Thomas Sewell's blog

Campaign finance reform is periodically all the rage. Typically, when people who disagree with the media or Hollywood have the temerity to want to broadcast their views.

Generally, there is a desire to "get money out of politics", or "stop special interests from controlling elections." What it generally comes down to in the end is a desire to shut people up. There is a pretense that they just want to restrict or ban political advertising so that the "little guy" can be heard. In reality, it's just another method of power and rent seeking from media and politicians trying to tile the playing field in their favor.

In theory, you could ban all political advertisements. In reality, you need an enforcement mechanism, which comes with regulators, prosecutors, etc... You also get a government board or committee to setup rules defining what is allowed and what isn't under a law banning political advertisements.

Pretty soon, that board is run by either big media companies or else entrenched political consultants, because hey, they're the ones that really care enough to really study the laws and the regulations and gosh darn it, they have all sorts of relevant experience that makes them perfect for the job, right? So the board starts defining terms like "political" and "advertisement". Is a movie about events in Benghazi political? Is it an advertisement? Perhaps that depends on who is making the movie, some right-wing group, of course it's political. Hollywood? Of course not, they're not political, right? Maybe it depends on if Hilary or Obama are mentioned by name in the movie or not? Or perhaps we can just exclude stuff like that when it's shown say, within 60 days of an election where people mentioned in the move are involved?

Not sure if you're movie is going to fall afoul of the regulations? Better to just make sure your movie gets preclearance from the regulators who report to the board. That way you can be sure you aren't wasting your money on that Benghazi movie the government will order you to not release, or fine you or throw you in prison for showing.

Of course, like with all other laws, there's prosecutorial discretion. I mean, we have to allow for the prosecutor to have some common sense in only going after the actual bad guys, right? Maybe if the prosecuting attorney happens to be appointed by someone who is politically friendly to you, you get a little more leeway in what kind of movies and advertisements you can put out there? Perhaps everyone knows that if old Joe wasn't the prosecutor, you couldn't put that union "Let's all work together!" ad out there because someone else might call it political, but since Joe doesn't prosecute that sort of thing, you're ok.

I mean, it's not as if your elected and bureaucratic representatives have any incentives around caring which politicians get elected, right? No incentive to ensure the system can be gamed for their benefit?

Hopefully you can begin to see why restricting or banning political advertisements is in effect, the same as giving whoever is in power a filter to tilt media and advertising in their direction. That's what campaign finance reform has always been about in Congress in this country. Gaining an advantage over your political foes, tilting the playing field and ensuring you keep power.

Campaign Finance Reform is just a special case of regulatory capture as predicted by Public Choice economics. The only thing special about it is that those doing the capturing are the politicians themselves.

Fortunately, we (all forms) have a right to free speech and the current supreme court is interested in preserving it more than they're interested in letting those in power in the government restrict it. Before you propose a fix, make sure it's not worse than the original issue.

This is Part III of a continuing series about how sovereign security companies and military underwriters could work to provide private justice and defense from foreign aggression in a society.
Original Econlog Post is here.
Part I is here.
Part II with Dr. Huemer's response is here.

Dave has some comments and follow-up questions about the discussion. His comment was:

Michael, I think your objection to "invasion insurance" being impossible to collect really only applies if we are concerned about the whole world being conquered. Against more moderate threats, the insurance can be backed by people all over the world in different jurisdictions. (I don't think you could run a private defense force out of, say, the US or Britain, but maybe you could write a credit default swap on one, or hold money in escrow for one)

Thomas, I guess I'll have to read your book. It sounds like you rely on some kind of limited "cartelish" norms enforcement to ensure that security firms pay "their share" of defense costs? What do you think of my claim that the possibility of "moderate scale" extortionary attacks, targeted against security firms without any defense insurance, would discourage free riding security firms?

What laboratory can you use to find out if these ideas actually work? EVE online?

Dave

My response:
Dave,

Thanks for the excellent notes on how a market can use financial transactions to spread risk across borders.

It sounds like you rely on some kind of limited "cartelish" norms enforcement to ensure that security firms pay "their share" of defense costs?

