Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

In Which We Add Ralph Miliband to the Infamous, Mighty, and Numerous Noam-Norm Axis...

Chris Bertram attacks Oliver Kamm for being a "vicious little merchant banker." It seems Kamm complained about the late Ralph Miliband's support for Pol Pot. It seems to me that anybody who--like Ralph Miliband--says that the North Vietnamese overthrow of Pol Pot was a bad thing because dictators deserve to be left in peace unless they are WROSE THAN HILTER1!!! and Pol Pot was not--well, that they deserve as many intellectual flamethrowers as can be brought to bear. It seems to me that Oliver Kamm does a fine job here and here, and deserves our critical support.

Here is Chris Bertram:

Crooked Timber » » A vicious little merchant banker: The merchant banker Oliver Kamm has a vicious little post today attacking the memory of the late Ralph Miliband for a paper he published in 1980. Miliband... a Marxist theoretician and a member of the British new left.... [A]s a member of that new left, he had an ambivalent relationship to the Soviet bloc. On the one hand he lamented the lack of democracy in those countries; on the other he thought they had achieved various social gains. Well he was (largely) wrong about the latter, but 1980 is a long time ago, and, back then he wasn’t alone in that false belief. In fact, he shared it with people for whom Kamm now declares his admiration and support and who then wrote for those same journals. The difference is, of course, that they are alive and he is dead. Miliband cannot reconsider.

Kamm’s post attacks Miliband’s paper “Military Intervention and Socialist Internationalism” (Socialist Register, 1980 ) on the grounds that [Miliband] doesn’t think the crimes of Pol Pot were sufficient to justify the Vietnamese invasion. Reading the paper today, it has an odd and stilted feel: Miliband is wrestling with a set of issues and problems that seem deeply alien today. I think Miliband was wrong about that case, and badly so. But I presume (and hope) that he didn’t appreciate how horrific the Pol Pot regime had been, or didn’t believe all the reports. What the casual reader wouldn’t glean from reading Kamm’s nasty little post, though, is that the substance of Miliband’s article was an attack on the idea that the socialist ideal should be advanced by “socialist” states invading other countries. In other words, it was principally an attack on the idea that socialists should support the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Miliband argues, correctly, that all that resulted from such interventions was alienation from the socialist cause, and the installation of weak puppet regimes without popular legitimacy. You’d never gather that from reading Kamm’s blog, though. He presents Miliband’s attack on Soviet tankism as an apologia for massacre. That wasn’t how it would have been read at the time. In fact, it isn’t how a fair-minded person would read it now.

Actually, it is how a fair-minded person would read it now. Ralph Miliband's position is that military intervention against the likes of Pol Pot or Idi Amin is illegitimate because they are not as bad as Adolf Hitler.

Here is Miliband:

A subsidiary argument, which has sometimes been used to justify some military interventions, notably the Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea, may be considered at this point. This is the argument that, whatever may be said against military intervention in most cases, it is defensible in some exceptional cases, namely in the case of particularly tyrannical and murderous regimes, for instance the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda and of Pol Pot in Kampuchea....

The argument is obviously attractive: one cannot but breathe a sigh of relief when an exceptionally vicious tyranny is overthrown. But attractive though the argument is, it is also dangerous. For who is to decide, and on what criteria, that a regime has become sufficiently tyrannical to justify overthrow by military intervention? There is no good answer to this sort of question; and acceptance of the legitimacy of military intervention on the ground of the exceptionally tyrannical nature of a regime opens the way to even more military adventurism, predatoriness, conquest and subjugation than is already rife in the world today.

The rejection of military intervention on this score is not meant to claim immunity and protection for tyrannical regimes. Nor does it. For there are other forms of intervention than military ones: for instance economic pressure by way of sanctions, boycott and even blockade. Tyrannical regimes make opposition extremely difficult: but they do not make it impossible. And the point is to help internal opposition rather than engage in military 'substitutism'. As noted earlier, there are rare and extreme circumstances where nothing else may be possible--for instance the war against Nazism. Hitler's Third Reich was not only a tyranny. Nor was it merely guilty of border incursions against other states. It was quite clearly bent on war and the subjugation of Europe. But neither Uganda nor Kampuchea are in this order of circumstances...

What Does John Yoo Believe?

A correspondent sends me to a 2000 article by Yoo, "The Imperial President Abroad", an article that opens:

Aside from getting himself impeached, President Clinton's most signal impact on the Constitution, and the rule of law it embraces, will have been in the area of foreign affairs. As his domestic agenda met with frustration in a Republican Congress, President Clinton exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utomost in the area in which those powers are already at their height--in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President Clinton has accelerated disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law...

That's a hell of an opening paragraph from someone who was, less than three years later, to say that the president has the power to order the torture and maiming of prisoners no matter what laws congress may have passed or treaties the United States has signed.

What does Yoo mean by saying that Clinton has "undermine[d] democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law? He turns out to mean:

• "The Clinton administration's use of the military in several long-term interventions has rendered the War Powers Resolution a dead letter.... [Its failure to obtain] affirmative congressional authorization for its conduct... is still open to constitutional question..."
• "The administration has used troops... not to achieve total victory or to contain the spread of Soviet influence but in order to achieve more limited goals... whose long-term benefits for American security are unclear..."
• "In Kosovo... American troops... serve[d] under... non-American... commanders, such as British General Michael Jackson.... [This] threatens that basic principle of government accountability. International or foreign officials have no obligation to pursue American policy, nor do they take an oath to uphold the Constitution..."

The only way I can find to reconcile these arguments with those of the Torture Memo is to conclude that Yoo truly believes nothing at all.

Can anybody help me here? For the president's commander-in-chief power to extend to the ordering of torturing and maiming against natural law, solemn treaty, and congressional enactment but not to extend to placing U.S. troops under NATO command?...

Does anyone understand how Yoo can pass the Turing test here?

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People have been asking "what is Youngstown?" as it more and more becomes the pivot around which lawyers' discussions of the matter of John Yoo's Torture Memo wheel. For example, Boalt Hall graduate "Ugh" writes in:

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong: And John Yoo clearly knows about the Youngstown case, he taught it to me in Con Law I in the spring of 2000. Strangely, he somehow omitted his theory of POTUS as King that semester, as if, somehow, he might not have believed it. Huh.

Youngstown is the Korean War steel seizure case: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. During the Korean War President Harry S Truman seized the steel mills to keep them running. The Supreme Court said that he could not do that: it limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress.

Steel company attorney John W. Davis closed his oral argument before the Supreme Court with Thomas Jefferson: "In questions of power let no more be said of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." The Court voted by six to three to affirm the District Court's injunction barring the President from seizing the steel plants.

The plurality opinion by Justice Hugo Black held that the president had no power to act without congressional or constitutional authorization. Robert H. Jackson's concurrence was less absolutist, and divided the constitutional issues into three cases--(1) presidential action in accord with express or implied authority from Congress, (2) presidential action in the face of congressional silence, and (3) presidential action in defiance of congressional legislation--classified Youngstown as category 3 in which presidential powers were at their "lowest ebb," and so disallowed Truman's action.

Since then the Supreme Court has expressly cited Youngstown and the Jackson classification as authority for its decisions invalidating Nixon's warrantless wiretaps, permitting litigation against thep to proceed in Clinton v. Jones, limiting the power of the president to intervene in state judicial process in Medellín v. Texas, and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Youngstown is good law, and bears heavily upon the issues of John Yoo's Torture Memo. Yoo did not fulfill his duty to his clients or to the law in ignoring it in the Torture Memo--at the very least he had a duty to explain his (erroneous) implicit claim that the principles of Youngstown did not apply because the situation here was in some way distinguished from the situation there.

Hoisted from Comments: John Yoo as a Sportswriter Who Did Not Mention the Red Sox

Hoisted from Comments: Rea says:

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong: "Leitner's analysis is that Yoo did nothing wrong because he was acting in "good faith", like a tax adviser who gives incorrect advice."

Problem is, Yoo, ignored the Youngstown case in formulating his advice. The Youngstown case, as anyone with the slightest passing familiarity with constitutional law knows, ought to be the very first case anyone looks at when considering the extent of the President's powere as Commander in Chief of the armed forces. That sort of mistake can't happen in good faith. If he'd written up an argument that Youngstown was inapplicable, or wrongly decided, he might be able to make a plausible claim of good faith, but not even to mention it?

