suppose — strictly for the sake of argument — that this is true. If it is true, what do you think follows from that about the FBI’s raids? Do you seriously mean to suggest that “hardcore anti-American Communists” should be raided, arrested and prosecuted for the government based solely on their political beliefs? If so, why? Shouldn’t people have a right to advocate any political beliefs they want, without fear of government intimidation or repression?

... Well, in addition to their libertarian philanthropy they also give a lot of money to more conventionally Right-wing and corporatist causes -- e.g. Heritage

... Well, sure, but the bit about nobody starving was in the present tense. ... Unemployment is a lagging indicator as usual, but there were noticeable losses

... Well, of course they didn't. I certainly had no intention of suggesting that they did. Stealing trillions of dollars from poor people to give away to rich

... Kevin, In terms of raw employment figures, I was referring to 1982-1983 (1982 had higher unemployment than 2009; whether 2010 or 1983 will have the worse

... Being jobless, and starving, are of course two different things, but I think that persistent nation-wide 9%-10% unemployment figures (or double-digit

For a long third-party discussion of Rothbard’s role in the original Cato line-up, and the whole nasty story of the split in 1981, you can also see also Chapter 7 of Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism.

MBH:

So given that the Kochtopus just is (or is becoming) the Republican Party, why doesn’t the von Mises Institute fully severe its ties to the Kochs and openly support Democrats?

They don’t have any “ties” with the Kochs to sever. The Kochs don’t fund them, and the two sides generally hate each other.

The reason they don’t openly support Democrats is because the Mises Institute does not support any candidates for office. You might be thinking of other, different groups which are made up of a some of the same people (e.g. Lew Rockwell and the other writers at LewRockwell.com, which is run by an entirely separate organization), who do sometimes take stances on elections (e.g., by supporting Ron Paul). But they have supported specific Democratic politicians in the past, and their reasons for not openly supporting “Democrats,” just as such, is that they think (rightly) that uncritical partisanship will, at the very best, just end up replacing one worthless bunch of warhawks in one party’s collaborationist “leadership,” with another worthless bunch of warhawks in another party’s collaborationist “leadership.” Which is, in fact, exactly what happened in 2006 and 2008, and the reason why the wars on Iraq has continued for the last 4 years, with Democratic approval and command, while the war on Afghanistan has actually escalated under Democratic “leadership.”

I’m not saying end agorism

Lew Rockwell isn’t an agorist. Neither is much of anyone associated with Von Mises Institute, as far as I know, except for Roderick. Being critical of the usefulness of electoral politics is not the same thing as being an agorist; Lew’s thoughts on What Is To Be Done mostly have to do with a classic FEE-style program of education about fundamental libertarian political and economic principles.

JOR: As for why Lew personally doesn’t favour the Dems …

I’m not all that interested in defending Lew Rockwell’s personal approach to endorsements in electoral politics, but I think it would be fair to say that, whatever faults he may have, the way he thinks about these things just isn’t based on political parties in the first place. It’s certainly not that he prefers Republicans as a group (this is the guy who’s been writing about “Red State Fascism” for the past 5 years). It’s just that he has a couple of issues he sees as absolutely central (war policy above all else), and he sees the important divisions in politics as running across party lines. So his preferences aren’t for Democrats or Republicans, but against the War Party.

MBH:

… ending the combat mission in Iraq …

Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.

Pinche President Obama has, of course, killed thousands of Iraqis while dragging his feet for two years to pursue an exit strategery that was already in place under Bush. Even if this does really mean that the Iraq war is almost over, he has simultaneously spent the last two years massively escalating the number of people being killed in the war on Afghanistan (in order to “win the peace,” you see) and, in true Nixonian fashion, gone about ending that war by expanding it into a large-scale aerial assault on western Pakistan as well.