More along the lines of each underwriter, i.e. military defense unit, is an independent company, but the norm is to agree to a set of interlocking contracts with the others in the area because keeping the peace is what their ultimate customers are paying them for. A refinement of the threat of force being the best way to keep the peace, if you will. Also a way of specializing, because one group may be best at mobile armor, but desire support from an air group and a light infantry group, and some specialists in anti-air defense, and a medical team, and contracts with suppliers who specialize in military logistics, and arms dealers, etc... Modern warfare capability is a complex thing and ultimately the market advantage would go to groups that can arrange to do it most efficiently for their customers.

In terms of individual customer cost, that would be the subject of negotiations between the large consortia and the local security companies. As long as there is competition, or at least the possibility of competition, then the payment for services would have to converge on the amount willing to be paid by the ultimate individual consumer. In that case, the local security companies end up as just a pass through in the average case, because other than having an ability to potentially negotiate a better deal for themselves, the average prices are going to revolve around the available supply and demand for military defense services overall.

What do you think of my claim that the possibility of "moderate scale" extortionary attacks, targeted against security firms without any defense insurance, would discourage free riding security firms?

I think that could occur, but it may be more likely to come into play when two local security firms are negotiating with each other over a case between their subscribers. If one of them has a contract with a big underwriting company to back them up as long as they are following the agreed upon rules of justice, choice of law and courts, etc... defined in their contract and the other one is on their own with no such relationship, guess who is going to have the negotiating advantage and is going to attract more subscribers? It's a competitive advantage in servicing their customers to ensure they're taken seriously enough.

As a result, once they've both contracted with an underwriter, either the same one or underwriters that also contract with each other, directly or indirectly, then that also creates a strong norm to keep the peace and work out any minor differences of opinion through the arbitration provisions in their web of contractual relationships.

A similar situation of friction between a "backed" company and an area that doesn't want to allow competition for government-style services arises in the sequel to Sharper Security, which isn't quite out yet. That competitive advantage explains part of the process of how local unaffiliated groups end up joining enough of the sovereign security company/underwriter legal framework to keep the peace and keep their influence. Similar to how having an industry standard for something causes competitors to converge on it because while there isn't direct enforcement of it, if they don't, they'll be at a competitive disadvantage to those that are interoperable as their customers desire.

What laboratory can you use to find out if these ideas actually work? EVE online?

That's a good suggestion. I'd like to see it. :) Currently I'm exploring them by writing fiction based on such a society and seeing how things turn out, how problems that arise are dealt with, etc... as much to see where the ideas take me as to expose them to the competitive light of the market place for ideas. If nothing else, it gets some people used to pondering the possibilities.

Myths

There are a couple of pervasive myths out there that are used to imagine that economic progress is bad, or unfair, or not compatible with "social justice".

The first is usually stated something like "People are getting wealthier over time, but inequality is increasing!" as if the second refutes the first.

The second is along the lines of "the poorest 20% still make about the same as they used to." or various statistics about the poorest 20% of people over time thrown in.

Financial Inequality

Consider the following scenario:
Jack is an engineer. He makes $100K/year.
Jill is a lab assistant. She makes $50K/year.

Obviously, Jack's financial situation is double that of Jill's. Taking this simplified situation as a society, we'll say this simplified society has a financial inequality of $50K, as Jack is paid $50K more than what Jill receives.

A series of technological advances and productivity innovation hit our simplified society. Over time, everyone in society is paid twice as much as a result!

So now consider:
Jack is an engineer. He makes $200K/year.
Jill is a lab assistant. She makes $100K/year.

Our updated simplified society now has a financial inequality of $100K! Clearly Jill is worse off and would rather go back to the society with more equality where she only made $50K each year, right? This is what we're meant to believe when told that despite everyone increasing in wealth over time, inequality is increasing... Apparently jealousy is more important to some folks than absolute levels of wealth.

To them, I say to cast your eyes on the vast majority of the people in the world, to whom the average wealth of the bottom 20% of people in the U.S. is something they can never hope to achieve. If you're reading this sentence, you're likely in the top 1% of income earners in the world. If you're in poverty in the U.S., with welfare benefits included, that puts you in the top 10% of the world. Just think, 6 Billion+ people are poorer than that. People in many places still spend hours of labor every day to supply themselves with hopefully clean water. You probably walk a few feet to your indoor plumbing and get clean water on-demand.