What would you make of a sportswriter who did a preseason analysis of the 2008 baseball season, and didn't mention the Red Sox? Not, predicted they wouldn't do well, but simply didn't mention them?

The Past Is Not Dead, It Is Not Even Past: Torture Edition

So I am reading an escapist mystery novel set in the Tudor dynasty--Dissolution by C.J. Sansom--and I find this passage affecting:

"Are you in pain, crookback?" Jerome aske"d suddenly.

"A little discomfort. We have had a long walk through the snow."

"Do you know the saying, to touch a dwarf brings good luck, but to touch a hunchback means ill fortune? You are a mockery of the human form, Commissioner, doubly so for your soul is twisted and cankered like all Cromwell's men."

Mark stepped forward. "God's bones, sir, you have a vile tongue."

I waved him to silence, and stood staring at Jerome. "Why do you abuse me, Jerome of London? They say you are mad. Are you? Would madness be your defense were I to have your arse hauled off to the Tower for your treasonable talk?"

"I would make no defence, crookback. I would be glad to have the chance to be what I should have been before, a martyr for God's Church. I shit on King Henry's name and his usurpation of the pope's authority." He laughed bitterly. "Even Martin Luther disowns King Henry, did you know? He says Junker Heinz will end by making himself God." Mark gasped. Those words alone were enough to have Jerome executed.

"Then how you must burn with shame that you took the oath acknowledging the king's supremacy," I said quietly.

Jerome reached for his crutch and rose painfully from the bed. He tucked the crutch under his arm and began slowly pacing the cell. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, steely tone. "Yes, crookback. Shame and fear for my eternal soul. Do you know who my family are? Did they tell you that?"

"I know you are related to Queen Jane, God rest her."

"God will not rest her. She burns in hell for marrying a schismatic king." He turned and faced me. "Shall I tell you how I came to be here? Shall I put a case to you, master lawyer?

"Yes, tell me. I shall sit to listen." I lowered myself onto the hard bed. Mark remained standing, hand on sword, as Jerome dragged himself slowly up and down the room.

"I left the world of idle show when I was twenty. My late second cousin was not born then, I never met her. I lived over thirty years in peace at the London Charterhouse; a holy place, not like this self-corrupted house. It was a haven, a place devoted to God in the midst of the profane city."

"Where wearing hair shirts was part of the Rule."

"To remind us always that flesh is sinful and corrupt. Thomas More lived with us for four years. He wore the hair shirt ever after, even under his robes of state when he was lord chancellor. It helped keep him humble, and steadfast unto death when he stood out against the king's marriage."

"And before, when he was lord chancellor and burning all the heretics he could find. But you were not steadfast, Brother Jerome?"

His back stiffened, and when I turned I expected another outburst. But his voice remained calm. "When the king said he required an oath from all members of the religious houses, acknowledging him as Supreme Head of the Church, only we Carthusians refused, though we knew what that would mean." His eyes burned into me.

"Yes. All the other houses took the oath, but not you."

"There were forty of us, and they took us one by one. Prior Houghton first refuse the oath and was interrogated by Cromwell himself. Did you know, Commissioner, when Father Houghton told him that St. Augustine had placed the authority of the Church above Scripture, Cromwell replied that he carted naught for the Church and Augustine might hold as he pleased?"

"He was right. The authority of Scripture stands above that of any scholar."

"And the opinion of a tavern keeper's son stands above St. Augustine's?" Jerome laughed bitterly. "When he would not submit, our venerable prior was judged guilty of treason and executed at Tyburn. I was there; I saw his body sliced open by the executioner's knife while he still lived. But it wasn't the usual hanging fair that day; the crowd watched silently as he died."

I glanced at Mark; he was watching Jerome intently, his face troubled. The Carthusian continued. "Your master had no better luck with Prior Houghton's successor. Vicar Middlemore and the senior obedentiaries still would not swear, so they too went to Tyburn. This time there were calls against the king from the crowd. Cromwell wasn't going to risk a riot the next time, so he tried all manner of pressure to make the rest of us take the oath. He put his own men in charge of the house, where Prior Houghton's arm, stinking and rotten, was nailed to the gate. They kept us half-starved, mocked our services, tore up our booiks, insulted us. The picked off trouble-makers one by one. Someone would suddenly be sent off to a more compliant house or just disappear."

He paused and leaned his good arm on the bed for a moment. I looked up at him. "I have heard these stories," I said. "They are mere tales."

He ignored me and resumed his pacing. "After the north rebelled last spring, the kind lost patience with us. The remaining brethren were told to swear or be taken to Newgate where they would be left to starve to death. Fifteen swore and lost their souls. Ten went to Newgate, where they were chained in a foul cell and left without food. Some lated for weeks--" He broke off suddenly. Covering his face with his hands he stood rocking on his heels, weeping silently.

"I have heard such rumours," Mark whispered. "Everyone said they were false--"

I waved him to silence. "Even if that were true, Brother Jerome, you could not have been among them. You were already here."

He turned his back on me, wiping his face with the sleeve of his habit, and stood looking from the window, leaning heavily on his crutch. Outside, the snow whirled down as though it might bury the world.

"Yes, crookback, I as one of those who had been spirited away. I had watched my superiors taken, I knew how they died, but despite our daily humiliations we brethren succoured each other. We thought we could hold out. I was a fit, strong man then, I prided myself on my fortitude." He laughed; a cracked hysterical sound. "The soldiers came for me one morning, and brought me to the Tower. It was the middle of May last year. Anne Boleyn had been condemned to die and they were building a great scaffold in the grounds. I saw it. And that was when I became trulyo afraid. As the guards bustled me down into the dungeons, I knew my resolution might fail. They took me to a big underground room and bundled me into a chair. In a corner I saw the rack, the hinged table and the ropes, two big guards standing ready to turn the wheels. There were two others in the room, facing me across a desk. One wa Kingston, the warden of the Tower. The other, glowering at me most foully, was your master, Cromwell."

"The vicar general himself? I don't believe you."

"Let me tell you what he said. 'Brother Jerome Wentworth, you are a nuisance. Tell me straight, without cavil, will you swear to the Royal Supremacy?'"

"I said I would not. But me heart banged as though it would burst my chest as I sat before that man, his eyes like the fires of hell, for the Devil looks out of them. How can you face him, Commissioner, and not know what he is?"

"Enough of that. Go on."

"Your master, the great and wise counsellor, nodded at the rack. 'We shall see', he said. 'In a few weeks' time Jane Seymour will be queen of England. The king would not have her cousin refusing the oath. Nor does he want her name included among those executed for treason. Either would be an embarrassment, Brother Jerome. So, you must swear, or you will be made to'. Then he nodded at the rack.

"I told him again I would not take the oath, though my voice shook. He studied me a moment and smiled. 'I think you will', he said. 'Master Kingston, I have little time. Get him lengthened.' Kingston nodded at the rackmasters and they hauled me to my feet. The slammed me down on the rack, knocking the breath from my body. They bound my hands and feet, stretching my arms above my head." Jerome's voice lowered to a whisper. "It was all so quick. Neither of rackmasters spoke a word."

"I heard a creak as they turned the wheel, then there was a great searing pain in my arms like I had never known. It consumed me." He broke off, gently massaging his torn shoulder, his eyes vacant. In the memory of his agony he seemed to have forgotten our presence. Beside me, Mark shifted uneasily.

"I was screaming. I hadn't realized till I heard the sounds. Then the pulling stopped. I was still in anguish but the tide--" he fluttered a hand up and down--"the tide had ebbed. I looked up and there Cromwell stood, staring down at me.

"'Swear now, Brother,' he said. 'You have only a little fortitude, I see. This will go on till you swear. These men are skilled, they will not allow you to die, but your body is already torn and soon it will be so broken you will never be out of pain again. There is no shame in swearing when you have been brought to it by this road.'"

"You are lying," I said to the Carthusian. Again he ignored me.

"I shouted that I would bear the pain, as Christ had on the Cross. He shrugged and nodded at the torturers, who pulled both wheels this time. I felt the muscles of my legs tear and when I felt my thighbone pull from its socket I screamed that I would swear the oath."

