What Would TJ Do?

It's obvious that the Founding Fathers would have more than just technological advances to be amazed at, if they were to see the United States today. They would barely be able to comprehend the role the federal government plays in our lives.

Many protesters will be out today, Tax Day, for the so-called "Tea Parties." Some will present a consistent moral case against the income tax and other government abuses of individual rights, but most will be lacking in that department. Jeff Scialabba at Voices for Reason said, "What unites the protesters is not a consistent intellectual outlook–they appear to hold a hodgepodge of viewpoints–but rather their anger at the alarming expansion of our government. To have real impact, they’ll need a consistent intellectual framework."

In the blog post quoted above was a link to a speech titled, “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence,” given in March of 2007 by Onkar Ghate. At roughly the 9-minute mark, Ghate asks some hypothetical questions that really bring all of these issues into focus.

I call it the "What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?" argument. What follows is a brief transcription of a minute or so of Ghate's talk:

The Founding Fathers’ achievement is eroding. They would be shocked by the power that is now concentrated in the hands of the American government at the expense of the individual.

Can you imagine [Thomas] Jefferson submitting to building inspectors who would decide if Monticello is up to code? Or pleading with FDA officials to take an experimental drug that, according to his scientific judgment, is beneficial? Or allowing Social Security administrators to dictate how much he has to save for his retirement and where he has to invest it? Or, patiently watching the tax collector as he takes his money away and pours it down the aid drains of Africa?

Can you imagine him prostrating himself before the FCC who would determine if his broadcast content is obscene? Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson seeking government’s permission to smoke a cigarette in a restaurant, eat irradiated spinach, screw in an incandescent light bulb, or buy a trans-fatty french fry?

In the video, when Ghate asked whether Jefferson would submit to building inspectors at Monticello, he got a good laugh from the crowd. But as the examples continued, examples of outrages that we allow daily in our lives, the contrast between Jefferson's time and ours became more serious.

It is obvious that Jefferson would rage against such injustices because they are as wrong and as evil now as the tyranny he knew so well and fought so bravely against.

What Bastiat Might Say to Our Politicians

In a comment on a recent post, Holdren Channels Mr. Burns, commenter C. Andrew (no relation!) linked to a chapter from Frederic Bastiat's Economic Sophisms. Chapter I.7 A Petition is a biting argument from absurdity against protectionism, wherein Bastiat suggests that candlemakers and other industries around artificial lighting are suffering from unfair competition from the sun.

I took particular note of the first two paragraphs. There, Bastiat addresses his mock petition to his fellow members of the French Legislative Assembly in words that could easily, and should be leveled at our politicians and intellectuals of today:

You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.

We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for applying your—what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, and, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice—your practice without theory and without principle. [bold added]

How little things have changed since 1845. Bastiat was writing as his country was rushing headlong toward socialism, and was confronting men who refused to think in principle. We have plenty of that type in government now, and too few Bastiat's to stand up and challenge them.

Bottle Shock

The movie opens with panoramic scenes, zooming over the endless rolling hills of Napa Valley, the neat rows of vines strict, clean, neat, and yet curving sensuously with the contour of the hills. But whereas this common scene in movies -- the fine geometry of agricultural production seen from a distance -- usually sets the stage for a farm tale of the rural drudgery of food production, this is different. Think of acre upon acre of carefully tended vines, tied, pruned, watered and fed with painstaking effort, all for the goal of producing a sublimely unnecessary thing: wine, the bottled essence of human enjoyment.

So perhaps it isn't unnecessary at all, but a testament to man's capacity for joy and need for celebration of it. The undulating rows of vines spilling over the hills of Napa are the precise, harsh, calculating product of a man's mind dedicated to the creation of joy in a bottle.

This is what went through my mind as I sat watching the opening of Bottle Shock this weekend, though I realized I was setting myself up for disappointment with such romanticized thoughts.

The story starts with two converging plotlines. Napa winemaker Jim Barrett, who left a life in business (banking?) to pursue his dream of making wine, makes a good product, but has seen little commercial success and has multiple mortgages on his venture. It's presented that this season is his "last shot."

Meanwhile, a Brit named Steven Spurrier is shown in a small wine store in Paris as his business stagnates. An American friend says to him, "Part of being a business is that you actually have to sell wine." It's 1976, and American wines are the joke of the French establishment. Spurrier, holding the same opinion, nevertheless has a spark of inspiration and decides to hold a blind taste test competition in Paris, letting the best Napa wines compete with French wines. He travels to California to pick wines for the competition.

