I have a hypothesis that some brilliant writers are afflicted by a kind of linguistic narcissism: their writing is so beautiful that they manage to convince themselves of bad ideas. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, wrote persuasively in favor of the Marxist view of human biology. Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, crackling with wit and anecdote, advances the thesis that people are surprisingly good at making snap decisions on precious little information—except when they’re not.

Today I read the obituary of John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist known for his “witty and acid-penned” writing and critiques of consumerism and corporations. The brilliance of his writings may have blinded, not only his readers, but also Galbraith himself, to the flaws in his thinking.

To take one example, Galbraith once said that “I am struck by our superb capacity to manufacture consumer gadgetry, including electronic games, versus our capacity to produce schools.” His apparent astonishment is an indictment of “our” society’s priorities, but a simple rephrasing might ameliorate his confusion: “I am not struck by the superb capacity of private companies to manufacture consumer gadgetry, versus the capacity of governments to produce schools.”

My hypothesis could be wrong, of course; bad ideas might have nothing to do with verbal fluency. There are, after all, plenty of excellent writers whose principal ideas are not obviously wrong. But I suspect that some people’s capacity for self-deception is enhanced by their falling in love with their own (literary) voice.

I’m still trying to minimize typing, but since it’s tax season I thought I’d capture two short aphorisms on government:

• “The government performs certain essential functions” is different from “It’s essential for the government to perform certain functions.”

• A “public good” is not simply something that’s good for the public.

In the comments to my post on privatizing the USPS, IdahoEv makes a thoughtful analysis to the effect that maybe the USPS monopoly is actually a good thing. I like his arguments, but I think they fail to clear the three hurdles from my previous post. It may be that the USPS reaches some global optimum by using force to exclude competition, but—even discounting the cost of the lost freedom—it’s hard to know a priori; such arguments read more like rationalizations for the status quo. Moreover, a love of such analyses lies at the heart of every good central planner—Markets might be good, they think, but markets are dumb; surely with a little intelligent intervention we can do even better. But, as counterintuitive as it seems, the failure of central planning suggests that you really can’t.

Indeed, the private sector routinely competes successfully with the government even in the face of deeply entrenched, subsidized competition. Private schools exist despite their public counterparts; private security agencies thrive even in the face of police competition; professional mediators and arbitrators ply their trade despite a monopoly court system. The glorious history of black-market postal services (including one run by Lysander Spooner, a hero of libertarians everywhere) and the success of UPS and FedEx suggest that mail is no different. And if private mail delivery does that well against a government monopoly, it’s not too much of a leap to anticipate even greater success in that monopoly’s absence. (Dangerous exercise: apply this argument to schools, protection agencies, and courts.)

When it comes to privatization, what I’m usually worried about is not that we’d be screwing up some beautiful public-goods global optimum, but rather that the government would botch the privatization. Turning the private sector loose on the thorniest problems of our time—security, say, or education, or traffic—could easily lead to disaster if done stupidly.* California’s energy ‘deregulation’ is perhaps the most dramatic recent example of this. But breaking the USPS’s monopoly is so simple that even the government could get it right: Homeowners—you now own your mailboxes!

*I wish that, rather than cockamamie public policy, optimal privatization were the policy wonk’s wet dream—Let’s figure out the best way to auction off the L.A.-area freeway system, and solve the traffic problem once and for all. Now there’s some ‘central planning’ I could get behind.

It has become a tradition for me to watch the Academy Awards with my mom each year, so I’ve heard my share of acceptance speeches. This year, George Clooney started the night off right with the best one I can recall. A winner in the best supporting actor category for Syriana, Clooney was almost preternaturally calm, with none of the usual Oscar-winner discombobulation. At turns self-deprecating, witty, and humble, Clooney managed to be poignant without gushing, and made a thoughtful political point with subtlety and heart.

Alluding to charges that Hollywood is out of touch with America, Clooney noted that maybe that’s not such a bad thing. The movies have often been on the vanguard of important social movements, and artists—including film producers, directors, and actors—have served as a canary-in-the-mine for threats to freedom of expression. Clooney’s other nominated movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, deals squarely with this last issue, and Clooney mentioned two other examples—breaking the AIDS taboo and recognizing a black actress way back in 1939—where the Academy was ahead of the curve.

Hollywood politics embodies some of the worst traits of limousine liberalism, with blind party loyalty, utterly naïve economics, and at times shocking hypocrisy. (For example, Martin Sheen, a millionaire many times over—and, incidentally, one of my favorite actors—has openly attacked “the rich” with a straight face.) Nevertheless, when it comes to coaxing a sometimes unwilling world into modernity—with its cosmopolitan attitudes, tolerance of differences, and shades-of-gray ambivalence—the film industry does a great service.

Bravo, George, for sounding such an elegant and thoughtful note on a night more often associated with blubbering thank-you lists and smug self-congratulation.

Update: Clooney’s speech is now available online. (I looked for it at the time of the original post, but I couldn’t find it then.) Thanks to Ranjit Mathoda for the link. P.S. Gotta love the Chinese subtitles!

Do you own a home? If you do, you may be surprised to learn that you don’t own all of it.* Outside your home is a box, which you own, but inside the box there is space, which you don’t—that space is owned by the United States Postal Service. Reflect for a moment on how bizarre this is. This strange legal situation is the source of the Postal Service’s monopoly on first-class and standard (third-class) mail. I’m sure that FedEx would love to deliver your letters, but US law forbids it.

*If you don’t own a home, put yourself in the place of your building’s owner.

Fortunately, the simplicity of the USPS’s monopoly suggests a way to break it with the stroke of a pen. All it would take is a tiny change in the law: henceforth, property owners own the space inside their mailboxes. This would free homeowners up to make contracts with Federal Express, UPS, and any of a large number of current and potential competitors to the USPS. It would put people in control of their mail.

What does this matter, when it only costs 37¢ 39¢ to mail a letter? Historically, black-market postal services typically undercut USPS prices by at least a factor of 2–3. According their website, the USPS takes in approximately $70 billion in annual revenue, so opening the postal market to competition could save consumers $35–$45 billion a year—hardly an amount to sneeze at. Not only would it cost you less to mail your Christmas cards, you can bet your Netflix would get cheaper, too.

In addition to these obvious savings, breaking the USPS monopoly would expose a hidden cost to high postage rates, one which makes the $35–$45 billion estimate conservative and even a little misleading: current prices may very well prevent entirely new businesses from forming. A price factor of 2–3 in the other direction—$1.20, say, for a first-class letter—could very well wipe out operations such as Netflix. Who knows what sorts of innovative services might become feasible if you could mail a letter for 13¢?