"An oath sworn under duress is surely not binding in law?" Mark said.

"God's blood, be quiet!" I snapped at him. Jerome started a little, recalled to himself, then smiled.

"It was an oath before God, a perjured oath, and I am lost. Are you kind, boy? Then you should not be in the company of this bent-backed heretic."

I stared at him fixedly. In truth the power of his story had struck me forcefully; but I had to keep the initiative. I stood up, folded me arms, and faced him. "Brother Jerome, I am tired of your insults and of your tales. I came here to discuss the foul murder of Robin Singleton. You called him perjurer and liar, before witnesses. I would like to know why."

Jerome's mouth worked into something like a snarl. "Do you know what torture is like, heretic?"

"Do you know what murder is like, monk? And no more words from you, Mark Poer," I added as he opened his mouth.

"Mark." Jerome smiled darkly. "That name again. Why, your bedesman has a look of the other Mark about him."

"What other Mark? What are you babbling about now?"

"Shall I tell you? You say you want no more tales, but this is a story that will interest you. May I sit down again? I am in pain now."

"I will have no more treasonable words or insults."

"No insults, I promise, nor treason. Just the truth."

I nodded, and he lowered himself back onto the bed with the help of his crutch. He scratched his chest, wincing at a pang from the hair shirt. "I see that what I told you of my racking discomfited you, lawyer. This will discomfit you more. The other boy called Mark was Mark Smeaton. You know that name?"

"Of course. The court musician who confessed to adultery with Queen Anne, and died for it."

"Yes, he confessed." Jerome nodded. "For the same reason I swore."

"How could you know that?"

"I will tell you. When I had taken the oath before Cromwell in that terrible room, the constable told me I would be lodged in the Tower a few days to recover; arrangements were being made through my cousin for me to be taken as a pensioner at Scarnsea. Jane Seymour would be told that I had sworn. Lord Cromwell, meanwhile, had lost interest; he was collecting up my sworn oath with the rest of his papers. I was taken to a cell deep underground. The guards had to carry me. It was in a dark, damp corridor. They laid me on an old straw mattress and left. My mind was in such turmoil at what I had done, I was in such pain. The smell of damp from that rotten mattress made me feel sick. Somehow I managed to rise and went over to the door, where there was a barred window. I leaned against it, for there was a breeze of fresher air from the corridor, and prayed for forgiveness for what I had done.

"Then I heard footsteps, and sobbing and crying. More guards appeared and this time they were half-carrying a young man, just the age of your assistant and with another pretty face, though softer, and streaked with tears. He wore the remnants of fine clothes, and his big scared eyes darted wildly round him. He looked at me beseechingly as he was dragged past, then I heard the door of the next cell open. 'Compose yourself, Master Smeaton', one of the guards said. 'You will be here for tonight. It will be quick tomorrow, no pain'. He sounded almost sympathetic." Jerome laughed again, showing grey decayed teeth. The sound made me shiver. His face worked for a moment, then he went on. "The cell door slammed and the footprints receded. Then I heard a voice.

"'Father! Father! Are you a priest?'

"'I am a monk of the Charterhouse', I replied. 'Are you the musician accused with the queen?'

"He began to sob. 'Brother, I did nothing! I am accused of lying with her, but I did nothing.'

"'They say you have confessed', I called back.

"'Brother, they took me to Lord Cromwell's house, they said if I did not confess they would tie a cord round my head and tighten it until they put my eyes out' His voice was frantic almost a scream. 'Lord Cromwell told them to rack me instead, to leave no marks. Father, I am in such pain but I want to live. I am to be killed tomorrow!' He broke down. I heard him sobbing." Jerome sat still, his eyes distant. "The pain in my leg and shoulder worsened, but I had not the strength to move. I hooked my good arm through the bars to support myself, and leaned half-insensible against the door listening to Smeaton's sobs., After a while he grew calmer and called again, his voice shaking.

"'Brother, I signed a false confession. It helped condemn the queen. Will I go to hell?'

"'If it was tortured from you God will not condemn you for that. A false confession is not like an oath before God,' I added bitterly.

"'Brother I am afraid for my soul. I have sinned with women, it has been easy.'

"'If you truly repent, the Lord will forgive you'.

"'But I don't repent, Brother.' He laughed hysterically. 'It was always pleasure. I do not want to die and never know pleasure again'

"'You must compose your soul', I urged him. 'You must repent truly, or it will be the fire.'

"'It will be purgatory anyway'. He began sobbing again, but my head was swimming. I was to weak to call out any more, and I crawled back to my stinking mattress. I did not know the time of day; there is no light down there but the torches in the corridor. I slept a while. Twice I was woken when guards brought a visitor to Smeaton's cell."

Jerome's eyes flickered up to meet mine for a second then slid away again. "Both times I heard him crying most piteously. Then later I woke to see the guard pass with a priest, and there was muttering for a long time, though whether Smeaton made proper confession in the end and saved his soul I do not know. I drifted off to sleep again and when I woke again to my pain all was silent. There are no windows down there, but I knew, somehow, that it was morning and he was gone, dead." His eyes focused on me again. "Know then that your master tortured a false confession from an innocent man and killed him. He is a man of blood"...

On David Brin's "The Transparent Society"

Michael Froomkin writes:

Discourse.net: CFP '08 Accepts Our Panel on 'The Transparent Society': I’m delighted to report that my proposal for a panel on “‘The Transparent Society’ — Ten Years Later” has been accepted for CFP’08, thanks no doubt to the sterling panelists I was able to assemble. Our panel is now scheduled to take place on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 3:30-5:00(PM) in the George room at the Omni Hotel in New Haven.

Computers, Freedom and Privacy is the most fun conference I go to; the program can be variable, I admit, but the hallway conversations are always fantastic. Come - it’s fun.

Here’s the panel description:

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of David Brin’s controversial book, “The Transparent Society”. The book argues that in the face of the explosion of sensors, cheap storage, and cheap data processing we should adopt strategies of vision over concealment. A world in which not just transactional information, but essentially all information about us will be collected, stored, and sorted is, Brin says, inevitable. The only issue left to be decided is who will have access to this information; he argues that freedom, and even some privacy, are more likely to flourish if everybody - not just elites - has access to this flood of data.

Brin proposes a stark choice: either the information will be “secret” and “private”—in which case only governments, always potentially repressive, will have access. Or, the information will be “open” and “public” and we will all be transparent to each other. Given this choice, Brin argues, better to be naked to each other than to empower a few with unique access to information about the many. The attempt to protect privacy as we know it carries too great a risk, as it leads if not inevitably than at least all too easily to a world of enormous information-driven tyranny in which the powers — primarily governments — with access to our ‘private’ information will abuse it. In contrast, a high-transparency world with very little privacy is one in which citizens have tools that allow them to monitor their governments.

Brin proposed a paradox which infuriated a good segment of the privacy community. It is normally an article of faith for privacy advocates that privacy empowers, and the removal of privacy is at least disempowering and at worst oppressive. Brin counters that privacy advocates have it exactly backwards: trying to maintain traditional ideas of information privacy in the face of technological changes he sees as (now) inevitable is what will disempower and perhaps oppress; only a program of radical information openness, nakedness even, stands a chance of leveling a playing field on which information is truly power.

The reception of “The Transparent Society” reflected the audacity of its claims. Some dismissed it; some attacked it; a few embraced it. What is striking, however, is that the ideas have had staying power: the book remains in print, it is regularly footnoted, and it comes up in discussion. Right or wrong, “The Transparent Society” has become more than a polar case trotted out as a good or bad example, but an as-yet unproved but also un-falsified challenge to how we think about privacy — one that demands continuing reflection (or, some would say, refutation).

The tenth anniversary of publication is an appropriate time to do that reflection at CFP.

About the presenters:

David Brin (remote participation): David Brin is the author of “The Transparent Society,” the inspiration for this panel. He is a noted futurist and science fiction writer.

Alan Davidson: Alan is the head of Google’s Washington, DC, government affairs office. Previously he was Associate Director of the Center for Democracy & Technology. Alan is a frequent speaker and presence in national privacy debates, and a frequent CFP participant.