Now consider all the people who've ever lived. Where do you fall in the historical wealth scale? Top 0.01%? Top 0.0001%? Wealthier in material conveniences, knowledge and leisure than many of the "super-wealthy" of only 100 years ago, with no mobile phone, no internet, no hot/cold running water, no dishwasher, no car, no decent roads, no TV shows, etc...

So before complaining about financial inequality, ask yourself if you're willing to right now take half your own wealth and make several actually poor people in the world tremendously wealthy by their standards. Maybe you should do so voluntarily, but do you really believe that they need to get together and force you to pay them your "fair share"? If so, I look forward to your advocacy of financial equality.

Bottom 20% over time

People, especially left-wing article writers, like to throw around statistics about how the poorest 20% in the U.S. are doing over time. Leaving aside the fact that they are among the incredibly super-wealthy by world historical standards, obviously that doesn't make them feel better about only having digital cable with HBO, live sports and on-demand movies in HD instead of visiting actual concert halls each weekend. They may even have to put up with basic digital cable and rental movies or a netflix subscription!

But, there's good news. Most of the people in the "bottom 20% of income earners" in the U.S. will change categories. What's that you say, people's income changes over time? Yep, it turns out that a college student in the bottom 20% of income earners, might get a decent job and move into the middle classes of income earners, then ultimately retire as one of the top 20%. While at the same time, these article writers are lamenting that this same person isn't improving as fast as other income groups.

Oops, they don't actually mean the same person. They really mean a "new" poor person. See, the original bottom 20% of income earners they're talking about have mostly moved on to become richer and wealthier. Over time, new people are born (poor), go to school (poor), get a job (richer), get a better job (even richer), retire (wealthy, but poor in terms of income measurements), and die (no income statistics anymore) . People's situations change with time and the results of those changes are generally much better in the U.S. than in more "equal" countries. They're comparing different groups of people over time and trying to say there is something meaningful about the fact that they're different groups of people however many years later. Well duh, they're actually comparing different people... why would you expect them to be the same?

It's common for these folks to mistake the group for the individual and talk about a group as if it's an actual person, rather than a collection of individuals. Imagine going to the beach and watching a social scientist analyzing sand. He scoops up a shovel of sand and says "Hmm... very dry sand." then dumps it out again. He walks over closer to the waves and scoops up another shovel of sand and says, "Ah-hah, lots of water in this sand! The sand in my second sample is much wetter than the sand in my first sample, therefore I have a new theory, sand has become wetter over time." Does the fact that it isn't the exact same sand matter? After all, it's all just a shovel full of sand, right? Interchangeable?

Now if you took the 20% lowest income earners in 1960 and tracked those same exact individuals over time for 50 years, you might be able to say something meaningful about what has happened to their income and wealth. But to compare those people to a different group of 20% lowest income earners 50 years later is meaningless.

Finally, notice how it's always done using percentages. If they used absolute measurements of income instead, someone might notice that the "poorest 20%" of income earners now are much wealthier than the "poorest 20%" of income earners were 50 or 100 years ago. But if you simply define the bottom 20% as "in poverty", then you'll always have 20% of the people labeled as "in poverty", no matter how rich they become. Think about that the next time you see any measurement talking about the bottom 20% of income earners over time.

Summary

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." from Mark Twain has an accurate theory concerning the order in which untruths are told and people are fooled. Watch out for that third kind and take anything relating to financial inequality and the bottom 20% with a huge shovel full of sand.

This is a continued conversation, sparked by Michael Huemer's book The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey.
Part I is here.

Dr. Huemer was kind enough to respond with what he thought of the sovereign security company idea I previously outlined.

