Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Amy Heckeling,58 (perhaps; sources differ, so I'm assuming wikipedia is correct).

And the good stuff:

1. Steve Kornacki gets it: any candidate who wins a solid plurality of the vote will do just fine in the Electoral College. Once again: candidates, of course, must make decisions about scarce resources, but for the rest of us, if you just ignore the Electoral College until October you'll have a much better chance of understanding what's happening in the presidential election.

2. Jennifer Rubin and I agree on something. More or less. Gotta be worth a link, I suppose.

3. Thoughts on commenters,from Brad DeLong, Andrew Sullivan, and Julian Sanchez. I should add: I can't tell you how much I appreciate the quality regular commenters here...not just what they have to say substantively, which is often terrific, but the way they have helped socialize new folk. I'm still able to read every comment (here; not at the other places, although I do try to peak in a bit), and I enjoy it very much, even when I don't have the time to join in.

4. Greg Koger on that perennial puzzler -- whether building the Death Star makes sense. Good post, but I have the same caveat that I had last time this conversation came around. As far as we know, I believe, all inhabited planets are within the Empire. Moreover, the Emperor's goals, we believe, are power/domination, nothing else. Given those two things, it's not clear to me that maximizing economic growth would be at all important to the Emperor. So a little economic inefficiency, including destroying advanced planets, just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It's all about whether it induces more or less effective rebellion.

5. And how Roman Emperors died. Nasty. Ranked by Josh Fruhlinger.

Read Stuff, You Should

Given the bottom of this post, I suppose I'll have to wish a Happy Birthday to poor Jake Lloyd, who is 23 and probably shouldn't be held responsible for any of it. 

The good stuff:

1. Nice Scott Lemieux summary of the evidence that a president can move public opinion in his direction (answer: doesn't work).

2. Adele Stan had a good reaction to the Rush Limbaugh thing early in the weekend (pre-apology) and an excellent analysis of that non-apology apology. Andrew Sabl argues that Republicans are driven by public opinion cleavages to make fools of themselves over birth control.

3. You know I'm in full support of the argument that Paul Krugman makes here and here: it's the state and local spending, especially state and local employment.

4. I'm a big fan of political scientist Matthew Dickinson, and I rarely disagree with him when it comes to the presidency...even when I do disagree with him, I take a second and third look to see where I'm wrong. But on the nomination process, I haven't been agreeing with him at all. The better to link to him (and are two that I disagree with), because it's important to point out that political scientists are not all in agreement on these things. More later, perhaps.

5. And kudos for Kevin Drum for trying an impossible argument: that Jedi is the strongest Star Wars movie. I fully agree with him about the first part of the movie...my position is that the whole Jabba sequence is just as good as the first two movies. But there's just no way that Jedi is, overall, a better movie by any standard. And I don't even hate the Ewoks as much as most people do. I like the movie overall, and I think Drum makes a good point about some of the difficulties involved, but it's still not up to the first two movies. What else? Seth Masket goes the other way and claims that the final prequel movie is better than Jedi. Seth and I have disagreed about this before (I can't find it; maybe it was over email), but I think he's just plain wrong about the Jabba portion, which he hates but as I said above, I think is first-rate. Basically, I'll completely agree with what Dan Drezner said. Except for one thing. For my money, the original movie is a bit better than "Empire." No, the characters aren't as well developed as they become, but to me that's sort of the point; everyone is supposed to be these purely iconic characters, and in the first movie that's what they are. And the writing! Everyone picks on Lucas for writing, but Star Wars has dozens of great lines. The writing, and those great lines, are absolutely pitch-perfect for the kind of movie it is. Now, I'm not knocking "Empire", and I'll grant all the positive points about it, but I think the first movie just has more going for it.

Death Star

Oh, you know I'm not going to pass on a good Star Wars thread -- this one begun by the good folks at Overthinking It, who explore a good question:

What’s the economic calculus behind the Empire’s tactic of A) building a Death Star, B) intimidating planets into submission with the threat of destruction, and C) actually carrying through with said destruction if the planet doesn’t comply?

As expected, Death Star cost expert Seth Masket responds by pointing out the importance of factoring in actually building the Death Star and wondering how Palpatine handled the budgeting; my brother David, however, moves the discussion along by pointing out the importance of the absent press corps.