J. Bradford DeLong: Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley: In addition to his work as a macro and economic historian, Brad has written extensively about the economics of information and the Internet. He runs a very popular economics and culture blog, “Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal” at http://delong.typepad.com/. Brad served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in the Clinton administration, 1993-95. He is also a founder-member of the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill.

A. Michael Froomkin (Moderator): Professor of Law, University of Miami: Michael has been writing about privacy, encryption, and anonymity for almost fifteen years. His writings include “The Death of Privacy?” 2 Stan L. Rev. 1461 (2000). He is a founder-editor of ICANNWatch, and serves on the Editorial Board of Information, Communication & Society and of I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. He is on the Advisory Boards of several organizations including the Electronic Freedom Foundation and BNA Electronic Information Policy & Law Report. He is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He is also active in several technology related projects in the greater Miami area.

Stephanie Perrin: Stephanie is the Acting Director General of Risk Management, Integrity Branch, Service Canada. She is the former Director of Research and Policy at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and was prior to this a consultant in privacy and information policy issues, president of her own company Digital Discretion Inc., and a Senior Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. She is the former Chief Privacy Officer of Zero-Knowledge, and has been active in a number of CPO associations, working with those responsible for implementing privacy in their organizations. Formerly the Director of Privacy Policy for Industry Canada’s Electronic Commerce Task Force, she led the legislative initiative at Industry Canada that resulted in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, privacy legislation that came into force in 2001 and has set the standard for private sector compliance. She is the principal author of a text on the Act, published by Irwin Law.

Zephyr Teachout: Visiting Asst. Prof. of Law, Duke University: Zephyr is one of the leading practitioners and theoreticians of online political organizing. She directed Internet organizing for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. Zephyr is noted for advocating the Internet as a tool for creating local offline groups. publications include “Mousepads, Shoeleather and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics”(Editor) (forthcoming August 2007, Paradigm Publishers); “How Politicians can use Distributive Networks” (New Assignment, November 2006); “Youtube? It’s so Yesterday,” (with Tim Wu) (Washington Post, November 2006), and “Powering Up Internet Campaigns,” book chapter in Lets Get This Party Started (Rowan and Littlefield, 2005.) She is currently writing about the meaning of corruption in the American constitutional tradition.

Econ 210a: May 7: The twentieth-century experience: half empty or half full?

May 7: The twentieth-century experience: half empty or half full?

• Richard Easterlin (1981), "Why Isn't the Whole World Developed?" Journal of Economic History 41:1 (March), pp. 1-19 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28198103%2941%3A1%3C1%3AWITWWD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y
• Angus Maddison (1983), "A Comparison of Levels of GDP Per Capita in Developed and Developing Countries, 1700-1980," Journal of Economic History 43:1 (March), pp. 27-41 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28198303%2943%3A1%3C27%3AACOLOG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
• Lant Pritchett, "Divergence, Big Time," Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer 1997), pp. 3-17, http://uclibs.org/PID/1011
• Dani Rodrik, "Getting Interventions Right: How South Korea and Taiwan Grew Rich," Economic Policy 20, (1995) pp. 55-107, http://papers.nber.org/papers/w4964.pdf

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Let's start today with Karl Marx: "The Future Results of British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853:

The political unity... imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organized and trained by the British drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of... India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, introduced for the first time into Asiatic society.... is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction.... From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam.... The day is not far distant when, by a combination of railways and steam-vessels, the distance between England and India, measured by time, will be shortened to eight days, and when that once fabulous country will thus be actually annexed to the Western world.

The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it.... [T]he English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures. But when you have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country, which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to withhold it from its fabrication. You cannot maintain a net of railways over an immense country without introducing all those industrial processes necessary to meet the immediate and current wants of railway locomotion, and out of which there must grow the application of machinery to those branches of industry not immediately connected with railways. The railway-system will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry.... Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labor, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power.

All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?...

The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 millions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget... [t]he bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world — on the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

The Torture Memo and Academic Freedom

I'm going to try to move the discussion of Professor John Yoo's Torture Memo over here: The Torture Memo http://delong.typepad.com/the_torture_memo/.

Anybody who wants posting privileges at "The Torture Memo," drop me a line at brad.delong@gmail.com...

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So I sent off my letter (http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/2008_pdf/20080506_yoo.pdf) to William Drummond, in his capacity as Chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate of the University of California.

Any Berkeley community members who want to sign on, drop me a note at brad.delong@gmail.com, and I'll put you on the list...

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

PROFESSOR J. BRADFORD DELONG
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-3880

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

EMAIL: delong@econ.berkeley.edu

TEL: 510-643-4027; FAX: 510-642-6615

May 6, 2008

Professor William Drummond
Chair, Academic Senate, Berkeley Division
Stephens Hall
University of California

Dear Professor Drummond:

As we discussed this morning, I write this as a consequence of reading what Boalt Dean Chris Edley calls the “Torture Memo” of Professor John Yoo—which horrified me. I write to ask you to appoint a special committee to examine the matter of Professor John Yoo--the matter that Boalt Hall Dean Chris Edley has named "The Torture Memo and Academic Freedom"—the role played by John Yoo in the Bush administration’s policy of subjecting to torture not high-ranking Al Qaeda members with information about ticking bombs but low-level prisoners irrespective of their guilt or innocence or of any information suggesting their guilt or innocence.

I ask you to appoint to this special committee members of the faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law. I ask you to instruct this committee to write of a public report to the Academic Senate no later than this Labor Day, advising the Senate of the pros and cons of actions that the Academic Senate might or might not take in the matter of Professor John Yoo, including but not limited to:

(I) no action, as Professor Yoo’s actions while on leave at the Office of Legal Counsel have been misrepresented in the press and on the internet, and he has been defamed.

(II) no action, as Professor Yoo's "Torture Memo" and related work while on leave at the Office of Legal Counsel are protected under academic freedom or are otherwise not germane to his status at Berkeley.

(III) a complaint to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer calling for the censure of Professor Yoo for actions while on leave at the Office of Legal Counsel that amount to one or more of:

(A) a breach of professional legal ethics, with respect to the duty that a lawyer and above all a law school teacher who educates future lawyers owes his clients to inform them truthfully and completely of the state of the law;

(B) work performed for the Office of Legal Counsel sufficiently misleading to rise to the same level in a professional school as work that violates the principles of scholarly integrity reaches elsewhere in the university;

(C) participation in a conspiracy to violate U.S and international law by torturing detainees, detainees whose guilt in the acts of or even association with Al Qaeda was not only not proven but not even likely.

(IV) a complaint to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer calling for the dismissal of Professor Yoo for actions while on leave at the Office of Legal Counsel that are, et cetera.

If you have not read John Yoo’s recently-released "Torture Memo," and have not been as horrified and appalled as I am, I strongly urge you to read it in full.

However, after reading the “Torture Memo” I found myself frozen, with no firm or settled judgment as to what appropriate action is in this context. I lack sufficient knowledge of the facts. I lack sufficient expertise on the issues. Thus I want you to appoint a special committee to write a report because I am enough of a liberal and enough of an academic to believe that discussion of these issues will help.

On the one side there are the claims of academic freedom, enunciated most strongly by our own medieval historian Ernst Kantorowicz just before his resignation from the faculty in protest. He said:

There are three professions which are entitled to wear a gown: the judge, the priest, the scholar. This garment stands for its bearer's maturity of mind, his independence of judgment, and his direct responsibility to his conscience and his god. It signifies the inner sovereignty of those three interrelated professions: they should be the very last to allow themselves to act under duress and yield to pressure. It is a shameful and undignified action, it is an affront and a violation of both human sovereignty and professional dignity that the Regents of this university have dared to bully the bearer of this gown into a situation in which--under the pressure of bewildering economic coercion--he is compelled to give up either his tenure or, together with his freedom of judgment, his human dignity and responsible sovereignty as a scholar...

In Professor Kantorowicz's view, a Berkeley faculty member should be allowed to state whatever his or her judgment leads him to state--even if it is that the government of the United States should be overthrown by force and violence--and that no pressure or threats of any kind should be applied to discourage him from saying what he or she decides to say.

On the other side there are at least four interrelated considerations.