His full response:

Thomas S asked more about private military defense. Let's see if I understand your idea. Is this it: You buy "unjust violence insurance" from your local protection agency (to insure you against suffering unjust violence). The local agency takes care of reducing unjust violence from small-time criminals. They do this because when unjust violence happens they have to pay out claims.
But your unjust violence insurance also covers unjust violence by states. Your local protection agency would have to pay out a lot if there were an invasion by a foreign government. But they can't prevent this by themselves. So they (along with many other local agencies) pay a much bigger company to insure them against the losses that would result from a foreign invasion. The bigger company then hires some soldiers to prevent foreign invasions, so that they won't have to pay out claims.
Is that something like the idea? I'm not sure if I got it right, because I'm not sure if you were buying insurance, or just directly paying people to combat rights-violators.
I like the idea at first glance. I'm a little worried, though. Let's say the private military is defeated in combat with a foreign state. They're not actually going to have to pay out any insurance claims, because the society will now be under the control of that foreign state, and the state won't enforce the insurance claims. Knowing this, why would anyone buy the insurance? Have I misunderstood something?

My reply:
Thank you for your reply.

In essence, yes. You could add a couple of additions like assignable and inheritable claims, etc...

I'm not sure if you were buying insurance, or just directly paying people to combat rights-violators.

More along the lines of buying protection with liquidated damages if the protection isn't able to be provided. Some companies could specialize in prevention to lower costs, others in investigation/retaliation to force the criminals to pay for the claims, etc... it's a market for services, so the possible outcomes would vary with actual individual preferences. Some would want catastrophic-style reimbursement coverage, others with more wealth might desire a team of 24x7 guards dedicated to their account. They could all coexist in the same marketplace.

... they're not actually going to have to pay out any insurance claims, because the society will now be under the control of that foreign state, and the state won't enforce the insurance claims. Knowing this, why would anyone buy the insurance?

I have a few answers to your "winner-takes-all" concern:
1. Caveat Emptor? Like any other business, the insurers would have to create at least a credible impressions that they will be able to deliver their product, or why would anyone buy it? At the very least make it clear that their defense will be damaging enough to a potential attacker that a reasonable purchaser is going to believe it's sufficient deterrence.
2. Historically, mercenary armies have successfully used bonding authorities to lend credibility to keep their promises. It adds some business overhead, but combined with assignable/inheritable claims, could be made to work for subscribers to gain assurances. I suspect it'd only come into widespread use if enough failures occurred to make the extra overhead worth it to buyers.
3. Comparing your concern to the current systems, in any country, if a foreign invader successfully invaded and took over completely, the current government would be deposed and that government's promises of future services, legal enforcement, etc... would be only worth as much as the winners allowed them to be. Despite this lack of assurance, people still generally pay their taxes and those taxes pay to hire soldiers for foreign defense. In other words, the actual existence of the defensive army is what is being paid for, not a guarantee of winning every war. Presumably the parties providing the underwriting services would be ruined as well if they were totally defeated. If not, then the inheritable/transferable claim against them by the "protected" would be rather large, with enough out there and willing to be an agent collecting on it to make it a decent deterrent to malfeasance.

Dr. Michael Huemer, author of The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey, has been kind enough to respond to reader questions for Bryan Caplan.

I had my own follow-up for a question and because it got so long, decided to post it here as well.

Dr Heumer:
Dave also asked about (I guess?) whether a paramilitary group of ideologues might take over the anarchist society. Very briefly, I think some group of pro-government ideologues could take over, and set up government in, a community that was sympathetic to the need for government. But if they tried to take over in a community that was generally opposed to government, I think they would face problems similar to those of a government trying to occupy a hostile foreign territory.

Dave also asked about private militaries. I don’t see how the free rider problem is solved. If a few people don’t pay their military bill, and the Russians decide to attack, they aren’t going to attack just the three houses in the neighborhood that didn’t pay their defense bill.
However, maybe you could have an HOA that pays for military defense of the whole neighborhood.

Dr Heumer,

I have a follow-up on your response to Dave's questions about private militaries, security companies, etc...

I've written a book that describes something similar (Sharper Security), with individuals contracting with security companies that provide both private law enforcement/local criminal defense and also military defense. The idea is that they contract to protect individuals and their specific property, so it's a mix of territorial and individual.

In turn, the security companies contract with each other in terms of how they will interrelate and also with larger umbrella-style military organizations that act in a manner similar to insurance underwriters. In this way, local groups deal with local issues such as crime, investigation and courts, with the security company on the hook to make good if they can't enforce a claim, but larger voluntarily formed groups provide protection against larger threats that we'd currently associate with a foreign military.

