Daily Archives: 28 April 2015

A Thought on a Mayor’s Statement

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What Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake actually said:

It’s a very delicate balancing act. Because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.

What she said she meant in the next day’s press conference:

I was asked a question about the property damage that was done, and in answering that question I made it very clear that we balance a very line between giving protesters—peaceful protesters—space to protest. What I said is, in doing so, people can hijack that and use that space for bad.

That’s an entirely legitimate reading of her initial statement: “In the course of,” not “by deliberate, separate decision.”

I think there are a number of factors in play that led to the NLMSM’s distortion (in my view) of Rawlings-Blake’s original statement:

  • the mayor’s fatigue—a thin read; leaders aren’t supposed to be tired, but the fact is, they’re human
  • losing sight of the fact that whatever she says will be presented in sound bites—no matter the difficulty of acting on that recognition while speaking extemporaneously
  • the NLMSM’s interpretation also is plausible
  • nevertheless, the NLMSM’s routine distortion of politicians’ statements in order to generate “a unique slant” about which to write, or because it has personal axes to grind
  • coupled with the NLMSM’s decision to take such a shocking statement (under their interpretation) at face value rather than first questioning whether an American city’s mayor actually could mean such a thing
  • the NLMSM’s haste to be first in the news cycle

It didn’t help that the Detroit police official interviewed so extensively, especially on Fox News, and so many other allegedly responsible public officials who were interviewed apparently took the mayor’s words under the NLMSM’s interpretation at face value rather than themselves asking whether a mayor really could intend such a thing.

Regulation and Inflation

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Here’s one example of how regulation drives inflation, in the milieu of corporate CEO compensation. Charles Murray, at AEIdeas, provides it.

On multiple occasions the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] amended its rules to increase the disclosure of compensation data and to force boards to explain their rationale for the amounts. That, combined with the influence of the arbiters of corporate governance, created an inviolable requirement for compensation committees to be advised by consultants. A perfect recipe for increasing compensation.

Thusly:

In 70’s and even the 80’s the compensation of the CEO seemed to be mostly a matter arrived at between the board and the CEO that resulted from discussions and negotiations and the public disclosure was a matter of a few pages. But there was then nothing like the pressure to conform to best practices backed up by the reliance upon the advice of consultants and the concomitant availability of market data that there is today.
…
You can guess how it works. No board that isn’t about to fire its CEO really wants to admit that their CEO is a less-than-average performer by paying him or her less than average. But if the lowest-paid CEO’s are always being brought up to the average, then the average increases every year. Then for the high performers to be paid well, their compensation needs to be increased, but that raises the average…and so on every year. And the compensation committee and the board always have this market data before them, the recommendations of their consultants and “best practices” to adhere to. These influences are not easily resisted. You see the result.

It’s hard to believe the enormously intelligent regulators didn’t see this coming from the jump. The apparent abuse—that obscene CEO compensation—seems just another excuse to justify their jobs.

Global Trade

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Governor and Ambassador, and currently Chairman of the Atlantic Council, Jon Huntsman had some thoughts in a weekend Wall Street Journal.

Expanded exports and open markets were central to our economic-security efforts to reconstruct Europe and Japan and keep lower-income countries free from communism.

Indeed. Such free trade imperatives remain central to freedom, to helping lower-income countries escape despotism generally, and to mutual and widespread prosperity. Huntsman went on:

Whereas today the world economy is replete with far-flung supply chains for manufacturing physical goods, it will be the free flow of designs and ideas that will increasingly constitute the economic linkages of the future.

True enough. The global economy, spurred on by that globalization, is evolving. Actually, the evolution will take a number of unexpected turns and paths, but Huntsman’s guess is as good as any.

But then Huntsman went astray.

….proliferation of empowered megacities and centers of creative innovation will challenge geographic borders, making it hard for capitals to call the shots.

The subhead of Huntsman’s piece emphasizes that basic problem.

Trade will be more important than ever 30 years from now. And a lot more complicated to regulate.

No. It’s not complicated at all to not regulate, and governments don’t need to—shouldn’t—call the shots. It’s not very much more complicated to not regulate very much. A free market doesn’t need very much regulation, and a free market global economy, for all the individual nations’ domestic laws may not be overly free, is the most prosperous global economy. Those who don’t want to play by free market rules when they enter that economy can’t force other nations to trade with them. That’s a free market decision.