The first consideration is that Professor Yoo is professor at a professional school, Boalt Hall, and thus must teach and model professional behavior that will be expected of his students as lawyers. Professor Yoo failed in his Torture Memo to make any reference to the Korean War case of Youngstown, an essential part of any good-faith contemporary analysis of the war powers of the executive branch. This failure to analyze and other deficiencies in the memorandum make it, I have been told, a serious breach of professional ethics--misconduct in failing to fulfill his professional duty to provide his clients with a complete and truthful statement of the law. Writing legal arguments that ignore (not find some way to distinguish, but flatly ignore) controlling precedent is misconduct. Students learning to be lawyers need to be protected from coming to believe that it is an acceptable part of lawyering.

The second consideration is that the work product for others outside the university performed by faculty who teach at professional schools plays a role analogous to that of academic research in other branches of the university. I am informed by some that the argumentative omissions and misrepresentations in the Torture Memo and in other work by John Yoo for the Office of Legal Counsel amount to misconduct that rises to a level equivalent to that of falsifying evidence in a scholarly work. As one attorney observed, "while outside legal work isn't formally scholarship, it has its own ethical obligations." The absence of relevant Supreme Court precedent from the Torture Memo is a "failure to meet the standards of practice required by the legal profession [that] appears... close enough to a failure to abide by the standards of the scholarly profession that it can be treated as an equivalent level of scholarly misconduct."

The third consideration is that some claim that Professor Yoo was not just an advisor, informing those whom Boalt Dean Chris Edley calls the "deciders"--George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, George Tenet, and Donald Rumsfeld--his view of what the law was. Professor Yoo was an implementer. The decision had already been made to torture detainees of unknown but probably low value who there was no reason to think had any knowledge of any possible "ticking bomb." Attorneys at the CIA and the Department of Defense were protesting that this policy of routine torture was illegal: contrary to U.S. and international law and treaty, and exposed them to potential criminal sanctions. Professor Yoo was asked not to provide an opinion but to write a document to override objections to an already settled-upon course of action, making wrongful use of the opinion-issuing power the Attorney General possesses within the executive branch to silence lawyers who had correctly evaluated the legal framework--and so cramdown the torture policy by issuing what was essentially a “get out of jail free” card in the guise of an OLC opinion. This, I am informed by some, may be a crime. I am informed that the standard, under treaties that are the law of the land in the U.S., is that an act of legal advice that materially contributes to the perpetration of acts of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is a criminal act if the actors were at minimum reckless as to the consequences of their advice: it is necessary only that the actors have accepted that their conduct could possibly and forseeably lead to the commission of a crime, not that they have known the exact crime that was contemplated and was to be committed.

The fourth consideration is that it is a key part of our society that our lawyers in the common-law tradition have no association with torture--that it is part of their professional identity to know nothing of the rack, the thumbscrew, the strappado, induced hypothermia, and the water torture. So William Blackstone wrote centuries ago. A rack had been set up in the Tower of London by the Duke of Exeter under Henry IV, and had been used by Queen Elizabeth to torture Jesuits, and by King James I to torture conspirators in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot--a true ticking bomb. But, William Blackstone proudly stated, this rack had always been "an engine of state, and not of law." Some inform me that John Yoo's role in making the strappado and the water torture--which Bush administration members of the twenty-first century speak of in euphemisms as "severe interrogation methods," just as the Elizabethans of the sixteenth century would speak of taking prisoners to embrace "the Duke of Exeter's daughter"--routine bureaucratic policy is enough of a breach of professional ethics to make him unsuited to teach in a law school.

I cannot evaluate these considerations. The facts are unclear. I have no special expertise in moral philosophy, professional ethics, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, or constitutional law. I am out of my depth. But I do know that these are vitally important issues--and I firmly believe that Berkeley as an institution does itself no good service if it does not publicly address the matter of John Yoo, and does not face us with an extraordinarily sharp conflict between powerful principles.

And so I ask that this matter be referred to a committee that has the proper expertise: a committee that can properly weigh the considerations of moral philosophy, professional ethics, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law, and publicly set out its conclusions and our options. I do this in the classical liberal belief that argument and discussion are good, and will make us see these issues more clearly.

Sincerely yours,

J. Bradford DeLong

Professor of Economics

UPDATE: William Drummond answers:

Dear Brad,

Although you and I disagree, our talk this morning was a good one. Thank you for your thoughtful memo. Prof. Yoo has agreed to testify before a Senate committee. More details of what he did while on government service are likely to surface at that time.

The actions you urge on the Senate are therefore premature. Nevertheless, nothing I've read in the bylaws that convinces me the Senate has any standing in the matter.

If there's a showing of any illegal act or actionable breach of professional ethics, the campus administration would have the responsibility of filing a complaint.

Creating the panel you recommend to examine Prof. Yoo's conduct would be defamatory on the face of it. Besides that, there's the practical problem of finding committee members with the expertise you outline.

Yours,

Bill

I am left with a puzzle: I have little clue as to what counts as an "actionable breach of professional ethics" or as serious scholarly misconduct. Hence I want a fact-finding committee. But it seems that the creation of a committee to find facts is ipso facto defamatory, and so cannot be contemplated unless there is already "showing of any illegal act or actionable breach of professional ethics." But if there is already a "showing of any illegal act or actionable breach of professional ethics" then there is no need for a fact-finding committee...

A New Kind of Science Fiction...

John Scalzi sends us to a new kind of science fiction--for this time the science is economics:

Daniel Abraham, "The Cambist and Lord Iron".

Nominated for the Hugo award. Vote early and often. Shows a deep understanding of the concept of opportunity cost.

Econ 101b: May 2: The Long-Run Fiscal Situation: Theory

May 2: The Long-Run Fiscal Situation: Theory

Notes: Lecture Audio

Readings:

• CBO, The Long-Run Fiscal Situation http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0 http://delong.typepad.com/delongslides/2008/04/the-projected-r.html
• The "Golden Rule" and National Savings.
• How Fast Should an Economy Head for the “Golden Rule? Some Simple Math

• Macroeconomics, 14.2, 14.3

• Mock Applications Exam out

April 23: Econ 210a: WWI and the Great Depression [DeLong]

April 23: WWI and the Great Depression [DeLong]

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Memo Question for April 30: "Thirty Glorious Years": A growing literature develops explanations for 'Europe's golden age' (the European economy's fast growth in the third quarter of the 20th century). Is this effort misguided? In other words, do we really need fancy explanations for a straightforward phenomenon that is easily explained in terms of convergence and delayed structural change?

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Memo Question for April 23: The Great Depression: What do our readings tell us about the answers to the following two questions?

• Why was the Great Depression so great?
• Why has there been only one Great Depression in the long span between the commercial revolution and today?

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World War I and the Task of Rebuilding:

John Maynard Keynes (1920), The Economic Consequences of the Peace, chapters 1, 2, and 6 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15776/15776-h/15776-h.htm

The Coming of the Great Depression:

Christina Romer (1990), "The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression," Quarterly Journal of Economics 104, pp.719-736, http://www.jstor.org/view/00335533/di971078/97p00037/0

Ben Bernanke (1983), "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression" American Economic Review 73, pp. 257-276, http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/di950033/95p00602/0

Understanding the Great Depression:

John Maynard Keynes (1932), "The World's Economic Outlook," Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/budget/keynesf.htm

Paul Krugman, "Introduction" to John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/GeneralTheoryKeynesIntro.html

Consequences of the Great Depression:

Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol, "State Structures and Social Keynesianism: Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden and the United States," International Journal of Comparative Sociology pp. 4-29 http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GLQ3AAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA7-IA3&dq=Margaret+Weir+and+Theda+Skocpol,+%22State+Structures+and+Social+Keynesianism&ots=P2iXGFkFfu&sig=APmY6D1P2QkJ0l28RRWX5YxjBmg#PPA29,M1

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World War I and the Task of Rebuilding:

John Maynard Keynes (1920), The Economic Consequneces of the Peace, chapters 1, 2, and 6 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15776/15776-h/15776-h.htm

• Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms, pursue our animosities and particular ambitions, and feel ourselves with enough margin in hand to foster, not assuage, civil conflict in the European family. Moved by insane delusion and reckless self-regard, the German people overturned the foundations on which we all lived and built. But the spokesmen of the French and British peoples have run the risk of completing the ruin, which Germany began, by a Peace which, if it is carried into effect, must impair yet further, when it might have restored, the delicate, complicated organization, already shaken and broken by war, through which alone the European peoples can employ themselves and live.... What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or be could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice...

