Archive of NSK LewRockwell.com Posts – June 2003 – June 2009

From the holy kee-rap file: Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading reports that Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. … During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading.” Hatch “said damaging someone’s computer ‘may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.’ …

“He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, ‘then destroy their computer.’ … ‘There’s no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,’ Hatch said.”

Hey, almost makes you think there may be something wrong with the whole notion of copyright.

And in support of the emerging libertarian view that democrats are becoming the less-evil party, “Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in copyright debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider.”

This story, by Tucker Max, about how he got fired when he was a summer associate at the California law firm Fenwick & West during the dot-com boom times, is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while — it reminds me of my summer in 1990 clerking for Vinson & Elkins … NOT! Note that though he puts quotes around the names of two of the Fenwick trademark partners he mentions, I’m not so sure they are pseudonyms….

Also hilarious is his SFGirl “iGuy” profile (example: his “Favorite Practical Joke” is: “I like to go down to the dog pound and pretend that I’ve found my dog. Then I tell them to kill him anyway because I already gave away all his stuff. Dog people sure don’t have a very good sense of humor.”).

In a recent post, Lew Rockwell notes that Cato’s Doug Bandow opposes free trade in pharmaceuticals. Seems there must have been a memo: now comes Just Say No To Drug Re-Importation, by Cato’s Michael Krauss. Krauss opposes H.R. 2427, which would authorize wholesale re-importation of pharmaceuticals from 26 countries to the United States for distribution to consumers. Warns Krauss, If enacted, it could endanger American lives, imperil national security, and reduce the quantity and quality of drugs available for Americans.”

This is a rambling, confused piece. Here we have a libertarian urging that the importation of commercial products, from willing sellers to willing buyers, be banned–because it could “endanger” American lives? When did libertarians abandon caveat emptor and adopt maternalism? As for how importing drugs can “imperil national security,” maybe someone else can figure out just what Krauss’s argument is, but it seems quite a stretch to me.

The real problem for Krauss is that reimporting allows consumers to avoid some of the monopoly price charged due to the US patent system. Hence, support for intellectual property rights leads once again to the undermining of genuine private property rights, such as the right to trade.

Interesting to note that here we have Cato favoring open immigration–let anyone in–and restricted trade; exactly the opposite of Hans Hoppe’s paleolibertarian views on immigration. As Hoppe points out, trade in goods does not violate rights and can be engaged in even by distinct groups that live separately, whereas the importation of people into a welfare state can result in forced integration and other rights violations. Here Cato apparently favors outsiders marching into the country, carrying with them the right to vote and to trample the private property rights of citizens by virtue of antidiscrimination and affirmative action laws–so long as they don’t bring cheap medicines with them!

Congress’s actions are also bizarre: they help to create artificially high pharmaceutical prices by giving patent monopolies to American companies. Then, they attempt to solve the problem by allowing reimportation. Why doesn’t Congress simply curtail patent rights in drugs, if they really want to lower the artificially-high drug prices consumers face? Similar with the medicare drug prescription plan: the feds are going to increase our taxes to pay for drugs that are expensive because of the federal patent grant. If the feds are going to make us pay for retirees’ drugs, shouldn’t they at least remove patent protection from them, so that the burden is lower?

Re Lew Rockwell’s latest post about Richard Epstein’s pro-patent comments–Epstein writes, “‘Patented goods are subject to a lawful monopoly created by the state in order to induce their creation. No one thinks that new pharmaceutical drugs will be invented by private firms that cannot receive a rate of return sufficient to recover [various costs]. … ‘The legal monopoly granted by the patent is the only mechanism that allows the producer to recover those fixed costs….”

Obviously, this is a utilitarian argument; Austrians and libertarians are well aware of the economic and ethical problems that plague utilitarianism. But besides this, another problem with Epstein’s argument is that there is no logical stopping point. For it is not that “drugs” either will, or will not, be produced. By Epstein’s logic, there will still be some drugs that will not be produced, namely those whose cost can’t be recovered even with patent profits. The current patent term is about 20 years. If it were longer, more monopoly profit could be obtained, thus allowing more drugs, currently not produced, at the margin, to be profitable. So let’s extend the term to 30 years. Or 40. And so on. But why stop there? Why not impose criminal liability for infringement of patent rights–say, life in prison or the death sentence. We could also lower the statutory standards for obtaining a patent, so that more drugs would be subsidized by the patent monopoly. We could triple the budget and salaries for the Patent Office, so that patents are issued more quickly (they take 2-3 or more years, now).

What’s more, even the strongest patent rights in the world simply might not give enough extra profits to justify the generation of some “really useful” drugs. So by using the standard utilitarian reasoning underlying Epstein’s advocacy of patent law (and also undergirding his defense of the power of eminent domain in his book Takings), why not let some administrative commission dole out taxpayer-funded subsidies to the pharmaceutical industry. Yes, taxpayers would be harmed (just as private property owners are harmed by patent law–as the drive to outlaw reimported medicines attests), but drugs that would not otherwise be invented, would be. Presumably the “value” of these drugs would “exceed” the “value” (to whom?) of the money taken from taxpayers.

I better shut up. They might not realize I’m being sarcastic.

Recent posts (2, 3, 4, 5), and a wonderful speech by Congressman Ron Paul properly chastised Cato writers for opposing reimportation of medicines, thus adopting a protectionist, anti-free trade, anti-property rights stance.

It must have caused some outcry among Cato’s libertarian supporters. Looks like Cato’s Ed Crane and Roger Pilon decided to get back on course, in their article Conservative Drug Split in NRO. They conclude “Reimportation is right and good”, but they spend a lot of time bending over backward to try to make the protectionist argument look respectable, making for an overlong, convoluted defense of free trade. It should take about a paragraph or three, at most, for a libertarian, free-market group to explain why there is nothing wrong with free trade.

A follow-up to this post: Cato’s News Release dated July 29, 2003 proclaims its free-trade stance, despite columns advocating protectionism by two of its scholars:

“Cato scholars support drug reimportation

“WASHINGTON

Joe Stromberg recently emailed me about heroic World Court Judge Christopher George Weeramantry of Sri Lanka’s dissenting opinion regarding the legality of nuclear weapons.

Joe Stromberg recently emailed me about heroic World Court Judge Christopher George Weeramantry of Sri Lanka’s dissenting opinion regarding the legality of nuclear weapons.

I’ve recently discovered the wonderful HBO series The Sopranos (or, as my mother-in-law calls it, the “f*ck-that” show, due to the repeated use of the f-word). Thanks to DVDs and NetFlix (introduced to me by Karen De Coster a couple years ago), we’ve been catching up on old episodes. On a recent episode, a civilian who had witnessed Tony Soprano leaving the scene of a mob-hit was sitting on his couch, calmly reading Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia. Curious.

Also, in another episode, two mobsters were discussing the feds, and one of them was talking about how if they keep investigating, sooner or later they will crack down–because “they’re just like us–they’re a business. They’ve invested millions of dollars in this, they have to get their share.” Amazing insight for Hollywood, and calls to mind the similar wisdome of Lysander Spooner:

As Spooner wrote in No Treason:

“The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

“The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves “the government,” are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman.

“In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number [*14] to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed. They say to the person thus designated:

“Go to A_____ B_____, and say to him that “the government” has need of money to meet the expenses of protecting him and his property. If he presumes to say that he has never contracted with us to protect him, and that he wants none of our protection, say to him that that is our business, and not his; that we choose to protect him, whether he desires us to do so or not; and that we demand pay, too, for protecting him. If he dares to inquire who the individuals are, who have thus taken upon themselves the title of “the government,” and who assume to protect him, and demand payment of him, without his having ever made any contract with them, say to him that that, too, is our business, and not his; that we do not choose to make ourselves individually known to him; that we have secretly (by secret ballot) appointed you our agent to give him notice of our demands, and, if he complies with them, to give him, in our name, a receipt that will protect him against any similar demand for the present year. If he refuses to comply, seize and sell enough of his property to pay not only our demands, but all your own expenses and trouble beside. If he resists the seizure of his property, call upon the bystanders to help you (doubtless some of them will prove to be members of our band.) If, in defending his property, he should kill any of our band who are assisting you, capture him at all hazards; charge him (in one of our courts) with murder; convict him, and hang him. If he should call upon his neighbors, or any others who, like him, may be disposed to resist our demands, and they should come in large numbers to his assistance, cry out that they are all rebels and traitors; that “our country” is in danger; call upon the commander of our hired murderers; tell him to quell the rebellion and “save the country,” cost what it may. Tell him to kill all who resist, though they should be hundreds of thou- [*15] sands; and thus strike terror into all others similarly disposed. See that the work of murder is thoroughly done; that we may have no further trouble of this kind hereafter. When these traitors shall have thus been taught our strength and our determination, they will be good loyal citizens for many years, and pay their taxes without a why or a wherefore.

“It is under such compulsion as this that taxes, so called, are paid. And how much proof the payment of taxes affords, that the people consent to “support the government,” it needs no further argument to show.”

No, it’s not paleo, but this site, by an English guy, about all the things he argues with his German girlfriend about, is pretty darned funny. I liked this one: “I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I’d eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Margret accused me of doing this, ‘deliberately to annoy her’.” Or this one: “Margret thinks I’m vain because… I use a mirror when I shave.” “Wherever I’m standing is where Margret needs to be standing, and vice versa. Doesn’t matter where we are – the kitchen, the bathroom, Scotland – we each infuriatingly occupy the space where the other one wants to be, urgently. Over the years we’ve developed signals for this situation. Mine is to stand behind her and mutter under my breath. Margret’s is to shoulder-charge me out of the way.”

for defending Al Franken. Other than Michael Moore, it’s hard offhand to think of anyone I despise more. But the lawsuit filed by Fox News against Franken is simply ridiculous. Franken’s forthcoming book is Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox claims Franken can’t use the phrase “fair and balanced” in the book’s title: “They argue that Fox has trademarked “Fair and Balanced” to describe its news coverage and that Mr. Franken’s use of the phrase would “blur and tarnish” it.” Fox also complain that the book cover “mimics the look and style” of two books written by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

Puh-lease. Does anyone really think some “No Spin Zone” conservative Yahoos are going to accidentally buy Franken’s book, thinking it must be similar to O’Reilly’s? Thank God I’m not an IP lawyer. Er, waitasec…

In a recent post I noted how much I despise Michael Moore and Al Franken: snide, smarmy, smug socialist know-nothings. Surely my hatred is blinding me to other choice candidates. Ted Danson, Robert Downey Jr., Susan Sarandon just don’t tee me off as bad (well, Downey is up there). Any other LRCers have any celebs/commentators they love to hate? Post it, or email me.

Yeah there are some despicable liberals, but every now and then you find a diamond in the rough. In my Randian days I used to think all liberals are evil and dishonest, and I have to admit I have almost no close friends that are liberal. Some conservative types, I can befriend, but I just never trust liberals. There are a few for whom I’ve developed a grudging respect–well, lack of extreme disgust, would be more accurate–e.g. I always thought Michael Kinsley, of Crossfire, was pretty honest and fair for a liberal. And then there’s my friend Rob Rosenthal. And maybe… Christopher Hitchens…? Gore Vidal? And then there’s… no, no one else comes to mind. Little help?

You gotta love ‘em: the Objectivists’ m.o. when reviewing a book is almost always to praise its good points but then to point out how the author is not fully Objectivist. This Objectivist book blurb of Coulter’s new book, by Harry Binswanger, shows how condescending the Objectivists can be:

“BOOK REVIEW: *TREASON* BY ANN COULTER
Treason, by Ann Coulter, is a book of great value and great danger. For Objectivists, who are immune to its horrendous philosophical claims, its integration of the political events of the last 50 years will be of great value. But the excellence of those very points makes all the more dangerous the anti-man, mystical, religious underpinnings of the book.”

I love it–Objectivists alone are “immune” to its flaws. Hey Harry–it’s “anti-man”, but is it “whim-worshipping”? Ah, those Objectivists and their little passions and quirks are cute, aren’t they?

Recent requests for more examples of not-so-bad liberals and ultra-despicable ones yielded a few interesting emails. One of them reminded me of James Carville, the slimeball of a human being who makes me grit my teeth (and, I’m embarrassed to say, he’s a fellow Louisianan and LSU Law School alumnus). Some excerpts from the emails I’ve received below–

“I feel especially offended by the mouths of Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand. I have developed the following policy–for them and others like them:

Whenever I hear, or hear of, celebs running their stupid mouths in public on topics about which they certainly have no knowledge or background, I go to my video collection and check to see if I have a video or DVD with the celeb. I put it into a mailing envelop, address it to the CEO of the film studeo that produced the film. I also write in huge dark black letters on the outside, “Crushed and smashed by sender. Post office did not damage this package.” I enclose a note explaining that, since they choose stupid people as actors and actresses, I will not be purchasing, or going to the theater to view, any films produced by that studeo until stop providing employment for publically offensive, stupid celebs. I seal the package, throw it to the floor, and stomp it flat. Then I mail it to that CEO.

My [spouse] used to think that I just am throwing money away, and the studeo won’t care. I explain that I feel better, and so the money is well-spent. I tell friends of my policy, hoping that some of them will follow suit. I hear that ’5 handwritten letters’ from consumers cause execs to pay attention. What about 5 smashed films???

***

You mean Robert Downey Jr. does something besides getting busted for drugs? Did not Gore Vidal write “Caligula” and “Myra Breckinredge”?
There are plenty of other annoying liberals:
Tim Robbins (Shawshank Redemption is the only good movie he has been in. Dull as dishwater in the acting department.)
Drew Barrymore(“no guns” for Charlie’s Angels. And how can a T&A movie designed to appeal to teenage boys be femininst empowerment?)
James Carville
Paul Begala(do not watch Crossfire or CNN anymore. Having an audience wrecked that show. Bill Press was a lot less smug)
Svend Robinson (Homosexual Canadian MP of the NDP or as I call it the New Demoncratic party. Supports the “right” to kill yourself and other kooky socialism.)
Dalton McGuinty (leader of Ontario Liberal party, by the end of this year he will probably be Premier) wants to lower energy Prices while shutting down Ontario’s remaining coal power plants-during an energy shortage. Also wants a gay marriage law, now!
Jesse Jackson
Al Sharpton
Bob Hunter (enviro-whacko reporter for local Toronto news) ran for office as a New Democrat in very left-wing district. He Lost. Defeat not helped by the revelation that he had sex with an underage girl in Thailand.)
Ontario Supreme Court -created the “right” of gay marriage out of thin air.
Most Foreign Film Directors-make pretentious, boring, garbage “art” films that trash the free market, religion, “corporate consumer capitalism” et al.
Vanessa Redgrave
Most Toronto Star Reporters-blame high rates of crime committed by blacks on “racial profiling” by white racist cops. Complained that the Blue Jays are “too white.” Like Gay marriage. Knee-Jerk Liberal party supporters. Prefer the NDP if Paul Martin becomes PM sinces he is insufficiently Socialistic. Support the “New Deal for cities,” kooky environmentalism,etc. Only Plus for you is that they Criticize the current war(s).
Alan Rock (Gungrabbing Minister of Health)

I could go on, but I think you have had enough.

***

Here’s a short list of smarmy liberals: Charles Schumer, Rosie O’Donnell, Cybil Shepherd, Richard Dreyfuss, Molly Ivins, Katie Couric, Anita Hill, Andrea Dworkin, Anthony Edwards, Garry Wills, Catherine MacKinnon, Leonard Pitts, Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas.

Still, I find neo-cons like Charles Krauthammer, Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas–each an unabashed admirer of mass-murdering socialists like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt–every bit as annoying as liberals. In the words of Richard Nixon, “We’re all Keynesians [and leftists] now.”

***

Gotta be Ellis Henican!

I’d say he’s a rat but I think he snivels more than most rats. Rats are better looking too.

***

Now as for your solicitation on the LRC blog for liberals we love to hate – here are just a few…

*Bill Maher – Smug and condescending, this jerk had the gall to call himself libertarian! I haven’t heard him say it recently, so perhaps he’s fully embraced the Dark Side. He’s still repeating the same stupid liberal mantras – “Clinton was impeached over sex,” “Republicans stole the 2000 election,” “Guns and SUVs are evil,” blah blah blah. Put a sock in it already.

*Molly Ivins – A hidebound, knee jerk liberal if ever there was one. Her criticisms of Bush are not off target, but her takes are so tiresome and predictable – hey Molly, would it kill you to conjure an original thought in your pointy little head?

*James Carville. There’s not enough bandwidth here to convey my loathing for this guy. Let’s just move on…

*Janeane Garafalo – Her anti-war stance is admirable, but she harms her message with shrill, self-righteous rhetoric about the whole thing. She seems to have adopted the belief that the louder she yells something, the more likely others will accept it as gospel. She makes bizarre assertions and backs them up with nothing: “There is no liberal media; it’s a myth.” Oh, thanks for clearing that up Janeane. I guess I’ll just ignore all that evidence to the contrary now.

*Here’s a non-liberal I’m rapidly beginning to despise – radio host Neal Boortz. He’s that odd species of “libertarian” who paradoxically supports the Iraqi war. Um, OK. Whatever tortured rationalizations get you through the day, I guess. I don’t know how you can believe government does nothing right except when it comes to foreign policy and waging war…

*Here’s one liberal “good guy” – Ted Rall. His columns are usually witty and insightful, and his cartoons about Bush and the war have been right on target. He may be insane about most issues, but he manages at least to come off sincere and principled – like he’s not just spouting sound bites and derivative talking points. He seems to have studied the issues but drawn the wrong conclusions. To paraphrase “The Simpsons,” “He’s not evil, just ignorant.” Oh well.

