With all this talk of health care reform this year, I couldn’t help but do some digging into the real aspects of the proposals. Ranging from the completely disruptive universal medical care plan from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the socialist-like plan from Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in the 110th congress, health care is big on the agenda for 2007. I am afraid that if the policies proposed by Schwarzenegger and Kennedy are passed, future generations will witness a detrimental effect on our economy. Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, being the first state to provide universal health care to its citizens, has already seen negative aspects in regards to business and job creation.

These arguments for universal health care come disguised in many forms, but all contribute negatively to the economy. The idea of making health care affordable and available to citizens is an excellent idea, however, Governor Schwarzenegger’s and Senator Kennedy’s ideas are the wrong way to go.

Forcing employers to provide health care and penalizing them for not providing coverage is not the right direction to head.

The state of Massachusetts employs a combination of subsidies and penalties to make insurance more affordable and to force people to buy it. The law requires employers with 11 or more full-time employees to offer health coverage or be subject to a $295 fee for each employee, as well as face being billed for services their uninsured employees get.

Because of this policy, employees are going to lose other benefits and suffer pay cuts, or even be fired. The cost of medical insurance is extremely high. The real solution rests in not forcing employers to provide coverage, but to make insurance more affordable.

The answer lies in eliminating all of the fraudulent law suits filed every day by money-hungry lawyers who are completely destroying the medical system. As lawyers sue doctors, malpractice insurance premiums increase. The number of personal injury litigations has steadily increased at a rate of 12% since 1975.

Jury Verdict Research, a database of plaintiff and defense verdicts, says awards in medical liability cases increased 43 percent in 1999, from $700,000 to $1,000,000. Jury awards in medical malpractice claims jumped 43 percent in one year—from $700,000 in 1999 to $1 million in 2000. Juries are compensating plaintiffs more generously than in the past. From 1994 to 2000, Jury Verdict Research found that more than half of medical malpractice jury awards were for $500,000 or more.

Seeing the direct correlation between health care cost and the cost of medical malpractice insurance for doctors (driven up by law suits), the root of the problem is obvious. This must be attacked before anything else. If Senator Kennedy and Governor Schwarzenegger want to see real progress, their plans must be disregarded and tort abuse must be solved first. There are various other aspects to their plans that are also misinformed and misdirected, but I’ll save that for another time.

Although it is played by about 15 million Americans and amounting to a $1.5 billion a year industry, and even though it is a growing business and worth talking about, this post is not about the real-world economics of fantasy sports.

Instead, this post is about the typical structures of fantasy leagues, particularly football (the most popular), and what these leagues can tell us about the participants’ most basic economic assumptions or impulses. I will argue that the default model in fantasy sports is one of an authoritarian and interventionist governing body, which severely restricts fantasy commerce.

But just who are we talking about? As Marketplace reports, the typical fantasy sports players are “male, they’re about 36, and they own their homes.”

So what are the basic structures of fantasy leagues?

Continue reading "The Political Economy of Fantasy Sports"

BRYN MAWR, July 11, 2006 - One school of libertarian political thought is that of the so-called anarcho-capitalists. Here’s a good summary: “Anarcho-capitalists reject the state as an unjustified monopolist and systematic aggressor against sovereign individuals, and would replace it with cooperatives, neighborhood associations, private businesses and similar non-monopolistic organizations.”

I think this view is incompatible with biblical Christianity. Perhaps you think that this conclusion is rather uncontroversial and obvious. Even so, Christians who are broadly in favor of limited government and classical liberalism need to be careful to recognize the various types of positions and views that this larger umbrella category often covers. It’s worth looking at some of the reasons that anarchism and Christianity cannot be reconciled.

The most basic perhaps is that the government is a divinely mandated institution. The exact nature and scope of its mandate is a point of some important debate, but the divine institution of government cannot be denied on the basis of the Bible. One important feature of this mandate is the responsibility to adminster temporal justice.

As Paul writes in Romans 12, Christians are forbidden from taking personal vengeance for wrongs committed against us. He says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay.’” (Romans 12:17-19 NIV)

Paul goes on to describe the means that God has instituted for the administration of retributive justice. Thus he writes in the next chapter that the civil ruler “is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” (Romans 13:4 NIV)

Again, this gets at the role of the State, but it also assumes the validity and necessity of the existence of civil government. In this latter regard, Paul also writes, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.” (Romans 13:1-2 NIV) This section is a good summary of what the Bible says on these topics, and is consistent with the traditional interpretation of many other parts of the Scriptures, including the commandment to “Honor your father and your mother.” (Exodus 20:12 NIV) This commandment is understood to refer not only to our actual parents but to all temporal authorities that God has instituted.

One specific feature of anarcho-capitalist theory is that all taxation by government is necessarily invalid and by definition theft. This is because any state action, but particularly one like taxation, violates the basic principle of non-agression because it is inherently coercive. As we have seen, Paul clearly legitimizes a role for the State’s use of coercive force, i.e. “the sword”. But he also specifically addresses the question of taxation (as Jesus had also done previously with regard to the Roman tax). Thus Paul writes, “This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” (Romans 13:6-7 NIV) Here we can see that Paul implicitly regards governing as a valid and sacred calling or vocation, as it is participation in a divinely instituted ordinance and is a “full time” job.