• This chapter must be one of pessimism. The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe,—nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New. The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others,—Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of polities, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the States whose destiny they were handling...

• If we take the view that for at least a generation to come Germany cannot be trusted with even a modicum of prosperity, that while all our recent Allies are angels of light, all our recent enemies, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the rest, are children of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her children starved and crippled, and that she must be ringed round by enemies; then we shall reject all the proposals of this chapter.... But if this view of nations and of their relation to one another is adopted... heaven help us all. If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilization and the progress of our generation. Even though the result disappoint us, must we not base our actions on better expectations, and believe that the prosperity and happiness of one country promotes that of others, that the solidarity of man is not a fiction, and that nations can still afford to treat other nations as fellow-creatures?...

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The Coming of the Great Depression:

Christina Romer (1990), "The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression," Quarterly Journal of Economics 104, pp.719-736, http://www.jstor.org/view/00335533/di971078/97p00037/0

Ben Bernanke (1983), "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression" American Economic Review 73, pp. 257-276, http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/di950033/95p00602/0

• 

• 

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Understanding the Great Depression:

John Maynard Keynes (1932), "The World's Economic Outlook," Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/budget/keynesf.htm

Paul Krugman, "Introduction" to John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/GeneralTheoryKeynesIntro.html

• Keynes: The immediate causes of the world financial panic -- for that is what it is -- are obvious. They are to be found in a catastrophic fall in the money value, not only of commodities, but of practically every kind of asset. The 'margins,' as we call them, upon confidence in the maintenance of which the debt and credit structure of the modern world depends, have 'run off.'... Debtors of all kinds find that their securities are no longer the equal of their debts. Few governments still have revenues sufficient to cover the fixed money charges for which they have made themselves liable. Moreover, a collapse of this kind feeds on itself. We are now in the phase where the risk of carrying assets with borrowed money is so great that there is a competitive panic to get liquid. And each individual who succeeds in getting more liquid forces down the price of assets in the process of getting liquid, with the result that the margins of other individuals are impaired and their courage undermined. And so the process continues.... We have here an extreme example of the disharmony of general and particular interest.... Practically all the remedies popularly advocated to-day are of this... beggar-my-neighbor description. For one man's expenditure is another man's income. Thus, while we undoubtedly increase our own margin, we diminish that of someone else; and if the practice is universally followed everyone will be worse off. An individual may be forced by his private circumstances to curtail his normal expenditure, and no one can blame him. But let no one suppose that he is performing a public duty in behaving in such a way. The modern capitalist is a fair-weather sailor. As soon as a storm rises, he abandons the duties of navigation and even sinks the boats which might carry him to safety by his haste to push his neighbor off and himself in. Unfortunately the popular mind has been educated away from the truth, away from common sense. The average man has been taught to believe what his own common sense, if he relied on it, would tell him was absurd.... Meanwhile the problem of reparations and war debts darkens the whole scene...

• Krugman: The message of Keynes: It’s probably safe to assume that the “conservative scholars and policy leaders” who pronounced The General Theory one of the most dangerous books of the past two centuries haven’t read it. But they’re sure it’s a leftist tract, a call for big government and high taxes. That’s what people on the right, and some on the left, too, have said about The General Theory from the beginning. In fact, the arrival of Keynesian economics in American classrooms was delayed by a nasty case of academic McCarthyism. The first introductory textbook to present Keynesian thinking, written by the Canadian economist Lorie Tarshis, was targeted by a right-wing pressure campaign aimed at university trustees. As a result of this campaign, many universities that had planned to adopt the book for their courses cancelled their orders, and sales of the book, which was initially very successful, collapsed. Professors at Yale University, to their credit, continued to assign the book; their reward was to be attacked by the young William F. Buckley for propounding “evil ideas.”

• But Keynes was no socialist – he came to save capitalism, not to bury it. And there’s a sense in which The General Theory was, given the time it was written, a conservative book. (Keynes himself declared that in some respects his theory had “moderately conservative implications.” [377]) Keynes wrote during a time of mass unemployment, of waste and suffering on an incredible scale. A reasonable man might well have concluded that capitalism had failed, and that only huge institutional changes – perhaps the nationalization of the means of production – could restore economic sanity. Many reasonable people did, in fact, reach that conclusion: large numbers of British and American intellectuals who had no particular antipathy toward markets and private property became socialists during the depression years simply because they saw no other way to remedy capitalism’s colossal failures.

• Yet Keynes argued that these failures had surprisingly narrow, technical causes. “We have magneto [alternator] trouble” he wrote in 1930, as the world was plunging into depression. And because Keynes saw the causes of mass unemployment as narrow and technical, he argued that the problem’s solution could also be narrow and technical: the system needed a new alternator, but there was no need to replace the whole car. In particular, “no obvious case is made out for a system of State Socialism which would embrace most of the economic life of the community.” [378] While many of his contemporaries were calling for government takeover of the whole economy, Keynes argued that much less intrusive government policies could ensure adequate effective demand, allowing the market economy to go on as before. Still, there is a sense in which free-market fundamentalists are right to hate Keynes. If your doctrine says that free markets, left to their own devices, produce the best of all possible worlds, and that government intervention in the economy always makes things worse, Keynes is your enemy. And he is an especially dangerous enemy because his ideas have been vindicated so thoroughly by experience. Stripped down, the conclusions of The General Theory might be expressed as four bullet points:

  • Economies can and often do suffer from an overall lack of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment
  • The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully
  • Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly
  • Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach

• To a modern practitioner of economic policy, none of this – except, possibly, the last point – sounds startling or even especially controversial. But these ideas weren’t just radical when Keynes proposed them; they were very nearly unthinkable. And the great achievement of The General Theory was precisely to make them thinkable.

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Consequences of the Great Depression:

Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol, "State Structures and Social Keynesianism: Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden and the United States," International Journal of Comparative Sociology pp. 4-29 http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GLQ3AAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA7-IA3&dq=Margaret+Weir+and+Theda+Skocpol,+%22State+Structures+and+Social+Keynesianism&ots=P2iXGFkFfu&sig=APmY6D1P2QkJ0l28RRWX5YxjBmg#PPA29,M1

• 

"Vengeance, I Dare Predict, Will Not Limp"

John Maynard Keynes on the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI. From The Economic Consequence of the Peace:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15776/15776-h/15776-h.htm: If we take the view that for at least a generation to come Germany cannot be trusted with even a modicum of prosperity, that while all our recent Allies are angels of light, all our recent enemies, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the rest, are children of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her children starved and crippled, and that she must be ringed round by enemies; then we shall reject all the proposals of this chapter.... But if this view of nations and of their relation to one another is adopted... heaven help us all. If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilization and the progress of our generation. Even though the result disappoint us, must we not base our actions on better expectations, and believe that the prosperity and happiness of one country promotes that of others, that the solidarity of man is not a fiction, and that nations can still afford to treat other nations as fellow-creatures?...

Hoisted from Comments: Mark Graber, John Yoo, and the Problem of Academic Evil

Blissex writes:

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong's Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal: I am awed and impressed by BDL's arguments about Taney and Graber, which need to be recounted, because they are the central axis of the difference between the two Americas, the America of winners who send plague blankets to "untermensch" natives or who fight wars to keep treating as animals millions of imported "untermensch", and the America of losers who fight bloody wars to free their cruelly imprisoned compatriots and create the Peace Corps and try to lift even foreigners out of their poverty.

But this comment seems to be, however well meaning, extraordinarily hypocritical:

And at what point did the American people have the opportunity to condone this conspiracy with their votes? I say 'never.' For many years, the Bush Administration went out of its way to make sure we, the people, had no idea what was being done in our names with respect to "enhanced interrogation techniques." And it pretty much held the line about whether anything was being done at all until Abu Ghraib, which was sold as the doing of a few rogue National Guardsmen. The Bush Administration maintained uncertainty and deniability about its role in such activities until it was too late for the voters to indicate their outrage at the ballot box.

