The topic of sanctuary cities comes up every once in a
while. It should come up a lot more often.
We need sanctuary cities. That is because we need relief
from federal regulations and laws. We also need relief from state regulations
and laws. There are vastly too many regulations on the books. There are so many
laws and regulations that there is no way to keep track of all of them. Every
year, the Federal Register publishes over 80,000 pages of fine print,
three-column regulations. There is no way that these regulations are part of a
coherent plan. There is no coherent plan, which is one of the central facts of
all modern administrative law.
THE MESSIANIC STATE
The modern state is
messianic. It operates on the assumption that government legislators and
executive bureaucracies of enforcement have the power of God. The whole system
of modern planning assumes that state planners are omniscient, omnipotent, and
omnipresent. They are none of these things. Therefore, every system of modern centralized government
is a fraud. If the central planners could actually implement their plans, the
chaos this would create would paralyze productivity, and the vast majority of
humanity would starve to death. Whenever we see massive central planning, such
as in North Korea, we see massive impoverishment, when we do not see actual
starvation. There are many stories of starvation in North Korea. I think they
are true.
We get some sense of just how messianic the modern state
is when we look at the Federal Register. The publication is a monstrosity. It
is unreadable. It is incoherent. If you get trapped by one of these
administrative agencies, you are either going to have to spend a fortune on
hiring lawyers to defend yourself, or else you're going to capitulate. The
alternative is to be put out of business. What saves us is the fact that these
regulations are enforced only sporadically. They rely on self-government. They
rely on fear. There is no way that the modern administrative state can be
enforced, apart from self-restraint on the part of fearful participants in the
economy.
The main institutional reason why we have any liberty
remaining is that the vast majority of these laws and regulations are not
enforced. There is not sufficient wealth at the federal, state, or local level
to enforce more than a fraction of these laws and regulations.
PARETO'S 80/20 LAW
We should assume something like a Pareto 80/20
distribution of enforcement. My guess is this: about 80% of the money and
resources spent on enforcing laws and regulations applies to about 20% of the
laws and regulations. I am simply guessing. But Pareto's distribution applies
well to so many areas of life that I see no reason why it does not apply here.
Pareto's distribution is a power law. This means that the
same 20/80 distribution applies as we go up the pyramid of power. So, probably
two-thirds of all the enforcement money and resources are applied to about 4%
of the laws and regulations: 20% of 20% = 4%, and 80% of 80%=64%. About 50% of
the money and resources apply to less than 1% of the laws and regulations: 20%
of 4% = 0.8%; 80% of 64% = 51%. If Pareto's law doesn't apply, then something
comparable to Pareto's law applies.
The reason why we have any liberty at all, and the reason
why we have money left over in local government budgets to build and repair
roads, impose mosquito abatement programs, and operate public schools is
because most of the laws that are on the books are enforced rarely, and when
they are enforced, they are enforced sporadically. It is in the background
noise of unenforced laws that we find our refuge from the state.
AN INESCAPABLE CONCEPT
Sanctuary cities are an inescapable concept. Therefore,
it is never a question of sanctuary cities versus no sanctuary cities. It is a
question of which cities turn a blind eye when looking at specific violations
of the law.
Cities cannot possibly afford to enforce all federal laws
and regulations. To attempt this would bankrupt every city. Cities would have
to impose massive property taxation in order to create the administrative
system necessary to enforce the laws that the federal government insists must
be enforced at the local level. The federal government cannot afford to do it.
So, the federal government demands the cities do it. All cities turn a blind
eye to the request.
It is a political
game that is played daily across the country. City governments pretend to
enforce most federal regulations. The federal government in turn pretends not
to notice that the cities are pretending.
The federal government could impose negative sanctions on
cities that refused to impose politically correct regulations. The federal
government could simply cut off all federal aid to a particular city. But there
are so many regulations that are not enforced that the federal government would
have to cut off all federal aid to every city in the country if it actually
applied such a sanction. The federal government would then be shown to be a paper
tiger. The federal government pretends that it may implement such a negative
sanction, and this usually scares cities into implementing at least token
enforcement procedures on a tiny handful of politically correct regulations.
Any thought that anything like a comprehensive implementation of all of the
laws and regulations that are supposed to be enforced at the local level will
take place is an exercise in political fantasy.
Certain mayors have announced that their cities are
sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. It is politically correct for these mayors
to make such pronouncements. It makes them look liberal.
The federal government could intervene and stop this at
any time. They would simply say that these cities will no longer receive
federal aid of any kind. The federal government never does this. When the
federal government refuses to implement negative sanctions that are easy to
implement, we have to assume that there are good bureaucratic reasons for
refusing to implement the negative sanctions. The voters really don't care. The
politicians in Washington know that most voters don't care. Politicians and
bureaucrats in Washington don't want to cut off aid to the cities. They believe
that the existence of a flow of funds to the cities from Washington is a means
of gaining political leverage in local communities. I think this is a correct
assumption. The bureaucrats in Washington don't want to expose the whole system
as a charade. They prefer piecemeal and sporadic conformity at the urban level.
They figure that something is better than nothing. Some conformity is better
than no conformity. So, they refuse to withhold federal aid from cities whose
mayors have declared the cities to be sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.
CONCLUSIONS
All cities are
sanctuary cities. Each city decides unofficially which laws to enforce, which
will be few in comparison to the number of laws on the books at the federal,
state, and local level. Each city allocates
money to enforcing a relative handful of laws and regulations. There is a
division of labor with respect to this enforcement. Different cities have
different degrees of enforcement. People who live in these communities learn
which laws are enforced rigorously, and which are not. People adjust their
behavior to their perception of the risks of breaking a particular law.
Modern man lives in terms of what R. J. Rushdoony called
the politics of guilt and pity. Ayn Rand made a similar point. There are so
many laws on the books, Rand said, that everybody feels guilty about being a
lawbreaker. This makes citizens more pliable politically and judicially.
There will always be a Pareto distribution with respect
to law enforcement. But if we want to restore liberty, we should see to it that
politicians eliminate 80% of the laws on the books. Politicians should cut 80% of the existing budgets of
all federal agencies. Then bureaucrats in Washington should eliminate 80% of
the regulations that have ever been published in the Federal Register. Most of
the Federal Register should be devoted to rescinding previous regulations.
None of this is
going to be done on a systematic basis. Instead, there will be a great
default because of the escalating impact of the $210 trillion present value
of the unfunded
liabilities of Medicare and Social Security. This actuarially
inescapable descent into federal insolvency will force a frantic, unsystematic
political re-structuring of the federal budget. We are going to see a wholesale
refusal of federal agencies to enforce the laws and regulations on the books. The
politicians will have no choice. Budgetary constraints will impose this kind of
budget cutting.
Liberty will be
restored as a result of the great default. I certainly look forward to this. I
think you should, too.