What follows is a light, sometimes funny, and nevertheless inspiring story of American ingenuity and commercial success. As a means of reviewing the movie, I'll go the unconventional route of using another review as a foil. It was reviewed at CineScene last year, and though it was a middle of the road positive review, some comments were enlightening.

...the spirit of Bottle Shock, a film by Randall Miller, ...seeks to present a wholly upbeat feel-good narrative. Beware, this is a movie that operates principally in the land of myth, where details are shifted to make a jauntier, tidier story. Bottle Shock isn't by any stretch a great film.

The reviewer accurately portrays that this is not a faithful documentary. It "operates in the land of myth," which means in this case that it is a selective re-creation of reality. I disagree that it was done only to make a "jauntier" story, however. The film is relentlessly positive about the value of hard work, innovation, pride, and business success. Ayn Rand said about art:

By a selective re-creation, art isolates and integrates those aspects of reality which represent man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. Out of the countless number of concretes—of single, disorganized and (seemingly) contradictory attributes, actions and entities—an artist isolates the things which he regards as metaphysically essential and integrates them into a single new concrete that represents an embodied abstraction.

In our culture, however, it's no surprise to hear the view that idealized, romanticized stories cannot make "great film." Instead, "realism" or more appropriately, naturalism, is prized. Again, from the CineScape review:

Bottle Shock works best if you look on its overdrawn characters, who have nothing of the depth of Sideways, as mere window dressing for the "historical" narrative--an attitude which, luckily, the story-arc justifies.

If you recall, Sideways was a giant indie-film hit, one that was full of neurotic, morally disgusting characters, a rambling pointless "plot" and awful sense-of-life. This is what passes for "depth." However, let me again mention that the review I'm quoting seems oddly sympathetic to what it would probably view as a naive outlook on life.

The virtue of the film is that it's not about the people so much as about Limousin oak, tapping casks, wine color, the wine-maker's art--and the most educated palates of France revealing that when they couldn't see the label, they found wine from the Napa Valley second to none. To trample on the movie's celebration of that triumph--even if its tone is a bit jingoistic-- would be rather unkind, especially if you're writing an hour's drive from where most of the action happens. [bold added]

It seems as if the reviewer secretly resonated with the life-affirming values portrayed in the film, but had to get in a dig just for good measure. "Jingoistic" here must be a code word for "too American and therefore hokey," or just simplifies everything down to a rivalry with France. Nevertheless, a perhaps grudging respect for the film's message comes through the review.

This movie was of the kind that could only be told in America; the entrepreneur chases a dream and knocks off the Old World establishment in a shocking and unpredictable (to the Old World) way.

My sense of what the movie could and should be, from the opening scenes, ended up being pretty much spot on. Yes, it was light fare, and some of the characters and plot threads were tied up too quickly, but as a fun, inspiring tale of the American sense-of-life, Bottle Shock was well worth the price of admission. My only frustration was that I didn't have a bottle of wine on hand to open up and enjoy while watching.

Holdren Channels Mr. Burns

I first heard about John Holdren's "climate hacking" ideas on NPR a few days ago. The short bit on Morning Edition described Holdren as saying that "we're near a tipping point" of catastrophic climate change, and we might have to take radical action. The two things listed were fake trees to vacuum up carbon and store it somehow (I thought real trees did that?) and shooting sulfur particles into the atmosphere, emulating a volcano, to block the sun's rays. There are some risks, such as burning off the ozone layer, but it's still an option that we must look into. Makes sense, right? Sure, we can't predict the weather accurately, even a few days out, but we have enough certainty to know that global warming is like being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

A couple Objectivist bloggers have weighed in on this topic already. Brian at Reality Talk notes the absurdity of it all:

In light of recent evidence suggesting that some part of global warming has been caused by cleaner air, which allows more sunlight to hit the Earth’s surface and the oceans, it should come as no surprise that President Obama’s new science advisor, John Holdren, would seriously consider pumping the atmosphere full of pollution particles. [links dropped, bold added]

Yup, the air is now too clean and we need to pollute it, on purpose, to save the planet.