To me and other foreigners it seems pretty clear that the huge re-election victories of Republicans in Congress and for the presidency post 9/11 were based on a campaign of well understood "whatever it takes" wink/nudge and that the American voters enthusiastically backed a strategy of "better safe than sorry" where the rights of a few thousand brown (instead of red or black skinned) "untermensch" are insignificant compared to the safety of terrified USA voters. Torturing un-persons "just in case" seemed such an attractive option.

Am I the only malicious mind who disagrees that innocent, well meaning USA voters were hoodwinked and they did not really mean to vote for more "whatever it takes" or "better safe thansorry"? Well, some others seem to have shared the same impression, for example this Financial Times commentator (in 2006, not the day after the WTC atrocity):

http://news.FT.com/cms/s/2817d81c-b067-11da-a142-0000779e2340.html: But is clear leaders of both parties lack the confidence to challenge the mood of xenophobia that exists outside Washington. Instead they are fuelling it. In some respects the Democrats are now as guilty of stoking fears on nationalsecurity as the Republicans. Their logic is impeccable. A majority of Americans believe there will be another large terrorist attack on American soil. Such is the depth of anxiety that one-fifth or more of Americans believe they will personally be victims of a future terrorist attack. This number has not budged in the last four and a half years. Mr Bush has consistently received a much higher public trust rating on the war on terror than the Democrats. Without this -- without the constant manipulation of yellow and orange terror alert warnings at key moments in the political narrative -- Mr Bush would almost certainly have lost the presidential race to John Kerry in 2004.

But it is easy to dismiss all this as the inane gibbering of the foreign surrender monkeys that hate America and want the terrorists to win....

[Brad DeLong writes that he "doesn't see an argument" in Mark Graber's:]

[T]he Yoo memo provided constitutional justification for what may be the majoritarian constitutional understanding in the United States.... [A]s a legal matter, you could still confine conspiracy to Yoo and a few others, but there would be an awful lot of unindicted co-conspirators.... [T]he constitutional support for Yoo's position is gaining strength.... Constitutionalists who disagree had better spend more of their time explaining to their fellow citizens what is wrong with torture than suggesting the problem might be cured by better legal methods courses in the first year of law school.

But I do see TWO ARGUMENTS here, and [a third] implicit one.

Mark Graber's first argument is the same that he uses in the Taney case, and it is that Constitutions are not legal agreements, they are political and cultural ones, and that if they are not supported by the politics and culture of the majority. Nothing new there, except that Mark Graber makes a stronger case for this than is warranted. Anyhow see Tocqueville etc. quotes below.

The second argument is encapsulated in "Constitutionalists who disagree had better spend more of their time explaining to their fellow citizens what is wrong with torture."... [T]orture is wrong, but this is irrelevant if public opinions is in favour, and this follows from the previous argument, so changing public opinion is far more important than insisting on the respect of unpopular laws.

Both I think are fair points as far as they go -- because in the end unpopular laws can only be enforced with guns, "ultima ratio regum" and not just of kings.

Quotes from Tocqueville:

When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United States, to whom can he turn? To public opinion? That is what forms the majority. To the legislative body? That represents the majority and obeys it blindly. To the executive power? That is appointed by the majority and servers as is passive instrument. To the public police force? They are nothing but the majority under arms. To the jury? That is the majority invested with the right to pronounce judgements; the very judges in certain states are elected by the majority. So, however unfair or unreasonable the measure which damages you, you have to submit.

A striking example of the excesses which the despotism of the majority may occasion was seen in Baltimore during the war of 1812. At that time the war was very popular in Baltimore. A newspaper opposed to it aroused the indignation of the inhabitants by taking that line. The people came together, destroyed the printing presses and attacked the journalists' premises. The call went out to summon the militia which, however, did not respond to the call. In order to save those wretched fellows threatened with by the public frenzy the decision was taken to put them in prison like criminals.

The precaution was useless. During the night the people gathered once again; when the magistrates failed to summon the militia, the prison was forced one of the journalists was killed on the spot and the others were left for dead. The guilty parties, when standing before a jury, were acquitted.

I said to someone who lived in Pennsylvania: "Kindly explain to me how, in a state founded by Quakers and celebrated for its tolerance, free Negroes are not allowed to exercise their civil rights. They pay their taxes; is it not fair that they should have the vote?"

"You insult us," he replied, "if you imagine that our legislators committed such a gross act of injustice and intolerance."

"Thus the blacks possess the right to vote in this country?"

"Without any doubt."

"So, how does it come about that at the polling-booth this morning I did not notice a single Negro in the crowd?"

"That is not the fault of the law," said the American to me. "It is true that the Negroes have the right to participate in the elections but they voluntarily abstain from making an appearance."

"That is indeed very modest of them."

"It is not that they are refusing to attend, but they are afraid of being mistreated. In this country it sometimes happens that the law lacks any force when the majority does not support it. Now, the majority is imbued with the strongest of prejudices against the blacks and the magistrates feel they do not have enough strength to guarantee the rights which the legislator has conferred upon them."

"So you mean that the majority, which has the privilege of enacting the laws, also wishes to enjoy the privilege of disobeying them?"...

[T]he implicit one... is that instead of spending more money to gather intelligence, find proofs and thus raising taxes on USA voters, it is much cheaper to torture "people who do not look like us" as a cost-saving shortcut. Public opinion realizes that is much cheaper to torture a few thousand nobody-cares just in case, than to raise taxes on deserving, hard working "people who do look like us" to pay for better intelligence.

So those who think that the constitution is more than a piece of paper full of precatory verbiage should give that up and make the case for raising taxes on "people like us" to spare a few thousand nobody-cares "unpeople who are not like us" some cost-saving techniques.

Basically, the implicit argument is that USA voters care what's in it for them as to the case against torture, not what's in it for the potential victims of torture, who are all brown-skinned nobodies with funny foreign names, and this is what matters when one is against torture.

Finding the substantive argument against the "f*ck them, we are fully vested" position as to brown skinned suspects is more important than insisting on quaint notions like legalism which never had much traction in USA politics anyhow, except where it benefits the ruling classes...

Let me say just three things:

• The crucial middle of the American electorate in 2002 and 2004 believed George W, Bush when he said that "we do not torture" and that only "harsh interrogation measures" that were effective were being used on a very few high-value guilty criminals. You can convict a majority of the American electorate of cowardice and stupidity, but not, I think, of willful criminality
• All peoples, everywhere, are vulnerable to Reichstag Fire scenarios; we East Africa Plains Apes are who we are, and we need to try to build institutions to guard against our weaknesses.
• Constitutions are not just cultural and political agreements; they are legal, cultural, and political acts that shape the thinking of the next generation, and of the generation after that. They are attempts to improve upon whatever decisions would be made by the majority of the moment--and so the argument that they are useless because they are illegitimate if they try to stand aginst the majority of the moment is funamentally incoherent.
• Of all countries in the world, the United States is one of the leaders--when it is its bet self at least--in resisting the "f*ck them, we are fully vested" popsiiton

Chris Edley on John Yoo, and a Question in Response...

Berkeley law dean Chris Edley writes on John Yoo "as dean, but speaking only for himself" here.

I am not satisfied:

Dear Chris--

I note your statement in re John Yoo that:

I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct--that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney--material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute? Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met..."

I don't yet have an informed view in re John Yoo--I am not a lawyer. I suspect that when I have an informed and settled view it will be the Ernst Kantorowicz view: that once somebody is a member of the university their judgment is not to be constrained in any way whatsoever on any question that could possibly be considered "political."

But I do know lawyers expert in human rights who say that in their judgment John's memo of March 14, 2003 suggests a fact pattern that, if developed and filled out in ways that we can reasonably project, make him part of a conspiracy to commit crimes against what Thomas Jefferson would call Nature and Nature's God.

And I do know lawyers expert in constitutional law--including some Boalt professors--who say that in their judgment the failure of John's memo to make any attempt to distinguish the situation he was analyzing from the situation in Youngstown takes the memo out of the realm of possible good-faith argument and into that of being a serious breach of professional ethics--misconduct that rises to a level equivalent to that of falsifying evidence in a scholarly work.