One last thing – thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for posting the link to Tucker Max’s web site on the LRC blog. Tucker’s site has kept me in hysterics ever since. My discovery experience was probably similar to most people’s – I started reading one story, and the next thing I knew it was 2 hours later and tears of laughter were streaming down my face. I also found Mil Millington’s site, which you also reference on today’s LRC blog, through Tucker’s links page – I turned my whole office on to that one! I think my favorite entry is the one that ends with, “‘I don’t know if I’d have done it in real life.’ ‘In real life’? What? WHAT? You’re going ‘Ooo – that’s slightly scary and unsettling, Mil’ now, aren’t you?” Priceless.

OK, enough rambling from me. Take care and keep up the good work.

***

Ted Turner certainly deserves a nomination. !#%$*& socialist muckspout!

Re Raico’s post about Auberon Waugh refusing to write for “the worst paying magazines in America”– I am reminded of one of my favorite Samuel Johnson aphorisms: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

Of course, being a libertarian writer, I don’t follow that advice. Luckily, being an Austro-libertarian, I realize all value is subjective and would therefore change it to “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for ex-ante expectation of satisfaction.” But by that definition, we render this type of blockheadedness an empty set. Sigh. What is one to do. Oh, I know–stop trying to painstakingly nickel-and-dime every decision to death. Some things are not based on money. Get over it.

Quoting Samuel Johnson just now, I remembered that a few years back, I gave John Cobin some of my own favorite liberty-related quotations, for Cobin’s online collection of same.

… or is it power? It’s estimated that it would cost $50 billion to fix the nation’s power grid. Hey, I’m no fan of government involvement in such matters, but wouldn’t it have been better to spend the money on that instead of Iraq?

and my Cajun heritage, and apropos nothing in particular, here is the joke “Illegal Cock Fight”:

The Louisiana State Police received reports of illegal cock fights being held in the area around Lafayette, and duly dispatched the infamous detective Desormeaux to investigate. He reported to his sergeant the next morning. “Dey is tree main groups in dis cock fightin’” he began.

“Good work. Who are they?” the sergeant asked.

Desormeaux replied confidently, “De Aggies, de Cajuns, and de Mafia.”

Puzzled, the sergeant asked, “How did you find that out in one night?”

“Well,” Desormeaux replied, “I went down and done seen dat cock fight. I knowed the Aggies was involved when a duck was entered in the fight.”

The sergeant nodded, “I’ll buy that. But what about the others?”

Desormeaux intoned knowingly, “Well, I knowed de Cajuns was involved when summbody bet on de duck.”

“Ah,” sighed the sergeant, “And how did you deduce the Mafia was involved?”

“De duck won.”

Tom DiLorenzo is right on in his comments on Raico v. Palmer.

In his reply to Raico, Palmer savagely attacked Hoppe — in part because Hoppe maintains the absurd and non-Austrian view that free market unemployment is “always voluntary.”

Palmer and I corresponded over a year ago about another issue, but Hoppe came up. After I defended Hoppe, Palmer wrote me: “[...] who could take a self-described economist seriously when he writes that unemployment is impossible in a free market? And when he claims that that’s somehow an implication of Austrian economics he adds insult to ignorance. [...] The fact is that Mr. Hoppe is an embarrassment.”

In a reply to Palmer, I pointed out that Mises, in Human Action (Chapter XXI. WORK AND WAGES, Section 4. Catallactic Unemployment, p. 599), explicitly stated: “UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNHAMPERED MARKET IS ALWAYS VOLUNTARY“. Clearly Hoppe’s view on unemployment is the same as Mises’. Is Mises supposed to be an embarrassment to Austrian economics too?

Palmer’s reply to this? “For Mr. Hoppe it is a cult based on reading and interpreting sacred texts, the point of which is to ‘master Misesian economics.’ [...] I don’t really give a fig about what Mises said just because it’s what he said; what I care about is whether what he wrote helps me to understand the world. [...] You write, ‘And it is more than an implication of Austrian economics–it is Mises’ actual, express, explicit view, in his magnum opus.’ If you’re right, then so what? Is that an argument? If you’re right about this, then Mises was wrong. Is that so hard to accept?”

Note that Palmer himself attacked Hoppe’s pedigree as a free-market economist, indeed, as an Austrian economist, by citing Hoppe’s allegedly absurd and non-Austrian view that involuntary unemployment is impossible on a free market. When I simply pointed out that Mises himself had the same view, I was clearly not citing Mises to prove that proposition is correct, but to show that this view is not “an embarrassment to Austrian economics,” but is rather the view of one of the premiere Austrian economists. Palmer is the one who brought up pedigree; when I showed that his argument was flawed, he retreated to the charge that my citing Mises is cult-like. Need anything else be said?

The ACLU is trying to delay the California recall election, on the grounds that old punch card machines put minority voters at disadvantage. Presumably this means that for some reason–presumably, minorities are too stupid to operate punch-card machines as well as whites?–the minority vote will be undercounted. However, if the premise is correct (minorities are stupid), aren’t they better off if their votes are undercounted–for the same reasons that severely retarded people have guardians to make important decisions for them?

The logic of the ACLU’s actions here supports this patronizing, racist view of minorities as helpless dolts. For the ACLU is not an exclusively minority group; its membership is thus more white on average than the minorities they are defending. This implies that whites are better, on average, at protecting the rights of blacks (to use white and black as proxies for majority and minority). But if this is the case–if benevolent, smart whites are the ones who have to look out for their little black wards–why isn’t it good that the white vote counts disproportionately.

And liberals think everyone else is racist. Sigh.

I fond Tom Teepen’s email address (teepencolumn@coxnews.com) with a little googling. He smarmily dismissed the idea that the First Amendment applies only to the federal government as a “goofy” idea. I suppose the words, “Congress shall make no law…” are meaningless–or goofy?–to him. What a dishonest liberal idiot. I’m gonna drop him a line.

I must have explained to my dad the difference between voicemail and answering machines a dozen times, yet I still get voicemail messages from him such as, “Steph…? Steph? … STEPHAN! Pick up–it’s Daddy!…. [pause; aside to my mom:] He must not be there, he’s not picking up… [=CLICK=].”

Jeff Tucker’s comment about being the computer-fix-it man for relatives is right-on.

This brings to mind a pretty cool telephone service I switched to a few months back: Vonage offers VOIP (voice over IP). If you have a high-speed Internet connection such as cable modem, you can cancel your home phone service and transfer your same home telephone number (in most cases) to Vonage. They give you a little ATP box. You buy a $40 router and plug it into your cable modem. The computer plugs into the router, so it can still access the Internet; and the ATP box plugs into the router. You plug your telephone into the ATP device instead of the jack in the wall. The ATP box gives your phone a dial tone, and transmits your telephone calls over the Internet, via your cable modem.

Once you get it set up, it’s pretty transparent to the user: you use your same phone; it rings, dials, has dial tone like usual; can receive calls; place calls, etc. For $26/month + $1 federal excise tax, you get unlimited local plus 500 minultes of long distance; for $40 you get unlimited long distance. It sounds about as good as regular phones; on occasion it drops, and if cable goes out, your phone does too–but nowadays most of us have cell phones to use as backups in such cases.

Unlike regular home phone service, the only fee is the $1 tax; all those other service fees and taxes don’t exist. Plus, voicemail, call forwarding, etc. are all included; and you can check your voicemail on the web and get email notification of new voicemail (you can even download the .WAV file of a voicemail and store or email it). International long distance is extremely cheap; I love the service.

What reminded me about it was they are now offering a toll free number for $5/month, which gives you 100 free incoming minutes and only 4.9 cents for additional ones. I just signed up for it, and gave the toll free number to my relatives in Louisiana. As soon as I spread the word, I got my first call from my Grandma–the sweetest woman in the world but so parsimonious that she would almost never call anyone long distance. Now, she can call me at whim.

As soon as I switched to Vonage my local carrier offered me this $40-50/month unlimited long distance + local plan, but it would still have about $15 of taxes and fees. I’d rather pay Vonage than the federales.

Heard about this on an article on Drudge–this video of the Star Wars kid is hilarious, as are the various remixes and spoofs, such as SWK 2.0.

“The Star Wars Kid was just goofing off at school. Now he finds his private performance downloaded by Internet users across the world.”

“The Star Wars Kid is a 15-year-old from Quebec known only as Ghyslain — his parents are keeping his last name secret to protect his identity. Back in November 2002, Ghyslain was goofing off at a school video studio and recorded himself fighting a mock battle with a golf ball retriever lightsaber. Over two minutes, the video shows the lone, overweight teenager twirling his mock lightsaber ever faster while making his own accompanying sound effects.

“Yes, we’ve all had our dorky, private moments, but this poor kid is living the nightmare of having his private dorkiness projected across the world to giggling Web users. His friends found the tape, and uploaded it to KaZaA as a joke on April 19. Within two weeks, someone had added full Star Wars special effects and noises to the tape, and the video was linked on gaming, technology, and Star Wars-related sites across the Internet.

“Every teenager does something they live to regret. It’s part and parcel of adolescence. A 15-year-old Quebec boy named Ghyslain simply made the additional mistake of recording his moment of infamy on video. And now he’s an Internet sensation.”"

I recently printed The Good Wife’s Guide for my wife, a new mother. This article, purportedly from Housekeeping Monthly, 13 May, 1955 (but possibly a fake), offers politically-incorrect advice such as:

• Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
• Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
• Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
• Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dustcloth over the tables.
• During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet. [An alternate version also lists: "Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part."]

Be happy to see him.

Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.

Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.

Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.My wife rolled it up and wacked me me with it.P.s.: Also funny is: Good Housekeeping v. Real Women

In a recent LewRockwell.com article, I criticized the recent Supreme Court case overturning Texas’ law against homosexual sodomy. Randy Barnett, another libertarian lawyer, has written in favor of the ruling.

I plan to post an article before too long on LRC further discussing the Fourteenth Amendment and some of Barnett’s views, but in the meantime, one Larry Ruane called to my attention a couple of articles by Colorado libertarian Ari Armstrong. The first praised Barnett’s article; the second tries to find common ground between Barnett’s views and mine.

For now let me mention a couple things.

Armstrong recognizes that I am concerned with limiting federal power. He believes that Barnett has accomplished this with his “presumption of liberty.” Writes Armstrong, “Barnett achieves what Kinsella is looking for — the limitation of the federal government to those few powers specified in Article I, Section 8. [...] Whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies the ‘presumption of liberty’ to matters of state governments as reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court is another matter entirely. Barnett seems to assume the Fourteenth Amendment does strongly protect citizens from state-level tyranny, but the matter is not central to his case. It’s possible to maintain the ‘presumption of liberty’ at the federal level yet argue the Fourteenth Amendment should be weak.” This is similar to my view, although I would prefer a “presumption of unconstitutionality” to a presumption of liberty, but more on this when I have time to get around to it.

Armstrong writes, “I think it’s possible to have the best of both worlds: a federal government with the power to check the tyranny of state governments, but with little power to do anything else.” In other words, Armstrong agrees the federal government is dangerous, and is therefore also leery, as I am, of giving it more power, but he thinks maybe we can limit the grant of power so that the feds have the power to veto bad state laws, but not the power to trample rights or balloon in size.

A couple of responses: first, I am not sure why he thinks this is possible. The Framers thought the written Constitution would limit federal tyranny; clearly it has not. Why Armstrong has such faith in paper documents is not clear. Second, even if it were possible to design a federal government having only the power to veto, I am not sure why Armstrong thinks this is relevant to the debate about the Fourteenth Amendment–our Constitution is not written this way. It empower the feds, via the Fourteenth Amendment, to interfere with states. I think this power is rather restricted; Barnett seems to think it sweeping. However, however broad this power is, it is not limited merely to vetoing bad state laws. It also permits Congress to legislate.

Armstrong is correct that I did not go into much detail, in my previous article, about why the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, does not incorporate and apply against the states, the various rights listed in the Bill of Rights. Some libertarians such as Barnett and Roger Pilon, believe it does; I do not. Let me mention here a couple of things. First, the word “rights” does not appear in the murky expression “privileges or immunities”. Much less is the Bill of Rights mentioned. Given this, it is certainly not perfectly clear that the Privileges or Immunities clause meant to incorporate fundamental rights and apply them against the states. It is certainly arguable that much less was intended; the work of Raoul Berger–much derided by incorporationists from Akhil Reed Amar to Michael Kent Curtis to Roger Pilon and Randy Barnett–shows as much. But in a Constitutional system in which the central government was feared and states’ rights were jealously guarded, one would expect any radical change in this system–and the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted by Barnett, Curtis, et al. surely imposes radical changes on federalism–to be made explicitly, clearly, expressly, in writing.

It seems to be to be almost self-evident that the words “privileges or immunities” do not clearly claim all the rights in the Bill of Rights. To my mind, the most likely meaning of those words–as understood by most of the ratifiers in 1866–was a narrow set of rights having to do with national citizenship only, but not the full panoply of natural rights or those listed in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights. In any event, it is clearly arguable that the privilieges or immunities clause had a narrow meaning, just as it is arguable that it had a broader meaning. Given that its meaning is arguable–i.e., not perfectly clear–then why would it serve as an effective and legitimate substantial grant of power to the feds and a fundamental change to the federalist system constitutional protected in 1789? If the Constitution said, “Congress shall have power to stop gnarly actions,” would libertarians argue that this unclear, vague wording justifies a massive legislative power grab by Congress, or would they say that this wording is not sufficient precise to give Congress wide powers?

A final thought for now. If Barnett et al. are right that the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was originally meant and understood to incorporate rights as expresssed in the Bill of Rights, then they are indeed correct that Lawrence v. Texas was properly decided. However, ask yourself this: if you had asked a typical selection of Congresscritters in 1866, “Does the proposed Fourteenth Amendment give a federal judge the right and power to strike down a state criminal law outlawing sodomy between men?” — what do you think their answer would be? I submit that to ask the question is to answer it. Of course, they would nearly unanimously shout NO! Which of course implies that the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment was not to grant such sweeping powers to the feds.

“We can only hope that those who have the fate of this nation in their hands at this crucial time will do whatever has to be done, regardless of the political consequences. No one’s political career is worth seeing American cities in radioactive ruins.”

Give up? Answer below.

Thomas Sowell, A Tale of Two Wars, in Capitalism Magazine, an Objectivist publication.

(Courtesy Tim Swanson)

I was discussing with someone recently how some libertarians, such as Randians, are so rabidly opposed to anarcho-capitalists, denouncing them in the strongest terms. And this just occurred to me: it makes no sense for minarchists to be SO OPPOSED to anarchists. Because, if the minarchists are right, government is justified and “makes sense”; and it would do a good job of … what? stopping lawlessness, crime, etc., right? So why is it such a threat to the utopian minarchist state, that a few anarchist “say” that we should have “no state”?

If the state is right and good and competent and just, and can put down criminal actions, and fend off foreign invasion–surely, it won’t be hurt by a few starry-eyed libertarian-anarchists’ opinion that the state is not justified!

In other words, by merely worrying about anarchists–their arguments, their existence–the minarchist betrays his unstated distrust of the very state that he favors. He shows that he is not so confident of even the minarchist state’s durability and competence.

The recent flap over the Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Judicial Building makes me wonder–which version of the Ten Commandments are we talking about here? There are at least three versions (link2)–Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish.

And it appears that there are two different sets of Ten Commandments, anyway. After Moses broke the first stone tables, God commanded him to bring him another set of stone tablets, to write down the list of commandments that form the covenant. But these commandments are not the same as those traditionally listed. For example, the real Ten Commandments tells us things like: Eat unleavened bread (without yeast) once a month; redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck; and my favorite, do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

I wonder which version Justice Moore was displaying?

Muslims are sometimes smeared as savages and terrorists by pointing to certain allegedly primitive, unicivilized teachings in the Koran.

But it occurs to me that two can play that game.

Psalms 136: “O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. … Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.”

And: Numbers 31:

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Revenge first the children of Israel on the Madianites, and so thou shalt be gathered to thy people. And Moses forthwith said: Arm of you men to fight, who may take the revenge of the Lord on the Madianites. [...] And when they had fought against the Madianites and had overcome them, they slew all the men. [...] And they took their women, and their children captives, and all their cattle, and all their goods: and all their possessions they plundered: And all their cities, and their villages, and castles, they burned. And they carried away the booty, and all that they had taken both of men and of beasts. [...] And Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the princes of the synagogue went forth to meet them without the camp. And Moses being angry with the chief officers of the army, the tribunes, and the centurions that were come from the battle, Said: Why have you saved the women? [...] Therefore kill all that are of the male sex, even of the children: and put to death the women, that have carnally known men. But the girls, and all the women that are virgins save for yourselves ….”

My goodness! Killing the babies of your enemies, raping their virgin women? A far cry from the New Testament’s proscription to “turn the other cheek”! Surely we are not supposed to attribute these views to modern, civilized people, even if they officially claim allegiance to the Old Testament, no? Just as we should not attribute proscriptions that seem barbaric to modern, dainty eyes, in the Koran, to all Muslims, right?

Postscript: Mark Odell pointed me to Letter XI in Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth.

Re Kirkwood’s distinction beween the Ten Commandment’s “Thou Shalt Not Murder” versus “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (incidentally, there is a distinction between Stephan and Stephen), it reminds me of this quote by the Roman jurist Papinian, “It is easier to commit murder than to justify it.”

A cute little device I’ve almost purchased several times in the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge is Cajun in Your Pocket, a hand-held toy. It has six buttons that, when pushed, play six different spoken phrases, such as “We gon pass a good time, yeah, cher,” “You gotta suck da head on dem der crawfish,” and, my favorite, “OO, I Love You Like a Pig Loves Corn” (WAV file similar to device sounds). But the wife couldn’t stand my juvenile cackling as I hit the buttons in frenzied, monomaniacal succession, so, alas, I don’t own one of those fine toys. Anyway, it’s the subject of a recent copyright lawsuit. The owner “obtained registered copyrights to protect the “sound recordings” and word arrangements of certain Cajun sayings”.