I think the question about why there's no press corps has to do with whether the Republic is more similar to Rome, or to the government under the Articles of Confederation, which is what I've argued before (although I've also noted that the Republic lasted a long time, which makes it more Rome-like). If it's like the Articles, we're talking about basically a weak central government overseeing, but basically irrelevant to, an unimaginably large area. Why no noticeable press in such a galaxy? Perhaps because, for those outside of the capital, the "federal" government really isn't all that important. Oh, it helps out when there's a trade dispute with another planet, but other than that, it's mostly irrelevant, even to the point that in some of those planets the federal money isn't even any good. Why bother to keep an eye on what's happening there?

As for those in the capital, it wouldn't be surprising if the focus is much more on personalities and gossip than on the serious business of government -- after all, in the USA a lot of the press coverage is about personalities and gossip, even though the central government is quite important in people's daily lives. It's just not really clear that the Galactic Republic actually does very much real governing.

(And, yeah, it's not hard for me to believe that Palpatine could lay his hands on quite a bit of money. First of all, the guy is able to manipulate Yoda, so imagine how much he might be defrauding, say, his friends in the Trade Federation, if he needs the cash. Second...remember, we're talking about some very large number of entire planets, all of them incredibly far advanced in technology. I'm guessing that a tiny sliver of Gross Planetary Product in taxes from each of them could buy a lot of clones, and even a Death Star or two, without anyone really noticing much).

Of course, once the Empire takes over then it does make sense to know what's going on, but you're not going to start up a free press then, are you?

I'd expect very little press coverage of the central government under the Republic until the Clone Wars break out...and even less after they end.

Want more? All the nerdy you can handle here.

Not Really A Monday Movie Post (But W/Jedi)

Not a Monday Movie Post, but since Seth Masket has been oddly silent in response to the recent libertarian attacks on the Jedi Order, I guess I'll have to be the one who responds.  It all started with a stray and presumably tongue-in-libertarian-cheek comment from Reason's Jesse Kline in an otherwise terrific post:

Although the Jedis did assist the Rebel Alliance in overthrowing a tyrannical emperor, it's clear that the Knights were originally set up to enforce the Galactic Senate's big government agenda.

Well.  With that, Dan Drezner went to town with an impassioned, er, discussion of the Jedi.  You certainly want to read it in full (I mean, if you're nerdy enough to still be reading this far; I'm assuming most of the sensible people are long gone).  Drezner focuses on what he sees as the Jedi's attempt to monopolize the Force:

Are the Jedi big government advocates?  That's unclear.  I think it would be more accurate to describe them as cartelistic --  they refuse to permit a free market in learning the ways of the Force. Just as clearly, their anti-competitive policies weakened their own productivity, given the fact that they were unable to detect a Sith Lord walking around right under their noses for over a decade.  

His emphasis, but really, isn't it everyone's emphasis?  He goes on...make sure you read the P.S.

OK, my turn.  As much as I'd like to spend my time poking fun at typical libertarian assumptions about markets and Homo Liberal, which they assume are the only form of humanity and the only form of commerce, I'll stick with something closer to home: political institutions.  The Galactic Republic?  We have a unicameral legislature, and as far as we can see each planet gets one vote.*  The Republic appears to be pretty much absent in the internal affairs of the planets.  The only policies it considers that we know of are war and trade negotiations.  Within either (presumably) core planets such as Naboo, or peripherals ones such as Tatooine, the central government appeared to have little if any presence or authority.  What does that sound like to you?   You got it -- it's the Articles of Confederation.  Sure, they call their legislature a Senate, but there doesn't actually seem to be anything very Senate-like about it (just as there's nothing very Senate-like about the United States Senate under the Constitution).  Moreover, the crisis that Palpatine creates and uses to spark the wars that eventually lead to Empire is a crisis of weak government, not strong: it's about trade disputes within the Republic!

There's also some stuff about bureaucrats "really" running things in the Republic, but since our only evidence for that is that Palpatine said it as part of his manipulation of Amidala (and therefore it has less than a 50/50 chance of actually being true), I'll have to pass on the opportunity to talk about  how important it is to have politicians, and not civil servants, in charge.  But it is.  Although preferably, not Sith politicians.  You don't really want that. 