I cannot help but think that it is time for some appropriate arm of the university that is expert enough to have an informed view to consider the matter, and to advise me and the rest of the faculty (a) why John's memo of March 14, 2003 does not, despite appearances, rise to the level of participating in a conspiracy to torture goatherds from Afghanistan who have been sold to the military by clan enemies falsely claiming they are members of Al Qaeda; and (b) why John's memo of March 14, 2003, does not, despite appearances, constitute a breach of the duty of a lawyer to his clients (in this case, the majors and colonels of the U.S. army who did the torturing) of a level equivalent to that of the falsification of evidence in a scholarly work--or to say (c) that in spite of substantial evidence of participation in a conspiracy to torture innocent goatherds and to deceive the majors and colonels who were his clients and acted in reliance on his advice, the Kantorowicz freedom-of-academic-speech position still applies.

I would like to know.

There is, I think, only a choice of poisons here no matter which way Berkeley moves. But I would like smarter and more informed people than me to publicly say what they think the least damaging poison for us all is.

--

Yours,

Brad DeLong

On Jared Bernstein's Book "Crunch"

I've been trying and failing to post this on TPM Cafe for a couple of days, so let me at least put it up here:

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Let me join Alan Viard in beating up on Jared Bernstein for the undefined term "merit" in his first basic principle:

TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Let's Talk "Crunch": Economic outcomes are generally thought to be fair, in the sense that market forces dole out rewards to those who merit them. But that’s not always the case. Power, whether it’s based on political clout, wealth, class, race, or gender, is also a key determinant of who gets what.

"Merit" can, I think, mean three things:

1. Marginal productivity--the amount by which, given who you are where you are with the resources you happen to own, total collective product would be reduced if you and your resources were to suddenly vanish from the scene.
2. Optimal incentives--because we want people to take local actions that advance our global goals, we have set up a system that provides people in the right place at the right time with the right skills with incentives that give them a better life--or at least more stuff--if they take actions that we regard as adding to the total pie.
3. From each according to his or her ability--what each would be able to add to the collective pie if he or she had and is the resources to fully realize his or her potential to the extent that that freedom for the one is compatible with that freedom for others.
4. To each according to his or her need--what each of us needs, understanding "need" to include not just bare necessities but also conveniences and luxuries, to the extent that provision of what we need to one is compatible with the provision of what they need to others.

These four definitions of "merit" are very different and have very different implications. By definition #4, an individual with Down syndrome merits a great deal of support and resources. By definitions #1, #2, and #3, such an individual merits zero.

Jared doesn't hold with definition #1 or definition #2--that's the work that the "clout, wealth, class, race, or gender" phrase is doing in the latter part of his definition, to shift us down at least to definition #3. Alan, by contrast, wants to use "merit" as meaning what it means in definition #2--in large part, I think, because the world is not as rich as we would like it to be, and getting incentives right to make the pie bigger seems to him a way more conducive to enhancing social welfare and hence more meritorious than highlighting the gaps between what we each can do and thus get and what we each would get if we had been allowed to develop our ability or get others to recognize our need.

Jared wants to take the word "merit" and use it for definition #3 or #4; Alan wants to take the word "merit" and use it for definition #2 (or #1?). American history and culture is, I think, on Alan's side--though I wish it were otherwise.

April 9 Lecture: Econ 101b: Arguments Against Lender-of-Last Resort Operations

Lecture Audio

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Arguments Against Standard Central Bank Lender-of-Last Resort Operations:

• Since at least 1844, central banks have been trying to avoid great depressions by acting as lenders-of-last-resort in times of financial crisis
  • Stage I: provide liquidity (at a penalty rate)
  • Stage II: lower interest rates on safe assets (via open market operations)
  • Stage III: direct market support of some kind

The critics say...

• This is immoral

  • We have a system in which the Princes of Wall Street earn great fortunes by virtue of their analytical skills, entrepreneurial vision, and willingness to take and bear risks
  • The lender-of-last-resort function provides them with a safety net, and so turns them from economic heroes into villains
  • Response I: There are no Randites in a panic...
  • Response II: Exactly: if it's good to have a safety net for rich financiers, it's better to have a safety net for the middle class and the poor as well--and a progressive income tax to fund it...

• This is unfair

  • Rich, feckless financiers who ought to be punished escape with their wealth to their yachts
  • Thriftless, feckless, imprudent borrowers who ought to have known better escape loss--and live more lavishly than the thrifty and prudent who played by the rules
  • Response: Markets aren't fair--the lucky prosper, and this is a form of luck. Markets are about productivity and efficiency, politics is about justice--see above re progressive income tax, etc.

• This won't work in the long run

  • I: Moral Hazard:
    • Financiers in the future, knowing that the central bank has always shown up in the past, will be even more imprudent and feckless
    • Thus the rescue doesn't cure the current financial crisis so much as create future ones
    • Response I: Yes, this is a danger to guard against--but the risks we want to guard against are those of running the real economy into an iceberg, not an unfair rearranging of the chairs on the pool deck
    • Response II: The principals of Bear Stearns lost the bulk of their wealth; the principals of LTCM lost their fortunes as well; how much additional moral hazard is created by LoLR?
  • II: Adverse Selection
    • You need big depressions and their losses to clean the the ranks of the entrepreneurs...
  • III. Overinvestment
    • The financial crisis is a reflection of a real disequilibrium--of an overinvestment. Boosting the prices of financial assets simply generates more overinvestment--and a bigger problem, because the bigger amount of overinvestment then has to be worked off...

This is a very old argument indeed: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made it.

It is, I think, a matter of time and scale: we want investment spending to decline as rapidly as workers can be redeployed to other potential leading sectors--but no faster. The bubble needs to "deflate," not "pop"...

Paul Krugman has, I think, the best answer:

THE HANGOVER THEORY: Are Recessions the inevitable payback for good times?: A few weeks ago, a journalist devoted a substantial part of a profile of yours truly to my failure to pay due attention to the "Austrian theory" of the business cycle--a theory that I regard as being about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire. Oh well. But the incident set me thinking--not so much about that particular theory as about the general worldview behind it. Call it the overinvestment theory of recessions, or "liquidationism," or just call it the "hangover theory." It is the idea that slumps are the price we pay for booms, that the suffering the economy experiences during a recession is a necessary punishment for the excesses of the previous expansion.

The hangover theory is perversely seductive--not because it offers an easy way out, but because it doesn't. It turns the wiggles on our charts into a morality play, a tale of hubris and downfall. And it offers adherents the special pleasure of dispensing painful advice with a clear conscience, secure in the belief that they are not heartless but merely practicing tough love.... The many variants of the hangover theory all go something like this: In the beginning, an investment boom gets out of hand... all that investment leads to the creation of too much capacity--of factories that cannot find markets, of office buildings that cannot find tenants... reality strikes--investors go bust and investment spending collapses. The result is a slump whose depth is in proportion to the previous excesses. Moreover, that slump is part of the necessary healing process: The excess capacity gets worked off, prices and wages fall from their excessive boom levels, and only then is the economy ready to recover.

Except for that last bit about the virtues of recessions, this is not a bad story about investment cycles.... But let's ask a seemingly silly question: Why should the ups and downs of investment demand lead to ups and downs in the economy as a whole?... Here's the problem: As a matter of simple arithmetic, total spending in the economy is necessarily equal to total income (every sale is also a purchase, and vice versa). So if people decide to spend less on investment goods, doesn't that mean that they must be deciding to spend more on consumption goods--implying that an investment slump should always be accompanied by a corresponding consumption boom? And if so why should there be a rise in unemployment?

Most modern hangover theorists probably don't even realize this is a problem for their story. Nor did those supposedly deep Austrian theorists answer the riddle. The best that von Hayek or Schumpeter could come up with was the vague suggestion that unemployment was a frictional problem created as the economy transferred workers from a bloated investment goods sector back to the production of consumer goods. (Hence their opposition to any attempt to increase demand: This would leave "part of the work of depression undone," since mass unemployment was part of the process of "adapting the structure of production.") But in that case, why doesn't the investment boom--which presumably requires a transfer of workers in the opposite direction--also generate mass unemployment? And anyway, this story bears little resemblance to what actually happens in a recession, when every industry--not just the investment sector--normally contracts.... The hangover theory, then, turn