“A rap album distributed by defendants included the exact word arrangement used in two of plaintiff’s copyrighted sayings. The court concluded that the words and phrases at issue in this case were common Cajun phrases not subject to copyright protection, and therefore affirmed the judgment in favor of defendants.”

Aww, poor little Cajun!

[Courtesy my Yankee friend Tony Diehl.]

[Courtesy Tim Swanson]

As a French-blooded Louisianan I feel entitled to weigh in on this. From my Civil Law to Common Law Dictionary (note 39): “James Harvey Domengeaux, comment, Native-Born Acadians and the Equality Ideal, 46 La. L. Rev. 1151, 1168, n. 100 (1986), explains that

I’ve gotten a few emails about the term coonass–one pointed out that Barry Jean Ancelet rejects the theory that the word comes from “conasse”: “Folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet rejects this theory, however, calling it “shaky linguistics at best.” He suggests that the word originated in South Louisiana, and that it derived from the belief that Cajuns frequently ate raccoons. He also proposes that the term contains a negative racial connotation: namely, that Cajuns were”beneath” or “under” blacks (or coons, as blacks were often called by racists).”

Who knows. Hey, this is a cool little history of Cajuns.

[Forwarded on to me by Tibor Machan, subject line "This is Weird"]

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot.
.
.
While doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.
.
.
What direction is your foot going now?

I came across a hilarious web site of a small, mostly-female-owned Colorado law firm, who call themselves The Bitches From Hell. See especially the new firm announcement and their fan mail. I’d hire ‘em.

One of my favorite quotes is this one by Walker Percy (though it is too cynical): “How can the great suck of self ever hope to be a fat cat dozing in the sun?”, from The Second Coming (more text).

I’ve recommended this article by Ralph Raico many times: Grow Up, Canada. Only a year old, this stunningly insightful and beautiful piece is already a classic. And see his treasure trove of FFF articles, not to mention his LRC archive.

A bit crude, but funny: The 25 Most Inappropriate Things An Objectivist Can Say During Sex.

SmokeThis! is the politically-incorrect site of “Cigar Dave”, who hosts the Smoke This! radio talk show. The Cigar Dave Motto: “Live the good life. Drink, smoke, gamble, feast, joke, fornicate and be tolerant of those who do. Take risks and thrive for the good challenge. Work hard and play hard without going over the edge. Live in the moment. Believe in moderation in all things, including moderation. Live it up!”

You gotta love this guy. He calls cigars “sticks,” his female fans his “harem,” his listeners “Cigar Lieutenants,” and opens his show with the greeting “Long Ashes.” His site has features like Cigar Dave’s “Babe Magnet” Cologne Selections, Living Like James Bond (Interview with author of the “Complete James Bond Lifestyle Seminar”), and Top 10 Cities for the Hottest Delicious Dames. His message to a “whiney” email that complained he “advocates” cigars: “My show does not ‘advocate’ cigar smoking. My show advocates enjoying life

Two cool websites (courtesy of a recent PATNEWS newsletter): “The first is www.californiacoastline.org, where you can view 10,000 photographs of the coastline of California from the Oregon border to the border with [Mexico].

The second site is www.Keveney.com/Engines.html, where you can see animations for 19 types of historical and modern engines.”

A few months back, Honda put together this extremely cool ad to highlight the inner workings of one of its new cars. You might think it’s computer generated effects, but it’s not, it’s a live-action, one-take shot with no special effects.

A confrontation between the execrable Al Franken and the affable popcorn puff Bill O’Reilly can be found here: http://booktv.org/ram/feature/0503/btv053103_4.ram (you may need to open this link directly from your media player). Starts at about five hours into it (5:02 or so).

But then, you won’t think so, if you dislike male chauvinist pig fratboy antics or don’t have a juvenile sense of humor: “The Now Infamous Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle” Story. “How Tucker became an urban legend (This is the complete, true story behind the famous email. If you aren

I recalled recently an utterly fascinating legal squabble I read about when I lived in Philadelphia. This concerns the infamous Holdeen Trusts (link 2), and a series of cases and legal disputes centered around same. An article about it in the Philadelphia Inquirer caught my notice because it concerned the efforts of an eccentric millionaire New York lawyer, Jonathan Holdeen, to set up a series of trusts that would one day totally wipe out taxes, at least in Pennsylvania.

Holdeen set up a labyrinth of trusts in Pennsylvania in the 1940s and 1950s, lasting for hundreds of years, with the accumulated trillions of dollars to be eventualy used to endow and completely fund the operation of the government of Pennsylvania. He chose Pennsylvania, believing that that state’s laws were most favorable to the validity of such trusts. Holdeen “modeled his plan somewhat after that of the thrifty Benjamin Franklin who limited himself ot two hundred years (1790-1990).” (Holden v. Ratterree, 270 F.2d 701 (2d Cir. 1959); see also Holdeen v. Ratterree, 190 F.Supp 752 (N.D. N.Y. 1960); In re Trusts of Holdeen, 486 Pa. 1, 403 A.2d 978 (1979).)

Unfortunately, in 1977, a “judge ruled invalid a plan Holdeen had dreamed up to make Pennsylvania’s the first tax-free government in the history of the world.” Over the years, Holdeen deposited $2.8 million in several charitable trusts for the benefit of Pennsylvania. ” His plan was to let the trusts grow, and to keep plowing the investment income back into them, for 500 to 1,000 years. Since charitable trusts are tax-exempt, the pool of money would become immense.”

“By Holdeen’s calculations, the trusts would contain quadrillions or quintillions of dollars after a few centuries – more than enough to pay all the expenses of Pennsylvania government. All state taxes could then be abolished, and Pennsylvania would be a tax-free model for the world.

“The Internal Revenue Service pounced on the plan right away. The tax agency saw it as an elaborate scheme by Holdeen to avoid taxes and to benefit his family.

“[...] From the 1940s to the 1970s, Holdeen and his heirs battled with the IRS over the validity of the charitable trusts. In the end, the IRS lost. The U.S. Tax Court ruled in 1975 that the trusts were legitimate.

“But a separate legal fight had developed in 1971 in Orphans Court, which has jurisdiction over trusts and estates in Pennsylvania.

“To try to make his plan conform with legal requirements, Holdeen had named the Unitarian Universalist Church as a beneficiary of charitable trusts, with the understanding that the church would get a tiny portion of the yearly trust income.

“While Holdeen was alive, church officials consented to the arrangement. After his death, the church filed suit in Orphans Court seeking all the income. Its lawyers contended that piling up money for 500 or 1,000 years was unreasonable and potentially dangerous.

“Eventually, the church argued, the Holdeen trusts would soak up all the world’s money, and Jonathan Holdeen’s descendants, who were to remain in charge of the trusts, would have unimaginable power.

“In 1977, [Judge] Pawelec ruled in favor of the church, concluding that Holdeen’s scheme was ‘visionary, unreasonable and socially and economically unsound.’

“From then on, income from the trusts, which had grown to more than $20 million, was paid to the Unitarian Church at about $1 million a year.”

Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy describes the recording industry’s ever-desperate and despicable attempts to enforce their copyrights–smearing users of file swapping services like KaZaA and Morpheus as being peddlers of child pornography. What will they say next–MP3 file swappers are communists?

The traditional telecom industry is having a fit with upstart voice-over-IP (VOIP) telephone services, like Vonage (which I use), and is trying to get them sacked with all the strangling regulations and taxes that they are subject to. Pathetic.
[Link courtesy Tim Swanson--who writes, "Thank God the FCC is going to do something, for a minute there I thought rates would stay the same and innovation would falter."]

I received a great deal of comments on my latest LRC article. (A surprising number of them were fellow Texans and Houstonians. Hmm.) Kevin Carson writes,

“It goes back to the failure of the Levellers to create a decentralized republic and abolish feudal control of the land. As it was, for a time in 1647 when the agitators were at the peak of their power in the Army and Cornet Joyce arrested the king, Cromwell would have tap-danced naked and jerked off to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to appease the Levellers. At the time, some Leveller writers were proposing a teardown of all enclosures in living memory, and guaranteeing the right of copyhold tenants as a de facto freehold.

“Had they succeeded in this libertarian alliance of tradesmen, peasants, and soldiers, England would have been a republic with a written constitution, in which almost all power was decentralized to counties and hundreds. It would have been a nation of distibutive property ownership by peasant small-holders, like France after 1789. And there would not have been a central government with the power to pass Navigation Acts or to impose governments on Virginia, Plymouth and Massachusetts-Bay. The industrial revolution would have taken place in a country where the majority of the population had independent access to means of subsistence, and the working classes were not subjected to the equivalent of an internal passport system and forbidden to associate. So it’s safe to assume that industrial organization would have been considerably different.

“And America, left to grow in its own way, would have been a lot different….”

Some others are pasted below…

***

Reading down through you great piece When Did the Trouble Start? at break neck speed, I kept smiling more and more. Then your picture appeared at the bottem and I Laughed out loud!!! It was perfect!

Thanks! Well done, here here, and God save the King. Let’s see… which King would that be? Henry the VII??? LOL, time for us all to brush up on that Euro history.

***

You write:

“Incidentally, Maybe Hamilton is not the arch-villain, and Jefferson not the libertarian hero, that we

Karen De Coster comments on my previous post about Tucker Max’s hedonistic stories. One of her readers wrote “Someone at LewRockwell.com posted some items on the “legendary” Tucker Max, claiming this was the funniest stuff he had ever read. I read these “funny”stories and have to conclude they are the most pretentious, narcissistic, puerile, and unadulterated bull{stuff} I have ever read in my life.[...] Seriously, I haven’t read anything more disgusting and sad in a long, long time as the “Miss Vermont” and “Charity Auction” stories.[...]”

Did I say Tucker Max was funny? Obviously, {stick-up-rear}I meant to say he was pathetically puerile. I object to his stories. Horrible. Truly horrible. Anyone who finds that funny needs professional help.{/stick-up-rear}

Comment on the recent posts about Tucker Max: “As an immature college student (who happens to enjoy a lot of your articles), I must say that the Tucker Max stories were absolutely hilarious. Your response to the criticism was just as funny.”

Ship yourself in a crate!

A recent E-Commerce Times article, RIAA To Offer Reprieve for Music Swappers, quotes yours truly fairly extensively. Boy, this ought to be good for my intellectual property law career.

The Sage Chronicle, “Views and comments from the financial markets,” by Austrian-oriented investment whiz Tony Deden, of Sage Capital Zurich AG. Check out, for example, the posts Two dozen tacos, or News and Old Fools (about Sean Corrigan‘s recent speech).

(Blog bonus!– a recent funny piece by Deden.)

This is a hoot–Old School Commie TV Ads.
(Courtesy Tim Swanson)

Interesting radio debate (link2) between two mainstream physicists and Lewis Little and Steven Speicher, regarding Lewis Little’s Theory of Elementary Waves, which challenges the assumptions of modern quantum physics.

Speicher:
“In the seven decades since the wave equation was created, the strangeness of this new field of physics has been transformed into the ‘weirdness’ of quantum mechanics. The standard theory is replete with effects without causes and the assertion that matter exists in an indeterminate state. The ‘weird’ behavior, according to the theory’s interpreters, is worn as a banner of proof, as if this difference from known facts of reality should be taken as evidence to substantiate the theories. In 1996 the physicist Lewis Little published his paper “The Theory of Elementary Waves”. For the first time since Planck’s quanta in 1900, a rational basis for quantum mechanics has been established.”

On a related topic… fascinating reading (for those with an interest in, but who have always been just slightly bothered by, modern quantum physics): Interview with Carver Mead. (Other links on revisionist physics.) Mead comes tantalizingly close to an almost Austrian view of scientism and the hyper-mathematicism of modern science. Mead critiques the substitution of “mathematical description” for “intuitive understanding”. Of some of the mathematics, he says: “It

A recent post by Nick Weininger on The Agitator blog (run by Cato’s Radley Balko) offers some good points in rebuttal to Eugene Volokh’s argument which attempts to defend IP rights by analogy with tangible property rights.

A quick perusal of Volokh’s post shows that he focuses on assigning property rights so as to give the proper incentives to invest or use resources efficiently. I think Volokh’s whole approach to property rights is confused, however. It is basically a utilitarian approach, which is of course, problematic, as Austro-libertarians well know. As I’ve argued elsewhere (and here), property rights allocate who has the right to control a resource. Obviously the very purpose of this is to specify which person, of multiple possible users, gets to use the thing. If there is no possibility of conflict over the thing, property rights are simply pointless.

It is when two or more potential users might both want to use something that only one can use–because use by one excludes use by the other–that we have a potential conflict that can be avoided by use of property rights. It has nothing to do with incentives to invest or other utilitarian concerns. Property rights should be assigned only to address a possible conflict over the use of a (necessarily scarce) resource–I say “necessarily scarce” because if it is not scarce (some use the unwieldy economic concept “rivalrous”) then there cannot be conflict over its use, by definition.

What rule should be used to assign property rights, in the case of scarce resources, is a debatable issue. Libertarians believe it is the first-use homesteading principle–”finder’s keeper’s”–the should be used to assign property rights. But regardless of the rule adopted, a conflict-avoiding rule can only be applied to a situation where conflict is possible–i.e. where there is a scarce resource at issue. Only one person can use a patch of land, because his use excludes that of others. Two people cannot simultaneously use it. If they try to, there is conflict. Thus a property rule can specify which one gets to use it.

However, the “things”–”ideal objects” as Tom Palmer calls them–that are protected by intellectual property rights are things like arrangements of characters on a page, techniques for doing something, functional arrangements of matter. In short, patterns, or information, or knowledge. Clearly two people can use the same recipe, or arrangement of matter, at the same time, without excluding the other’s use. This elementary point escapes notice of mainstream theorists who do not have an Austrian view of economic theory nor a libertarian view of ethics and property rights. The very function of a property rule is to prevent conflict. Conflict is only possible over scarce resources. Property rights therefore apply only to scarce resources. Moreover, since property rights are always enforced against scarce resources–e.g., your body, in the case of punishment; or your computer or printer in the case of copyright–granting property rights in non-scarce things always comes at the expense of property rights in scarce things. In other words, any kind of right in a non-scarce thing results in a redistribution of wealth–from the owners of real things, to those to whom government grants an IP privilege.

Maybe I can take advantage of the Americans with Disabilities Act now. This test shows I’m color blind (related article).

California’s Governor Davis, in response to the ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals postponing California’s gubernatorial recall election, would immediately issue the following declaration:

1. The federal appellate court’s ruling is illegal and unconstitutional.
2. Under the federal system the states have an equal right and duty to uphold the Constitution and to refuse to enforce, or to permit the enforcement of, unconstitutional federal laws or actions.
3. The court’s decision is hereby deemed null and void.
4. The election will proceed as scheduled, pursuant to state law.
5. Any federal official attempting to enforce the order or to interfere with said election will immediately be arrested and tried.
6. The three federal judges who issued the ruling have until noon tomorrow to reverse the ruling. If they do not, they will be immediately deported–or better yet, arrested.

Who knows, it might even help Davis win the recall!

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who thinks CNN has been “‘muzzled’ in its war coverage by a combination of the White House and its competitive position with the higher-rated Fox News Channel”, said that CNN had been “intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News.”

Fox News’ retort: “It’s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.”

From an email making the rounds:

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?”

Ahh, I’m learning a lot these days.

If you ask, “Where exactly do I put dirty baby clothes? Where is this alleged special baby clothes hamper you always refer to?” and the wife answers, “In the green hamper on top of the little fridge in the laundry room–where we’ve been putting them for two months–where have you been? What planet do you live on?”–I suggest you don’t mutter under your breath loud enough for her to hear, “at least I don’t live on b*tch-world”.

Another suggestion: if you are leaving the house with wife and baby in tow, and the wife pulls your wedding ring out of her pocket, saying, “so, why aren’t you wearing THIS?”, don’t say, “Look, I’m walking your two poodles on pink leashes, I’ve got the baby in a Baby Bjorn carrier on my stomach, I’ve got a Brighton diaper bag over my shoulder–just how married do I need to look?”

“Hey, honey, here’s a surprise–come look at my latest Lew Rockwell blog post!” It might not go over well. At least I didn’t tell her I have the power to edit and delete old posts.

on ridiculous uses of copyright law by the heavy-handed RIAA, is here. Pretty good.

Just received an email from my fellow Houstonian and libertarian buddy Gil Guillory, a chemical engineer at Halliburton who decided a few months ago to take a year-long posting in Iraq. Left his wife and 2 young kids here for the duration. Edited excerpts from his email:

“Stephan,

I

McDonald’s to Launch Adult Happy Meals. Oh, what a great idea! That, and the redistribution of Whip Inflation Now buttons should get consumer confidence up!

Yet another stupid assertion of intellectual property rights–

“Dewey Decimal Owner Sues ‘Library’ Hotel

DUBLIN, Ohio — The nonprofit library cooperative that owns the Dewey Decimal system has filed suit against a library-themed luxury hotel in Manhattan for trademark infringement.

The Library Hotel, which overlooks the New York Public Library, is divided according to the classification system, with each floor dedicated to one of Dewey’s 10 categories.

Room 700.003 includes books on the performing arts, for example, while room 800.001 has a collection of erotic literature.

In the lawsuit filed last week, lawyers for the Online Computer Library Center said the organization acquired the rights to the system in 1988 when it bought Forest Press, which published Dewey Decimal updates. The center charges libraries that use the system at least $500 per year.

Melvil Dewey created his system — used in 95 percent of all public and K-12 school libraries — in 1873, but it is continually updated, with numbers assigned to more than 100,000 new works each year.

“A person who came to (the hotel’s) Web site … would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system,” said Joseph Dreitler, a lawyer representing the center.

