With respect to the Robot-Heart post above, I received an email from a loyal reader. Parts of it, including a completely fair chastising of me, are below:
According to my old philosophy professor, there are two symptoms of oxygen deprivation in pilots. The first symptom is that their fingernails turn blue. The second symptom is that they don’t mind that their fingernails turn blue. The lecture was on the topic of the indistinguishability of dreams and reality. When asleep, the things we observe don’t make sense to the rational mind. However, since we are asleep, and not thinking rationally, everything seems to make sense.
This is what runs through my head when confronted with what I call the bad-at-math liberal (similar to the bad-at-math conservative).
Robot-heart believes strongly that there is a difference between adding a tax for the pet-free and offering a tax credit for pet-owners. In the short term, she is right, of course. The government will run a greater deficit for the tax credit scenario. In the long run, income must match or exceed expenses. Taxes will rise to cover the deficits, and the net effect will be greater taxes for those without pets (now with interest).
I actually believe that robot-heart could accept your premise and every step of your argument and still disagree with your conclusion. I understand that you give her more credit than that, but that is also why I shy away from such debate.
I’ve lost my mojo for arguing against populist arguments recently. Part of it is that I don’t have solutions. Until some of the negative consequences start being realized, I have little opportunity to say that the unintended consequences will be worse. Robot-heart used this precise argument against you. You can’t solve the animal abandonment problem, and this government policy appears to be able to help. Any unintended consequences are not “real life problems.” The fact that you might have to pay more taxes as a consequence isn’t “real life,” it is a “theoretical bullshit.” You are now left with the position of proving that the government solution cannot solve the problem and offering a better solution. Even offering a better solution isn’t sufficient unless you somehow prove it is mutually exclusive with the government proposal. As I see it, you’ve been outmaneuvered.
How did she accomplish this? Aren’t you a lawyer? You are supposed to be the one doing the maneuvering (see this? I mock you). You used the word “tyranny” in your original response. This allowed her to resort to name calling (putting you in the position of “unreasonable blowhard”). A fallacy perhaps, but effective. You effectively granted her premise that tax credits can solve problems while using a reductio ad absurdum argument. Unfortunately, she granted the entire argument to the extreme point. She did this without acknowledging that the tax credits must be accompanied by offsetting tax increases (or spending cuts). You could go as far as offering support for such a bill provided that the bill was budget neutral. That would concede your argument of not allowing the government a say in how we choose to live. You remained polite and she called you names. Again, I cannot remain rational in such a debate.
People like robot-heart do not view government policy as the allocation of scarce resources by force. The force seems fantastic (of fantasy), and the rich don’t deserve their money anyway. But more importantly, the resources don’t seem scarce because for as long as we’ve been alive, the government has acted as if the resources weren’t scarce. Nothing was foregone because of lack of money. That’s what deficits are for. Until recently, there hasn’t been much of a threat of a realized cost. Our growth masked any opportunity cost from deficit spending. Restricting government spending might have made us grow faster, but at what cost? Lower minimum wage? No thank you. It would take a huge crisis (one I fear we are in) to actually have to give something up in return for the government spending. Only a huge crisis could make your “sky is falling” paranoia a reality. Now we face the very real possibility that we will face a long period of a reduced quality of life. Until that point comes, you are paranoid. Once that point comes, it will merely be the loss of things we didn’t need. Only further down the line, when shortages in things like food occur, will they admit that there is true pain. But then you will still not be vindicated. It was the free market, greed, and corruption that brought us here.
Now fortunately, I don’t think we’ll actually get to a point where massive food shortages effect us. Double digit unemployment runs the risk, and the lobbyists asking for subsidies to increase pork prices will contribute to the problem, but I think that food is plentiful enough that even a manipulated economy will find a way to avoid extreme shortages. A severe shock to oil and I call the bet off, but that’s the path I see. Until then, your arguments will fall on deaf ears as people praise the new age of austerity.
He’s right on all counts. Part of the problem is that I tried to play on Robot-Heart’s field. I tried to appeal to her values—to explain how these kind of policies lead to a homogenization of society. To explain how they dull us as a people. How they lead to corruption, with only the connected or represented able to benefit from government policy. But these things can’t sway her, because WE MUST DO SOMETHING. And if I can’t solve the problem, then why shouldn’t we adopt her solution?
I tried to sway her with the idea that there must be a limit—can we really give tax credits for everything that is good? For education, and healthcare, and fitness, and literacy, and rest, and food? Doesn’t there have to be a limit? I thought this was a winning argument … but instead, she simply agreed … why not allow credits for all of these things. Or if not credits, why not a massive government program to take care of them. Health care—she has a program for that. Schools, she’ll make better, I’m sure. Food—free for kids, I’m assuming. Any problem, no, every problem—she can fix. She just needs to get her favorite people into office.
At the core of Robot-Heart’s thinking is the notion that tax credits (and indeed, any policies) are free. The idea that someone else will have to pay for them (whether now or later) seems like a complete fantasy to her. You might think that’s absurd, but her view is the popular one. This is how the government acts. Obama spends as if there are no repercussions—as if money is free. Bush did the same. When Robot-Heart professes these beliefs, she is within the mainstream of modern politics. This matters more today than actually being reasonable. Robot-Heart could be elected to office. I could not. This is depressing beyond belief to me.
