Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

2023

End of History Latin America

THANKS, GUS!:

Why Chile Couldn’t Bury Neoliberalism (Juan David Rojas & Geoff Shullenberger, December 19, 2023, Compact)

Chile’s aborted attempt to rewrite its constitution is a cautionary tale for all of those seeking a radical break—whether from the right or from the left—with the “end-of-history” consensus known as neoliberalism.

Until 2019, Chile was regarded as the pinnacle of Latin American development and a testament to the benefits of free-market economics. To be sure, the model erected by Pinochet and the Chicago Boys—the University of Chicago-trained economists tasked with implementing a radical overhaul of the economic order—eventually restored Chile’s macroeconomic stability following the inflationary chaos unleashed under Salvador Allende’s socialist government. This stabilization allowed the country to attract investment and achieve impressive rates of growth. But the reforms also brought about catastrophically high unemployment, which would have been difficult to sustain under democratic rule. Eventually, the resulting discontent led many Chileans to vote against keeping Pinochet in power in the 1988 referendum that ended his rule.

The irony is that the fruits of the Chicago Boys’s neoliberal reforms came mainly under the stewardship of Pinochet’s democratic successors. After two decades of political turmoil and economic pain under Allende and Pinochet, Chile witnessed an economic boom in the 1990s thanks to high commodity prices. Democratically elected presidents also secured trade deals that had previously eluded the pariah dictatorship. GDP growth averaged 7 percent a year, and per capita GDP doubled by 2010—the year Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD.

The biggest problem with neoliberalism is that, singularly, it works. Yopu can’t have a clash of civilizations when there is only one.

Founding

Why 14th Amendment bars Trump from office: A constitutional law scholar explains principle behind Colorado Supreme Court ruling (Mark A. Graber, 12/19/23, The Conversation)

The text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states, in full:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

To me as a scholar of constitutional law, each sentence and sentence fragment captures the commitment made by the nation in the wake of the Civil War to govern by constitutional politics. People seeking political and constitutional changes must play by the rules set out in the Constitution. In a democracy, people cannot substitute force, violence or intimidation for persuasion, coalition building and voting.


The first words of Section 3 describe various offices that people can only hold if they satisfy the constitutional rules for election or appointment. The Republicans who wrote the amendment repeatedly declared that Section 3 covered all offices established by the Constitution. That included the presidency, a point many participants in framing, ratifying and implementation debates over constitutional disqualification made explicitly, as documented in the records of debate in the 39th Congress, which wrote and passed the amendment.

Senators, representatives and presidential electors are spelled out because some doubt existed when the amendment was debated in 1866 as to whether they were officers of the United States, although they were frequently referred to as such in the course of congressional debates. […]

Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Insurrection, Burr’s Rebellion, John Brown’s Raid and other events were insurrections, even when the goal was not overturning the government.

What these events had in common was that people were trying to prevent the enforcement of laws that were consequences of persuasion, coalition building and voting. Or they were trying to create new laws by force, violence and intimidation.

These words in the amendment declare that those who turn to bullets when ballots fail to provide their desired result cannot be trusted as democratic officials. When applied specifically to the events on Jan. 6, 2021, the amendment declares that those who turn to violence when voting goes against them cannot hold office in a democratic nation.

One Economy to Rule Them All

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Who Gets Credit for No-Recession 2023? Everyone and No One (Elisabeth Dellinger — 12/18/2023, Fisher Investments)

[T]he basic, simple yet powerful story of the past few years appears to be this: It is far easier to turn an economy off, as lockdowns did in 2020, than it is to turn it on again—especially when different countries are firing back up at different times and speeds. The US got going before Europe got going before Japan got going before China. So you had demand boom in one place before supply in another was capable of meeting it. Even in the US, some states and industries reopened before others, creating a mismatch for made-in-the-USA goods and services. For just one example, I was back in the office before I could get my hair cut without crossing state lines.[iii] First-world problem, maybe, but it is mostly a microcosm of the broader picture: Lockdown and reopening caused countless dislocations and disruptions that couldn’t resolve until the whole world, developed and developing, moved beyond lockdowns. Parallel to all of this, the world’s energy markets had to realign after Russia’s Ukraine invasion and the resulting sanctions, which shifted oil and natural gas supply and demand globally. That took a while, too, but at this point it is largely solved.

Furthermore, a lot of the reopening decisions in the US were business-specific, not government-ordained. When the economy was shut down, some companies innovated or otherwise managed through it, quickly returning to normal operations when allowed. Others waited. To each their own—no judgments here! The key is this: It speaks to how decentralized and messy a developed economy really is. In the Western world, as the UK has shown lately, governments can’t even order civil servants back to the office, much less private workers. In the end, businesses respond to conditions—all conditions—as incentives dictate.

Governments can tweak those incentives, but that is about it.

Turns out a gl;obal pandemic was disruptive…briefly.

Neoconomics

THE SOLUTION TO POVERTY IS WEALTH:

$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people (Doug Smith, Dec. 19, 2023, LA Times)


The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.

Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.

“I felt there was enough interest and the initial findings were compelling enough that it was important to get those results out,” said Benjamin Henwood, director of the Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research at the Dworak-Peck School, who led the study.

Russia

THERE IS NO BEAR IN THE WOODS:

The Russian Air Force Is Dying a Slow and Painful Death in Ukraine (Peter Suciu, 12/18/23, National Interest)

Russia saw two of its jets lost in just 24 hours over the past weekend, including one that was reported to have been shot down by its own forces in the skies over Ukraine.