Hotel general manager Craig Spitzer and OCLC spokeswoman Wendy McGinnis did not return phone messages Saturday seeking comment.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus seeks triple the hotel’s profits since its opening or triple the organization’s damages, whichever is greater, from the hotel’s owner.

Dreitler said Saturday he and his client do not yet know the size of the hotel’s profits. The center, based in Dublin, is willing to settle with the hotel’s owners, he said.

Funny story about a 1938 article in the British magazine Homes & Gardens, “on Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps.” The article noted that “The predominant color scheme of Hitler’s ‘bright, airy chalet’ was ‘a light jade green.’ Chairs and tables of braided cane graced the sun parlor, and the F

I’ve noted before that the utilitarian argument for IP–that patents, say, are needed to encourage innovation–has no logical stopping point. A patent monopoly allows the holder to charge a higher price, thus allowing some projects to be undertaken that could not be, otherwise–so goes the reasoning. But what if the monopoly profit is not enough? Surely there are still further innovations that won’t be invested in, because even with the monopoly price of patents, it’s not worth it. Therefore, we ought to cut to the chase and just have a government board award tax-subsidized “innovation bonuses” to what it deems are “worthy” innovations.

Now, I’ve used this as an argument from absurdity before, to show that there is something wrong with utilitarian arguments for patents. It looks like some similar arguments from lefties are not so tongue-in-cheek:

“Fortunately, there is a simple alternative route to providing seniors with affordable drugs

So here I am, yesterday, on my daily drive home from work in Sugar Land, back to home in Houston, wending my way through a one-mile stretch that passes through an island of suburbia known as (we’ll call it, to protect the not-so-innocent, namely me) Brookhollow Place. It’s a well-known speed trap. Drive fast–they bust you. My last encounter with them was a bad day about 2 years ago. I had run a red light in down town Houston at lunchtime, and worked until almost midnight. Driving home, I went about 50 in a 35–in Brookhollow Place. The cop stopped me. I was in a suit that day, looked totally legit, driving a car with all lights working–you know, the kind of guy who doesn’t deserve a ticket.

I told the cop, “Man, this has not been my day, I already got another ticket a lunch,” hoping he would let me go. He says, “Let me see it,” getting my hopes up. He’s gonna give me a break, I thought. A few minutes later, he saunters back up to my car and hands me the ticket. “What did you need to see the other ticket for?” I splutter? “Just wanted to check your story out,” answers the redneck.

Luckily I was able to get out of both tickets using a traffic-ticket lawyer I’ve used several times now. He doesn’t make me pay him, being a fellow lawyer, but doesn’t mind if I give him a couple of $25 gift certificates to Carrabas restaurant–so he can “give them to a cop at Christmas.” Hey, I don’t ask–all I know is every time I show up for my court date, the judge dismisses my case without me saying a word. Three or four times in a row now, over the last 2-3 years.

But I’m afraid my luck will run out one of these days, and I don’t want a ticket–makes insurance rates go up and all that. Or you have to take a stupid 6-hour defensive driving course to remove it from your record. Anyway, this is all background for yesterday…

Around 6pm I was driving home, through the Brookhollow Place speed trap. It’s 35, I figure if you go past 40 you are in the danger zone. I was going about 45 and all of a sudden spy the smokey parked in the median. I hit the brakes but he zapped me when I was going 40 I was sure. I was on the phone and wearing sunglasses at the time. I locked my eyes on his car in the mirror, praying I would not see the car pull out into traffic…but it did. I knew I was busted. Luckily the road curved to the right, and he was just starting after me, several hundred yards back.

As the road curved and I momentarily got out of his line of sight, I espied a little subdivision off to the right. As I’ve done many times in the past, I quickly darted in, zig-zagging my way down the unknown streets, running stop signs and breathing hard. I’d long ago hung up on the wife, who was expecting me home for dinner after stopping at the store. Having a strange feeling he might be coming after me, I bore left into a little cul-de-sac (don’t you hate that term? almost as annoying as nonpareil and soi-disant, no?), and, thinking quickly–I knew I’d be a dead duck if he caught me, he’d know I was trying to evade capture–I quickly parked the car in the cul-de-sac as if I lived there, and got out immediately and started walking down the sidewalk as if taking an evening stroll.

As I exited the cul-de-sac, still on the sidewalk, I saw the cop car slowly approaching. He was creeping through the neighborhood trying to find me. Evidently he had turned the curve and seen that my Landrover was not further down the stretch of road, and deduced I had darted into the neighborhood. My blood froze, as I expected him to stop me right there on the sidewalk. But he didn’t. He must have seen only my truck, not me. And I had already removed my sunglasses and put my phone in my pocket, just in case he had seen those when I had driven past him.

I kept walking, afraid to look behind me to see if he was turning into the cul-de-sac to investigate the just-parked and still-warm green Landrover innocently nestled among cars, minding its own business. I quickly walked down the next cul-de-sac, looking for shelter or escape. Fences all round. I walked into a quiet driveway, and ducked behind a tree and hid by the water hose on the side of the house, hoping I could pretend was just… washing my hands?… if he should discover me. I called my wife back, told her I was going to be late, I was trying to evade arrest. “Oh Lord,” she says, “how do you get into these things?”

So here I am, allegedly an upstanding citizen, husband, and new father–trespassing on some stranger’s lawn, hiding behind a tree, hoping to evade a ticket, increased insurance, hassles with a traffic ticket lawyer, possibly arrest, and getting shot in the rear by an irate suburbanite.

Hey, say what you want, but you wan’t read this kind of stuff from Goldbert on The Corner….

Anyway, I was afraid to walk back to my car, thinking he might be waiting for me there. I considered jumping a fence or two to get back to my car some back way, but it looked too risky. Finally I noticed a few people were strolling down the sidewalk, so decided I could continue my stroll and look relatively innocent, even though I was wearing work-slacks with pockets bulging with sunglasses and cell phone. So I retraced my path, and walked past the cul-de-sac where my car was parked, not daring to look in that direction. But my peripheral vision saw no white, and after I crossed the street I doubled back and hid behind another house corner’s shrubbery–shrubbery is my friend, I am thinking–and carefully look into the neighborhood, all senses on alert. My spider-sense, luckily, did not tingle, and I finally assayed that the coast was clear.

Jumping into my trusty green steed–sans sunglasses–I carefully snuck out of a different entrance into the neighborhood, briefly crossing the smokey’s road–not going down it this time–into a different neighborhood and a back way home.

Such is my life.

A fascinating book (but probably not for non-math nerds) that I read many moons ago is Rudy Rucker’s Infinity and the Mind (review). There are actually different types and levels of infinity, and whole mathematics of infinities… pretty mind-blowing stuff.

Even the simple notion of infinity is hard to wrap your mind around. But here is a neat little trick I learned a long time ago, that I’ve never forgotten. A line segment is packed with an infinite number of points, right? Say, a one-inch line segment. You would think that a line segment twice as long has more points in it than the shorter one, right? Maybe… twice as many points? Well, this is wrong, as can be seen in the following diagram:

If you take the two line segments, L1 and L2, and curve them into concentric circles, then you can see that for every single point on the outer, larger line segment L2, it corresponds to a unique point on the inner line segment L1–the same radius line passes through both. If L2 had more points than L1, you could find at least one point on L2, that does not correspond to a unique point on L1… but you can’t. Every point on L2 connects by the radius line, to a point on L1.

So, the longer line segment L2 does not have “more” points than the shorter segment L1. But it does not have the “same number” of points, either–that’s the thing about infinity. Each segment has an infinite number of points, but this is not a fixed number, so they can’t be the “same”. That is why 2 x infinity = infinity. If infinity was a certain number, then this equation would not be true–but it is.

I know a few people stupid enough to wear the I’m Stupid sign.

[An edited version of an email I prepared and sent to friends shortly after Christmas, 1998. Before 9/11/2001, when the world was still innocent. Sigh.]

So our Cocker Spaniel, Muffy (yeah, that’s her name, what of it?), kicks the bucket a couple years ago [around 1996], when we lived in Philly. Cin loved that dog, I gave her to her back in college, in 1989, as a present. We buried her in Great Valley Pet Cemetary. Putting the rose in her little paws was too much to bear. I paid $400 for the hole in the ground but I was not gonna shell out $400 more for a coffin. Nosirree. I’m not some stupid, soft, manipulable yuppie. In fact, I insisted on carrying her out of the vet’s office, after they had to put her to sleep, in the black Hefty bag I had brought along to protect the car seats on the way to the pet graveyard. It was a pitiful scene, as wife and I walked out in tears, with our poor dead Cocker (nestled in a Hefty bag) in my arms. We made such a commotion and upset the other patrons waiting to get FiFi’s annual shots, that they didn’t even make us pay for the euthanasia (ohhhhh, but someday, I tell you, SOME DAY, we will pay for all those youths in Asia). I showed them. Or maybe, they were content with the $1300 we had shelled out the preceding 6 days on ultimately ineffectual Cocker Spaniel dialysis treatment.

Anyway, this is not about Muffy [another good story about her, when I can find it]. It’s about the next phase: standard poodles. A whole new chapter in life. [One that just forced me to buy a king-sized bed, dammit.] Ever since Muffy died we are this DINK couple with no dog hassles. But Cin breaks down and eventually has to get another dog, of course the most expensive dog on the planet, a “well-bred” standard poodle. She names her Sophie, and she’s now about 8 months old.

Well, lo and behold, of course, Sophie turns out to be a rare poodle with hip dysplasia, so of course we have to get this hip surgery done on her that costs more than my parents’ first 3 cars.

And then as a consolation prize, the breeder gives us for free a year-and-a-half old standard poodle, Anna Belle, which is actually Sophie’s aunt. Anna Belle (aka Big Dog) is physically healthy but is psycho dog: she runs from her own shadow. [Another story about her later.] Sophie, I thought, was physically defective, but at least, sane.

So we are in Baton Rouge on a Sunday night after Xmas. Cin and I, and her brother (we’ll call him Skid) and his wife (we’ll call her Smidge), are visiting in the living room of Cin’s dad’s house. One of them insults my poor poodle Sophie, for limping due to the recent hip surgery, and I said, “No, she’s a love-dog, a good dog,” and reach to pick her up and place her on my lap.

Unfortunately, I must have twisted her bionic leg the wrong way and hurt her badly, for she freaked out and attacked my face like a bobcat, with an ear-rending yelp. I could feel her teeth sink into my upper lip like a hook in blubber. Meanwhile I’m trying to set this squirming, yelping, snarling, pain-wracked poodle on the ground without re-injuring her $6 million leg, and she limps off, I guess dazed that she had just bitten her master and best friend. Until then she had never hurt a flea.

My head is in my hands and I feel and taste blood gushing out. Smidge says, “Are you okay?”, to which I say, quietly, “no,” trying to avoid vertigo.

So then we see this gash on my upper lip that is about 3/4 inch long and 1/4 inch deep, from about nostril to lip edge. There are other assorted scratches and cuts, inside and outside the mouth, but the most serious is the big one that makes my lip look like one of those little football-shaped rubber coin purses the banks used to give out for free that opens with a big slit when you squeeze on its sides.

So I’m in the bathroom looking at it in the mirror, and we are trying to decide about whether to go to the emergency room or not (it’s 10:00 at night), and I feel cold, clammy, nauseous, the feeling right before pass-out. So I lay on the floor while Skid fishes for my insurance info through my wallet, and off we go to Our Lady Of the Lake (OLOL) hospital, me holding a ball of soggy paper towels enwrapping a bunch of ice, against the lip. That was Smidge’s idea. I said, “Hey, what’s the point of this ice, Smidge?”–or rather, I mumbled it out the left, unmarred, side of my mouth–because I’m always skeptical of the pseudo-scientific holistic treatments. I figure she would know the answer, being a 4.0 ChemE and all. And she says, “To keep it from healing so it won’t hurt so bad when they rip it open to clean it out.” Ah. I see. You’re smart, Smidge.

Now we decided to go to OLOL instead of the equidistant Ascension Parish ER, even though the latter is quicker, because OLOL is supposed to be better. Maybe it was a good idea but let’s just say Cin and I got home at 3:30 a.m.

Anyway we get to the OLOL ER, which Skid knows how to find with the back of his hand because he’s been there numerous times for over-drinking at the bowling alley, his dad’s nosebleeds, and whatnot. Okay, so we all walk in, and on this Xmas weekend Sunday night at 10:30 p.m., the ER is packed. Some clerk who admits us wants to see my wound, to triage the damage I assume, so I remove the ice pack and poke my tongue behind the cut so it opens real wide so he thinks it’s really bad, to increase the chance he’ll put me in the high-priority line instead of at the bottom of the line. Of course, I am fuming that we have to wait so long, there is a fast track for more high-priority cases, and there is of course the immediate track for ambulance patients, but there is nothing for people willing to pay twice as much! Where’s the justice in this world.

So he goes, business-like, “What happened?”, and I say, “uh, dog bit me.” Why does he need to know it’s a poodle, you know? How’s that relevant?

Then he asks the question I’d been dreading, “What kind of dog?”, to which I mumble, quietly, “… poodle… — but a standard poodle, a big one.” Cindy happily chimes in, the evil tormenter, “But she’s only a puppy“. So the guy makes the call, on the spot: “poodle bite, small laceration on the lip“. SMALL laceration? And did he have to specify the type of dog? Where in God’s name is the relevance of this?

Anyway then I am shuttled off to this young black lady nurse/registration person. Whatever the hell she was. The one with the power of God over me at this moment. Cin handles most of the info input, with me mumbling the answers to the nurse’s question and Cindy interpreting. Remember, I’m talking through a soggy napkin ice ball, dripping bloody ice water all over my pants and the registration lady’s desk.

When we give her my law firm’s name in response to her query over place of work, she then says, “And what do you do for them?” (why in hell this is relevant I don’t know); Cindy and I both simultaneously answer, “Lawyer”. And the nurse lady rolls her eyes at this, like, “Oh, big woop, Mr. Big lawyer man, eh, well, it ain’t gonna help you heal from that poodle bite any better!” And later on she passes a pad of microfiched fine print to sign off on, so I guess they can donate my left [censored, but rhymes with tut, or besticle] to charity if I sneeze or something, and she says, “This form explains — oh, I’m sure you can understand it, YOU’RE A LAWYER AFTER ALL!” Ha, ha, lady, just run my insurance papers through and KEEP YOUR PIE HOLE SHUT!

So this being a religious hospital, she then says, “Religion?” and Cin looks sideways at me, and I look back at her, and we both know Cin’s not going to answer something pointless for me like “he’s a semi-ex-Randian secularistic rational skeptic” etc. Now I was raised Catholic and this is a Catholic hospital. But Cin and I were married in her church, Methodist. So Cin just answers, “Methodist.” What?! NO WAY I’m gonna be called a Protestant! We Catholics (cultural ones, anyway) have to keep our roots alive! I’d rather not-be-Catholic than not-be-Protestant! So I mumble through my soggy ice pack, “Catholic!” and the lady looks at me patronizingly, “Oh, no, honey, you don’t have to be Catholic to come here.” Like she’s caught the little Protestant lying to get into the uppercrust Catholic hospital. To which I firmly said, “I AM Catholic!” So there. That really made her believe me. Meanwhile Cin’s rolling her eyes, as if to say, you are getting your lip sewed up, why do you care what box this menial clerk marks on an irrelevant form?

Well, 4 hours later, at about 2:30, our doctor, a Boy George look-a-like, finally attends to me, gives me a damn tetanus shot (that arm still hurts), and sews me up. [It always sucks when you are asked by the ER when you last had a tetanus shot, and you can never remember exactly, so they always give you one just to be sure.] I mean, here I am, stitches in my lip, probably a permanent scar which will hopefully enhance my looks a la Harrison Ford’s chin scar, and paying multi-thousand dollars in upkeep on the damned poodle that did it. I figure that in the future, if it scars and I am questioned about it, I can just say, “Let’s just say it was because of a bitch named Sophie, and leave it at that.”

Okay, that’s too grandiose a title. But as I mentioned briefly in my entry in Walter Block’s Libertarian Autobiography series, I think one reason I developed libertarian views is “my strong sense of outrage at injustice, which probably developed as a result of my hatred of bullies and bullying. I was frequently attacked by them as a kid, because I was small for my age, bookish, and a smartass. Not a good combination.”

A couple years ago I had a conversation with some libertarians about this, and brought up bullying–many of them had had similar experiences. Maybe there is a common theme here.

Which leads me to my main point here: it’s astonishing, to me, that bullying is permitted and laughed off as some natural kiddie thing. Even in good schools, bullies exist, and they mercilessly prey on smaller, weaker, meeker kids. We are talking serious violent crime here: assault and battery. Physical violence. Beatings. Theft. Why is there no outcry over this? Why is it tolerated? I am not fond of the over-litigiousness of modern American society, but if my boy were attacked by another kid in school, I would sue the attacker and his parents for assault and battery. It’s outrageous. I just don’t get why there are so many bullies: why don’t they teach them never to be cruel to the weak and innocent and defenseless.

Followup: Lew agreed with the bullying point, and pointed out that “The creation of the kid culture, separate from parents and other family members, encourages this sort of evil. Thanks, public schools. We will never know the proper educational organization until we allow freedom. Mothers cooperatives, etc. As it is, the government defines what a school is.” For a partial explanation, see Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why, by John Taylor Gatto.

Followup 2: One reader writes:

“This blog got my attention right away. Not pretending to be a psychologist, but having been bullied and done a little bullying myself as a child, let me offer this explaination: a bully bullies because he can. The humiliation of another enlarges the bully in his own mind (and there only). He picks his victims purely on the basis of risk. That is, the lower the risk to himself the easier the target. (Sounds like a few chicken-hawks we know in D.C.)

