[This was written before I read Pierre Lemieux’s recent post on this topic, which makes some related points.]
There’s a famous old saying (by John Marshall?):
The power to tax involves the power to destroy.
Subsidies are essentially the same as taxes, when viewed from a certain angle. Not surprisingly, it’s also true that the power to subsidize is the power to destroy.
Suppose you are a libertarian, and you oppose government subsidies to farmers. A new president is elected in 2024 and he announces that henceforth any farmer caught criticizing the president on social media will no longer receive government farm subsidies. How should you feel about that?
Some people might think to themselves, “This new provision will make the bad farm subsidy program smaller, and hence it’s a good thing.” I would focus on the way the new policy inhibits free speech, and oppose the policy.
In a recent post, David Henderson correctly pointed out that in trying to punish Disney for speech they didn’t approve of, Florida’s legislators were ending a very useful public policy. I agree. But I’d go even further. I would oppose this action even if I thought Disney’s special status was a bad policy. (And perhaps it’s not so special, given that Florida has 1844 such “special” districts.)
Even when government policies are bad, they should not be selectively dismantled if the change is being used as a bludgeon to go after speech of which they don’t approve. If we go down this road, we’ll end up like Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
Years ago, Hayek pointed out that expanded government control over our economy threatens our liberty. This is why policies such as replacing the public school system with education vouchers are so important.
If Florida Republicans were serious about liberty, rather than merely looking for weapons in the culture wars, they’d abolish the public school system and let parents decide what sort of education their children would have.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasing clear that many conservatives are no more serious about liberty than are the extremists on the left.
PS. Fortunately, Florida’s punishment of Disney is likely to be ruled unconstitutional. However, other forms of implicit censorship are harder to police.
PPS. National Review has a good article on the broader issues involved here:
On one side, there are those on the right who see conservatism as a set of clear and timeless principles that should be consistently adhered to, regardless of whether they lead to preferred short-term outcomes in every circumstance.
Those on the other side of that line may be sympathetic to many of the same principles, but they believe that any principle that gets in the way of achieving their preferred outcomes should be discarded without remorse. . . .
[I]f we look at the battles on the right that in recent years have ended friendships, severed institutional relationships, and pitted long-time conservative allies passionately against each other, they all, at their core, come down to the same disagreements over the proper approach to politics.
PPPS. FWIW, I don’t think Florida’s state government should be policing the curricula of local schools and I don’t understand what this poorly written law was supposed to accomplish. Should legislators incapable of writing a law in plain English be lecturing school teachers on how to teach?
READER COMMENTS
Michael Sandifer
Apr 26 2022 at 11:24pm
Spot on. I’m on the left, but the more we look like a banana republic, the more I favor decentralizing power. No President should have the power to change our trade policies on a whim, have such influence over immigration policy, law enforcement, etc. We frankly need a lot of Constitutional changes, but that can’t happen in a productive way in country like ours.
For example, make the Department of Justice a Separate Branch of government, with the Attorney General always being selected by the most popular party that doesn’t control the White House. Explicitly state that Presidents can be indicted and sentenced while in office.
Also, give the courts the power of “super judicial review”, so that laws that lead to outcomes other than those intended, explictly or implicitly, can be struck down.
I don’t favor abolishing public schools, because that would be an extremely radical step and would seem insane to a large portion of voters. However, I have long supported vouchers.
Michael Sandifer
Apr 26 2022 at 11:28pm
Oh, and require that the Supreme Court and appellate courts must have an even number of justices, and must equally represent both parties. That means that any decisions made will necessarily be non-partisan.
robc
Apr 27 2022 at 3:02pm
Both?
There are more than 2. Why should the LP or the Greens not have equal representation? What about the Consitution Party and the Socialists?
Michael Sandifer
May 1 2022 at 2:11am
Those other parties have almost no support in terms of proportion of voters.
Jon Murphy
May 1 2022 at 6:26am
If the goal is to make courts non-partisan, then excluding representation of different groups simply because they’re a minority doesn’t accomplish that goal.
robc
Apr 27 2022 at 2:59pm
We could use some, but the bigger issue is ignoring the current Constitution as written.
If this were more common, and if SCOTUS would rule this way, we wouldn’t need many changes\:
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-3-1817-veto-message-internal-improvements-bill
Mactoul
Apr 29 2022 at 12:06am
And should a court have power to redefine pre-political institution such as marriage?
Jon Murphy
Apr 29 2022 at 7:27am
I do urge caution as the Court (and Congress) did not redefine the pre-political institution of marriage. They redefined the political institution of marriage. In other words, they only redefined marriage as recognized by the governments of the United States of America. The political definition of marriage only affects the political rights and privileges of married individuals (eg, right to inherit, right to make medical decisions, etc).
So, to your question: “should a court have power to redefine pre-political institution such as marriage?” The answer is “no, and at least in America, courts do not have that power.”
Mactoul
Apr 29 2022 at 7:29pm
It is quibble without meaningful distinction. Marriage is not a private thing but a social and public reality.
