Libertarian Leanings

This About Sums It Up

This, written by Ken White at Popehat and coming to our attention via Instapundit, pretty well sums up my skepticism on the seriousness of Edward Snowden's leaks and the dangers they pose:

Espionage charges usually describe someone with classified information leaking that information to powers hostile to the United States government.

We, the people, are those hostile powers.

The dangers they pose... to whom?

Pathological Altruism

Via Best of the Web, we find a paper by Barbara A. Oakley  discussing the concept of pathological altruism — where good intentions cause harm.

A working definition of a pathological altruist then might be a person who sincerely engages in what he or she intends to be altruistic acts but who (in a fashion that can be reasonably anticipated) harms the very person or group he or she is trying to help; or a person who, in the course of helping one person or group, inflicts reasonably foreseeable harm to others beyond the person or group being helped; or a person who in reasonably anticipatory way becomes a victim of his or her own altruistic actions (2). The attempted altruism, in other words, results in objectively foreseeable and unreasonable harm to the self, to the target of the altruism, or to others beyond the target.

The pathological part of it seems to pertain particularly to our government's intent to "help".  It has become excessive and extreme in its drive to "promote the good".  The altruistic part of it depends upon there being good intentions.

Motives are also important. Well-meaning intentions can lead either to altruism or to pathological altruism. Self-servingly malevolent intentions, on the other hand, often have little or nothing to do with altruism, even though such malevolence can easily be cloaked with pretensions of altruism. A con artist soliciting for a “charity” that he uses to personally enrich himself would not be a pathological altruist.

I once thought there were ultimately good intentions behind government's ever expansive efforts to promote the good, but it's been a long time since I've thought anything like that.  There's a natural aversion to admitting that well intended programs never actually worked, never mind that they might indeed have done a great deal of harm instead.  But it just never happens with government programs.

It goes beyond government refusing to admit that things didn't quite work out.  The notion of studying why good intentions go bad seems not to get any play from scientists and academics, and I would guess that there's some self-interest involved there.  Much of academia benefits from government grant money, and much of what government wants to know is what other ways it can expand and provide "service".  What academic wants to discourage that?

So it's a given.  Government does good.  Except that now there is clearly malevolence.  Think of the IRS targeting.  Even the individuals targeting know it and their superiors do as well.  Everybody is pointing fingers at somebody else, which means they don't want to be the ones to take the fall, which means they all know it was wrong.  For the good of the country?  To save the country from conservatives?  I'm sure that's their story.

Ms. Oakley's paper concludes that the study of the bad outcomes from altruism deserve as much if not more attention than the study of the good outcomes.  

Science has put extraordinary emphasis on studying the helpful aspects of altruism, and this emphasis has helped reify altruism’s benefits among the general population. However, if science is truly to serve as an ultimately altruistic enterprise, then science must examine not only the good but also the harm that can arise from our feelings of altruism and empathetic caring for others. In support of this idea, it is important to note that during the twentieth century, tens of millions individuals were killed under despotic regimes that rose to power through appeals to altruism (106–110). The study of pathological altruism, in other words, is not a minor, inconsequential offshoot of the study of altruism but instead is a topic of overwhelming scientific and public importance.

Yes, it's a topic of overwhelming scientific and public importance, but it's not as if the potential and actual harm of altruism has gone unnoticed over the centuries.  People have studied it before.

Abstract: The basic thesis in The Road to Serfdom is that the lure of socialist ideology has the unintended and undesirable consequence of economic depravation and political tyranny when countries follow its policy agenda. Socialist planning requires economic planners to assume a level of responsibility for economic life in a country which is both cumbersome to the point of impossible, and powerful beyond any reasonable limit that could be safely trusted to any one individual or group of individuals. The papers in this symposium provide a critical reading of the Hayek’s thesis on socialism. While many strong points are made in the discussion, the critical reading of Hayek offered must ultimately be judged unsatisfactory. The issues of choice and consequences are not addressed, and as a result the basic argument presented in The Road to Serfdom is never adequately engaged.

Yes people have studied it, but big government proponents dispute, deny, and ignore the conclusions.  It is not at all in their interests to concede that there could be any truth to them.  They suppress the information.  Hence the IRS scandal.  Can't have those conservative ideas out there interfering with their plans.  Which brings us to another of Hayek's conclusion:  Why the worst get on top.

[L]eaders don’t promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an “us” against “them” program.

“Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things,” Hayek explains. “The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”

Us against them.  Who does that sound like?

What's Different About This One

Peggy Noonan, who is often quite unimpressive in my view, gets one right in this blog post.

In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.

That’s what makes this scandal different, and why if it’s not stopped now it will never stop. Because every four years you can get yourself a new president and a new White House, but you won’t easily get yourself a whole new administrative state. It’s there, it’s not going away, not anytime soon. If it isn’t forced back into its cage now, and definitively, it will prowl the land hungrily forever.

There's another thing that's different about this one. In this case we have an arm of the government going after private citizens on behalf of a political party — the Democrats.