“The bully is essentially a coward. But the answer with childhood bullying (and probably with occupied states) isn’t litigation or bureaucratic intervention, just plain old self-defense. The easiest way to back down a bully is good right cross to the nose, and that’s exactly what I’d tell my own kid. One shot and he won’t be bothered again. Very laissez-faire I think.

“The problem with our cowardly lions on the Potomac is that they face no personal risk to there own lives, liberty, and property. Until they do they’ll continue to stalk the global schoolyard in search of easy prey.”

I agree in part. However, I think it’s incorrect to think that self-defense is “the answer.” Certainly, kids should be taught self-defense. But sometimes the kid is too small or weak. And in high school, we are talking seriously possible harm now. It’s akin to organized crime.

What interests me most, however, is not the psychology of bullies–there are many reasons some people choose to be thugs, and as they are not excuses, they are not that interesting to me–nor techniques for self-defense, but why libertarians don’t see bullying as aggression. Surely, you wouldn’t say, to women, that “the answer” to rape is self-defense? Surely, they should defend htemselves if they have to, but far better to prevent it and if they do it, you arrest and hang ‘em. Why does a bully get away with it?

In my view, if a kid bullies, he ought to–quite literally–be arrested and imprisoned for a time, and punished with severe pain. And if he does it again, he should be imprisoned for a long time, if not ejected from society. I am quite serious. They are criminals, pure and simple. There is no excuse for it.

Several times I have noticed something about “conversions”–political, religious, what have you. It seems to me–and I suspect other libertarians have had similar thoughts from time to time, though I don’t recall seeing this written about before–that it’s an indication of the objective superiority of a view if conversions are almost always to that position, and rarely away from it.

The most obvious case would be libertarianism and socialism. You almost never hear of someone, once they become a libertarian, all of a sudden becoming a socialist. Whereas, many people, if they are sincere, ethical, and searching for politically sound views, will become libertarians to one degree or the other. This seems to be true, to varying degrees, of conversions of muzzy-headed liberals to “conservatives”–as people get older or wiser, many become more conservative. Do you ever hear of conservatives becoming more liberal? Arianna Huffington is the exception that proves the rule.

When the occasional person does go the other direction, it’s usually to a more apathetic or mainstream approach, but not usually to leftism. E.g. an anarchist, a la Roy Child, may revert to minarchism. But to statism? Even Nozick, a semi-minarchist (I think), sort of renounced his earlier “hard core” libertarianism, but never made it clear what he reverted to; it seems unlikely he become a democratic socialist but stayed silent about it.

Moreover, when someone does abandon a superior ideology, they often reveal they never really understood it but just jumped on it for faddish reasons, as evidenced by their mischaracterizing the ideology, much like its ignorant opponents do. Liberals have to mischaracterize what libertarians really believe in order to oppose it. While,

Now I am not adopting a version of the Whig view of history, but there does seem to be a general one-sidedness, or directionality, to a given ideology, when it is objectively, and significantly, superior. In the case of libertarianism itself, it seems to me the fact that libertarians almost never convert to socialism, but leftists, liberals, and mainstreamers often moderate their leftism or even see the light of libertarianism, is a striking indication of how superior our view is.

I’ve noticed this in other fields too, e.g., within Christianity–Catholicism versus Protestantism. In my–admittedly limited–experience, anti-Catholics usually badly mischaracterize its doctrines. But often a sincere, searching non-Catholic Christian, bouncing from one Protestant denomination to the other, finally sees what the Catholic church really teaches, and converts. Whereas, when a Catholic converts to fundamentalism, it’s either for convenience (e.g., marriage) when he is not that “into” either one anyway; or they reveal that they never really understood the Catholic doctrines very well in the first place, and thus succumb to anti-Catholic distortions of RCC doctrines.

I’m not claiming here that this proves RCC is “superior” to fundamentalism, but it’s just an example, from my own personal experience, that illustrates the unidirectional-conversion rule I noted above.

There are undoubtedly other examples, probably Chicago-to-Austrian economics, etc.

It’s odd, but when I read the first paragraph of this story, I sort of get a glassy-eyed smile on my face, because I can’t help picturing Al Franken substituted for the dog. Don’t ask me why.

“WAYMART, Pa. – A woman being viciously attacked by a large dog said she was saved from further harm when her 13-year-old daughter distracted the canine by screaming “You want a piece of me?” and kicking it repeatedly in the head.”

[Thanks to Tim Swanson for the link.]

University Shuts Down Anti-Affirmative Action Bake Sale reports that SMU “shut down a bake sale Wednesday in which cookies were offered for sale at different prices, depending on the buyer’s race or gender. [] The sale was organized by the Young Conservatives of Texas, who said it was intended as a protest of affirmative action. [] A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks. [...] The group sold three cookies during its protest, raising $1.50.”

Interesting. So they sold three cookies, raising $1.50–but they were $1 for white males, so there had to be at least one minority customer. There are three possible customer-lineup arrangements that would generate $1.50 in sales, based on 3 cookies sold:

1 White Male + 2 Blacks, or
1 White Woman + 1 Hispanic + 1 Black, or
3 Hispanics

Ain’t diversity great?

[Thanks for the math correction from Phillip Winn--my earlier permutations overlooked that exactly 3 cookies were sold]

Recent design patent for a “Holy Bible trailer hitch cover”. Now I ask you: do you think this product is marketed more towards Protestants, or Catholics? To ask it is to answer it. This has redneck written all over it, which correlates more with Baptist types than with Catholics. And they say Catholics are idol worshipers. Pshaw! (No, I’m not Protestant-bashing, this is just for fun, people!) (Download full patent; other silly patents)

Re my previous post, a reader writes, “C’mon Steve never been in a RC bookstore? FYI they are filled w/ tacky yard art & glow-in-the-dark blessed virgins! At least we dont put little statues of John Calvin on the dash of our pick up trucks. Although now that I’m thinking about it…”

Okay, okay, you got a point. (But dammit, it’s Stephan–call me Steph if you want, but Steve is short for Steven or Stephen. People never mispronounce Stephanie as Stevenie do they? Auugghh!)

Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me

[From about February 1999]

So the other day, Cin’s sister Amy and her family were visiting. On a fine Saturday morning, I decide to take my 6-year-old nephew, Thomas, and our standard poodles Sophie & Anna Belle for a walk to a park a few blocks fom our house. Well, I had to walk the dogs anyway, and it was an excuse to have a cigar. And I get brownie points w/ the wife and sister-in-law because it looks like I’m bonding with my nephew at the same time. A win-win. Also have a coffee travel mug full of beer–don’t want my WASP neighbors to sneer at me. Or my wife and sister-in-law. After all, this is like 10:30 in the morning. Multitasking, man. Made cell phone on the way there, and have a comic book stuffed in my pocket, just in case I get bored. Fat chance.

Arrive at the park. I tie the dogs up to a table so I have enough hands free to fire up the cigar and drink the beer. Maybe even read the comic.

Then Thomas acts up–damn, the kid wants attention; why’d I bring him?–so I give him Sophie to walk around the little jogging path in the park. Off he goes, tugging on Sophie’s leash. But of course, he has difficulties so I need to interrupt my solitude at the table and go help him. I leave Anna Belle, our psycho poodle, tied to the table. I need a couple hands free for other things, plus I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me. She’s terrified of me, in fact. I mean I can stomp my foot when she walks past me to go outside and she’ll spray the wall with flecks of dog mess. She’s been afraid of me ever since we got her, at 18 months old. She’d be raised as a show dog, and being naturally shy, I think that traumatized her. She bonded with the wife but her fear of me won’t subside. Psycho dog, man.

So I go over to Thomas to help him walk Sophie around this little park. I’ve got the beer in one hand and a lit cigar and leash in the other, and try not to glare at Thomas for ruining my little cigar-beer-comic moment. About this time, Anna Belle’s abandonment fears kick in, and she worms her way out of the collar, unbeknownst to me. Although she hates me, she sees me and Sophie across the park, so naturally she heads towards the familiar.

As I’m trying to puff the cigar with one hand and avoid spilling the beer in the other when Sophie pulls on the leash, I see a bit of movement out the corner of my eye. I look up, and see Anna Belle, about 150 feet away, running towards me across the park at about 40 miles an hour like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. I mean she is booking it. I had forgotten all about her–can only multitask so much, you know.

The dog is loose. Uh oh. Time slows down, and I instantly realize she somehow escaped being tied to the table–maybe the leash broke. I also realize that although she is running toward me now (fear of abandonment), when she gets close she’ll realize what she’s doing and turn around and run away from me. She always runs from me, looking for Cindy. But that would mean her possibly running around the neighborhood and getting hit by a car, while I’d be unable to chase her anyway due to having 6-year-old Thomas and Sophie to watch. Cin would not be happy with if that happened, especially after she smelled cigar and beer on my breath. She’d find some way to blame it on those. So in that frozen moment of time I realize I have a delicate job of grabbing her when she gets close enough, before she runs away, but not making a move too soon and spook her early.

As she approaches, still in slow motion, I start to prepare… keeping an eye on her I hand Sophie’s leash, the beer-laden coffee mug and cigar to Thomas, telling him to hold them and don’t move, as I start to crouch, ready to spring… I know, I’ll just grab her collar. That usually calms her down. Once you have that, she obeys.

She gets about 5 feet away and starts to sit down in her terrified way, and I gingerly approach her … and she gets the spooked-horse white-eye-rolling they get when they see a bear, and she starts inching up to run away–and I lunge for her, and grab the collar–but there’s no collar there! That’s how she got out–she had backed out of it when she was tied to the table. So there’s nothing to grab this wiry psycho dog by. So basically I semi-tackle her and grab her neck, which makes her go completley crazy. I mean she is snarling, trying to bite me, trying to get away, and I’m wrestling her down, pulling her by her ears, etc., hair is coming out of the ears, she is crapping all over herself, it’s flying up in the air. I’m trying to avoid her snarling bites and to not hurt her, all without letting her go.

Time returns to normal speed as I reach a point of equilibrium and have her pinned to the ground like a high school wrestler, and hold her still until she calms down, in a position where she can’t escape but also can’t bite my face off. The only sound is the soft noise of little turdlets that she’d sprayed into the air thudding onto the grass around me, and Thomas, who is holding Sophie and my cigar and beer, yelling “Poo Poo! Poo Poo! Poo Poo!”

Eventually I have Thomas set down the adult paraphernalia and go retrieve Anna Belle’s leash and collar from the picnic table. Safely back at home, I delivered a sufficiently edited version of the story.

Have I mentioned my growing aversion to poodles?

***

Coda: Sophie died at 3.5 years of age, about 2 years ago. After my wife got tired of my boo-hooing for a month, she dragged me out once again to Candy Land Farm up in Spring Texas, where we bought the best one yet, my little buddy Boudreaux, a white male standard poodle.

Re Karen’s 2000-CD music collection–I’ve got my eye on the sweet new RCA RD2840 Lyra Personal Jukebox MP3 Player. For just $299 (price sure to drop soon), you get a walkman-sized 40GB MP3 player. That’s enough to hold about 1200 CD’s worth of music–! A competitor is the Archos 20GB Jukebox, which might be preferable if it came in larger capacity, as it probably will any day now.

With one of these babies, you can rip your entire CD collection (unless you’re a fanatic like Karen with 2000) to your hard drive, then store it on the handheld player, with tons of your own playlists. Attach it to a wireless adapter and you can play the songs on any stereo with an FM radio receiver within 10 to 30 feet. Going on a road trip? Don’t take 10 to 20 CDs along… take your entire CD music library, in the palm of your hand.

[Followup: Karen De Coster reminded me of the Apple iPod, for which she has a preference over the others. And apparently it now comes in a 40GB model, too--but at $499, much more expensive than the RCA Lyra and Archos devices. In addition, I've always hated Macintosh and Macintosh fans, and devices designed to "make it easy" for techno-illiterates--usually it doesn't, it only restricts your ability to find a fix when the inevitable bugs occur.

Second followup: comments from readers who use the new generation of Macs lead me to wonder if maybe it's worth switching and joining the cult. What can be worse than the continual crashes that Windows users face?]

P.s.: who the heck is Julie London? Link, clue, description? Little help, man.

And don’t forget the Ayn-Rand influenced Canadian rock trio Rush (Steve Horwitz’s Rush page). E.g., check out the fantastic lyrics to the Tolkienesque-libertarian The Trees, a clever anti-egalitarian metaphor (and great song), along the lines of Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron:

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

Also, the concept-album 2112 is loosely based on Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem, replacing lightbulb with guitar; and the song Anthem is explicitly individualist. The wonderful Red Barchetta, from their best album, Moving Pictures, glorifies the liberating freedom of the automobile, against a backgrop of a future dystopia where cars have been outlawed. (And I can’t help but link to the beautiful lyrics of Losing It, though it has little to do with libertarianism.)

(More Rush lyrics.)

Though I hate the custom of tipping, it’s easy to do, if you know basic arithmetic. 20%, a generous tip, is easy to figure: just take a tenth (knock off a zero–e.g., $50.00 becomes $5.00) and double it–$10. Voila, 20%. For 15%, just do 10% ($5) and 20% ($10), and go half-way between them: $7.50. (I know, I know, trivial math to you engineers out there, but lots of libertarians are just liberal arts majors

But the final bill you receive is usually after-tax, 8.125% here in Texas. I don’t want to pay a tip on a tax, so I usually back off a bit from my 20% estimate. E.g. if you get a $50 bill, that means only about $46 of the bill was the actual food bill. So you want to tip 20%, figure 20% of $50 ($10), and back off a bit, say knock a tenth off, so that you tip $9. And notice, $9 is about 20% of $46. If you figure the 15%, or 20%, on the after-tax price, you are tipping on taxes.

In Brian Jennings’ comments about midwives, he writes, “Incomprehensibly to both of us, home birthing and the use of midwives in place of OB/GYN’s seems to be regarded as the province of the Left, falling in line with hippy/vegetarian/New Age trends. [...] Reputable research continues to confirm that the more comfortable the mother is during the birth, the fewer the complications.”

Two words: epi-dural. Which can only be given in a hospital. Is it more comfortable to be at one’s home, but with pain; or to be in a hospital, but with the pain relief of the epidural? I dunno, but I know how all the women I know would vote…

Lew, does this mean I should take my baby off Baby Ambien? But he’s sleeping sooooo good through the night.

Some time ago I mentioned to Lew that I tend to agree with his “take” on so many issues–political, economic, even cultural–to a very high degree, except I do not always share his optimism about the potential for liberty and improvement in society. He asked me a simple question, that took me off guard: “Do you watch much television?” I admitted I did, but then he pointed out that the world as portrayed by modern TV is much sicker and more twisted than the real world. There are many more decent, hardworking, basically honest and good people out there, than you would think, from watching too much TV. Good point.

So — tune out, turn off, and cheer up!

In response to my post about bullying, a reader writes:

“I like almost all of your columns and you

Kirkwood: “Lawsuits over bullying? Whatever happened to defending yourself with your fists?”

I’d say, whatever happened to not feeling sorry for people who are sued when they are actually responsible for damage done to others. Whatever happened to taking the side of victims–without exception–over that of the violent thugs, predators, and other outlaws of society?

Self-defense, and other measures are not mutually exclusive. What’s wrong with suing someone legally responsible for damage to you or yours? I’ve yet to see a principled, libertarian-based argument against the notion that bullying is a clear instance of exactly what libertarianism opposes: violent invasion of rights, which should not be tolerated. Aggression should be countered with punitive force and restitution should be made.

The degree of the punishment and amount of restitution, should of course take into account proportionality concerns, but that’s just a detail. But let’s err on the side of the victims. I have an idea: expel the thugs among us and put them in school with other like-minded thugs and let them beat the hell out of each other. Fine with me, let’s separate the the riff-raff thug children of jock parents from civilized children of civilized parents.

If the parents of a thug get sued by the parents of one of his many vicitms, instead of whining about it, they ought to figure out how to teach him that thuggery is intolerable.

Another followup: another reader writes:

“Stephan, you ask, “Why is there no outcry over this? Why is it tolerated?”

“Gatto writes, ‘Children are made to see, through school experiences, that their classmates are so cruel and irresponsible, so inadequate to the task of self-discipline, and so ignorant they need to be controlled and regulated for society’s good. Under such a logical regime, school terror can only be regarded as good advertising. It is sobering to think of mass schooling as a vast demonstration project of human inadequacy, but that is at least one of its functions.’

“The problem of bullying is a symptom of the failure of both compulsory-schooling (as distinct from education; thank you, Mr. Clemens) laws and unilateral-personal-disarmament (“gun control”) laws. Compulsory schooling violates the principle of freedom of association; restore the freedom of (non-)association, and the problem of bullying “withers away”.

“I also think being bullied amplifies and focuses one’s desire simply to be left alone, so libertarianism’s attraction for the bullied might be described as ‘”leave me alone” writ large’.

“> Certainly, kids should be taught self-defense. But sometimes the kid
> is too small or weak.

“Well, right there is an explanation for why so many kids bring guns to school.

“I have long thought that the reason “an armed society is a polite society” is very simple: because in an armed society, those who are impolite are dead, at the very least.

“> If the parents of a thug get sued by the parents of one of his many
> vicitms, instead of whining about it, they ought to figure out how to
> teach him that thuggery is intolerable.

“I agree completely; sadly, I fear that the more likely response will be the same as that of most businesses — blame lawyers for the problem instead of their own behavior, and then hire other lawyers to “game the system” to shield them from consequences instead of changing their behavior.”

As one of the few registered patent attorneys who oppose patents –and on principled, pro-private property, grounds, not for utilitarian or anti-industrialist reasons (in fact, the only other anti-patent registered patent attorney I know of is law professor Michael Davis, who, if memory serves, is a leftist) — I get my share of the “hypocrisy” charge. How can I help companies acquire patents, if I know the patent system is unlibertarian. Is it “immoral” or unlibertarian to patent your invention?