Otherwise, why the push for the term ” marriage ” when civic partnership could have given all the benefits required for LGBTq couples.
Jon Murphy
Apr 30 2022 at 10:04am
The distinction is subtle, but not meaningless. It’s the same important distinction that Fauci failed to make when he criticized the judge’s ruling on mask mandates and what many fail to make when they justify some policy by “it’s legal.”
The difference between a political and a non-political institution is the political only involves the political process. Politics and jurisprudence are not overarching institutions that determine every aspect of our lives. They are precise institutions meant to deal with precise things.
Craig
Apr 27 2022 at 9:39am
“Fortunately, Florida’s punishment of Disney is likely to be ruled unconstitutional.”
You could be correct of course, no telling what a federal court will do of course, but RCID isn’t Disney. It exerts de facto control of course because the only residents of Bay Lake are hand selected by Disney, but the RCID does exert government control over non-Disney entities like the good neighbor hotels at Lake Buena Vista. They don’t get to vote because they’re not residents.
Disney wound up detaching Celebration because if they left Celebration in RCID well then those property owners would be voting and Disney would have quickly lost control over RCID.
Sean
Apr 27 2022 at 1:30pm
Gets complicated on free speech here because Florida has a right to govern their territory.
Florida as a company has free speech. Florida as a government perhaps not.
Mark Z
Apr 27 2022 at 1:49pm
” FWIW, I don’t think Florida’s state government should be policing the curricula of local schools”
Do you mind if I ask why not? A lot of people have written about this issue as if it is self-evident that it is illiberal for state or national governments to restrict what can be taught in public schools, but they already do when it comes to religion: we don’t leave it to local school boards to teach whatever religion they want in their district. We have strict regulation – required by the first amendment – on religious content in public schools, and this is considered a quintessentially liberal form of regulation, because it’s regulating what agents of the state can and cannot do in performing a coercive public service. Because public schools have a coercive relationship with both students and taxpayers, leaving them to their own devices is not the intrinsically liberal (in the classical sense) position, any more than automatically deferring to, say, local police departments in matters of law enforcement is the liberal position on criminal justice.
Scott Sumner
Apr 27 2022 at 7:10pm
Decentralization generally leads to better decisions. The best would be 100% private schools, with each school deciding what to teach. Second best would be to have local school districts decide. Third best is to have states decide. Fourth best is to have a national policy. Fifth best is to have the United Nations decide.
At which level of government do you prefer decisions be made?
Phil H
Apr 27 2022 at 10:03pm
I think this is overly simplistic. We have had a system where each school decides what to teach; and pretty much every country in the world has moved away from that system. It seems much too ahistorical to reject all of that experience. The centralisation of curriculum design and standards is an effort to improve quality: not every teacher is capable of writing a good curriculum and a good textbook, so outsourcing that part to a specialised group is a good. Of course I understand that specialised doesn’t have to mean centralised, but historically they have gone together.
Jon Murphy
Apr 27 2022 at 10:56pm
It is also ahistorical to accept that experience without understanding the rise of socialism in the late 19th Century within education.
One should also note that your claim that every country has moved away from that system is false. The US has not. Higher education in the US is precisely the system Scott describes.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Apr 27 2022 at 10:33pm
Obviously the State government is ultimate responsible for how what egret taught gets decided. Local governments do not exist in the Constitution. What I doubt is that this kind of vague law is the right way to decide what gets taught. It’s clearly just “do something-ism” at best and more likely just cynical virtue signaling about a problem that may not even exist. It’s the same problem as state governments overriding local government policy on NPI’s. It just does not and cannot have the local knowledge to do it right.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Apr 28 2022 at 10:57pm
The point is the State Government was already delegating powers to develop curricula, chose textbooks etc. What was wrong with that system (if anything) that required a vague new state law? “Do something-ism” at best, political posturing in the middle and a desire to make the lives of LGDTQ people more difficult at worst.
Andrew_FL
Apr 27 2022 at 2:50pm
Those people would be right. By your point of view, once we give anyone a subsidy, we must never take it away, so we can never make policy better, only worse, or as bad as it already is.
Florida absolutely does not have 1844 municipal entities own by companies entitled to govern themselves. There is only one of those, in the entire world, much less Florida. You might argue, if you were an anarchist, that we should privatize all municipalities. But you are not an anarchist, you are the furthest thing from an anarchist.
If the Supreme Court actually finds that the first amendment entitles Disney to self governance that would be an extraordinary reading of the first amendment indeed. I can’t find that provision in the text, maybe you can help.
As long as education in Florida is public, the state gets to set the curricula whether you like it or not. Perhaps you should actually call for privatizing education, instead suddenly pretending that is your preferred policy when you’re upset public school teachers won’t be able to teach kids things you like.
It’s not poorly written, you haven’t even read it.
Scott Sumner
Apr 27 2022 at 7:07pm
Your comments are becoming increasing hysterical, and full of factual errors. In the future, I would suggest taking a deep breath before you respond.
Jon Murphy
Apr 27 2022 at 7:07pm
Scott doesn’t say that. What he actually says is:
I added the emphasis because it is the key detail: the subsidies are only going away to those who criticize the President.
In other words, the issue isn’t with removing subsidies. It’s in selectively removing subsidies. Removing all subsidies is not a problem. But targeting people is wrong.
Scott Sumner
Apr 27 2022 at 7:15pm
Andrew almost always misrepresents my views, and this post is nothing new. He also wrongly says I didn’t read the law, and wrongly implies that I don’t know that Florida controls its public education system. He’s also wrong about the Disney special district being unique. He’s also wrong about my views on public and private education.
Jon Murphy
Apr 27 2022 at 7:11pm
As a factual matter, that is incorrect. I cannot speak for how the legislation is written in Florida, but in Massachusetts (where I was raised in the public school system), curricula are set at the town/district level. The state has very little say about curricula except for a few broad items.
Floccina
Apr 28 2022 at 12:48pm
About school vouchers, would it be better if families with above median income made almost all the arrangements and pay for their children’s education directly so they could opt not only for private schools but also for homeschooling or less formal educational institutions? Maybe with some kind of annual test to see that they are learning the 3 R’s.
Could we think of a clever scheme to get there? Like maybe charge directly for each child going to the Gov schools and subsidizing those with income below median?
Philo
Apr 28 2022 at 4:32pm
It is because “many conservatives are no more serious about liberty than are the extremists on the left” that a regime of liberty is so fragile. It depends on the rightists’ being strong enough to resist the leftists’ attempts to deprive them of the liberties they prize together with the leftists’ having similar strength against the rightists. Let’s hope the stand-off continues.
Mactoul
Apr 28 2022 at 10:13pm
Victor Orban’s Hungary?
Only problematic because it dares to oppose LGBTQ agenda to propagandize children.
Jon Murphy
Apr 29 2022 at 7:39am
The “it” in your comment is ambiguous because you could be referring to Hungary or the repeal of Disney’s subsidy. Seeing as Disney is the topic of this post, I assume you are referring to the repeal. Thus, I am operating on that assumption for the remainder of this post.
As I said to Andrew_FL above, the problem is not with either the LGBTQ legislation nor with Disney’s objection.* The problem is with the targeted nature of the government’s repeal. They are explicitly repealing a subsidy because the recepiant objected to the government’s actions. This is pretty much the definition of “legal plunder” that Bastiat wrote about in The Law.
*As an aside, Disney’s objection seems half-hearted at best. True, they have some shows like The Owl House which has an openly lesbian relationship at its core. But then again, they also cancelled a planned movie for Nimona explicitly because of a gay relationship between two of the characters. If they truly are “propagandiz[ing] children,” they seem to only be focusing on lesbian relationships and ignoring the GBTQ.
Mactoul
Apr 29 2022 at 7:25pm
“It” is Hungary.
I don’t get the beef a lot of commentators have with Orban’s government. He wins in fair and free elections so why he gets to be typically called a strongman?
ssumner
Apr 30 2022 at 1:53am
If you don’t see what’s wrong with Orban, it’s likely that you’ve never really studied the issue. I’d be more impressed if you said you understood all of the objections people have with Orban, but you don’t agree with those objections.
ssumner
Apr 30 2022 at 1:54am
BTW, people used to make the same excuses for Putin–that he won elections.
Jon Murphy
Apr 30 2022 at 10:12am
The “fair and free” is questionable given the media repression there, but even if that weren’t an issue winning elections is insufficient to deny someone is a strongman. In Scott’s example, the President was legally elected. But he is abusing his authority.
Craig
Apr 30 2022 at 1:59pm
“They are explicitly repealing a subsidy because the recepiant objected to the government’s actions. ”
But Disney isn’t really the recipient. RCID is actually controlled landowners, specifically 5 landowners who own some land technically the only land not owned by Disney, who vote for the people who run the RCID. The fact is is that Disney controls who the residents of Bay Lake are and they are hand picked and they pay a monthly rent of $75 per month for some kind of mobile home and they don’t control the Board or have a vote, even though theoretically they should.
When Disney did Celebration, people moved in and Disney realized that if Celebration were left in the RCID, they would LOSE control. So they detached it. {In a sense one could argue that the RCID ‘punished’ the anticipated future not-quite-as-pro Disney voters of Celebration}
Compare with the special districts for the Villages where my dad has now retired to up in Sumter County, its no longer controlled by their ‘Disney’
Initially the special districts are controlled by the landowners but the legislature recognized that at some time prescribed by statute (I think its 6 or 7 years), control should begin a process of transition to the residents.
So we can see that Disney exerts de facto control over the district thru hand picked ‘Disney’ employee but still not-Disney landowner strawmen (who own undeveloped lots no less and don’t even live there) and stunts the residential development of the district to retain this control.
Comments are closed.