Obviously it's required that the security companies understand that it's in everyone's best interest to have limited relations with someone who doesn't pay their bills. It's self-enforcing when someone can't get a property/personal defense commitment without also paying their share of the military defense required to actually make that possible.

In our current society, ultimately criminals aren't prevented from just taking a whole town over by the police force of that particular town, but by the knowledge that if they ever succeeded, a larger group of armed individuals would intervene, right up to the military as necessary.

There's no reason why groups of smaller security companies wouldn't make agreements about enforcement among themselves, including agreements for paying a military group for defense, and then pass those costs on to their customers. It seems less realistic to me that a customer would want to contract for only limited protection against local threats, but be fine with an exclusion for larger threats. If anything, most customer-driven insurance works the other way, being more concerned with larger devastating threats and more tolerant of self-insuring against petty threats.

As for foreign travel, the power of trade and contracts comes to the rescue. If your security company (or affiliated group of companies) has a mutual protection agreement with a foreign country that covers members, than you're covered. Otherwise, your agreement with that security company would have to contain an exclusion where you travel to foreign lands at your own risk.

All of this seems to be easily covered under an insurance model with companies and individuals using standard waivers/riders and normal underwriting practices. I believe you are underestimating the power of creative individuals motivated to write and enforce contracts to serve customer needs.

What do you think?

P.S. More about private legal systems in the page about Sharper Security's setting and technology.

David Henderson calls this "Obama's Mistake on Social Security".

If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America's bills on time, Social Security checks, and veterans benefits will be delayed.

A "mistake" is when someone says something they believe is true, or accidentally says something they don't actually mean.

What Obama says here is a purposeful lie designed to scare the public and influence the complicit media.

If all the administration does is pay debt interest and make already committed payments and pay salaries without making new purchases/commitments for payment, then they can stay under the debt ceiling indefinitely. All of that committed spending doesn't add up to the tax receipts and other income the federal government has coming in. What's already contracted with individuals and companies is covered. New spending is what would have to go.

If the federal government starting selling their accumulated gold, that would give them a $200,000,000,000 cushion to work with. If they started selling federal land that's not currently in use for a park/military base/etc... they could raise another few trillion or so. At the very minimum, the department of the Interior could stop blocking oil and gas leases that bring in revenue and make a "mint" from that. Lots of options out there for additional revenue besides taxes.

No, Obama prefers to scare people that they won't get their already expected money, rather than just say, "Well, we won't make any new deals to owe people money, then!"

Whenever they run out of money, left-wing politicians always claim that it'll cause the most popular programs (teachers, police, firefighters) to not get paid and never mention not paying the people who get the latest sweet-heart contract pork deal.

I bet you'll never hear Obama lamenting how a failure to raise the debt ceiling will prevent him from doing any more $535,000,000 loan guarantees for solar companies run by his cronies. In a responsible administration, that's what would be the first thing to go.

The "mint a coin to pay the Fed" idea was popularized by Presidential Candidate Bo Gritz back in 1992. It was a huge part of his platform at the time, spoken about at every campaign stop.

From an old archive, so you can see the 1992 date:

And, if this only costs a cent to make, but they have to give us 25 cents credit, what is wrong with minting a giant coin (Bo holds up a 5" diameter, giant coin) that says "Four Trillion Dollars Debt of the United States Paid in Full In God We Trust." (Huge round of applause.) Now, I ask you, let's be very clear about it: is that legal? I'd be very enthusiastic if I thought I could get my great grandkids, my grandchild who's thirteen now and my three mules and a daughter, if I could get them out of debt because they all owe $42,000. That's what every one of you owe and that's what your kids owe and if you're born today, that's the price of being an American. I'd be excited about thinking on this because is this coin going to be made out of gold? Is it going to be made out of silver? No, it has to be made out of pot metal because it has to be worthless! It has to equal what it is that they have been giving us all this time!

From another source:

I appreciate your applause in our solution. But we've got to apply the solution, and that's something to applaud. You see, it has to be in pot metal, doesn't it? Because it has to equal what the value is of these things right here (cash). So if we made it out of anything that was either gold or silver, it wouldn't be fair, would it?

