In the news, Monday, July 5, 2021

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JUL 04      INDEX      JUL 06

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED

There's a New "Study" Showing 26% of Americans Are Right-Wing Authoritarians. There's Nothing Scientific about It.

“1/4 of Americans Qualify as Highly ‘Right-Wing Authoritarian’ New Poll Finds,” runs a recent headline from Business Insider. This shocking headline is only one of many similar articles reporting on a recent study. If the headline’s implications are true, this is certainly terrifying news. But before we start checking under our bed for fascists every night, we might want to look a bit deeper into how the researchers behind this poll came to this number. The “Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale” was constructed by Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer, and it gained notoriety after Altemeyer and John Dean used it in their book Authoritarian Nightmare, published in August. Altemeyer’s scale has been around since long before the Trump presidency, and he explains how he created it in his 2006 digital book The Authoritarians. ... The cognitive dissonance of American academia and journalism is on full display in this survey.

The Not So Wild, Wild West

The growth of government during this century has attracted the attention of many scholars interested in explaining that growth and in proposing ways to limit it. As a result of this attention, the public-choice literature has experienced an upsurge in the interest in anarchy and its implications for social organization. ... The purpose of this paper is to take us from the theoretical world of anarchy to a case study of its application. To accomplish our task we will first discuss what is meant by "anarchocapitalism" and present several hypotheses relating to the nature of social organization in this world. These hypotheses will then be tested in the context of the American West during its earliest settlement. We propose to examine property-rights formulation and protection under voluntary organizations such as private protection agencies, vigilantes, wagon trains, and early mining camps. Although the early West was not completely anarchistic, we believe that government as a legitimate agency of coercion was absent for a long enough period to provide insights into the operation and viability of property rights in the absence of a formal state. The nature of contracts for the provision of "public goods" and the evolution of western "laws" for the period from 1830 to 1900 will provide the data for this case study. The West during this time is often perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected, and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

To help rural America, forget the red-blue divide

Jim Hinch: In the mountainous high desert of Grant County, Oregon, America’s battle over infrastructure appears hopelessly misguided. While lawmakers debate roads versus colleges and jobs versus climate change, residents of this beautiful but economically struggling region are piecing together a future that scrambles or even renders irrelevant many terms of that debate. On paper, Grant County appears no different from any other solidly Republican rural area. More than three quarters of residents voted to re-elect Donald Trump last year. In May, voters joined six other Oregon counties in approving a symbolic resolution to secede from the rest of state. Grant County was a timber-producing powerhouse until changes in the forest-products industry and environmental regulations upended the local economy. The county has lost jobs and population almost every year since the 1990s. It currently ranks as Oregon’s most economically distressed area. Though the poverty rate matches some of urban Portland’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, historically there has been little appetite for the sort of ambitious, expensive government proposals in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan. Politics here often follows a simple rule: If Portland likes it, we’re against it. Yet, Grant County has hatched a counterintuitive effort to reverse years of economic decline by becoming more like … Portland.

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