Bruce Baugh: Like Unto a Sage

[womzilla]

Which means he's tasty on roasted meats.

Bruce Baugh is an sf and rpg fan and writer who has been, for many years, an online friend and one of the people in my mental catalog of "proof that not all libertarians are moonbat assholes". (The not-quite-exhaustive list also includes Jim Henley, nancylebov, and Greg Costikyan, and my college roommate Michael Grubb.)

In a short essay some time ago (sorry, no link readily to hand) Bruce was responsible for introducing me to the concept of "regulatory capture", about which I hope to write more soon; it's one of the few concepts of politics to which I was introduced by libertarians which strikes me as both terrifically important and not obvious. In short, regulatory capture is the process in which an industry which is regulated by the government will eventually traduce the regulatory scheme and turn it to the industry's advantage. Obvious recent examples are the consolidation of the broadcast media thanks to subversion of the FCC and the $600 billion big pharma boondoggle known as the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan.

So imagine my surprise to learn that Bruce has abandoned libertarianism. Imagine my pleasure to discover him writing the words in my head:

This is where I break most decisively, I think, with the idea that the big priority is to work for a reduction of state power. I agree that it would be well to have a smaller, much more tightly bounded and governed state. But I also think that the way the state operates matters: the sort of social stability that Hayek describes as crucial for the useful operation of markets calls for honesty, consistency, competence, and other virtues in government. The thing is, making that happen requires serious, detailed engagement with the operations of government. You have to find representatives interested in the subject, and staffers who can do the job right, and there are volunteer positions that gotta be staffed, and oversight, and a whole lot of things that can't be done by people who are standing aloof casting aspersions on the whole thing.

Thanks for saying it so well, Bruce. Thanks for being here, now.

(Pointer courtest of Electrolite. I read Bruce's blog, but I hadn't realized he'd updated recently because the BlogLines read of his RSS feed is flakey.)

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Excellent essay; it coincides with a lot of my reasons for giving up libertarianism.

Proofreading a book on the California energy mess, I realized it was an example of deregulatory capture. The only time the government intervened in the market was when a corporation was faced with losses.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The "regulatory capture" argument for having no government at all is one I can respect, although I think extreme libertarians are wrong anyway.

What I don't get is how the concept of regulatory capture is trumpeted as a reason not to have regulation in certain fields, by people who don't beleive all governance should be done away with. That's just wrong and inconsistent.

If RC is a fate so extreme and so inevitable that you have to abandon regulation and not try instead to preserve the independence of the regulating agency from special interests, then it cannot be true that "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The capture of democratic governments by wealthy and determined corporate cabals is a possible failure mode of democracy, and it is a danger, but the answer is to be vigilant against such takeover, not to throw the game away in disgust.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It didn't require libertarians to introduce me to the concept of "regulatory capture," though I didn't know the term until just now: it's inherent in, for instance, the 1950s warnings of that great libertarian philosopher Dwight Eisenhower against "the military-industrial complex." The history of campaign finance reform demonstrates the same thing: PACs were created by the 1970s round of campaign finance reform; 527s were essentially created by McCain-Feingold.

The question is: having identified the problem, what do you do about it? To me, the answer to all such problems is that reform (of government regulations, or anything else) must be an ongoing process, not something you do once and now everything's perfect.

If the libertarian answer is, "See, regulation doesn't work, so let's give up on having any regulation at all," that's akin to solving the problem of corrupt cops by not having any cops; or, to take an example perhaps close to many libertarians' hearts, to solve the problem of spacecraft accidents by ceasing manned spaceflight - something which many small-earthers (mostly non-libertarian) have seriously argued.

It's their solutions, not their analysis of problems, that disgusts me about libertarians. And communists.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

To me, the answer to all such problems is that reform (of government regulations, or anything else) must be an ongoing process, not something you do once and now everything's perfect.

Whoa, verbose, mon. Howzabout: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," much cleaner...

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was quite an interesting essay, especially since I think of myself as a liberal-flavored libertarian, and I've noticed that I don't have the impulse to spend time with groups which indentify primarily as libertarian. Are ideas responsible for the sorts of people they attract? Does it matter if the conservatives don't have good songs and the liberals are bad at getting organized?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Thank you for posting about this. It's a drum I've been banging on for a while. (I had some infamous run-ins with extremist Libertarians in alt.callahans some while back.)