{"id":26471,"date":"2014-06-24T09:11:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T14:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26471"},"modified":"2014-06-24T09:11:39","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T14:11:39","slug":"how-should-we-do-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/24\/how-should-we-do-x\/","title":{"rendered":"“How should we do x<\/em>?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The urge to provide a national (or even a global) solution to a given problem is almost always mistaken. Kevin Williamson<\/a> explains why:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow should we do x<\/em>?\u201d The main problem is not the answer, but the question itself, and the assumptions behind that question, the belief that an answer exists<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some policies must, by their nature, be implemented at the national level. If you\u2019re going to have a sovereign nation-state, you need a national<\/em> defense apparatus (which is not to say you need our<\/em> national-defense apparatus; there are alternatives), and you probably need a national<\/em> immigration policy, etc. The basic architecture of the current American constitutional order, which is a remarkably wise and intelligent piece of work, contemplates national policies in those areas in which the several states interact with foreign powers and in those cases in which the states cannot coordinate efforts or resolve disputes among themselves on their own. That, along with some 18th-century anachronisms (post roads, etc.) and some awful economic superstitions (political management of trade, a political monopoly on the issuance of currency), constitutes most of what the federal government is in theory there to do. That and fighting pirates and others committing \u201cfelonies on the high seas,\u201d of course, which is awesome, and we can all feel patriotic about fighting pirates.<\/p>\n

But … if we look at federal programs by budget share, almost nothing that Washington does requires a national policy. There\u2019s national defense, of course, at around 20 percent of spending; you may believe, as I do, that that number is probably too high, but national defense is a legitimate national<\/em> endeavor. But most federal spending is on various entitlement programs \u2014 Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various other welfare benefits. There is not much reason for any of these programs to exist at all \u2014 government is a criminally inept pension planner and a thoroughly incompetent insurance company \u2014 and there is very little reason for any of them to exist as uniform, one-size-fits-all national<\/em> programs. Start digging into that non-defense discretionary spending and you end up with very little more than a catalog of crony payoffs and political favoritism.<\/p>\n

There is no more reason to believe that a single government-run pension scheme is in each individual\u2019s best interest than to believe that a single city or single model of car is right for everybody. And the people who design and plan these programs know that. The point of Social Security \u2014 like the point of insisting that health insurance is \u201ca right\u201d rather than a consumer good \u2014 is to redefine the relationship between citizen and state. That is the real rationale for a national pension scheme or a national insurance policy. For several generations now, we\u2019ve been changing the very idea of what it means to be an American citizen. It used to mean being entitled to enjoy liberty and republican self-governance under the Constitution. Eventually, it came to mean being eligible for Social Security, functionally if not formally. Now it means being eligible for Obamacare. The name of the project may change every generation, and its totems may evolve from Bismarck to Marx to \u201cthe experts\u201d \u2014 that legion of pointy-headed Caesars who are to be the final authority in all matters in dispute \u2014 but the dream remains the same: society as one big factory under the management of enlightened men with extraordinary powers of compulsion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The urge to provide a national (or even a global) solution to a given problem is almost always mistaken. Kevin Williamson explains why: \u201cHow should we do x?\u201d The main problem is not the answer, but the question itself, and the assumptions behind that question, the belief that an answer exists. Some policies must, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,13],"tags":[715,363,727,661],"class_list":["post-26471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-corruption","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6SX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26472,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26471\/revisions\/26472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}