I decided to give a young colleague a post-graduate course in political science and economics – P. J. O’Rourke’s books Parliament of Whores and Eat the Rich. So I went to my local Barnes & Noble to search for them. Not in Current Affairs. Not in Economics. No separate section called Politics. I decided to try Borders. But first – to avoid yet more driving around – I went online to see if my local Borders stores had them in stock. (An excellent innovation that Barnes & Noble should copy, for customers who like to look at the actual book before buying it, or who don’t do their Christmas shopping far enough in advance to shop online.) Sure enough, they did, in a couple of stores just blocks from the Cato Institute. Checking to see where in the store I would find them, I discovered that they would both be shelved under “Humor–Humorous Writing.” Oh, right, I thought, they’re not books on economics or current affairs, they’re humor.

Yes, P.J. is one of the funniest writers around. But what people often miss when they talk about his humor is what a good reporter and what an insightful analyst he is. Parliament of Whores is a very funny book, but it’s also a very perceptive analysis of politics in a late 20^th century democracy. And if you read Eat the Rich, you’ll learn more about how countries get rich—and why they don’t – than in a whole year of econ at most colleges. In fact, I’ve decided that the best answer to the question “What’s the best book to start learning economics?” is Eat the Rich.

On page 1, P. J. starts with the right question: “Why do some places prosper and thrive while others just suck?” Supply-and-demand curves are all well and good, but what we really want to know is how not to be mired in poverty. He writes that he tried returning to his college economics texts but quickly remembered why he hated them at the time–though he does attempt, for instance, to explain comparative advantage in terms of John Grisham and Courtney Love. Instead he decided to visit economically successful and unsuccessful societies and try to figure out what make them work or not work. So he headed off to Sweden, Hong Kong, Albania, Cuba, Tanzania, Russia, China, and Wall Street.

In Tanzania he gapes at the magnificent natural beauty and the appalling human poverty. Why is Tanzania so poor? he asks people, and he gets a variety of answers. One answer, he notes, is that Tanzania is actually not poor by the standards of human history; it has a life expectancy about that of the United States in 1920, which is a lot better than humans in 1720, or 1220, or 20. But, he finally concludes, the real answer is the collective “ujamaa” policies pursued by the sainted post-colonial leader Julius Nyerere. The answer is “ujaama—they planned it. They planned it, and we paid for it. Rich countries underwrote Tanzanian economic idiocy.”

From Tanzania P. J. moves on to Hong Kong, where he finds “the best contemporary example of laissez-faire….The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing.”

You could do worse than to take a semester-long course on political economy where the texts are Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores. So, bookstore owners, leave them in the Humorous Writing section for sure, but also put copies in the Economics, Politics, and Current Affairs sections.

This somewhat cryptic blog post at Wired reflects the delight of Roger Clarke that the Australian national ID card has been dropped by the incoming government. Clarke wrote an article in 1994 that is probably fairly regarded as the foundation of identification theory. I expanded on his thinking in my book, Identity Crisis.

In related news, Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester put language prohibiting the expenditure of federal funds for development of a national ID card in the omnibus spending bill Congress passed last week. Because the Department of Homeland Security denies that REAL ID is a national ID, this language is probably hortatory during the current administration.

Over at The New Republic, Josh Patashnik responds to my post on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R-CA) universal coverage plan. Over at Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum gave Patashnik Tuesday’s quote of the day.

It would be an understatement to say Patashnik and I don’t see eye to eye. I don’t even think we speak the same language. For example…

Market-friendly reforms?  Patashnik describes the Schwarzenegger plan as a collection of “market-friendly” health care reforms. Really.

The plan would banish market prices for health insurance. It would override market allocations of wages and benefits. It would let the state, rather than the market, decide what share of health insurance premiums will be spent on administrative costs vs. claims. It would expand government coverage at the expense of private markets. Every plank of Schwarzenegger’s plan would reduce the number of decisions made by the market and increase the number of decisions made by government.  

Certainly some insurance companies and employers would benefit, because the plan would cripple their competitors. But that makes the plan anti-competitive, special-interest legislation — not market-friendly. 

Patashnik claims the plan contains a “variety” of market-friendly reforms. If he can find even one, I’ll buy him lunch.

Libertarians = conservatives? Patashnik writes:

I can’t say I’m surprised Cato doesn’t like [Schwarzenegger’s plan], though. The conservative health care strategy works like this…

Patashnik perhaps believes that conservatives and libertarians are the same thing, or that the latter are a subset of the former. This is a source of irritation for libertarians (and probably conservatives too), for the same reasons it would irritate TNR staff to be called communists: not only is it dismissive, it’s just plain inaccurate. 

…endorse subsidies in theory, since it would seem unacceptably heartless to simply say that people who can’t afford medical care shouldn’t get it….

Libertarians endorse voluntary subsidies, in the abstract and the concrete, for those who cannot afford medical care. This is not because “it would seem unacceptably heartless to simply say that people who can’t afford medical care shouldn’t get it,” but because that is unacceptably heartless. 

Libertarians oppose coerced subsidies, such as the Medicaid program that Schwarzenegger proposes to defraud, because it is immoral to put someone in jail if he doesn’t want to contribute to Medicaid. Coerced subsidies are also counter-productive. (Need evidence? Look around.)  

Mind you, we don’t think these things because we’re libertarians; we’re libertarians because we think these things. 

Patashnik continues:

…Then, whenever anybody proposes a plan to actually implement subsidies, vehemently oppose it without offering any alternative plan to expand coverage.

Three things: First, a libertarian who opposes coerced subsidies is being entirely consistent. Second, libertarians have no obligation to offer an alternative plan to expand coverage, because libertarians reject that as a legitimate role for government. Third, were Patashnik to peruse the offerings of Cato health policy scholars, he would notice that most of our proposals nevertheless would expand coverage — simply because more people would have health insurance if government got out of the way.

State experimentation  Patashnik concludes:

…In other words, let states experiment — except when they actually do.

Yeah — if libertarians (or conservatives?) prefer state-level economic regulation to federal regulation, why do they complain about it when they see it? Two responses:

First, one might believe that gay marriage is an issue for the states rather than Congress, but still oppose a particular state’s proposal to suppress that freedom. My guess is that Patashnik sees hypocrisy only because he does not value the freedom to choose his health insurance or how to provide charitable care as much as he values the freedom to marry someone of the same sex. 

Second, Schwarzenegger is experimenting with the money of non-Californians. By law, half of California’s Medicaid budget comes from the feds. So the non-Californians funding his grand designs have every right to object. Moreover, Schwarzenegger proposes — in broad daylight — to further pick the pockets of non-Californians by defrauding Medicaid. 

I wonder, does that bother Patashnik? I’m interested to know the answer.