Now you doubt? You doubt this? Let me read you, because you see we said, gosh, if they have to give us credit for the coin's face value, no matter what the coin cost to manufacture or is worth, why don't we just pay off the debt? So we wrote this letter, and here comes the answer. By the way, signed by Mr. Monk, who I'm glad did it because he's a lawyer, Assistant General Counsel to the United States Treasury Department, "The former chairman," so this has been thought of before, but you probably never heard of it, "The former chairman of the House Coining Subcommittee correctly points out that we could pay off the national debt with a single four trillion dollar coin." And so we will.

Some people seem to think that the whole trillion dollar coin idea is of recent vintage, but history shows differently.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal issued a minor correction under the title "Send In the Clowns" updating the source of the idea to reflect Bo Gritz. Previously they pointed to a Simpson's episode from 1998.

The higher nominal corporate and individual taxes are overall, the more power those politicians and bureaucrats that grant exceptions and loopholes possess.

When the top marginal tax rate was 70%+, the "effective", or "real" tax rate was only 30%+ because of all the loopholes and tax credits, etc... If the government got rid of those deductions and loopholes and just cut the overall tax rate to match the effective tax rate, about the same revenue would be garnered and people and companies would pay about the same in taxes.

You'd lose all the market distortions and paperwork losses from the more complicated system of higher rates with loopholes and credits, so this is what an economist would call a pareto optimization, making the whole economy more efficient.

So why doesn't that happen? It was actually a big part of Romney's proposals in the last election cycle, but he and many of the other Republicans lost. Many of the Democrats who won campaigned on either explicitly or implicitly higher tax rates on corporations and the rich. Why does that benefit them? You can't really extract much more out of people in terms of taxes, because if you do they either move, or go out of business, or don't expand, or pass on costs to heir customers, or a dozen other things. The actual revenue the government gets fluctuates short term with the health of the economy, but the basic maximum level has a hard ceiling in terms of % of GDP over the long term that just doesn't get surpassed.

It doesn't happen because the Democrats and most of their constituencies benefit in an important way from higher rates and lots of credits/loopholes/waivers. They control the power to grant those loopholes and tax credits and waivers. This forces the rich and the corporations, especially the rich corporations and the industry groups, who want ways around those high nominal tax rates, to come to them to get them. That "rent-seeking" model goes back to the government spoils systems of the 1800s. That's really what we're dealing with here.

This is the fiscal cliff fix model, this is the ObamaCare model, this is the model for how they want to run the government. Pay attention and you'll start to see it in all their big programs and in "deals" they push that otherwise don't make much economic sense.

Full disclosure of possible bias: I live with someone who has a form of PTSD and with someone else that has bursts of reactionary anger. I also have other extended family members with similar moderate mental issues.

The Problem Defined

The Soviet Union used psychiatry as a tool to suppress dissent. The U.S. criticized them in the 60's for this and Soviet apologists claimed that American mental institutions and involuntary commitment were practicing the same thing, locking up dissenters.

As a result, some politicians and academics in the U.S. pushed a movement to deinstitutionalize.

In many cases the deinstitutionalisation of the mentally ill in the Western world from the 1960s onward has translated into policies of "community release". Individuals who previously would have been in mental institutions are no longer continuously supervised by health care workers." Study

Now we have a permanent group of street people (many of whom are not violent, but some are) and a system where it's very difficult to get someone committed involuntarily, like Adam Lanza should have been, Jared Loughner should have been, and James Holmes should have been.

There is a real concern that someone may be committed against their will by the government or well-meaning (or malicious) family members. There is also a real concern with uneven conditions within government run mental institutions.

A Solution Offered

Let's align economic incentives to help the mentally ill, especially the potentially violent mentally ill, while at the same time protecting their rights and the rights of those they may attack.

