Idle Doodle: A short conversation with Jennifer Esteen

I typically try to take the time to find out what the opposing viewpoints are. I probably don't spend as much time doing it as I should, but I don't insulate myself from other viewpoints. Plus, I've always maintained that it is not possible for a libertarian living in the San Francisco Bay Area to live in a bubble. Still, I sometimes wonder. Maybe I'm not hearing the best arguments. Maybe I'm not searching rigorously enough. Maybe I hang out with too many politically apathetic people (this is a compliment, not an insult).

A few days ago, an answer, of sorts, rang my doorbell.

Jennifer Esteen, running for California Assembly, was on the other side of the door. Okay, we can talk. I have even talked to Jehova's Witnesses that stop by from the congregation down the street, to which one of them seemed particularly perturbed when I brought up the name Richard Dawkins and scurried away as fast as he could without looking like he was running.

She went on her initial sales pitch, which held an array of progressive buzz words. Within ten seconds, I was pretty much able to discern what position she held on every issue, as there was very little deviation from tribal politics. I mean, that might be unfair, since if I give a quick pitch on my views, it'll be pretty similar to what other libertarians might say, particularly those in the Austrian school. But we libertarians do diverge from each other much more than other political tribes tend to. As the joke goes, ask any two libertarians about their opinions on a topic and you'll get three different answers.

She eventually asked me about what issues were important to me.

Presumably, she saw my Michael Lema for Hayward City Council yard sign on my front window when she walked up but didn't know who it was. She must have had some sense that the resident was into politics, but she can handle whatever came her way. Sorry, this house shelters a libertarian that spends an unhealthy amount of time in politics. After her pitch, I was pretty confident in how our discussion would go.

Okay, I'll play.

I said housing and its rapidly increasing prices.

What came next I could have said for her. It was a loose smattering of rent control, regulations, and pouring money into assistance with down payments. Okay, I didn't know of the specific bill she was referencing for the last item, but it's not like I am unfamiliar with the concept of doling money out to the pet project of the day like it's the Democrats' only trick in the book.

Oh, where to start.

I started with the Socratic method. I asked her what she thinks pouring money into assistance with down payments would do to inflation, possibly the biggest issue right now.

I think she missed the correlation with her policy proposal as she started to talk about how inflation is also a burden for many people. 

Okay, but what happens when money is injected into a particular sector to assist people to buy that product? Adding money supply, in this case, particularly in the form of subsidies, causes prices to go up.

Her segue was a veritable word salad of predictable progressive sloganeering. But price gouging! What about corporate greed? Fifty billion dollars in profit! This was said with a slight smirk on her face like it was game over (this was my own impression, not necessarily what she was thinking).

Corporate greed. The Satan of anti-capitalists. Why are there hurricanes that result in loss of life? Satan! Why do prices go up? Corporate greed! I explain profit margins, costs, and volume a bit, but then ask her why were prices going up just slightly before? Then suddenly prices go up? What about when prices went down? What was that? Corporate altruism? Therefore there must be a mechanism outside of "corporate greed". I then try to bring it back to pumping money supply into the market.

She didn't seem to have an answer on pricing fluctuations and why corporations suddenly seem to get greedy all of a sudden. But she was happy to criticize Trump for injecting $2 trillion in COVID payments, maybe because she figured I was a MAGA Republican, I guess?

Sigh. Yes, he did. So did all of Congress except for Thomas Massie, the only one there with the balls to call it for what it was and force a vote on it. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. I bet you anything she was pushing for those payments two years ago right along with them. And she seemed completely oblivious to how she just linked her own desired policy of injecting money into potential homeowners' pockets with Trump's COVID payments while criticizing it. 

It was around this time that she said she was not an economist.

Yeah, that much was obvious. I didn't say that to her face. That's just what I was thinking.

We talked a bit more about some aspects of the economy. I circled the conversation back to rent control, and talked about how rent controls are price controls and how price controls always result in shortages, to which she gave me a quizzical look and said, "shortages?"

I guessed she didn't want to discuss shortages. I was ready to talk about supply and demand as well as the 1970s gas lines due to price controls, but she said she had to get going as she edged away from the porch, shaking my hand, like the Jehovah's Witness that unluckily landed at my doorstep.

Still trying to score a point, halfway down my walkway, she mentioned how we've been in a free market, the implication being that housing prices continue to go up.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that one a million times since 2008. Despite being a registered nurse, she probably thinks the healthcare sector with for-profit insurance is a free market as well (it's not). I decided to just let her go, not telling her that I was a residential architect and have more experience than I care to have with city boards, zoning laws, design guidelines, arbitrary DRB members, and urban growth boundaries. Not to mention that I understand how interest rates are manipulated by the Federal Reserve, skewing demand with artificially low prices.

It's probably prudent to mention now that she was extremely nice and cordial. She also seemed like a genuine person. I mean, living where I do, I probably won't really see anyone better than she elected into that position. But she pretty obviously has been living in a sheltered bubble. I guess I can't blame her too much, at least, any more than the average progressive Californian. When (nearly) all of your coworkers, friends, and family share the same political views, you start thinking that's normal and that there aren't really any opposing viewpoints. 

People are busy and can't get that much into the weeds of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. I get it. But just watch something other than MSNBC or CNN sometime. Read something other than the New York Times and Salon. Venture outside of r/politics. When your opponent knows more about your positions than you do, and you know none of your opponent's positions, it's time to look into diversifying your intake of information and just maybe, consider that you don't have the right answers to everything. For the average person, fine. But if you're seeking to hold public office, come on. Challenge your priors.

Maybe my intake is pretty diverse, after all.

Yet still, the question in the back of my mind nags. Maybe she wasn't the best representative of her political tribe. Maybe it's because I steered the conversation to a topic I know particularly well. Maybe she was just too nice to really push back...