Doug Reich digs deeper and finds fascinating parallels between the unfathomably irrational programs of brutal dictators like Mao -- the "Kill a Sparrow Campaign," and handing out fly swatters? -- and Holdren's radical geoengineering ideas. Read his whole post.

And this morning, James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal captured the pure insanity of the whole situation in his "Best of the Web" column. Under the heading, "Life Imitates The Simpsons," he writes:

Smithers: "Well, sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the elementary school, the local tavern, the old age home. You must be very proud."

Burns: "No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy the sun. Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing--block it out!" [bold added]

I can picture the crazed professor, John Holdren, cackling with spittle on his beard, as he cries, "Prepare to ignite the Holdren Volcano-izer! On my mark!... FIRE!"

Yes, this is a very serious issue, but sometimes gallows humor or a good quote from The Simpsons helps to retain sanity.

Survey of Obama's Critics on the Left

Camille Paglia at Salon.com

Responding to letters from readers, Paglia discusses Obama's first days in office, the brain trust around him, and his early "painful missteps." A reader asked about Paglia's earlier statement that Obama has been "ill-served by his advisors" and suggested that "the responsibility for their failures should be laid at the feet of the person who was ultimately responsible" for selecting them. Paglia responded:

You are absolutely correct! The buck stops with the top executive. ... For better or worse, Obama is learning as he goes -- and surely most fair-minded people would grant him reasonable leeway as he grows into the presidency, one of the hardest jobs in the world.

At a certain point, however, Obama will face an inescapable administrative crux. ...

Obama's staffing problems are blatant -- from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be. There has been one needless gaffe after another -- from the president's tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady's over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives? The silence of the major media was a disgrace. But I attribute that embarrassing incident not to Obama's sinister or naive appeasement of the Muslim world but to a simple if costly breakdown in basic command of protocol. [emphasis added]

Paglia is ultimately too soft on Obama -- despite later mentioning the "bungled handling of the grotesquely swollen stimulus package" -- but it was interesting and refreshing to see a prominent figure from the Left call him out for his disgraceful dhimmitude.

Even more interesting is the flood of vitriol leveled at her by Salon.com commenters. For instance:

go away for God's sake
This is just too freaking much. Is this some sort of performance art? Are you a 'literary' Tony Clifton? 'Painful missteps'? THE GUY HAS 66 PERCENT APPROVAL and just conquered Europe! The onmly people in pain are Salon readers subjected to your crap and of course, your life-force jazz-musician-of-language, Limbaugh. Joan -- PLEASE stop this madness!!!
-- tangerine

Excuse me?
Who is this stupid woman, Camille, and why does she get to write such sophomoric drivel? My God! Having an opinion is one thing, but basing everything with a grade-school mentality is another. Let the grown-ups play here ....
-- Renman [misspelling and grammar from original comments]

Those were some of the comments without swearing or inarticulate ranting. I gather from some of the comments that Paglia is not seen as an ideal representative of the Left.

Steven Stark at the Boston Phoenix

At the Boston Phoenix blog, Stark Ravings, Steven Stark looks at the question of whether voters picked a Harvard Law grad (Obama) when the country needs a Yalie (Clinton). Responding to a New Republic article by Noam Scheiber about the same topic, Stark presents the options thusly:

He argues that different institutions produce different kinds of leaders, just as the military produces a different leadership style than, say, the political world. In a unique crisis like the present one, it makes all the difference what a leader's intellectual instincts are. And, taking off from where Scheiber began, it may well be that, at least now, Obama has exactly the opposite instincts we need.

It all has to do with how each of these two major institutions structures its approach to legal education and public policy. According to Scheiber, the much smaller Yale sees its mission ... to encourage its students to be more creative — "to unlock students' innate brilliance in an atmosphere of freedom, intimacy, and intellectual ferment."

In contrast, Scheiber wrote, Harvard was more formulaic and traditional, priding "itself on instilling discipline . . . [It] was, in certain respects, a three-year hazing ritual." And Obama "absorbed the dispassionate, conservative, relentlessly logical mode of analysis a Harvard legal education was meant to convey."

Stark accepts this thesis and justifies it in the following way:

What's needed is something new, dramatic, and unusual. All things being equal, a group of Yale Law graduates is likelier to come up with something outside the box than their Harvard counterparts.