First, make it easier for an initial commitment for an evaluation period.
Second, make it easier for that evaluation to result in commitment to a mental institution.
Third, contract running the mental institutions to competitive private companies with incentives to make them as pleasant as possible with items such as allowing the inmates and their families to move between institutions on a basis easy enough that it's a real threat to their livelihood if everyone decides to go elsewhere for services. These aren't prisoners and there is no need to make their living conditions match a prison isolation ward.
Fourth, contract with a group of Mental Health Professionals, independent of the companies running the institutions, to supervise treatment and analyze when it's appropriate to release someone. Align the incentives of at least one person supervising a patient's case with getting them released and let them act as a formal/informal advocate for that position. Don't leave the burden on the family or the patient to try and get someone out if they really don't need to be there anymore. Make this provision strong enough that we won't worry too much about easier initial commitments, because people will be right back out if they can truly manage on the outside.

I don't have all the answers, but I think something like the four points above is the best we can do under our current regulatory system and political climate.

I'd challenge economists smarter than I am, Tyler Cowan, Bryan Caplan, and David Henderson, to name a few who could argue this to death, to consider the question and refine my solution or propose their own with proper incentives.

Perhaps a system of three Doctors, with one an advocate of the patient getting out, one from the institution advocating keeping him in and the third paid just to decide when the first two can't convince each other. I posit a similar private legal system in the novel Sharper Security.

Ok, somehow I agreed to let Kate Paulk tag me in the ongoing blog chain of the Next Big Thing. I don' t know how I didn't remember it would require some work on my part to follow-up later, I guess I just got lost in the enthusiasm of the moment.

Supposed to publish this on a Wed., but I'm driving to San Diego that day and I was never much of one to follow rules....

The rules:

1. Give credit to the person/blog that tagged you.
2. Post the rules for the blog hop.
3. Answer these ten questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress).
4. Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Tagees (I went for the eclectic, unwilling mix):
A.G. Fredericks, AKA @AGFredericks
Virginia Saunders, AKA @fearlesswidow
Michael Scott, AKA @flamelauthor
Laini Taylor, AKA @lainitaylor
Joseph Jett, AKA @josephjett

The questions and my answers:

What is the working title of your book? Vote For Pedro. Other than the main character happens to be named Pedro (and has to be, because that's his name in Sharper Security) and ends up running for office as part of the main plot, this has nothing to do with Napoleon Dynamite. I'm trying desperately to come up with a different title for the book, but it's stuck in my head now. Maybe after I finish it, I'll find something with less additional connotations, Or maybe I'll just go with it, who knows. We did run into Jon Heder and his daughter in line at the Haunted Mansion on our trip to Disneyland last spring, but we pretended to not recognize him. Have video to prove it, though.

Where did the idea come from for the book? This book started as a natural progression from Sharper Security, in terms of what happens next to who. It's philosophical underpinnings are related to the question of Exit vs. Voice and how effective each method of accomplishing people's desired outcomes is. The book explores the clash between the "new" sovereignty system in the Arizona Zone and the lingering vestiges of the "old" system that still hold sway in La Raza Council. The adventures in the book come from me sitting around (or standing in the shower!) and thinking about, "What would be the implications if Pedro went back to Tucson to start a branch of Sharper Security?"

What genre does your book fall under? It's near-future science fiction (in the old sense of societies and technology) mystery/thriller/adventure. Very action oriented, even more so than Sharper Security, which had to spend a lot of time introducing people to the overall setting. There's some of that in terms of exploring how La Raza Council works, but mostly events are able to move pretty quickly.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? John answered this in his interview with Gregory Cruz. For the others? Haven't really thought too much about it.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Pedro and Sharper Security fight for the people of, against the rulers of, La Raza Council.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Once finished, published by Catallaxy Media.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? Still in the outlining/plotting stage. Just barely published Sharper Security and Hitchhiking Killer For Hire in the last few weeks. Goes fast once I get to "final" writing, but by then I have all the scenes and interactions worked out and the main thing left is expanding the description of them.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Not much. Perhaps a mix of Tom Clancy, Louis L'Amour, and a dash of Heinlein, but nothing else is really that good of a fit.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? Writing the first book in the series led directly to this book, although I didn't know it until I got to the end of Sharper Security.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Kidnapping, Political and Legal Intrigue, Espionage and Military Conflict. What else do you want?

"Vote For Pedro" (Author's working title, subject to change) - Coming 1st/2nd Quarter 2013. See SharperSecurity.com for more details.