A few comments. First, even if I’m hypocritical, it does not mean my argument against IP is wrong. It’s ad hominem.

Second, consider how patents are used. First, one invents something. Then, a patent application describing the invention is prepared and filed with the US Patent Office. Then, two to three years later, the patent office might issue a patent to the inventor. Once he has a patent, it gives the inventor the right to prevent others from making, using, or selling whatever invention is claimed–by filing a lawsuit to stop this, if necessary.

Often, a company–say, a small laser company–will obtain a bunch of patents in this manner. What for? Well, quite often, they sit in the company’s vault. If the company gets sued by a competitor for infringing one of the competitor’s patents, the laser company sifts thru its stack of patents, and if it finds one or two that its competitor might be violating, it countersues. If both the claim and counterclaim have merit, the plaintiff might back down; maybe they’ll settle by cross-licensing to each other. Even if it is immoral to sue someone with your patent, it is not immoral to use patent defensively.

Consider guns–they can be be used both defensively and offensively. Because they have both a legitimate, and illicit, use, it is not per se a threat to own–to have– a gun. Its the same with patents. Merely having a patent is like having a gun: you can use it for a legitimate (e.g., defensive) purpose, or against an innocent defendant.

So is it immoral, or hypocritical, to be a patent attorney, if it is true that the patent system is unlibertarian? It is not immoral to give clients advice about the actual system they exist in. It is not immoral to obtain patents. It is not immoral to give opinions on the whether your client’s products infringe a given patent. It is not immoral to negotiate a license agreement giving your client permission to make its products without being sued for patent infringement.

But what about actually suing another company, without provocation, for infringing one of your client’s patents? It may well be immoral, from the libertarian point of view, to aid and abet a company in suing another company for patent infringement — although I would argue that in most cases, the defendant company’s management and shareholders by and large support the existence of the patent system as well as the federal system that generated it, and that the defendants in effect consented to, or waived their right to complain about, patent infringement lawsuits. (Likewise, I have no problem with taxes in general–taxing Democrats is fine by me. They asked for it. Only problem with it from my perspective is it is giving funds to a dangerous group, but I don’t feel too sorry for the “victims.”)

Incidentally, it is similar for copyright–except that you have a copyright in things you write automatically, by virtue of federal law–there is NO need to register a copyright, or to stamp a copyright notice, on your works, in order to have a copyriht. As soon as you put pen to paper, you have a copyright in your work, whether you register it or not, whether you mark it “

[This was passed on to me, not sure where it appeared. No comment, it can speak for itself. --SK]

Dr. Laura Tells Women: Just Do It

Wednesday, October 01, 2003
By Barbara Hoffmann

NEW YORK

Here we go again with another libertarian scheme. A couple friends have already emailed or called me to ask me if I’m moving up there. Damn, maybe we need to change our name to propertarians or something, to avoid the association.

Links to other libertarian “new nation” schemes.

Okay, okay–since my post about the Archos and RCA audio players, and my disparaging comments about Macintosh cultists, I’ve been barraged with comments educating me, from Karen De Coster and others, about the superiority of iPods and Macs. I must admit, I hate Windows so Mac can’t be worse. So now I’m wondering if I should get a PowerMac and an iPod! They look extremely cool, though more expensive. I guess you gets what you pays for.

Re “Scooter” Libby–it just proves what I’ve always said–never trust anyone whose name requires quote marks, especially extremely stupid names like “Scooter”, “Skip”, “Chip”, “Tipper,” etc. Don’t ya think, when he got to college, he would have tried to shake that name off?

Want an example of a working anarchy, without resorting to ancient Iceland or Ireland? How about the Roman Catholic Church? It is a political entity under international law (the Holy See–technically, the State of Vatican City). As far as I know, it imposes no taxes, instead collecting money voluntarily from the one billion Catholics around the world; and does not impose its jurisdiction on unwilling participants–its “citizens,” so to speak, are the one billion Catholics living under the jurisdiction of others states. So who says voluntary government is impossible?

Great Grover Norquist interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with host Terry Gross. Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, “talks about freedom, the role of government, and taxation in a half-hour interview on NPR.” Right off the bat he corrects Gross’s use of “us” as in “tax cuts cost us money”. No, he explains, tax cuts cost the government money; they save us money (overlook his weakness for vouchers).

(See also this NRO article, re Paul Krugman’s attacks on Norquist, Krugman

Lew’s post reminds me of one of his columns many years ago, probably in the venerable Rothbard-Rockwell Report or The Free Market, where, offhandedly mentioning some Congressman, he glibly listed the Congresscritter’s affiliation thusly: “Rep. Smith (R–Lockheed)”. I always smile when I remember that line.

(Incidentally–one of my favorite “introductory” books on free market issues is Lew’s The Free Market Reader.)

Try The Lifeline Calculator–answers the question, “how long will you live?”

Top 10 Most Outspoken Stars in Hollywood.

Good article on what the post-file-sharing MP3 world might look like–and how the quality of music and film might improve, as the market for “blockbusters” dissipates and people once more produce art for art’s sake….

Awesome photos of Hurricane Isabelle…..

[Correction: Drat! I've been had! Reader Mark Coleman kindly informed me that this is an urban legend--whatever those pix show, it's apparently not a hurricane.]

Chris and Charley–okay, okay, point taken. Sheesh. I don’t want to imply that we should not regret lemming-like teen suicides. We should. It is very sad. Yes, it is callous to pretend not to care a whit about the mental torment these disturbed young people must obviously be in. I agree.

But it does not mean we can’t put it in perspective and give appropriate weight to various tragedies, ranging from totally innocent, helpless victims of violent crime, down to self-destructive, but still sad, actions. As a libertarian, I suppose I sympathize first and foremost with genuine victims–that is, those whose rights are violated by violent criminals. Far more so than for “victims” of their own actions.

Suicide, it seems to me, is usually aimed the living–the motivation is to hurt others, to ruin their lives. It’s a destructive, hateful action. These are people who are willing to be very malicious to others. Not saying that does not make them pathetic, but are they as worthy of pity as genuine, blameless, innocent victims of violent crime by others? I don’t know, it’s a judgment call, I suppose.

It’s probably natural to evaluate news of tragedies befalling others, by wondering whether it’s just an unfortunate event–or something that could happen to anyone, i.e. some possible danger. When you hears of a tragedy, it is natural to wonder if it’s potentially applicable to yourself–whether there are grounds to worry. If you hear of someone getting murdered or robbed in their home, you might get chills, mentally putting yourself in their place. You know it could happen to you. But when you hear of some daredevil falling off a cliff while rock-climbing or whose parachute didn’t open–granted, it’s unfortunate, but you can breathe , “I can easily avoid that–just don’t climb mountains!” Those unfortunate souls sentenced to years in jail for minor drug crimes–again, it’s terrible, but on the other hand, easy to avoid–just don’t do illegal drugs. See, there’s a safe harbor. When you hear of some kids killing themselves in stupid, hateful stunt, again, granted, it’s unfortunate, but not alarming–all you have to do to avoid such a fate is … not kill yourself. To be clear, I don’t at all mean to imply teen suicide is a good thing; it’s usually a horrible tragedy, and very sad.

As for whether “anyone’s death–even that of a stranger, even a misfit–is necessarily a loss to society, there’s probably something to this. Although, surely, there are some people we are simply “better off without.” I’d rather every murderer and rapist would have offed himself when he was young, than to have lived to become a menace to the truly innocent, for example.

This all reminds me of a case (People v. Skiles, 115 Ill.App. 816, 827, 450 N.E.2d 1212, 1220 (1983)), which mentioned the reported exchange “many years ago between the Chief Justice of Texas and an Illinois lawyer visiting that state. ‘Why is it,’ the visiting lawyer asked, ‘that you routinely hang horse thieves in Texas but oftentimes let murderers go free?’ ‘Because,’ replied the Chief Justice, ‘there never was a horse that needed stealing!’”

This order regarding the disclipline of a patent attorney by the PTO for allegedly improper voicemail messages makes for funny reading…

One of the voicemails, and similar epidsodes, can be found here.

One thing that is striking about advocating intellectual property rights–rights in non-scarce things–is that one is inevitably bound up in a self-contradictory position. For although they want to say that non-scarce things (like ideas, inventions, etc.) are “just as much property” as are scarce things like physical resources, they always, when it comes down to it, want to enforce IP rights against scarce resources.

In other words, to make IP rights “real”–you have to step down from the abstract realm and enter the real world. If you infringe someone’s patent–they get to take some of your money. Or they can get a court order to stop you from using your own tangible property in a certain way. But remedies against IP rights are never remedies only in the intangible realm. They are always made real, made concrete, by putting them in terms of real things.

But if non-scarce things are “just as good” and “just as much property” as are scarce things–why don’t they just “enforce” their IP rights against non-scarce things? After all, that should be good enough. But they never do this–implicitly acknowledging the insubstantiality of these imaginary things.

On the notions of of scarcity, aggression, property, norms, and justification, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Theory of Socialism & Capitalism, especially pp. 5-6 & 8-18; also related references here. Articles arguing against the legitimacy of intellectual property, namely copyright and patent, are here.

Well Karen, it’s all well and good to have a “manly man,” but, as every good Randian knows, he better not be too manly, i.e., have a beard. Facial hair means the guy has something to hide, you see (as you have mentioned in your blog). But if “not too perfect” guys are “in,” that’s great news for moi! Turns out I’m even color blind.

On a tangent–re khakis–I hear these Bill’s Khaki’s are supposed to be great. Daddy gots to try himself a pair. I hope Jeff Tucker will approve–khakis do seem to be on his approved list, although I can’t imagine wearing them with anything but a short-sleeved shirt, which apparently is a no-no. Oh, what the heck, just makes me less perfect, and apparently, less is more, right?

One more tangent, re your mention of manscaping. How about these women with tongue-studs, tatoos, and assorted body piercings. Now what one does with her own body is her own business, but it doesn’t mean I can’t observe to my friends that such habits are correlated with sluttiness. My wife says I’m a fuddy-duddy because I even think that women wearing anklets or toe rings is correlated with, shall we say, loose sexual morals. My thinking is that a woman willing to publicly flout conventional dress standards is broadcasting the fact that she probably is more willing than average to “be wild” or to “try anything once,” etc. But what do I know. I’m not perfect.

One more thing, while I’m on a roll. Why is Uma Thurman regarded as such a beauty? Look at her. I mean she was supposed to be the hot one, and Jeanine Garafolo the ugly one, in the movie Truth about Cats and Dogs, but really, Garafolo is prettier than Thurman. How did Uma get that reputation for being hot? I think it all goes back to her baring her admittedly ample and young bosom in the scene in bed with John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. Don’t know how I remember that. Ahem.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t stand when kids–typically elementary school students–embark on these little panhandling routines to beg for money from family, friends and neighbors. For example selling magazine subscriptions, or World’s Finest Chocolate, or raffle tickets, or wrapping paper, etc. Since when did begging become an activity for the middle class? Seems gauche and tacky to me.

I just paid $10 for a coupon from a co-worker, for his son’s school. It lets me get a Domino’s pizza free when I buy one–can use up to 20 times, over the next year. Forgetting that I get such coupons for free in the mail all the time anyway, this is what these stupid fundraising inevitable become–the parents do the work for their kids. I don’t want my kids going around panhandling.

One time, a few years ago, on a nice Saturday afternoon, my doorbell rang. It was some little kid, maybe 13-14 years old. Selling magazine subscriptions “to help him pay for college.” I said, “No thanks.” Incredulous, he says, “B-b-b-but, don’t you want to help me go to college?” I say, “No, not really, that’s your parents’ job.” After closing the door, I bump into my wife, who had an incredulous look on her face, as if to say, “Dang, that was kind of mean!” I’m thinking to myself,–why? why is it mean to refuse to give money to some panhandling middle-class kid?

Look, I’m all for eleemosynary giving. I support the Mises Institute and my private Catholic alma mater, for example. But should self-sustaining middle-class parents in effect have their kids ask for their education expenses from their neighbors?

A US patent has been filed for “Process of Love.”

The ENTIRE text is as follows:

“[0001] This invention resulted from my combining God’s gift of reincarnation with love.

[0002] In Chapter 4 of the London translation of the Holy Bible, paragraph 8 says “He that loveth not knowth not God; for God is love.” and paragraph 16 says “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

[0003] The scope and extent of my invention is defined in the following claim:

[0004] 1. The process of combining God’s gift of reincarnation with love resulting in immortality.”

This is just a published patent application and no doubt will never issue as a patent (for one, it’s not enabled). Cute. But this idiot paid $375 just for the privilege of seeing it published.

From an email by Roderick Long on the Mises list–

“Today’s comics page brings an exchange that nicely captures the dispute between a priori method and empirical method. From the strip Arlo and
Janis:

JANIS: I’m home! Want to see what I bought?
ARLO: Sure!
JANIS: I’ve got three of the cutest little tops!
ARLO: Only one can be “cutest.”
JANIS: You haven’t even looked at them!”

Full comic on Long’s “unblog” here.

Clark Calling for Civilian Reserve Corps
[Courtesy Paul Comeaux]

McMacken is right, we should be polite even when declining to give money to those asking for it–especially innocent (and manipulated) children. I did not mean to imply that I slammed the door in the kid’s face while he was in the middle of talking. I first told him no, not interested, as one does to a telemarketer calling one’s house; when he persisted, I explained why, politely, but firmly–that no I didn’t want to help him go to college since that was his parents’ job. Then I closed the door and got back to my Saturday. My wife was incredulous that I was so blunt and honest with the kid, not that I terminated the conversation–whenever someone comes knocking on the door begging for money–usually some homeless guy claiming to represent a fundamentalist church and asking for money to help “stop drug addiction”–she stays out of sight and lets me be the bad guy. Hey, division of labor.

I do not at all mean to bash charitable giving; of course, it’s a good thing to do (and no, it’s not just “morally neutral, at best,” as Randians would say (more on Rand below)–obviously, it’s genuinely good to be generous and helpful to those in need). So I don’t mind being asked to help nonprofit groups or needy children. There is no other way for them to survive without monetary assistance given by those who are able to help.

What I find inexplicable and rude is middle-class or richer parents in effect asking their fellow middle-class neighbors to help pay for the educational expenses of their own children. What’s next, do I need to make an occasional car payment on the fancy sports cars some parents stupidly give their teenage kids?

Rand wrote: “My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.”

Only Randians would be so anal that they would feel a need to justify helping others; they actually seem to feel almost guilty for wanting to be decent neighbors. “There is nothing wrong in helping other people“–whoa hoa, how generous, Miss Rand! Don’t bend over backwards, now! I have no idea if charity is a “primary virtue.” But common sense indicates that decent people should help each other out, so yes, it does seem like a moral duty. Of course, this does not imply that it should be a legally enforceable duty or legally enforceable claim by those in need. But a moral duty? Sure, why not.

Clooney’s Drudge-ry — reports that Matt Drudge may “go to court and file a cease-and-desist motion if “K Street” continues to use his likeness and images of his Web site.” Great. Thanks to intellectual property law, e.g. copyright, Drudge can prevent another show from featuring or discussing him or using images of his webpage. Another example of how IP rights let the IP owner control others’ property.

What’s next–can’t show someone reading the New York Times? Or instead of featuring New York City in a movie, does it have to be Gotham City or Metropolis?

Followup: Woops, scratch that–as Kurt Kober writes: “It can’t be Gotham or Metropolis, or the DC Comics lawyers would swoop down. I recommend “Genericopolis” but then, that’s MY intellectual property, so if you use it, I’m gonna have to serve notice.”

How about Galambosopolis?

runnin’ with the pack describes the new phenomenon of “flash mobs”–a bunch of strangers get secret instructions by email and gather unexpectedly in public places to do strange things. “In Minnesota, for example, hundreds of people gathered at an electronics store at the Mall of America, watched Lord of the Rings on monitors and asked store employees for popcorn. In Boston, hundreds crammed into a store and said they were looking for birthday cards for their friend “Bill.” And in Rome, more than 100 mobbers gathered at a bookstore to ask for different, non-existent titles.”

It makes me realize another disadvantage of laws that provide for maximum working hours.

Tangent–The argument for tax subsidized college is that students “need” the financial assisatance of subsidized tuition to be able to afford to go. But bars–which charge lots of money for alcoholic drinks–thrive around colleges. Obviously students have excess cash. Shouldn’t they at least spend all their excess cash, above necessities, on education? Otherwise we, the taxpayers, are in effect paying for these students to get hammered and party on. So I propose that public university tuition be raised until college bars start to go out of business. Hey, it would be a start.

Just talking to one of my South Louisiana Cajun/semi-redneck friends. I was mentioning to him one of my totally nutso friends here in Houston. “Man,” he says, “sounds like he needs to go see the talkin’ doctor!”

So the wife, baby, and poodles are in Louisiana for a week, while I’m here in Houston earning nickles. Meanwhile, my buddy Joey, of Joeyscomputers, well, I need him to come over and fix my damned Epson scanner problem. So I offer to buy him a steak dinner followed by PC repair time. Well I end up grilling for him since it’s nice weather here… and after cigars and libations we end up in my study, him whizzing away solving my PC problems. This is good. My PC is a step closer to PC health.

Uh oh. Joey’s getting his little backache. So, before you know it, here I am, standing in my study 11:00 p.m. on a weeknight, while wife, baby, and poodles are in another state–giving a Ben-Gay back massage to my computer whiz buddy, to keep him planted in that seat and typing away.

Is that wrong?