That, in fact, is the lesson of the early days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. At that time, Columbia Law School was the Yale of its era. In the 1920s and early 1930s, it was the center of the Legal Realist movement, with future New Dealers... on the faculty. ... Vastly oversimplifying, the Realists believed that the law was not something determinate but whatever any particular individuals (judges, legislators, etc.) decided at a particular time.

FDR, a fellow Columbian, relied heavily on a Columbia "Brain Trust"... when he constructed the largely experimental programs of the early New Deal. ...

Experimentation or the tried and true? Creativity or discipline? The truth is we need a mixture of both. But if one is to be preferred to the other, when the Democrats had a choice this past spring between a graduate of Harvard Law and a graduate of Yale Law — namely Hillary Clinton — did they pick the wrong school? [bold added]

So Stark's lesson from history is that FDR followed the "radical," "creative," and "dramatic" model, and that Obama's Harvard-ish "dispassionate" and "relentlessly logical mode" is the opposite of what the country needs right now.

I suppose he's right, that the Obama administration is following a "more... a LOT more... of the same old same old" model -- though it's anything but logical -- and is simply trying to crush the country with a dramatic expansion of the same programs that have been around for decades. But what Stark is suggesting is that the Left yearns for leadership that will come up with new, innovative, and "dramatic" ways to rip the beating heart of the country right out of its chest.

Apparently recycling New Deal ideas isn't enough. I'm left wondering, while shuddering... what would be enough?

Sowell's Random Thoughts

Thomas Sowell has a brain dump of random thoughts up at Capitalism Magazine, and it's full of great and pithy insights. Some of my favorites:

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

Barack Obama's favorable reception during his tour in Europe may be the most enthusiastic international acclaim for a democratic government leader since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, proclaiming "peace in our time." [bold added]

His final observation is a perfect encapsulation of the dangerous farce we are witnessing in Washington:

Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television. [bold added]

But my favorite bit was the following:

The famous editorial cartoonist Herblock could write as well as draw. In one of his books, he said something like: "You too can have the soothing feeling of nature's own baby-soft wool being pulled gently over your resting eyes." I think of that every time I see Barack Obama talking. [all emphasis added]

And now I'll think of that saying every time I hear Obama, too.

Imagining a Mutually Beneficial Labor Union

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the current economic, political and philosophical situation, and to find a solution. Bernstein presents a rock solid defense of capitalism against all comers, logically demonstrating capitalism's moral and practical superiority, and then uses his clear arguments to demolish the common myths and falsehoods presented by anti-capitalists of all stripes.

Rather than offer a detailed review (though I hope to return to various topics raised by this excellent book) I'd like to present a hypothetical scenario that occurred to me while reading Bernstein's discussion of unions, near the end of the book.

Bernstein makes the case that "unions seek, and through government intervention gain, monopolistic control over an industry's labor supply." Various laws and Supreme Court rulings have "compelled employers to to recognize and bargain with unions -- and forced non-union workers to accept the union as their sole bargaining agent... [T]he government also required companies to bargain with such coercive unions 'in good faith.' No matter how outrageous a union's demand, the company was legally obligated to respond with a counter-offer... that made some concessions."

Once a union catches hold, it wields its coercive power by mandating a litany of absurdities: "feather-bedding" where more workers than are necessary must be hired for a job, technological advancements (and thus productivity increases) are outlawed in an attempt at keeping people in jobs, and make-work schemes are employed, "such as requiring that pipe delivered to construction sites with screw thread already on it, have its end cut off and new screw thread cut on the site." These practices are so outside the bounds of sanity that if someone where to write fiction about them, it would be too crazy to be believable.

With all of that being said, could unions have a place in a free market system? Of course, Bernstein answers. As long as government is not there to act as a coercive force on one party's side in violation of the rights of the other side -- the very definition of a free market -- then workers can voluntarily organize and employers can choose to recognize the union, or not.

This last point got me to thinking... would there be a place for unions in a free market? Of course their existence is possible, but is there any case where they might be a productive force benefiting employer and union-member alike? Would unions not only be possible, but also likely?

Let's look at a hypothetical example. What if there were 3,000 factory workers, all at roughly the same skill level and pay scale (regardless of specific job description) who, essentially, offered the same product on the labor market. The company would have to employ X number of human resources staff, have the infrastructure in place to deal with individual contracts for each employee, track them all (for bonuses, reviews, discipline, and the like), employ X number of attorneys, etc... just as the cost of managing the workforce.