I do have to get one shot in...Drezner complains about "Beyond George Lucas' rather bigoted portrayal of anything involving commerce."  Really?  Who's the most likable character in the Star Wars movies?  OK, not counting R2D2.  Isn't it Han Solo, galactic smuggler, pirate, and all-around scoundrel?  Sure, Solo eventually realizes that there's more to life than money, but that doesn't mean he's not fond of money, and we're certainly fond of him.  I don't see it, at all.  Presumably we don't like the greedy Watto, but he's a bad guy because of his slaves, not because he's a businessman.  (I suppose Jabba the Hut is a bad guy, but everyone likes him, right?).  Perhaps Drezner is thinking of the Trade Federation.  That's a mistake!  The Trade Federation aren't actually the Bad Guys of the Clone Wars; the only Bad Guy of the Clone Wars is Palpatine. 

You want a commerce-hater?  That's Star Trek, the Next Generation, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard, scourge of the Ferengi and 20th century businessmen.  Star Wars?  Sure, a strong and inexplicable bias against death sticks, but, er, um....

Where was I?  I can't remember.  I wanna go home and rethink my life.


*I'm afraid I know that from Star Wars, The Clone Wars.  Think of me what you will, but no spoilers, please: I'm four or five episodes behind.

(UPDATE:  Don't miss Adam Serwer's comments.  And I apparently shamed Seth into playing).

Against Contarianism on Palpatine

Matt Yglesias says that a lesson of Star Wars is that "the idea of a galaxy-spanning Republic is just hopelessly naïve." He's responding to a pro-Palpatine (sort of) post from Jamelle. Matt cites Kant; I'll respond with Arendt, and I promise I won't go into anything as dull as European Central Banks (not that there's anything wrong with that; we're lucky we have policy bloggers who care about such things, and at least it's not Canadian Central Bank).

First...well, I'm not going to try to dredge up the argument, but Arendt is against one-world government more or less because she doesn't think that democracy is possible on that scale. It's more complicated than that, but hell if I'm going to remember it well enough to explain it for a blog post on Star Wars.

But back to the original post: Jamelle says:

All of that said, I’m not so certain that the operating philosophy behind the Galactic Empire — that despotism is necessary to maintaining the peaceful cohesion of a galaxy-spanning empire –is entirely wrong...[T]he Galactic Republic — collapsed largely because it was too large to be effective. The Republic didn’t even possess the strength or legitimacy to handle a trade dispute on a minor core world, much less an existential threat like the Clone Wars.

And:

[S]uccessful galactic dominion requires the kind of cruelty and brute force that we see on display in the movies. Otherwise the whole thing will collapse into petty-infighting and jealousy.

Surely, that's completely wrong. The Republic wasn't defeated because it couldn't handle a trade dispute or the Clone Wars; it fell because it was the victim of a monstrous conspiracy by Palpatine. From what we see in the movies (and that's all I'm working from -- if I've ever read any of the books, I won't admit to it), all of the things cited here -- the trade dispute, the clone wars, even the petty infighting and jealousy -- were all just part of Palpatine's plan. In other words, the Republic is vulnerable to a massively powerful Sith Lord. Especially a Sith Lord with the ability to disguise himself from the Jedi, a power that the Jedi apparently don't realize can exist. I suppose that's a weakness of any government in a universe that has massively powerful Sith Lords, but it's not exactly a solution to, you know, turn the whole enterprise over to one.

At any rate, Obi-Wan says that the Republic lasted for over a thousand generations. The Empire didn't last for one. I don't think that's convincing evidence that it takes an Empire to get stability in the Star Wars universe. Actually, Palpatine's insane drive to bankrupt the Empire (although see Seth's post too) with easily destroyable superweapons is a great example of what actually happens with unchecked personal power.

I guess I can add one other thing...our concepts come from places, and have baggage that comes with them. Our idea of a republic contains within it the danger that republics will degenerate into empires, because a "republic" is a system of government invented by Rome, and the Roman Republic became an empire. That's why the political systems of Star Wars make intuitive sense to us, even when they aren't necessarily very well explained or internal coherent. The idea of "republic" does most of Lucas's work for him.