Impeachment and Envy Gary North from Specific Answers

Impeachment and Envy

Gary North - June 27, 2014

Two Presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Clinton. Neither was convicted by the Senate, although Johnson won by only one vote.

It would be a waste of time to try to impeach Obama. The main case for this would be that Congress would waste a lot of time. There is a good case for that.
There would have to be a legal reason that the voters would accept. Every President violates the Constitution sufficiently often, so that a plausible legal case might be made for Obama's impeachment. But it would have to be plausible politically. Otherwise, it would backfire: underdog politics. That was what happened to Clinton. He is supposedly worth something like $80 million, due to speaking fees. That's getting even? Hardly. Meanwhile, Bush II rarely appears in public. He did not get impeached.
The Senate would not vote to convict Obama. The Democrats would see the horrifying threat: President Biden.
If Joe Biden were to become President of the United States, Hillary Clinton would not get the nomination. Pres. Biden would guarantee that there would never be another President Clinton. Mrs. Clinton would fade into a well-deserved obscurity. She would get to spend the rest of her life changing her hairstyles.
I think a Republican could defeat Biden fairly easily. Even if Biden won, he would be less of a threat to our liberties than Hillary Clinton. He has a marvelous ability to put his foot in his mouth. He would become, not so much a bone of contention as a source of amusement. I don't think he has the stomach for becoming a dictator. There is something flaky about him. Flaky people make rotten dictators. It is why I would have voted for John Kerry in 2004, had I not written in Ron Paul's name.
I did not want to see Clinton impeached and convicted. This was not because of any sympathy for Clinton. But, in 1998, I did not want to see Al Gore become President. As it turned out, I was wrong. Instead, we got Bush. Bush was worse than Gore ever could have been, because Gore ultimately is wishy-washy. He is a one-trick pony: global warming. He didn't have the votes to get his agenda through Congress. On the other hand, Bush briefly had something that only Eisenhower had enjoyed ever since Hoover's administration: a Republican majority in both houses of Congress. Cheney have the deciding vote in the Senate. Bush didn't have this majority long, but he had it too long. After 2001, the federal deficit and federal political power both expanded dramatically. I could not have known this in 1998. What I did know was that Clinton was a lame-duck President. He had not achieved anything of significance in his first term, and he was unlikely to achieve anything in his second term. He didn't. What he achieved was notoriety for the Lewinsky affair. That is his only memorable legacy. That is the only thing he will be remembered for. This is all to the good. So, I was glad to see him impeached by the House, and I was glad to see that he was not convicted by the Senate.

I wanted to see Clinton torn down, but I did not want to see him impeached and convicted. So, I was not envious against him; it was simply a matter of political strategy. I am always happy to see some President whacked on the knuckles by political reality, so that he cannot exercise as much power. National politics is usually a zero-sum arrangement. The President wins; I lose. When he loses power, I gain a little bit of freedom.
Biden for President! Now, but not in 2017.
It's a fantasy, of course. But I can always hope.
ENVY
I agree with the sociologist Helmut Schoeck, when he described envy as a sin. It is a very specific form of sin. It is the desire to see somebody else torn down, not because his fall will benefit you, but simply because you want to see him torn down.
He contrasts this with jealousy. A jealous person resents the fact that somebody else owns something. But the jealous person sees that, in a negotiation, he can extract some of the benefits presently owned by the other person. The motivation offers personal advancement at the expense of the other party. This can be a free market transaction; this can also be a political transaction.
Schoeck made the point that the person who is driven by envy cannot be dealt with. If someone who is the target of his envy goes to the person and offers to make some kind of a bargain with him, the envious person is deeply resentful of the fact that the other person is in a position to negotiate with him. He resents the position, not just the person's advantage in a relationship to him.
The envious person is willing to tear down the other person merely to see the other person torn down. But in a free market economy, the other person has the advantage because of some benefit that he is offering to third parties. This is not true in cases where there is political intervention, but it is true in situations where the person is involved exclusively in voluntary arrangements with other people. Whatever he is bringing to the table, it is benefiting people on the other side of the table. Therefore, to want to see that person torn down is inescapably also a demand that the people he is cooperating with are also torn down. He loses, but they also lose. So, envy is unquestionably a sin. It is difficult to deal with, and when it is extensive in the society, whole segments of the society are put at risk whenever envy gets into control politically.
In a zero-sum game, the winner benefits at the expense of the loser. In such games, each of the parties wants to see the other one torn down. This is not a matter of envy. This is a matter of one-to-one jealousy. For every dollar that the guy on one side of the contract loses, the guy in the other side of the contract collects.
There are almost no free market transactions that have this zero-sum characteristic. The only one that I can think of that really is not a game, and therefore is not a form of gambling, is a commodity futures contract. In such a contract, the winner winds at the expense of the loser.
The advantage to society commodity futures contracts is that these contracts provide information regarding correct pricing. These contracts are based on rival views of the future. When such contracts are widespread, better information is brought into the marketplace regarding a very narrow question: "What should this thing cost?" Gaining accurate information is never a zero-cost endeavor. Free-market pricing, as Hayek has said, is a discovery process. We want the best people to come into the market and offer their opinions. The way we get this is by means of a commodity futures market. The rest of us are winners. We get better information. We pay nothing for this. It is an after-effect of the futures market.
A commodity futures contract is not a form of gambling. It is not a game that exists solely to redistribute wealth. It is a means of dealing with an existing problem, namely, incomplete and inaccurate information regarding the pricing of a particular commodity.
Envy offers no benefits to society. Envy is destructive. Envy is aimed at tearing down somebody else, but the person who is envious does not directly benefit, except in so far as his wish is achieved. Somebody else is hurt, and not just the target of his envy. Anyone who was successfully dealing with that person is also harmed. The social division of labor contracts as a result of the envy. The envious person is not a reliable person in terms of social cooperation. He resents the success of others. Anybody can become a target of his envy. Success therefore climbs a wall of envy.
Schoeck made the point that societies that are envy-driven do not have an extensive division of labor. Therefore, they are invariably poor.
In a zero-sum arrangement, envy is not a factor. When the other guy loses, I gain. That can be described as jealousy -- I get what he has -- but it should not be described as envy: he loses, but I do not gain, and I am probably harmed.
If someone is trying to tax the rich in order to gain the rich voters' money, this is jealousy, not envy. In a few rare cases, somebody may vote to tax the rich merely to tear down the rich. That is envy, and it is dogmatic. When it is extensive, the social division of labor is threatened. Everybody will get poorer when envy is widespread.