Now, what if the employees decided to band together and offer a "volume discount" for the labor they supplied, and bargained collectively, letting the employer save money and time on administrative burdens because everyone in the union would agree to abide by the negotiated contract.

In return, the union could ask for higher wages, more time off, a fast-track for training and advancement... something of value. Both parties would benefit, and no one's rights would be violated. It wouldn't be coercive, and productivity and merit would still be the drivers because workers wouldn't see the union as the sole source of employment and advancement (i.e. by seniority alone), and the employer wouldn't be the evil bastard that the union wanted to soak for any concession it could. Instead, joining the union would simply be a shrewd business decision for the laborers. And for the owners, it would offer administrative efficiency, allowing time and money to be dedicated to other productive ventures, increasing the profitability of the company, and likely leading to more workers being hired.

It's difficult to imagine more detail than that, considering how far our society is from such a mutually beneficial employer/employee arrangement. But the point is that, left free to decide on their own how to maximize their opportunities, with whom to contract and for what purpose, it is not a bit of a stretch to think that creative people would find ways to make unions a productive advantage, leading to greater prosperity for all involved.

Such is the awesome power of capitalism.

What's Up With That Image?

Are you curious what the image in the header of this blog is? Do you wonder who is that haunting fellow staring out at you, with the despairing boy looking up for reassurance? He was a famous explorer and a number of things are named after him here in North America.

The image is an engraving done for a magazine in 1882, based on an 1881 painting by John Collier, called "The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson."

From an exhibit of arctic exploration images, comes this description that ran in the "The Graphic" on January 7, 1882:

As America came to grips with Arctic disasters in the 1880s, some took comfort in the long precedent of polar tragedy.... Henry Hudson, for whom Hudson Bay and the Hudson River were named, was cast adrift by mutineers in 1611 and left to die, a scene made famous by John Collier’s painting The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson. Here The Graphic reproduces Collier’s scene for its readers.

The original painting was, of course, in color. You can read more about it here, but the description from that linked site contains this interesting information:

Henry Hudson, the great navigator, made his last voyage to the Polar Seas in 1610. In the summer of 1611 his crew mutinied and set him adrift in an open boat with his son, John Hudson, and some of the most infirm of the sailors. They were never heard of more. Collier shows the moment when Hudson realises his fate and that of his companions.

Note the look of resignation on Hudson's face. Perhaps that is why I actually like the engraving better. Hudson's visage is no longer one of resignation. Instead, his piercing stare is a mix of wisdom and determination, but with full knowledge of his dire circumstances and the trials that are sure to come.
That determination was all for naught, as the boat was lost to the chilly depths of the arctic. Still, I like this work as a representation of what I'm fighting for and against. Hudson may not have made it, but he didn't have as detailed a map of the icebergs as I do. Now, if I could only get my kid to put on a damn coat.

Obama's Dream Team, Our Nightmare

In "How Obama Is Using The Science of Change" at Time.com, Michael Grunwald exposes something which shouldn't surprise, and yet it does. We know that Obama has appointed Cass Sunstein as "regulatory czar," and I have long observed the interplay between Sunstein's "libertarian paternalism" (Nudge) and the work of behavioral economist Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), but Grunwald today tells us something we didn't know (as far as I'm aware, anyway):

Two weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama's campaign was mobilizing millions of supporters; it was a bit late to start rewriting get-out-the-vote (GOTV) scripts. "BUT, BUT, BUT," deputy field director Mike Moffo wrote to Obama's GOTV operatives nationwide, "What if I told you a world-famous team of genius scientists, psychologists and economists wrote down the best techniques for GOTV scripting?!?! Would you be interested in at least taking a look? Of course you would!!"

Moffo then passed along guidelines and a sample script from the Consortium of Behavioral Scientists, a secret advisory group of 29 of the nation's leading behaviorists. ...

The existence of this behavioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has never been publicly disclosed, even though its members gave Obama white papers on messaging, fundraising and rumor control as well as voter mobilization. All their proposals — among them the famous online fundraising lotteries that gave small donors a chance to win face time with Obama — came with footnotes to peer-reviewed academic research. "It was amazing to have these bullet points telling us what to do and the science behind it," Moffo tells TIME. "These guys really know what makes people tick." [bold added]

I have previously addressed some of Cass Sunstein's and Dan Ariely's ideas, and upon reflection, it isn't a shock to see that they worked together in the Obama campaign's Consortium of Behavioral Scientists. In a perverse way, it's reassuring to see such terrible ideas coalesce like this, because it reinforces that ideas have great importance, and that there is a definite right and wrong. It reasserts the primacy of existence and the law of identity. These fellows belong together.

