Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2013 11:54:31 GMT -5
From Pierre Lemieux @ The Daily Reckoning
People here have made similar statements.
Some of you are always "worried about the others". The concept "my life is pretty boring it's OK to take everyone's rights away" is pretty crude. In fact it's the very same concept as "it's OK to take your money and give it away in the forms of Obamaphones because those people "need" a lifeline."
And it seems few can imagine anything else. Even folks with minor degrees in Art. Specially folks with minor degrees in Art.
And I do not.
James Madison seems to have been a pretty smart guy. He was fourth president and majority author of the constitution. I do understand those that reject the constitution will disagree this makes him smart.
I'll allow Pierre the last word in this post.
Many people do not seem to mind the government peeping into their “metadata” or even into their emails, Internet habits, or phone calls. Mark Reid, the city manager of Bluffdale, Utah, where a large NSA data center is being built, doesn’t worry: “If someone reads my emails,”he says, “they’ll be pretty bored.”
People here have made similar statements.
Other people might not have as boring a life as his. They may have legitimate reasons to keep prying eyes out. But even if their lives are boring, the Mark Reids of the world should still endeavor to keep them private.
Some of you are always "worried about the others". The concept "my life is pretty boring it's OK to take everyone's rights away" is pretty crude. In fact it's the very same concept as "it's OK to take your money and give it away in the forms of Obamaphones because those people "need" a lifeline."
The first reason why private information should remain private is that the state — the whole apparatus of government, all branches, all levels — has an incentive to use your information against you. There, as elsewhere, incentives matter.
But how do these incentives work? Assume that the state is nice and is entirely devoted to the welfare of its citizens. Similar to how parents are biologically driven to take care of their children. In this case, we can imagine any surveillance the angelic state carries out and any information it gathers will be used for the welfare of the people.
But how do these incentives work? Assume that the state is nice and is entirely devoted to the welfare of its citizens. Similar to how parents are biologically driven to take care of their children. In this case, we can imagine any surveillance the angelic state carries out and any information it gathers will be used for the welfare of the people.
And it seems few can imagine anything else. Even folks with minor degrees in Art. Specially folks with minor degrees in Art.
Obama implicitly adopts this angelic model of government. He’s not the only one in the political class who feels this way. On Aug. 10, Obama proposed a minor, cosmetic reform of the NSA’s surveillance. He claimed that it is important for “the American people to have confidence” in the intelligence community. The message is: Trust the state.
And I do not.
We have good reasons to reject the angelic model of the state. “If men were angels,”wrote James Madison, “no government would be necessary.” He immediately added: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” A brief survey of today’s politicians will make it pretty clear that the state is not made of angels. Just meet some politicians and bureaucrats.
James Madison seems to have been a pretty smart guy. He was fourth president and majority author of the constitution. I do understand those that reject the constitution will disagree this makes him smart.
I'll allow Pierre the last word in this post.
When we talk about the state’s incentives, we are referring to the incentives of these individuals. Public choice analysis is a field of economics that over the last half century has studied how these incentives work. To summarize, the incentives of government bureaucrats are to increase the sizes of their bureaus, because that’s how they get higher pay, better perks, and a greater sense of accomplishment. At the same time, politicians have the incentives to increase their power in order to satisfy the interests groups whose support they need to get elected or remain in power.
If we adopt this alternative model of the state instead of the angelic model, then we can understand why state power grows if not constrained from the outside. The American ideal — as in classical liberalism, or libertarianism, in the Western tradition — was to reinforce these constraints.
Lack of information is a useful constraint on government action. The less the state knows about individuals and their associations (including their business corporations), the less it is able to enforce its laws and regulations that are detrimental to liberty and prosperity.
Just imagine what would happen if, for example, official ID papers (Social Security numbers, passports, and driver’s licenses) did not exist. Imagine how difficult and costly it would be to enforce confiscatory taxation, financial regulations, gun controls, or travel bans (such as those for Edward Snowden). What would happen if the government did not have all the financial information listed corporations are forced to provide “regulators”? It would be much more difficult to enforce the current confiscatory corporate tax rates.
Some information in the hands of government is justifiable, but not the mass of data it now amasses. Without wholesale and continuous surveillance, murder and outright fraud could still be punished. Indeed, they were before the government knew so much about the activities of individuals and businesses.
If we adopt this alternative model of the state instead of the angelic model, then we can understand why state power grows if not constrained from the outside. The American ideal — as in classical liberalism, or libertarianism, in the Western tradition — was to reinforce these constraints.
Lack of information is a useful constraint on government action. The less the state knows about individuals and their associations (including their business corporations), the less it is able to enforce its laws and regulations that are detrimental to liberty and prosperity.
Just imagine what would happen if, for example, official ID papers (Social Security numbers, passports, and driver’s licenses) did not exist. Imagine how difficult and costly it would be to enforce confiscatory taxation, financial regulations, gun controls, or travel bans (such as those for Edward Snowden). What would happen if the government did not have all the financial information listed corporations are forced to provide “regulators”? It would be much more difficult to enforce the current confiscatory corporate tax rates.
Some information in the hands of government is justifiable, but not the mass of data it now amasses. Without wholesale and continuous surveillance, murder and outright fraud could still be punished. Indeed, they were before the government knew so much about the activities of individuals and businesses.