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If You Liked Obamacare, You’ll Love Goodwin Liu

Posted by Ilya Shapiro

Later today the Senate is set for a “cloture” vote — the vote to end debate, for which you need 60 votes — on the nomination of Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I’m not going to weigh in here on the issue of whether judicial nominees ought to be filibustered in general — or if the Republicans ought to be the first to foreswear the tactic even without a guarantee that Democrats would do likewise in the future — but if ever there were an “extraordinary circumstance” fitting into the Gang of 14 agreement that broke the judicial logjam under President Bush, this is it.

As I blogged last year, Liu is, without exaggeration, the most radical nominee to any position that President Obama has made. He believes in constitutional positive rights — not that the welfare state and all its accompanying entitlements (and then some) are a good idea, but that they are constitutionally required. That is, someone ought to be able to sue the government (qua the taxpayer) if they don’t have adequate health care, or food, or shelter, or… well, anything Liu envisions is part of his indeterminate Constitution whose evolving norms adapt to the times “in order to sustain its vitality in light of the changing needs, conditions, and understandings of our society.”

As Liu wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2006:

On my account of the Constitution’s citizenship guarantee, federal responsibility logically extends to areas beyond education. Importantly, however, the duty of government cannot be reduced to simply providing the basic necessities of life….. Beyond a minimal safety net, the legislative agenda of equal citizenship should extend to systems of support and opportunity that, like education, provide a foundation for political and economic autonomy and participation. The main pillars of the agenda would include basic employment supports such as expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit.

Moreover, he’s opined that words like “free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” are “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.”



More at link

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

While this guy has some issues, I really should point out that "free enterprise" and "limited government" really are "hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protection."

If the government didn't do anything, companies would **** all over the environment as much as possible. There's no way around that at all, if you don't cut costs by polluting the air/water your competitors will and drive you out of business. I also shudder to think what the state of workplace safety would be without OSHA and safety regulations, the really skilled $100k workers would have layers and layers of safety protection, the menial unskilled laborers would probably not be expected to last five years before being killed or crippled, they're too easily replaceable to waste money on keeping them safe. Also, products would be horribly unsafe, without the government the only thing motivating companies to make safe products is lost sales, and it's far more effective to just run ads lying to people about how your product is safe than to actually make the product safe.

Xeq you are aware lawsuits are more effective at initiating base line safety in products than are regulations.

Also companies tend not to last long if they encourage death or other negative effects on their customers.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Sure they do. Did you have a series of horrible accidents that killed hundreds of people through your own negligence and incompetence? Just change your name, everyone will forget. It worked for ValuJet.

Also, if government is "limited" you can't sue if they make you sign a contract before being employed where you waive all right to sue over safety issues. Unskilled workers have no negotiating power, they would all be made to sign. I would also argue that this would easily work on consumers, nobody ever reads the agreements or things they sign when buying anything these days.

Apparently you've never heard of the tobacco industry.

What do you see as the purpose of (any level of) government?

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They were first thought as healthful by doctors and everyone now knows their dangers and people still do it.

Freedom of choice as long as their is informed consent.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Or Union Carbide.

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The tobacco industry lied about cigarettes for nearly three decades and it took (gasp!) government to force them to come clean.

Now, it's not like "limited government" doesn't have benefits. If you're a smart person, you can avoid the killer jobs, and distinguish the good products from the bad ones while everyone else gets ****. But don't believe for a second that overall quality and safety would be better, or that the environment would be better off. We have industries now whose entire business models revolves around lying to people and cashing in on it. There are way too many stupid people to exploit mercilessly.

/sigh

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

If limited government was so wonderful then there would be a high demand for it in modern society.

There isn't?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Clearly not... in every single modern country there is a large and expansive government. And the people aren't oppressed or ignorant - this is what most of them want, including many academics and intellectuals.

If limited government was so wonderful, there would be at least one developed country where it's in use.

++

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Liu's nomination was blocked.

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On what do you base that conclusion, Elm?


In general terms, its purpose is to serve as a mechanism through which citizens (i) establish and enforce the basic rules/framework of the system and (ii) outsource certain functions that are more effectively and/or efficiently performed via the pooling of resources and delegation of responsibility to expert/dedicated workers.


Agreed, but it's literally impossible for an individual to be usefully informed on every matter requiring his or her consent. And even if it wasn't impossible, it would certainly be hugely inefficient. So how do you deal with that if not through baseline regulation?

This is a hasty generalization. And, even if we give if credence, exists only because of regulation in the first place. Because matters of consent and individual choice are so complicated by the presence of regulation and intervention not made public or easily understood, the legal nature of consent is made problematic by an external pressure on the knowledge curve.

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I think our problem is were dealing with extremes.

Limited government doesn't equal anarchy any more than baseline regulation equals total control over every aspect of peoples lives.

If you want to stick with the smoking examples, I think package warnings and age restrictions are a great example balance between the two extremes of outlawing it and doing nothing. When you start talking about banning it from their own houses and cars you've crossed the line.

I think we can take this mentality to just about every other issue.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I thought one of the basic tenets of economics is that consumers will make rationale decisions based on the knowledge that is readily available to them. If a company chooses not to disclose information because it is not required to do so via regulation then consumers are hamstrung when it comes to decision-making.

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I agree with the second sentence in the quote above, but not the first. For example, consider the typical morning activities of a person heading to work: they get cleaned up, eat breakfast, and drive to work. Pretty straightforward, but only until you look at the details. In cleaning up, that person used shampoo, soap, toothpaste, deodorant, maybe some hair goop, and if it's a woman, likely 3-7 different types of make-up. Has that person taken the time to research the health effects of those products and each ingredient they contain? Assuming he has, does he have the expertise to evaluate the information he finds? Ok, on to breakfast. He makes coffee, nukes a bowl of oatmeal, and eats some fresh fruit. Does he know what chemicals those foods were treated with and their potential health effects? Has he checked into the safety record of the manufacturers who made his coffee maker and microwave or, for that matter, the electrician who installed the wiring in his apartment building? Now for the drive. Does he know how his car stacks up against others in terms of crash safety, fuel efficiency, etc.? Does he know what additives are in the gas at each of the various gas stations and what the toxic/pollutant effects are? Has he reviewed the construction records on the various bridges and tunnels he takes on his way to work to make sure they were designed with sufficient safety levels in mind? Is he knowledgeable enough to determine what a reasonably safe maximum speed is for each segment of his trip, and beyond that, is he confident that everyone else on the road is equally willing and capable to make that determination?

And all of that just gets him to 9:00 AM.

Lol! Nice.

I gotta say, I'm glad that girl made some money and came away from the whole thing with a smile.

And this aligns very closely with my own view, in the abstract. Since the discussion revolved around "limited government", it would seem (if the quoted statement is in fact your viewpoint) that you would favor such, given that your quote implies intrinsic limitations to government. Xeq seems to be of a different view, in that efficiency and effectiveness should have no bearing on governmental activity.

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RD, so we are taking the word of one Guy over another. It still doesn't make any of it clearer and I think gives people a false sense of security as well as fosters ignorance.

The dangers of smoking weren't revealed by government regulation, government regulation was created after the consumer got sick and acted.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill