Kotkin: GOP should be economically populist

Hey, wasn't that the whole point of Huckabee. Ya know, economic populist combined with happy face social conservative? But the stupid party can't have economic heresy and goes nuclear on Huck like he's the enemy making him probably toxic today and giving us McCain.

When will the GOP realize that there are more votes by kicking out the corporate shills.

This is the part you were afraid to quote: "Sadly, those who do tend toward populism, like current front-runners Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, appear too socially regressive to appeal to the suburban independents who will decide the elections in 2010 and 2012. Americans may yearn for an economically populist alternative, but not if they think it will bring back the Inquisition."

What do you really make of "economic populism?"

Can you really have centrally controlled economic populism, which seems to be the sort of thing you like... Elite Policy Wonks telling the populace what is economically good for them... how is that really different from now?

What if the theoretical economic populism requires a well ordered society in which to thrive? The sort of society that has not been radically atomized and all intermdiate subsidiary institutions destroyed? What if you need those things that have been systematically broken in order to have actual populism?

Good idea, but light on specifics as to what "populism" would actually mean in practice. I'm actually all for more of such home-grown energy development as we can safely pursue, but he lost me with seeing "opportunity" in the federal government's belated efforts to do something about climate change. You know, public belief that global warming has dipped in the past year -- and Republicans are all convinced it's a liberal plot to kill NASCAR, or something -- but the scientists who actually study these things haven't changed their mind.

If populism means looking out for the little guy, I'm all for it. If it means ignoring people who actually know what they're talking about, count me out.

"In the end, economic populism, not social conservatism, can transform Republicans into something other than a scarecrow party. And they could make this strategy work, if they only had a brain."

If, by economic populism, you mean the mantra "cut my taxes and cut programs that help folks other than me" then this is a dangerous path to take. For far too long economic populism has seen spending for projects in other districts as pork, but considered spending for projects in their own districts to be bacon.

I still see some of this attitude present in the local 9-12 group, which is all about cutting someone else's pet projects; the bridge to nowhere, military bases in other states, and military projects that are built in other states. But when it comes to those expenditures that come into their own state they are all for that kind of spending.

For example, a look at the NY-23 race can give us some insight. Does anyone know what Hoffman's position is with regards to Fort Drum? A press release a mere two years ago from the outgoing representative in that district (John McHugh) offered the following:

"Rep. John M. McHugh (R-NY) praised House Armed Services Committee (HASC) actions to provide $357,523,000 for Fort Drum military construction projects. As HASC considers the National Defense Authorization for FY 2008, McHugh, Ranking Member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee and senior member of the Readiness Subcommittee, spearheaded the effort to expand funding for Fort Drum. At the close of the full committee mark-up today, several projects were expected to be approved that will greatly benefit Fort Drum..."

Does the populist movement that is supporting Hoffman stand against this spending in their own back yard (and the jobs it brings), or do they consider this to be "good" pork?

Will Hoffman's follow through on his recent promise?

http://www.wwnytv.com/news/ftdrum/66013127.html

If he does, will the populists that will have elected him to office stand with him as their fellow New Yorkers working at Ft. Drum lose out on jobs?

If they do, then I will actually believe that a populist movement is forming. But I am willing to bet a case of nice microbrew beer that if he is elected, the minute he refuses to pump money towards Ft. Drum these same populists will turn on him as being anti-defense and anti-New York.

Any takers?

Does this mean you've finally stopped conflating the GOP and Conservatives and Conservatism?

I stumbled across this at Big Government this morning.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34221

"the Republicans are now being run by consultants and strategists focused on short-term political tactics -- on vote margins and polling numbers rather than principles and ideas."

The Democrats are no different in this regard. They have stuck to "principle", but in this case, the Democrat principle is "Accrue power and control until you control everything, ensuring endless party dominance". If you think that sounds like the former USSR's party politics, the resemblance is neither coincidental nor vague. It is deliberate and studied, they have become politcal soulmates.

The last two Democrat presidents did not ever "govern", nor lead, both were just simply 'endless campaigners', who continue a short term strategy of endless campaigns of promising to feed our base desires in exchange for votes.

There's now two possibilities, the GOP gets taken from the expendeint clowns and becomes principled again, and becomes the dominant force in politics, or the nuclear option, where it disintegrates for failing to have any actual purpose, and a new organization is formed and it takes the lead.

Please note, there's no chance of this happening for Democrats. There is no princple to be found on the left.

I was with him until he mentioned the "anti-carbon jihad." Clearly this guy is part of the problem you're constantly mentioning--the dumbing down of the party in favor of silly rhetoric that appeals to the under-educated--rather than its solution.

Marchmaine: This is the part you were afraid to quote: "Sadly, those who do tend toward populism, like current front-runners Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, appear too socially regressive to appeal to the suburban independents who will decide the elections in 2010 and 2012. Americans may yearn for an economically populist alternative, but not if they think it will bring back the Inquisition."

Why on earth do you think I was "afraid" to quote that? Personally, I favor a politics that's socially conservative and economically populist, in that I would like to see government level the playing field for small businesses, and restrain big business when its interests stack the deck against the little guy. That's my general outlook. Huckabee once was that sort of person, but he seems to have gone all-in for Palin-style cultural populism. Personally, I think Kotkin is wrong about how amenable Americans might be to cultural conservatism and economic populism, but I think it's (regrettably) true that younger suburban voters are trending culturally liberal, and the GOP has got to figure out how to accomodate them.

"Personally, I favor a politics that's socially conservative and economically populist, in that I would like to see government level the playing field for small businesses, and restrain big business when its interests stack the deck against the little guy."

As a small businessman, this makes you as much of an enemy as Democrats. Government meddling in choosing "winners and losers" is a loser EVERY STINKING TIME.

Government's only role should be to ensure that there IS a free market, that artificial monopolies are not created, either by government policy, or by physical fiat. For instance, a currency based on a physical substance and then not increased as needed creates a deflating currency and a desperate shortage of capital - allowing monopolies of capital to flourish. There are many ways artificial monopolies can come to exist, however. Don't get caught on that one alone.

It further needs to ensure that contract law should be equitable and just, and that when regulation does occur, it is not designed to favor one over another.

I can't imagine why anyone should be specificaly "anti big business". There's a role for every size of business. In some cases, the economies of scale work to the consumer's advantage. In some cases, the flexibility and creativity allowed by the small business environs work to the customer's advantage. I know both by experience.

Microsoft and WalMart play vital roles in our economy, and so does my two man business. I CAN compete with the guys who have millions in funding and can hire any "expert" they wish, along with a huge budget for advertising. I'm doing it and doing fine. I can survive competition, I can survive a lack of capital, I can survive a bad economy. I cannot survive the capricious hand of force wielded against me by government. It is much like fire - once unleashed to choose who to devour, it is neither controllable nor constructive.

WAKE UP Rod, this "seeking the best for the people" is not a cherry picking experience. Either you're for us all, or you're against us. Figure out which side of the nation's people you want to be on. Right now, it's not my side. And if you can't be on my side, as the side of the two guys who bootstrapped a small business into being without significant money or debt, then what on earth are you using to choose your "side"?

I must note, as an extension to my last comments... for the sake of clarity:

From my point of view, being a "conservative" is not about choosing which group government should benefit. Liberals want government's force to benefit the poor and the minority racial and so on. And, accuse people like me of wanting to use government to benefit MY race and MY economic status. That's because government choosing whom to benefit is their ideology.

My ideology is that government should NEVER choose whom to benefit nor hurt. That it should be blind and neutral, and should dispense justice for all. That it's taxation should be as minimal as needed to do those things it MUST do, like defend us, defend our rights, and defend justice.

Those who would seek to use government to dispense social justice, to pick favorites among the people, are the definition of today's liberals.

You just chose that side, Rod. The only difference between you and Democrats simply the targets of an activist government. YOu're no different than them.

Rod,

Just because you can tick off more items from the SWPL list than Mike Huckabee can does *not* -- I repeat does *not* -- mean that you yourself don't count as every bit as "socially regressive" in the book of any self-respecting Kotkin-style establishment-elitist as Mike Huckabee does.

Abortion and now gay marriage are non-negotiable items for establishment-elitists.

Anyone who opposes or is even merely skeptical of either, let alone both, is "socially regressive."

And it makes not one whit of difference whatsoever if one's opposition or skepticism is based on a highly intellectualized "upscale" Eastern Orthodox mode of Christianity or if one's opposition or skepticism is based on a highly emotionalized "downscale" Evangelical Protestant mode of Christianity.

Your notion that the SWPL crowd are your naturally allies as opposed to Mike Huckabee's crowd and that all the SWPL crowd needs to be brought around to social conservatism is a more intellectualized articulation thereof is a fool's errand for the most part.

The proportion of the SWPL crowd that can be won over to social conservatism is much smaller than the proportion of the Mike Huckabee crowd that can be won over to a mode of social conservatism more attuned to the sensibilities of the SWPL crowd -- in other words, crunchy conservatism.

You'll find many more members of the Huckabee crowd who can be won over to farmer's markets and organic food than you will find members of the SWPL crowd who can be won over to opposing abortion or defending traditional marriage.

So there's much less percentage for you in particular and for crunchy conservatism in general in sucking up to the SWPL crowd and spitting down on the Huckabee crowd than there is in trying to win over more of the Huckabee crowd, who are a much more natural constituency for your particular ideas and for crunchy conservative ideas in general.

And on top of all that, there's the fact that in addition to not being much of a constituency for social conservatism, the SWPL crowd are also not much of a constituency for economic populism either.

The SWPL crowd talks a certain amount of economically populist talk, but they rarely walk the walk.

Timothy Geitner and Larry Summers and Robert Rubin are exactly, precisely the kind of Stuff White People like when it comes to economic policy.

As long as Obama and his team reinflate the bullsh*t bubble enough to keep the "creative cities" bipping and bopping with coffee shops and gay-owned metrosexual boutiques and as long as Obama imposes at least one left-liberal lifestyle-paradigm shift on the country before he leaves office -- preferably gay-marriage -- then the SWPL crowd will be as happy as pigs in a poke.

None of them could give a tinker's d*mn about the economically populist side of crunchy conservatism or Front Porch Republicanism or anything else.

Whereas the Huckabee crowd can and do give a whole lot more than tinker's d*man, since for them the erosion of the middle and working class is something more than just something to muse on momentarily while skimming *The Nation* as your latte cools down enough to drink.

" . . taxation should be as minimal as needed to do those things it MUST do, like defend us, defend our rights, and defend justice."

does defend us from corporate rapaciousness count?

Well, Crustacean said it pretty well... you linked a fluff piece that has nothing to say about what economic populism might be, but was really a short and simple hit on two easy targets.

You claim to be in favor of populist economics, but rather than publish interesting articles about Distributist Economic theories or pointing folks to "third way" economics via Ropke or others, we get hack pieces with vague references to undefined populist economics that seem to oriented to show, as Crustacean suggests, the right thinking to SWPL crowd.

Sure, FPR is struggling with similar challenges... but they are at least inching the ball down the field however fitfully.

Sorry, the issue I was talking about is anthropogenic global warming or climate change or whatever term you prefer.

Franklin Evans, I think you're on to something with your comments about lack of civic morality.

To the anti-Krugman: As an executive and as a consumer, I understand the value of regulation in some areas. If you say you are against regulation, does that mean that you see no need at all for state or federal level oversight or for a protective regulatory role? Doesn't that place you at the mercy of the choices and business practices of people about whose standards and moral compass you know nothing? Do you really trust your fellow human beings to always do the right thing and to avoid actions that might place you or your loved ones at risk? If all people had perfectly calibrated innate moral compasses, there wouldn't be so many of us trying to better ourselves by turning to religious or secular guidance.

Anti-regulation arguments make it sound as if Republicans may be willing to take a chance that their children will be lucky and never get e. coli from eating carelessly processed food products. Or that their frail parents won't suffer from physical or sexual abuse by amoral caregivers in their old age in a nursing home which no state or federal agency has the right or authority to regulate or to check in on. Or their children won't be at risk in daycare centers which no one has the right to regulate. Or that they never will work in a building that is not safe structurally or environmentally. But there are plenty of Americans who don't feel so sanguine about these things. It's not just about whether you run your particular two-man business well and in a way that enables you to compete in the marketplace. It's also about protecting people from those we know who are out there who are tempted to cut corners, to do shoddy work, to act without scruples, and to place our loved ones at risk. In fact, for some us the need for regulation in some areas is strongly linked to family values.

As to the view that Democrats don't have principles, that is a loser argument as far as Independents are concerned. (Mocking urban voters as latte dinking lib metrosexuals is as off putting to us as mocking rural voters as uneducated rednecks. No difference in the ugliness of the tactic.) You need our votes. You won't win them by painting the other side as something which they are not. Democrats and Republicans view a number of issues differently but Independents view neither party as inherently good or bad or as principled or unprincipled. Most of us are buffet voters. Many of us lean conservative on some issues, moderate or progressive on others. Telling us that Democrats don't have any underlying principles only signals an unnecessary lack of confidence in Republican principles. Both parties deserve better than that. I refuse to believe that conservative or Republican principles are so weak and unattractive that they require arguing in the market place of ideas that the other side has none at all.

Thanks, Indy. Now if we could just get Anti-K unstuck, we might have a real discussion here.

It's not that I think A-K has "bad" ideas (I believe the contrary), or that I don't like the way he expresses them (in fact, I dislike it). -Isms are fun to think about, but on the ground and in the office -isms and $4 will get you a latte.

A-K, as a business owner you know more about running a business than I'll ever know. As the employee of companies from a local, franchise hardware store (owner managed, four employees total) to a cog in a 10,000-employee organization (I'm being vague about that deliberately, privacy issue), and a few sizes in between, the issues for me have always been the same: What level of arbitrariness do I have to deal with in applying for a job, doing that job, and being rewarded for my work with raises and promotions?

Besides which, I have intimate knowledge of labor practices from the regulatory side from my previous career. It boils down to this: You (manager, owner) can decide to hire or fire me because of competence or skin color (as a binary example). The law states that the former is valid, but the latter is illegal. So long as you (general) insist on the "right" to both sets of criteria, you fail on every aspect of civic morality. So long as your (personal) peers in business also insist on that "right", then you (personal) can claim up and down that you'd never use race like that, but you still fail when you insist that laws are not the answer to their actions.

Slap whatever -ism you like on my position, I don't care. Just don't think you can get away with not addressing the practical, on the ground points.

Crustacean: Your notion that the SWPL crowd are your naturally allies as opposed to Mike Huckabee's crowd and that all the SWPL crowd needs to be brought around to social conservatism is a more intellectualized articulation thereof is a fool's errand for the most part.

Huh? I agree with you, as a matter of fact. There is no way the SWPLs are going to become social conservatives. My complaint about Huckabee (for whom I voted in the GOP primary, and tub-thumped for on this site during the primary season) is that after he lost the primary, he became a Fox News talk show host, and dropped the economic populism that would have been a real contribution to forging a different path for conservatism in this country. He's now a typical Palin-style populist -- Republican status quo on the economy, but breast-beating cultural populism. I count that a loss, not only for Huckabee, but for the country.

You show me one thing Sarah Palin or her ilk has done to challenge Wall Street and K Street, and I'll consider changing my views.

Meanwhile, entitlement spending is just barreling along; Medicare is in the process of bankrupting the country, young people are graduating college with unprecedented levels of personal debt, and nobody is saying Word One about how or why these things are happening.

A real "populist" movement would be demanding some actual restraint on spending---ESPECIALLY on entitlements---so that the generation currently being born will have a functional society to grow up into. Not that I expect to see that ever happen; that would send the relatively-wealthy elderly generation into apoplexy. Can't have that.

And the S.S. United States sails on, its spending and taxing controls locked on autopilot, as that iceberg looms dead ahead....

Your servant,

Lord Karth

P.S. Btw, kindly refrain from giving me any line about "health care reform" doing anything to moderate this uncontrolled central-government spending. NO serious economist I know of will agree with that.

But at what point do we cede all responsibility for our own decisions and welfare, and turn them over to regulators and agencies, and then later wonder why irresponsibility has become the order of the day?

This is one of those arguments that sounds great in theory and is utterly impractical in the real world. Many small and large businesses do the right thing everyday and will continue to do so, regulation or not. Others... not so much. Everytime a new regulation gets passed, it gets passed in response to someone abusing the system. Business have poisoned children and adults with lead, mercury and a whole host of other things, by poisoning air, water, and the walls in their homes. They have sold contaminated food and medicine, both with chemicals and bacteria. They have outright lied about their products. In fact, some have continued to sell defective or dangerous products, even after the company KNEW their products were defective or dangerous. They have locked employees into factories, with inadequate ventilation and no escape route, resulting in many deaths. They have forced employees to work with unsafe equipment and then fired them when they became injured. And in each and every case, they got away with it for a while (sometimes a loooonng while) by supressing information about what they were doing. They bought off or threatened the injured. The paid for scientific hacks who would dispute clear data demonstrating harm. They bought politicians and media.

Now that China has adopted minimal regulation capitalism, we are seeing the same kind of devestation happening to the Chinese citizenry that used to happen to people in the US in the late 1800's and early to mid-1900's. Although some of our imports from that capitalist paradise have poisoned Americans too. The fact that the incidence of American corporations killing and poisoning people have plummeted in the last 150 years indicates that regulation encourages MORE not less responsibility. What is the EVIDENCE that you have that the opposite is true? I don't mean some long rambling speech about your ideology. What is the ACTUAL EVIDENCE that regulation leads to irresponsible behavior?

It's a tangent if you say so, Anti-K. I find your logic a bit difficult to follow at times, so I guess that makes us even. Your mistake, respectfully, is in projecting your personal experience on others. You want autonomy in running your business? You have it except in the passive sense: Your limitations vis a vis the regulations is not what you can do, but what you cannot do. Civic morality, as I posit it -- and as it is very superficially addressed here so far -- challenges you to make an objective justification to running your business when you insist on using an arbitrary criterion. By the way, qualifications for the job and competence in performing the job are not arbitrary, and you may want to avoid listing those in your options. Go ahead, decide on the skin color of the applicant that you will not interview him. Should he file a claim, you have violated a regulation. Now, on that basis, justify yourself on that as a business practice. The law says you can't, and so does civic morality. As for chicken-egg, I submit that the civic morality came first. So, step past your personal business philosophy and practice, and consider the motivation for (amongst other things) anti-discrimination laws and regulations. Can you assert that they are unnecessary? Can you explain the logistics of a black man being denied employment on the basis of his race in the absence of such legal recourse? How far should he move to find work? If every location that has job opportunities in his skill/field shut the door on his race, what country would you suggest he move to? If you think that last is sarcasm, pay attention: Racially-based hiring practices were once ubiquitous in this country, and it was true that the vast majority of college-degreed blacks were unable to get a job in their field, let alone having a chance to prove their abilities and competence in it. So, I see your rat's ass and raise you a cow patty: There ain't no such thing as a job for a black person in the US without anti-discrimination laws, and you can take it to the bank for women and other minorities as well. For evidence, I direct your attention to the DoL statistics for the last 60 years.

I'd be halfway sympathetic to the argument Peggy Noonan seems to also want us to ascribe to if only the GOP and their floozies (Noonan being one of the most ardent groupies they have) were a little contrite in their own complicity in harm wrought tp ordinary Joes by the meltdown. Economic elitism - central banking & FIAT legal tender laws -- hides many sins, not just left-wing ones. Too many "Conservatives" don't understand how fractional reserves DO NOT CONSERVE ANYTHING thye dilute and embezzle most of the wealth from the hands of the private citizens into the public purse, financing pet projects like toys for boys to play "world policeman" and prescription plans that are "compassionate" to BigPharma not us! The breakdown of the global financial arrangements since Nixon did away with what was left of Bretton Woods isn't "new" (Pegyy needs to get out more and meet a different class of people, a trip to Salamanca last week could have taught her a lot) in any sense, and entirely predictable. We all need to start being intellectually honest and economically truthful, the money's down the tubes, but it was Bush (and Clinton before him) who opened the spigot at the Fed. The most populist policy would be the most prudent policy, but I don't see anyone willing to tell the grandkids that we're leaving 'em the tab for taking care of their ancestors before they were born' cos we had too much fun spending the money on ourselves instead. and don't be surprised if they decide that after paying off our debts they're in no mood to pay to take care of us in our dotage, and they pass an economic stimulus bill of their own: "cash for corpses" (euthanasia as innovative means to pump liquidity into the economy-- syphoning money from the SSI fund to settle their account in Carbon Credits, Al Gore and hos cronies are laughin' all the way to the Central Carbon Bank he set up with his Goldman chumps)

re: Btw, kindly refrain from giving me any line about "health care reform" doing anything to moderate this uncontrolled central-government spending.

I won't give you that line, but I will give you this: We have a moral obligation to see to it that all people in our country have decent healthcare, just as we do to provide everyone with education, defense against foes foreign and domestic, and basic justice under law. We do the latter things without bankrupting the country (though they all certainly cost money, and a fair bundle of it) so I see no logical reason why it should be impossible to do healthcare without ruining the country's finances. Why is healthcare spending so out of control when spending on other public goods is not (or at least is much less out of control)? Where the heck is all the money going?

Re: To which I ask you, where is your justification for intruding into the business I own?

The fact that you were born into this world imposes a requirement to behave justly. If you don't like it, leave. Or at least secede from society and live as a hermit where your actions will affect only yourself.

This is one of those arguments that sounds great in theory and is utterly impractical in the real world. Many small and large businesses do the right thing everyday and will continue to do so, regulation or not.

I'm not even sure you understood what I was arguing, much less realized I wasn't going where I think you thought I was.

My point was that we continue to develop more and deeper and ever more involved regulations over more and more things, but yet, we find no significant improvement. Let me explain:

Some of you may be aware that Montana used to have no speed limit on interstates and other highways. But, Montana retained a low rate of fatalities per mile driven. How is this possible, you ask? Well, let me blow your mind even more. When Montana adopted a statewide speed limit, fatalaties per mile driven went UP. That's right, more accidents and injuries. Since that countered "conventional wisdom", studies of traffic patterns and driving behavior revealed that once the speed limits were passed, people drove FASTER and engaged in riskier behavior while driving than when there was no limit.

It is ASSUMED BY DRIVERS that the speed limit is a safe speed to drive. And for most (like me) that +5 or +10 is even better. However, I do have some experience that most people lack that MIGHT make me better than average. Still, the point is, that regulation does not prevent speeding. Rather, it punishes those who pass an arbitrary line, while at the same time, tends to cause the individual to cease measuring the safety or prudence by their own standard and accept the presented "standard" as safe. The official rules were substituted for judgement, and judgement is often set aside or simply not made.

Did Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or Bear Stearns or CIT or (insert who and whatever here) fail because they broke the law? No. They failed because they failed, in a spectacular, glaring example, to use ANY JUDGEMENT whatsoever to guide what they were doing. In addition, Congress applied no judgement whatsoever in telling both of them what to do (make enormous amounts of loans, many not good, at sub-viable rates, while retaining no signficant capital reserves, for political purposes), and never will. It isn't their money, they will never really care. And nobody at Fannie or Freddy suffered a thing for all the horrendous damage they did. Why? They weren't responsible.

We set the rules for the sandbox, detailed and encompassing. This builds a system where the focus of the players is "gaming the rules", since everything allowed is... de facto "blessed" as acceptable.

I have observed this behavior all the way from grade school in interactions between children and teachers to the behavior of large highly regulated institutions formed by Congress. It is exhibited by people who are parts of large organizations with highly structured jobs with extensive rules. So long as they "follow the rules" they're safe, no matter how irksome or wasteful or bad the decisions made.

Nowhere in this am I suggesting we should scrub all laws that say that food should not be tainted, for instance, but we've managed to remove the ultimate liability and responsibility from those who make decisions, providing them an "I followed the rules" shield.

Responsibility works... All the words in the world on paper do nothing, if the person who can make the decisions isn't responsible. Have I been clear on this? And the lesson to be drawn, is that quite some time ago, we passed the point where we placed responsibility upon people for their behavior, and instead, set up a game with rules, where responsibility is percieved to be irrelevant, or at least less relevant, than learning how to game the system for selfish purposes.

We have rules about the size of toilet tanks. We have a billion rules about the behavior of financial institutions. Yet, we have somehow managed to bypass where we made responsiblity the goal, and instead, "compliance". How many times have you seen a restaurant with a "complied" sticker on the door? Or a financial institution that says it follows the rules? Or a payday institution that "follows the law"? And yet, people are not responsible.

Do you REALLY think that few more tens or hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and legislation will change this? I don't.

We need to fundamentally re-examine the way governance occurs, the way regulation works, and the results of substituting policy and rules for judgement.

The fact that you were born into this world imposes a requirement to behave justly. If you don't like it, leave. Or at least secede from society and live as a hermit where your actions will affect only yourself.

So the fact that I breath means that once I struggle and sweat finally launch an enterprise off the ground, and if or when I reach the point where I can use or need the time and talents of others, I am unworthy of living in society if I do not let YOU control the relationship between me and my prospective employee? Not me, not the the employee, not me and the employee... but YOU?

Methinks such mindless arrogance is the precise cause of nearly all our current societal problems.

For the Anti-Krugman: You write that “We set the rules for the sandbox, detailed and encompassing. This builds a system where the focus of the players is "gaming the rules", since everything allowed is... de facto ‘blessed’ as acceptable. . . .So long as they ‘follow the rules’ they're safe, no matter how irksome or wasteful or bad the decisions made. . . . Responsibility works... All the words in the world on paper do nothing, if the person who can make the decisions isn't responsible.”

This may be what it looks like from the outside, but is not always the case. I think you need to distinguish between different environments and varying regulations. The impact of all regulations is not the same. Don’t take the lessons that apply to apples and try to apply them to oranges. It’s a mistake to over generalize. I have worked in regulated environments where what you assume to be the case simply does not work the way you describe. You have to consider how decision making works in various environments, and support regulation where it encourages better outcomes.

A sense of responsibility and being mindful of regulation are not incompatible concepts, the way they work is not nearly so either/or as you depict it. Indeed, there are circumstances where the more regulatorily and statutorily protected employees are able to nudge decision makers towards ethical behavior where those with little job protection cannot. The ability of the subordinate to speak truth to power (to speak hard truths), to convey to the emperor that he has no clothes and needs to consider other options, to face the ire of the top person but still feel able to give him the bad news he needs to hear sometimes stems from workplace protections which the chief might find irksome. But without them, there are environments where there would be more situations where you would have yes men and bobble heads who support poor decisions, not because they follow the rules or try to game the system, but because they believe it is the only way to keep their jobs. And more bosses who steamroller their subordinates. Read Gordon Goldstein’s book, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam, if you want to see how tragically that played out with LBJ and his senior advisors.