Ralph–though I don’t follow baseball I do face the following about once a month, when I am checking out at a store or something and the clerk gets a gander at my name on the credit card–”Say…, Kinsella, …. isn’t that….” “yeah yeah, the guy in the Field of Dreams movie, Ray Kinsella” I interject, trying to speed up checkout time. Then I brace for the inevitable followup question — “are you related?” What?–to a fictional character? However, it is based on WP Kinsella’s novel. There are Kinsellas all over Ireland (same Celtic root as for Kinsley), but we’re fairly uncommon here. We’re all related, if we go back far enough, eh?

Google case could clip search engines’ wings reports that “A French court has ruled against the internet search engine Google in an intellectual property rights case that may have far reaching technological and financial implications for internet search firms, which process tens of millions of queries a day.” The court “fined Google

20 Great Google Secrets. For the Google Geek

Thank goodness we have the patent system to encourage innovation and protect intellectual creation!

Here are a couple of recent patents: Vision facilitation apparatus and method (i.e., a monocle); and Method to improve peri-anal hygiene after a bowel movement (putting gel on toilet paper to aid in wiping). Don’t try these at home, folks–you could be sued since patents have a “presumption of validity”!

The ’942 patent is a particularly good example of how granting patents in non-scarce things, such as methods or recipes, grants others partial control of the propery of others, including their bodies–here, this dude Putman in theory could get an injunction prohibiting you from putting your own gel on your own toilet paper.

The PTO has ordered these patents to be reexamined… still, it’s pathetic they were ever allowed. More wacky patents. (Courtesy Martin Meder.)

Good article on the problem with IP by Roderick Long.

In Sandefur and Federal Supremacy I made the point that according to Sandefur’s argument,

And I thought the little add-on fees and taxes on telephone bills were bad. I just renewed my Texas auto registration–you can now do it online. Here are the fees:

WINDSHIELD STICKER 40.50
INSURANCE FEE 1.00
REFLECTORIZATION FEE 0.30
CNTY ROAD BRIDGE ADD-ON FEE 10.00
CHILD SAFETY FUND 1.50
AUTOMATION FEE (LARGE CNTY) 1.00
MAIL IN FEE 1.00
SERVICE FEE (NON-REFUNDABLE) 2.00
Total 57.30

In response to my recent post about Sandefur’s theory of revolution, Sandefur posts this response on another blog.

He writes: “Unilateral secession is unconstitutional and illegal. The President of the United States is charged with the Constitutional duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed. If people resist him at point of arms

Another followup to the blog debate with Sandefur: I had hazarded a guess that Sobran was joking when he said billions of lives are worth expending to save a single slave. In private correspondence with Sobran, he elaborated (reprinted below with permission):

“I was joking — I wasn’t going to let him outbid me in the anti-slavery game. I was prepared to go as high as one billion and seventeen, but he dropped out.

“There has to be a sense of proportion in everything. Ultimately you may have the right to kill to protect your property, but this is a right you might waive now and then. Lincoln never really explained why maintaining Union sovereignty was worth a half-million deaths. Instead he switched to the holy cause of ending slavery and blamed those deaths on God’s wrath. Odd that the Almighty didn’t see fit to punish slavery so severely in other countries.

“I suppose Sandefur could justify similar extremes against, say, monarchy. Why not? He reasons like a man threatening to shoot people for walking on his lawn.

“To me one of the most interesting and neglected aspects of the Civil War is the suppression of dissent in the NORTH. Lincoln really cracked down on those who believed in the right of secession. David Herbert Donald says the period was the worst for civil liberties in US history. An understatement. Lincoln couldn’t afford free discussion. I think he owed his re-election to the silence he imposed, with the help of a lot of the usual thuggish “patriots.” As I say, Jefferson qualified as a traitor on his terms.”

From Rothbard’s great article, H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian:

In discussing how to punish guilty public officials (“jobholders”), Mencken said, “What is needed is a system (a) that does not depend for its execution upon the good-will of fellow jobholders, and (b) that provides swift, certain and unpedantic punishments, each fitted neatly to its crime.”

Mencken’s proposed remedy “provides that any [citizen]…having looked into the acts of a jobholder and found him delinquent, may punish him instantly and on the spot, and in any manner that seems appropriate and convenient

Translations by Roderick Long.

Hans Hoppe‘s wonderful new book, The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production, has just been published. It’s must-reading.

Many of the papers were produced for and presented at the Twenty-Second Internatonal Conference on the Unity of Sciences, on the Military and Police–Public or Private? committee, in Seoul, Korea, February 2000. H³ chaired the panel and brought a Austro-anarchists with him — Block, Hummell, Stromberg, Huelsmann, and others. He let me tag along but I was too lazy to finish up my paper for inclusion in the book … but it’s still great, probably the better for it!

H³ dedicates the book to Gustave de Molinari. Roderick Long maintains the Molinari Institute website, which has, in its online library, a translation of Molinari’s seminal 1849 article The Production of Security, along with other interesting works. Check it out.

N.C. Ladies of Liberty Pinup Calendar….

Speaking of Molinari–the indefatigable Joseph Stromberg has a great piece on him, Gustave de Molinari on States and Defense back in the July 2000 issue of his always-interesting column, The Old Cause.

Regarding Mencken’s proposal for punishing bureaucrats–Brett Middleton writes,

“This is in regard to your lewrockwell.com blog entry on 10/23, in which you describe Mencken’s proposed justice system for those who take it upon themselves to punish a public official. If you’d like to see an example of a similar system in (fictional) action, I suggest that you try to find a copy of H. Beam Piper’s short novel “Lone Star Planet“. I think you’d appreciate the trials held in the “Court of Political Justice.”"

Just kidding. But I’m planning on buying one of these cool Zero Blasters for my nephew for Xmas. Blows 2-6″ diameter Vapor Rings up to 14 feet away… only $19.95!

Bob’s bazooka story reminds me of all the insane things I did as a boy. We would tape Coca-Cola cans together, using a can opener to cut holes in the bottoms so there is an air chamber from top to bottom; put a tennis ball in the top and squirt lighter fluid in the bottom. Light it and =BOOM!= tennis ball cannon. The singed fur on the ball was wicked.

Or we would tape a steel BB to the primer on a 12 gauge shotgull shell, tape a thin stick to it so it would fall BB-first when thrown up in the air, and throw it over a concrete driveway and dive for cover. Sometimes we’d empty the pellets out of the shell first, sometimes not. And then there’s firebreathing with gasoline siphoned from Dad’s buick, stupid ramping tricks on bicyles, jury-rigged go-cart engine contraptions, inventive uses of drills and buzz-saws and wrist-rockets, playing chicken with tractors, attempting to ride cows, etc.

I’m (a) surprised I’m still alive; and (b) glad I’m gonna raise a city boy.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it bizarre that when I pay my property taxes I have to make out the check to an individual–”Paul Bettencourt, Tax Asessor-Collector”. My income taxes go to the IRS, not to some individual.

Modern Americans are extremely irreverent, but I don’t recall ever hearing a single joke about 9/11. I can’t think of any other event that Americans don’t joke about. There are jokes about Jesus, blonde jokes, Polack jokes. I remember, shortly after the shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, you started hearing tasteless jokes. But not about 9/11. Of course, I’m not saying jokes should have been made, but the fact that they weren’t, despite our irreverence and lack of respect for other sacred cows, is perhaps indicative of how deeply angry the terrorist attacks made most Americans. So it’s no wonder Bush was able to steamroll the nation into war.

A recent issue of Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four includes some remarkably Austrian-libertarian dialogue. In a terrible battle, Reed Richards–Mr. Fantastic–has banished the FF’s arch-nemisis, Doctor Doom, to Hell. The FF decide to take over Latveria, the Romanian-like country Doom has ruled as dictator for decades. Reed is surprised that the populace are afraid of him and do not instantly believe his revisionist, anti-Doom propaganda. As Benjamin Grimm–aka The Thing–tells Reed: “I dunno. Y’re smarter’n Doom was. You always were. But government ain’t a science ya’ can learn like … I dunno … astronomy. Ya can’t figger out human behavior on graphs ‘n charts. I don’t gotta remind you o’ that.”

Reed’s wife, Sue Storm–Invisible woman–chimes in, “Exactly. [...] you’re treating this like an intellectual exercise. These people aren’t a social experiemtn. And Latveria isn’t your laboratory.”

The Thing: “We got what we wanted. Latveria’s free. Who’re we not ta let it find its own way?”

Re my post about the lack of jokes about 9/11–well, I was wrong, sort of. There are apparently some jokes out there, as some sick puppies were happy to prove to me. However, none of the ones I saw that were jokes by and for Americans — e.g., those on The Onion — were making light of the event itself or making fun of the victims. The only ones I saw that did this, seemed to be told by and to foreigners. Which confirms my point–the Americans themselves took it so seriously they were ripe for the leviathan that follows crisis…

Afghan’s draft constitution “envisages a strong president elected directly by the people”, and also provides for “equal rights to education and a state health service.” It’s great we liberate people to make the world safe for socialism.

So are numbers. There is an interesting (if non-rigorous) “proof” that all integers are “interesting”–unique, special. Here is the proof. We start with 1, which is obviously interesting since it’s the first number. 2 is the first even number, so it, too, is interesting. 3 is the first non-unity, odd prime. 4 is the first non-prime. And so on. Now, you can prove that all integers have to be interesting by using proof by contradiction. Assume there are some interesting integers, and some non-interesting ones. Let the first non-interesting one be X, and thus the number before it, X-1, has to be interesting. But how can X not be interesting–it’s the very first non-interesting number, which of course makes it special.

Ergo, there can be no non-interesting integer, because there would have to be a first one which is necessarily interesting by virtue of this fact. There cannot be a first non-interesting number, and therefore there can be none.

Uhhh… ain’t that interesting? Hello? =tap tap tap= Is this microphone on?

Considering buying a rental property, and was reminded of one of the sayings of my ex-boss, Lanny Yeates–he has some great ones, which I call Lannyisms. The one I was reminded of was: “A working wife is worth three rent houses.”

How does lovely Ashley Judd keep in shape, for example? “Judd only drinks room-temperature water, believing that cold H2O is more difficult to digest, and she eschews milk. The University of Kentucky Phi Beta Kappa graduate also drinks wheatgrass juice (tastes bad, heals well) and hot water with lemon, and blesses her food with Tibetan sayings.” ‘Nuff said.

All the dittoheads are in an uproar about The Reagans miniseries, and are cheering now that CBS has decided not to run it. But I don’t get it. CBS sold it to Showtime, who will run it. What’s the difference? (a) CBS runs it, and gets advertising revenue. People see it. or (b) CBS sells it to Showtime, and gets the fee paid by Showtime; and Showtime runs it.

In both cases, CBS produced it, and is causing it to be aired and making a profit off of it. What’s the difference whether the profit is from advertisers, or from Showtime? I don’t get why selling the series to Showtime gets CBS off the hook with the dittoheads. Oh well, I guess the mind of the boycotter is not always clear.

Tom, in your post about Catoite Adam Thierer and others opposing tax cuts–what do you expect from a utilitarian (note in this article the utilitarian argument in favor of intellectual property: without IP, “some individuals would be discouraged from producing important goods or ideas”).

Interesting recent article on Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), Arbitrating over BIT claims, by attorneys Mark Friedman and Gaetan Verhoosel.

I found this comment interesting: “BITs typically contain a

In a previous post (followup1, 2, 3) I mentioned my aversion to bullying and my perplexity that it is not viewed by parents and libertarians as what it is–outright aggression. The thuggish bullying student and his parents should be sued if not incarcerated. I got a surprising amount of flack for this perspective, none of it coherent or libertarian or on-point. The criticism amounted to the cro-magnon “we already have too many lawyers and lawsuits” or “kids should be taught to be men–if a small kid gets the crap beat out of him repeatedly by a gang of thugs, that’s bound to be good for his character in the long run.”

I stand by my original opinion 100%. Nothing that was said to me caused me to rethink a word. Which is rare.

Anyway, this min-rant is but a prelude to the events told here: Violent School Bus Beating Caught On Video. Yeah, this one was caught on video–how many others aren’t? Gee, I wonder.

The story reports that “The beating suspect was arrested by police and charged with battery and disruption of an educational institution and he could be expelled.” I suppose those who dismiss the criticism of bullying with a neanderthal wave of the hand would say the parents and police here are “overreacting”. Harrumph.

Rosie O’Donnell wins.

“They thought I would just fade away,” Rosie O

One of the most annoying things about MicroSoft products is if you make the mistake of accidentally striking the F1 or help key, e.g. in Word. Then you have to wait about 30-60 seconds while everything freezes, as it launches the creaky help interface. God. Everytime I accidentally hit F1, I cringe.

I think MicroSoft must have whole department devoted to analyzing the dozens of “error reports” my various crashing programs send to MS every month.

Ah, my home state: Not Quite Bubba vs. Bubba: Louisiana Governor’s Contest Defies Stereotypes. A few excerpts:

“LAFAYETTE, La., Nov. 13 — The Republican candidate for governor in Louisiana is Bobby Jindal, a wunderkind son of Indian immigrants, dark-complexioned Rhodes scholar and health policy wonk. The Democrat is Lt. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a soothing Cajun grandmother easily flustered in debates.

“What’s a Bubba to do?

“Listen, man, we’re looking at a guy who’s not even from this country! And then we’re looking at a woman!” said Jubal Vallot, 38, a handyman in Lafayette sporting tattoo-spangled forearms, a Chevy pickup truck and a fist-size clump of keys at his belt.

“He hooted and shook his head at the outlandishness of the selection.
[...]

“Jindal has managed to appeal to deeply conservative Louisianans like Vallot, the handyman, a self-confessed Bubba who twice voted for white supremacist David Duke in the ’90s — and said he’d vote for him again if he could. (Duke currently resides in federal prison.) “It’s hard to believe I’m even going to look at this man — at first he almost looked to me like an Iraqi,” Vallot said, speaking of Jindal. “But I tell you, he talks so smart, and he’s hitting the hammer right on the nailhead.” “

Tibor Machan’s article Scalia’s Folly comments on Justice Antonin Scalia’s joshing/disparaging comments about libertarians in a recent case, as reported in Slate. The case, Olympic Airways v. Husain, is about what the term “accident” means for purposes airline liability (Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention provides that airlines are liable for death or injuries, resulting from an “accident.”)

and what happens if that accident happened simply because nothing happened, even if, as a result of the nonaccident, someone actually dies. In January 1988, Dr. Abid Hanson was traveling with his family on an Olympic Airways flight from Cairo to Athens to New York. Severely asthmatic, but unaware that there was smoking on international flights, Hanson was given a seat only three rows up from the airplane’s smoking section. His wife asked the flight attendant to move him up in the cabin, and the flight attendant told her to sit down. Later, his wife repeated the request, and the flight attendant told her the flight was full (a lie). Then the smoking and socializing started behind them, the cabin filled with smoke, Dr. Hanson began to suffer, and his wife again asked that he be moved forward. The flight attendant refused again, saying he was free to ask some other passenger to swap seats.

Dr. Hanson collapsed as he walked to the front of the plane, trying to get some air, and despite epinephrine injections, CPR, and other measures performed by another physician traveling in his party, he died shortly thereafter. Hanson’s wife sued the airline under the treaty that governs international flights

An interesting piece by W. James Antle III in the American Conservative that asks, “Will libertarians leave the Cold War coalition?” The article quotes Jeff Tucker and also mentions Lew Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Other related Antle pieces: Conservative-Libertarian Split: Liberals Get It, Conservatives Don’t; Big government conservatism alienates libertarians; The Conservative-Libertarian clash: Values and the free society; and GOP = Goldwater’s Old Party?.

Following up on this post about James Antle’s recent article about libertarians and conservatives–I mentioned to him in private email that it is curious that some conservatives were on the pro-war side during Cold War, but are now on the libertarian side, e.g. Pat Buchanan (and some libertarians are now on the neo-con side!). I was curious if Antle had a theory on why this is the case. My guess was that his view is that it was genuine defense then, but now is Wilsonian nation building etc. Still, why can some conservatives, like Buchanan, see the difference, but others cannot?

His reply, reprinted with permission, follows: “The Cold War did of course separate libertarians from conservatives, though not to the extent that has been evident in the War on Terror. Until the Vietnam war, many if not most of the libertarian critics of the Cold War were those who were never absorbed by fusionism at all, chiefly the students and admirers of the late Murray Rothbard. One irony of this is that many Rothbardians are more culturally conservative than the Randians and other mainstream libertarians more at home collaborating with the conventional right.

“The question you raise is an interesting one to which there is probably more than one answer. I think many conservatives would argue that the Cold War represented a more tangible challenge by an identifiable Soviet foe, while the War on Terror has degenerated into an open-ended conflict against a foe not clearly defined. But some of it also has to do with the perceived compatibility of dismantling the New Deal state at home with rolling back communism abroad. Today’s conservatives superfically invoke the same principles, but in fact favor the projection of government power through “conservative” welfarism at home and nation-building abroad.

“Of course, many conservatives come to different conclusions in this debate because they differently motivated. JP Zmirak had an excellent piece, also published in The American Conservative, pointing out that many on the right hardened conservatism into an ideology during the Cold War in an attempt to come up with a system of thought and politics to compete with communism. Some conservatives today want to defend these abstractions; others are interested in preserving their particular country, communities and civilization. The latter tend to be the ones opposed to the current neoconservative foreign policy project. The return of conservatism to rootedness and an attachment to both the particular and actual people, cultures, traditions and customs is the driving force behind what is called paleoconservatism. We have seen even many conventional Cold War conservatives, like Pat Buchanan, become heavily influenced by it.”

As this article reports, voice-recognition technology appears to have a bias against Southerners. We should sue!

Interesting law review article: The Persistent Spectre: Natural Law, International Order and the Limits of Legal Positivism (courtesy Joe Stromberg)

One thing my house is missing is a line of scrimmage.

I just realized that, like Michael Jackson, I’m on my own recognizance.