With this basic framework in mind, we can understand how anarchism has always been viewed by the Christian tradition as a fundamentally problematic and heretical doctrine. One might say that it dishonors God because it denies the validity of a divinely mandated institution. In this context, the magisterial Protestant reformers were consistently suspicious of what they perceived in some Anabaptist and other so-called “radical” groups. In this way, the Belgic Confession, penned by Guido De Bres and a confessional symbol of Reformed Christianity, included in its original form in the context of the discussion of civil authorities the following denouncement: “And on this matter we denounce the Anabaptists, other anarchists, and in general all those who want to reject the authorities and civil officers and to subvert justice by introducing common ownership of goods and corrupting the moral order that God has established among human beings.”

Having established the basic validity of the existence of the State for Christianity and the incompatibility of anarchism with the biblical faith, we will examine in more detail tomorrow the scope and nature of government authority. We already see an initial element in our discussion above, that is, the administration of civil justice.

BRYN MAWR, July 10, 2006 - Things are progressing smoothly for me here at the Advanced Studies in Freedom seminar. Our daily schedule includes four major lectures from seminar faculty, each with built in small group discussion time as well as Q&As with the presenting faculty.

One of our first activities was to try and self-identify in terms of our view of the role of government (if any). I identified with the endorsement of a limited government, whose main role is to provide for the defense of the nation and the administration of domestic justice. In addition, however, I do not dismiss out of hand any role for the State beyond these two activities. Indeed, in agreement with the political conclusions of the Chicago School and Hayek, I do find there to be a legitimate role for the State with regard to certain kinds of public good.

I would articulate this as being in broad accord with a sort of sphere sovereignty envisioned by Abraham Kuyper and those who followed him, specifically with respect to the divine authority invested in various social institutions. This perspective is not unique to Kuyper, however, and I think finds expression and support from a wider and more diverse range of sources. These include writers like Lord Acton (see yesterday’s post for a representative quote), Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the reformer Wolfgang Musculus.

The government is a social institution with its own specific and unique mandate, and therefore has an important albeit limited role. My current sense is that the government is responsible for having some concern for the public welfare in cases of extreme and urgent need. The proper relation between the government and the other spheres of life, however, is characterized best I think in terms of the government as the institution of last and temporary resort. The principle of subsidiarity is helpful in articulating just how these relations might work.

A final reflection: it is important to understand the role of a Christian political philosophy and how it relates more broadly to a Christian world-and-life view. Take Lord Acton, as an example. He writes,

Now liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

Broadly speaking, we might say then that for Acton the purpose of government is to promote and protect liberty, as man’s highest political end. But this end is itself penultimate, and is to be used in service of other, presumably even higher, human ends (e.g. those of civil society and private life). This points to the necessary relationsip between liberty as a political end and what we might call virtue as a higher human end. That is, freedom is not simply an ultimate end in itself, but must be used in the pursuit of virtue, which finds its authoritative and greatest manifestation in the Christian religion.

This quote from Acton also sets the stage for a topic for tomorrow, Christian theology and anarchy. But my thought for today is that classical liberalism is not itself a complete and adequate world-and-life view (for Christians especially, but really for anyone else either), but rather can in certain forms be consistent as an applied political philosophy with Christianity, and which does not even begin to make claims about the highest human ends.

BRYN MAWR, July 9, 2006 - I arrived safely at Bryn Mawr College yesterday for the beginning of the Institute for Humane Studies Advanced Studies in Freedom Conference. Someone will have to explain to me the economic efficiency of flying from Detroit to Philadelphia by way of Atlanta. The accomodations are excellent, and the campus is quite beautiful.

The program began last night, and continued today with two morning lectures. The schedule is well suited to a good amount of discussion and dialogue, both with the faculty and the seminar participants. In the hopes of creating a truly open environment for dialogue and learning, the entire seminar proceedings are off the record. Therefore, these updates will represent my own reflections and questions on the issues raised in the course of the seminar.

In the spirit of advancing the study and appreciation of liberty, let me pass along this quote from Lord Acton (who has had rather good representation here so far, if I may say):

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.

More in the coming days about my perspective on the role of the State, as well as difficulties in finding fundamental agreement between certain forms of classical liberal thought and Christianity.

I’m leaving tomorrow to attend the Advanced Studies in Freedom seminar sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies and hosted at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. The conference runs from July 8-14, and will “take a deeper look at topics such as spontaneous order, social development, and public choice, considering them in both a historical context and in light of issues today.”

Seminar faculty include Randy Barnett of Boston University (Law), Stephen Davies of Manchester Metropolitan University (History), Sandy Ikeda of SUNY-Purchase (Economics), David Schmidtz of the University of Arizona (Philosophy), and Jeremy Shearmur of the Australian National University (Philosophy).

I’ve been doing some prepatory reading over the last few weeks, as much as I could from the suggested readings for the seminar. I’m looking forward to sharing some of my experiences from the conference with the PowerBlog audience. Look for postings on a regular basis next week. I hope to have daily summaries for you.