Since launching its unprovoked war against Ukraine nearly two years ago, the Russian military has seen a significant number of combat aircraft lost in the fighting. The most recent aircraft destroyed included a Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bomber that was targeted on the ground at a Russian air base in an early morning raid on Sunday. Later that same day, a Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet was shot down over the Zaporizhia region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday per Business Insider.

Kyiv claimed it wasn’t responsible for the downing of the latter aircraft.

“I can confidently state that it was not the Ukrainian air defense that shot down the Russian Su-25 attack aircraft! These were clearly the coordinated actions of Russian anti-aircraft troops, for which the entire Ukrainian people sends them great thanks!,” Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a post on the social messaging app Telegram.

Latin America

“STOP ME, BEFORE I KILL AGAIN!”:

The Case for Dollarization in Argentina: A Path to Economic Stability (Nicolas Cachanosky, 12/19/23, Econ Lib)

The primary rationale lies in the necessity for a credible commitment device. This paper by Emilio Ocampo explains how dollarization can serve as such for Argentina. Drawing from the experience of Ecuador under Rafael Correa, we see that dollarization acts as a credible institutional constraint that diminishes the costs associated with a populist regime. In a country where political shifts are frequent, and the probability of populism returning to power is 100%, establishing a stable monetary system becomes indispensable for sustained economic success.

Dollarization is Cost-Effective and a Safer Solution:

In relative terms, dollarization is the most cost-effective and safest alternative. With an annual inflation rate hovering around 160% (and expected to go up in the coming weeks), the demand for Argentine pesos is practically nonexistent. Dollarization facilitates the redenomination of financial liabilities in pesos into US dollars, eliminating the risk of a run against the peso. This would not only stabilize the currency but also afford the government more time to enact necessary changes. Given the combination of high inflation and a lack of credibility in Argentine politics, the amount of US dollars required to sustain the peso exceeds the US dollars needed to implement dollarization. Those who argue that dollarization is not possible due to the lack of dollars at the central bank need to think seriously about where they intend to obtain the dollars to bring the peso back to life. Furthermore, as dollarization implies phasing out the peso, its success becomes more plausible than reviving the peso. […]

Argentina’s persistent struggle with inflation, which has averaged 60% annually since the mid-1940s, has impeded long-term planning and economic growth. The nation has exhausted every textbook solution to high inflation, all of which have proven futile.

Podcasts

ONE THING MAGA REMINDS US OF…:

PODCAST: Murder in Boston Podcast (HBO and The Boston Globe)

1989 Boston. The crack epidemic is raging, the murder rate soaring, and white flight has taken hold. Charles Stuart and his pregnant wife, Carol, are carjacked, drawn deep into a dangerous “inner city” neighborhood, and allegedly shot by a Black man. All of Boston – and the nation – is gripped by the hunt for the suspect. What follows will reveal truths about the city… and ourselves. Presented by The Boston Globe and HBO Documentary Films, Murder in Boston: The Untold Story of the Charles and Carol Stuart Shooting is hosted by Adrian Walker who, along with a team of Pulitzer-winning investigative reporters, unveils explosive new findings and change the narrative of a story long cemented in the city’s lore. The HBO Documentary Series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is available to stream on Max starting December 4.

…we are still who Charles Stuart thought we were.

Health

IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

You Know It’s a Placebo. So Why Does It Still Work? (Tom Vanderbilt, 12/19/23, Wired)

You might think that having a positive attitude about the nothing-pill is what transforms it into a something-pill. Perhaps OLPs are a sort of meta-placebo, a testament to how much we believe in our power of belief. But the real driving impulse for many patients who enroll in clinical trials isn’t positive expectation. It seems to be a more uncertain emotion: hope. As the 2017 study puts it, “Hope is a paradoxical combination of opposites, balancing despair and the counterfactual notion that things can improve—a kind of ‘tragic optimism.’” A patient who has suffered for years from some condition, taken drugs, undergone procedures, and gotten no relief may think: A sugar pill probably won’t help, but what the heck, let’s see what happens. As a 2016 paper in the journal Pain puts it, “Engendering hope when participants feel hopeless about their condition can be therapeutic.”

Republican Liberty

THE ANGLOSPHERE IS A BIT POORER:

J G A Pocock: the Antipodean’s view of Europe: John Pocock defended Britain in its broadest sense (Yuan Yi Zhu, 19 December, 2023, The Critic)

[H]e fell under the influence of Sir Herbert Butterfield, who steered him toward the history of historiography, or in other words the history of the history of history. Abstruse though it may seem to laymen, it is, as Pocock put it, nothing less than “the history of all the ways in which men have felt committed to their past”. The result was a brilliant dissertation, published as The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (1957), which examined late Elizabethan and early Stuart lawyers’ belief that there existed an “ancient” constitution of England, dating from time immemorial and therefore immune from interference by the king’s prerogative, not unlike how modern academic lawyers insist that judicial review can never be ousted by Parliament. […]

But it was not long before Pocock made his mark on America. In The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (1975), he deftly chartered the influence of early modern republican thought of Florence, typified by Machiavelli, and of its preoccupation with how to maintain civic virtue against the inevitability of decay, on English republicans and American revolutionaries. The American Revolution and the framing of the republican constitution were, to Pollock, “the last act of the civic Renaissance”.

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