The threat, however, is that the bad ideas are the ones whispered in the ear of power, and power is eager to listen.

To revisit briefly, Sunstein's idea of nudging is to set up "choice architecture" to default to the way the government wants things to go, but to toss a bone to freedom by allowing people to opt-out. I suppose that doesn't sound too terrible on the face of it, so let's continue with Grunwald:

The first sign of the behavioralist takeover surfaced on April 1, when Americans began receiving $116 billion worth of payroll-tax cuts from the stimulus package. Obama isn't sending us one-time rebate checks. Reason: his goal is to jump-start consumer spending, and research has shown we're more likely to save money rather than spend it when we get it in a big chunk. Instead, Obama made sure the tax cuts will be paid out through decreased withholding, so our regular paychecks will grow a bit and we'll be less likely to notice the windfall. The idea, an aide explains, is to manipulate us into spending the extra cash.

Obama's efforts to change us carry a clear political risk. Republicans already portray him as a nanny-state scold, an élitist Big Brother lecturing us about inflating our tires and reading to our kids. We elected a President, not a life coach, and we might not like elected officials' challenging our right to be couch potatoes. Obama's aides seem to favor nudges that preserve free choice over heavy-handed regulation, an approach Thaler and Sunstein, the co-authors of Nudge, call "libertarian paternalism." But it's still paternalism, and Sunstein will have the power to put it into action. The idea of public officials, even well-meaning ones, trying to engineer our private behavior to produce change can seem a bit creepy.

But face it: Obama is right. Our emissions are boiling the planet, and most of our energy use is unnecessary. Our health expenditures are bankrupting the Treasury, and most of our visits to the doctor can be traced to unhealthy behavior. We do need to change, and we know it.

So why don't we? And how can we? The behaviorists have ideas, and the Administration is listening. [bold added]

Grunwald's ideas are clear: he agrees with Ariely that people are irrevocably irrational and need to be led to the "right" decisions by a supposedly benevolent government. And yet, he still gets something right... this is creepy. And not just creepy, but Orwellian and profoundly disturbing.

If I were prone to believing in conspiracies, I would think that Kant and Marx set the philosophical and economic ideas in motion, transmitted special coded tea leaf signals to Keynes to continue the work to attack the free market, and to Dewey to destroy classical education, and then watched the dominoes fall throughout the 20th century as American students were bathed in nihilism and pragmatism to a point where they really are predictably irrational, by design.

But I don't believe in conspiracies like this. I do, however, respect the power of ideas, and know that while there were no grand plans in place, the transmission of the terrible ideas of the historical figures above led to the situation we're in now—where a group of "behavioral economists" (I use quotes on purpose) are positioned to experiment on the citizens of America—while citizens like Grunwald seem to revel in it. Grunwald acknowledges as much, though likely without realizing it, when he writes:

Obama has pledged that his bank-regulation overhaul would be based "not on abstract models ... but on actual data on how actual people make financial decisions." That's a plain-English way of saying it will be guided by behavioral economics, not neoclassical economics.

Neoclassical economics—another University of Chicago specialty—has ruled our world for decades. It's the doctrine that markets know best: when government keeps its hands off free enterprise, capital migrates to its most productive uses and society prospers. But its elegant models rely on a bold assumption: rational decisions by self-interested individuals create efficient markets. Behavioral economics challenged this assumption, and the financial meltdown has just about shattered it; even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan confessed his Chicago School worldview has been shaken. [bold added]

Behavioral economics, relying on the pragmatism and altruism that the sad majority of Americans hold as an unquestioned guide to life, is replacing the last vestiges of Enlightenment thought that, only because of its veracity and the American sense-of-life, still lingers in America to this day. In reference to the "opportunity" afforded by the financial crisis, Grunwald quotes Ariely, in what seems the disgusting relish of a cannibal looking up from its meal:

"We couldn't have planned a better marketing campaign for behavioral economics," MIT's Ariely quips.

Prepare to be nudged, America.