As a child, I never thought I’d turn into the type of adult who would use words such as “legume”.

James Ostrowski has an excellent article today on Mises.org, What’s Wrong with Juries. He writes:

“Why have juries largely failed in their intended function? There are some obvious and some less obvious reasons. First, juries have been stripped of their rightful, historical power to judge the law as well as the fact. For example, juries with the power to nullify unjust laws routinely acquitted those charged with violating the Fugitive Slave Law. A jury that must follow the law as explained by the judge, would have been forced to convict the liberators.”

But have juries really been stripped of their power to judge the law? We still have double jeopardy, which prevents any defendant acquitted by the jury from being tried again by the state for the same crime. The effect of this is that a juror still has the practical power and right to judge the law–all he has to do is refuse to convict.

I am not a litigator, as Ostrowski is, but as far as I am aware, jurors are not really “forced” to convict. The judge just does not tell them of their (practical) right to nullify the law. So as far as I can tell, the problem is not that jurors don’t have the right to nullify the law. They do. The problem is that they are ignorant. Why are they ignorant? Because the judge does not inform them; and because they are generally ignorant of constitutional, legal, or other rights. In part because of the horrible government-influenced/run education system, in part because of human nature. And most people, even if aware of their right, would not exercise it in most cases, e.g. drug or tax evasion convictions–because they think these laws are justified. That’s how they get enacted in the first place–most people are knaves, low-quality individuals who are willing to trample the rights of their fellow men.

In short, we do have now, in place, a constitutional “right” to jury nullification. The problem is too many citizens are ignorant and/or stupid, and too statist-minded to dare think they know better than their master-lawmakers. I’m afraid we are living in the best of all possible worlds.

In this age of Moore’s Law, with iPods holding 40GB of space, and more and more memory being crammed into smaller and smaller devices, with even greeting cards having microchips with entire tunes stored therein–in an age when we remember with nostalgic fondness, back in the 80s, when our PCs had 64kb–why O why does my new cordless telephone STORE ONLY 50 NUMBERS? My cell phone holds 200 for goodness sake.

If you’re an FOB–friend of Bush–he sends you an Xmas card every year. For example, if you had given him a little chinga back in 2000, you’d have received 3 Christmas cards by now.

Larger images: outside of card; inside of card.

Wendy McElroy has an excellent column up today on FoxNews, Media Fails Public in Jackson Case, in which she distinguishes between the legal presumption of innocence and public opinion.

As McElroy notes, “There is no presumption of innocence in the court of opinion. That’s a legal principle: A criminal defendant may not be convicted unless guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, with the accused bearing no burden to prove innocence.”

However, “The court of opinion can convict anyone on any basis. Issues of common decency certainly apply but everyone quite naturally speaks from their own concerns and opinions. This is healthy. This is human.”

This is a careful distinction not always maintained even by libertarians, who seem to think even aggressors are “innocent until proven guilty.” No, an actual aggressor is not innocent; he has just not been proved guilty yet. The presumption of innocence is merely a way of saying the state has the burden of proving someone deserves punishment; it does not imply that a criminal is “innocent”. The presumption of innocence is merely prophylactic and is meant to protect the actually innocent, not the actually guilty.

If you catch someone red-handed committing a crime, we can presume they are guilty. This is in fact why self-defense is permitted–the victim is a direct witness to the crime being perpetrated, and need not “presume” that the criminal is “innocent”. If it were possible to push a button and infallibly cause every criminal to explode at the moment of committing a crime, without due process, without a presumption of innocence, without mercy, this would be perfectly fine. The law sometimes prophylactically protects actual criminals as the price of limiting the powers of an even greater criminal–the state; but libertarians should not take this to mean the criminals are somehow innocent just because the state has been rendered unable to convict.

In addition to the Bushes’ 2003 Christmas card, here are the ones they gave out in 2001 and 2002:

2001 card: front; back; inside.

2002 card: front; back; inside.

Assuming you are right, Norman (from one Norman to another), about the flaws with atheist libertarians being they tend to be narrow and utopian… what’s an atheist with paleolibertarian sensibilities to do? Not sure if you are claiming these problems are a tendency or necessary.

If it’s a mere tendency, it does not affect a given individual. It’s like these studies of statistical “correlations,” such as, people who play scrabble tend to have better love lives. That does not mean you can start playing scrabble to improve your love life–it might be that people that tend to have good love lives also tend to have the same interest that make you tend to like to play scrabble more than average. Likewise, a given atheist may be a utopian or narrowly selfish/libertine type, or not. If he is, his paleolibertarian status is marred because of these qualities; if not, then not. So if it’s just a tendency, it’s not very controversial, just a slightly interesting, but not very useful, observation. (And frankly, my guess would be that most pot smoking types would tend to be religious, if only of the New Age variety, than atheist.)

If it’s a more categorical pronouncement, that one basically cannot be a true libertarian if you are atheist; that to be paleo means you must, ultimately, be theist; that there is some inconsistency, or tension, between the two–well, that’s more provocative claim, but its accuracy is doubtful.

What is necessary, IMHO, if an atheist or agnostic is to be a good paleolibertarian (and my recollection is that Rothbard was a prime example of this–agnostic that is), is that he not be the moral relativist, cynical, nihilist type of atheist, but must somehow embrace a set of strong moral values compatible with those shared by sincerely religious people.

In response to my previous blogpost, a reader writes: “If the prosecutor gets the idea that the prospective juror knows about jury nullification, that prospective juror will never be empanelled. I wasn’t picked when I was subjected to jury duty and I only suggested that I didn’t trust Police Officers to tell the truth.”

Yes. But it does not mean jury nullification is dead. It only means the citizens have to be intelligent, ejumacated, ethical, courageous, principled, and resourceful in order to exercise the right. So long as there is double jeopardy, we have jury nullification in place, to one degree or another.

A couple years ago I was part of a 60-member jury panel in Houston. We were subjected to voir dire from the prosecutor and the attorney for the defendant–a grandmotherly woman being prosecuted for possession of many kilos of cocaine in the trunk of her car. Very long mandatory sentence. Of the 60 or so prospective jurors, I recall at least a dozen or so of us, during voir dire, admitting we could not vote to put this woman in jail for 30 to life even if she was proved guilty. So, we were all dismissed. I doubt any of us were using it as an excuse to get out of jury duty. I think we were all sincere.

No, not the two magazines. The connection. In my view being moral and libertarian is completely reasonable. Careful application of reason is both necessary and sufficient to justify libertarianism. This is our starting point. We have a rational, justifiable set of politico-ethical beliefs. Certainly, we don’t want to say libertarianism is irrational.

So when we talk about the interrelationship between politics and atheism or religion, the question is simply: which is rational, supported by reason, compatible with the reasons underlying libertarianism?

No doubt the leftist/libertine sort of atheism, at least, suffers from irrationalism. Many of these types do reject God not because of carefully developed, sincere reasoning, but for ulterior motives or rejection of Authority. I.e., they do not like the idea that someone might know more than them, or that there might be immutable standards of right and wrong to which they objectively should conform. So they stamp their feet like little brats and reject it. This is indeed irrational–it is believing something to be the case because one wants it to be true (or not), rather than because there are good reasons for it.

But the juvenile rejection of authority is not, I believe, the only path to atheism. There are quite rational bases for it too. To the extent it is the more rational position, it of course has to be compatible with libertarianism, which is also supported by reason.

When it comes to religion, there is certainly an irrational element there, to say the least. But if you analyze, say, certain careful Christian reasoning (I am thinking of Catholic reasoning such as the “No Rational Basis” section of this article), there is more careful reasoning there than even the paleo-atheist, perhaps influenced too much by Rand’s religion-hostility, might suspect. At the least, as Rothbard recognized, the moral teachings and natural authority and cultural importance of religion should not be hostilely rejected out of hand, as is many atheists’ habit.

Whether non-religiously-hostile atheism, or well-grounded religious views, is more compatible with reason, is a separate question (and not really a political one). But in my view, reason and rationality is the standard that must be used to decide the question of which is more compatible with libertarianism. (And I don’t see how someone can deny this without falling into contradiction: to deny it is to employ some reason and to admit the efficacy of reason; so it would be simply self-contradictory to use reason in an attempt to show that reason is not the applicable standard.)

In addition to the things mentioned previously, or this, do NOT do the following.

When your baby hardly ever cries but cried a lot when he got his first round of innoculations at 2 months old, so much that the wife cried and asked you to take him in for the second round of innoculations at 4 months old, so she does not have to hear him crying, don’t do this: (a) call your home voicemail on your cell phone just as the nurse is giving the first of 4 shots, thereby leaving the crying on your voicemail; and then (b) call your wife later that day from work, telling her there is a voicemail message someone left for her on the home telephone that she needs to check.

Coda: when your wife asks you later, “did you cry when you heard him crying?” don’t say, “No, I was too busy taping it.”

Ann Coulter vs. Al Franken, by Harry Binswanger. “Summary: The value of Ann Coulter’s book (abstracting from its flaws) is not in its concretes, but in the ideas that the concretes illustrate. Yes, Coulter is savage, overstates, ridicules, and sometimes oversimplifies. But she has a mind. Al Franken does not. She sees the big picture of what’s going on in this country. Franken not only doesn’t, he twists the picture… “

IP cartoon someone sent me.

Further confirmation of the proposition that liberals are at least as bad on civil rights as conservatives: the liberal Justices of the Supreme Court tend to be worse than the others on free speech and related matters. In a decision handed down today, the Supreme Court upheld key parts of the Campaign Finance Law. “Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer signed the main opinion barring candidates for federal office, including incumbent members of Congress or an incumbent president, from raising soft money.” (More info about the case, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.)

A friend of mine send me this quote by Bush, from an article about the Iraq contract flap:

“Bush scoffed at a question seeking his reaction to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s statement on Thursday that international law must apply to the awarding of the contracts.

“‘International law? I better call my lawyer,’ [Bush] said.”

My friend commented, “I disagree with lots of things Bush has done, but I just love the guy. This quote is priceless.” I can’t say I completely agree, but something about the quote is a bit amusing. Maybe it’s just that it pokes a stick in the eye of the utopian one-worlders. Maybe it’s that at least we don’t have a lawyer in the White House right now. Maybe it’s the thought of French and German leaders hearing of Bush’s retort and sputtering with indignant outrage trying to think of a way to respond.

In an email exchange I remarked to Roderick Long, “Come to think of it, the Objectivists seem to be strangely silent on the question of the Civil War.”

Long replied, “Actually not so silent — the Ayn Rand Institute has come out for the South (they endorsed Tom’s book [on Lincoln]!), and the Objectivist Center has come out for the North. (This is somewhat puzzling, since the Ayn Rand Institute is far more imperialist/warmongering than the Obj. C. on most issues.)”

As for TOC, see this soft-on-Lincoln piece by David Mayer. I couldn’t find the endorsement of DiLorenzo on ARI’s site, but did find this comment, in opposing reparations: “‘Slavery was evil, but America atoned for it during the Civil War

Peggy Noonan’s Sunday column, Joy to the World, opens thus: “First, let’s just be happy. Let’s feel a burst of joy.

“Let’s not be boring people who Consider the Implications. Let’s not talk about the domestic political impact. For just a day let’s feel the pleasure history just handed us.”

Why, Peggy, why? She gives no reason whatsoever for this suggestion.

Excellent Wendy McElroy column about the hysterical reaction of liberals to Affirmative Action Bake Sales put on by conservative student groups to expose the absurdity and unfairness of affirmative action.

and a late 30-something’s eyesight–that, when I mistakenly read the Drudge Report headline, Deer Wanders Through D.C. Subway Station! as “DEAN Wanders Through D.C. Subway Station!,” it didn’t seem that outlandish.

Bush says: “I believe, firmly believe

“That it falls a little shy of greatness is perhaps inevitable. The story is just a little too silly to carry the emotional weight of a masterpiece.”

How can Ebert call it silly? Did he see the march of the Ents? That was wicked cool. But at least he gives it 3.5 stars. Others aren’t being shy in handing out top marks. I have not seen it yet, but will go ahead and give it 4 stars.

Record Industry May Not Subpoena Providers (Thanks to Tim Swanson)

Addendum: Blow to online music piracy fight: “Attempts by the record industry to fight music piracy on the internet have suffered a double setback. … A US court said that the recording industry’s methods to find music swappers are not allowed by the law. … In a separate ruling, the Dutch Supreme Court decided that the popular file-sharing program, Kazaa, is not breaking the law.

“The Recording Industry Association of America had issued hundreds of subpoenas to force internet providers, such as Verizon, to identify customers suspected of file-swapping.

“But Verizon argued that existing copyright law did not give the recording industry the power to force it to hand over names and addresses of their subscribers.

“A three-judge panel has now agreed with its interpretation of the law, overturning an earlier ruling that had approved the use of subpoenas.

[...]

“There was more bad news for the record labels, this time from the Dutch Supreme Court. … It ruled that the world’s most popular file-sharing program, Kazaa, was not breaking the law. … The Dutch court said that the developers of the software could not be held responsible for how individuals used it.”

(since I have nothing to report on the Chaldean front.)

Real men from Manly Web.

Funny article on Saddam–the Ba’athist who won’t bathe–by Mark Steyn.

Brian’s Quotes-n-Junk — e.g.:

“Hello, this is God. Whenever I’m in Pittsburgh — which is all the time, since I’m omnipresent — I listen to all the radio stations at once, including WRCT. –Promotional spot heard on a college radio station”

“I know how to spell banana, I just don’t know when to stop”

“Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he’ll
believe you…. Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he’ll have
touch it to be sure.”

“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. –Woody Allen”

Breasts suck babies in reverse universes.

I can see stopping a car for a dog. But a cat? You squish a cat and go on. I think we’re overcomplicating life. –Iowa Democratic State Senator James Gallagher

Luke, I’m yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you knob. –Dave Thomas, “Strange Brew”

Bumper sticker seen on the stealth bomber: IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THEN WE WASTED 50 BILLION BUCKS. –David Letterman

I feel Clinton’s opposing the Vietnam War isn’t an issue, and I probably would have done the same. As far as Clinton supposedly cheating on his wife, what do people think he’s going to do? Be president of another country while he’s president of ours? –Tom R., age 12, Woodstock, IL

I am Homer of Borg. Resistance is fut…. mmmm… donut!

One of the first mileage signs encountered on I-10 when entering Texas from Louisiana. Texas is big–and Texans want you to know it.

From the pages of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s IP Section newsletter, the “Did you Know” column, which I contributed to a few times, years back, when I was an editor–a couple of little pieces, one a funny excerpt from Tuccille’s It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand on Galambosians and IP, the other debunking a myth about the end of invention. view file [PDF].

This little Flash video is cute and catchy; from this site.

Articles related to privatized roads etc. recently posted on WalterBlock.com:

• “Road Socialism,” International Journal of Value-Based Management, 9 (1996): 195-207
• “Compromising the Uncompromisable: Speed Limits, Parades, Cigarettes,” Asian Economic Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (April 1998): pp. 15-29
• “Theories of Highway Safety,” Transportation Research Record, #912, pp. 7-10

As a libertarian, of course, I’m opposed in general to price controls. But a limited case can be made for a version of price controls in the case of prescription drugs. Hear me out.

Medicare is of course an unjust, unlibertarian program that amounts to wealth transfer from taxpayers to Medicare recipients. Expanding Medicare to include prescription drugs exacerbates the amount of theft. What makes the additional theft even worse are the artificially high prices charged by pharmaceutical companies for their drugs–artifically high due to the patent monopoly and FDA regulatory process.

What this means is that the federal government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on prices inflated by federal government laws. It’s ridiculous. If the feds insist on stealing out money to purchase drugs for seniors, the least it can do is buy them at the cheapest possible price. One way to do this would be to simply issue compulsory licenses to generic drug manufacturers for any patented drug covered by Medicare. (The feds can license third parties to manufacture patented articles, without patent infringement liability; this was threatened in the Cipro anthrax drug a couple years ago. Yes, the feds have to pay “compensation” to the patent holder, but the level of compensation is bound to be less than the monopoly profits normally reaped by Big Pharma.)

This could be done selectively, for patented drugs for which an “exhorbitant” price is being charged. In short, Big Pharma would be told: “Lower your price or we will short-circuit your patent.”

Unfair, some might argue. Why? Drug companies are not entitled to the patent monopoly in the first place. So how is it a violation of their property rights for the government to threaten to take it away unless prices are lowered? Any drug company would be free to ignore the threat and compete on the free market (i.e. without patent protection).

Couple other comments: There is no reason to restrict this “price control” technique to drugs purchased by Medicare–it could be used to de-inflated patent-monopoly-inflated prices across the board–Medicare, and other drug customers, would all benefit.

Second, even if there is a utilitarian case for patents, there is no reason for a one-size-fits-all policy–the “reward” need not be so high in all cases. So, there could be a a commission or board which looks at each patented drug and determines a “fair” rate of return and limits profits to that amount–on pain of losing the patent.

Also, of course, all FDA barriers to drug reimportation should be removed; and abolishing the FDA would also help lower drug prices.

Yet another approach would be to lower the patent term from approximately 17 years to 5 or so years for pharmaceuticals (and/or adopt a “utility model” type of patent system used in some other countries, where the patent term is shorter than the normal “utility patent” but it’s easier to obtain the patent–for the utility patent, both novelty and non-obviousness (“inventive step”) must be present; for the utility model, the invention need only be novel.)

Or as a patent attorney friend writes, “If you have to deal with the patents I’d rather see a bidding process. For example a person seeking a patent could disclose their invention subject to a confidentiality provision. Then the govt. and the inventor could bid for patent term. Govt could say “I’ll give you a 2 year monopoly for that stupid idea.” Drug co. could say “What, no way. I can’t live on that I need at least 20 years.” Then they meet in the middle, or not as the case may be. The same process could be used for all inventions not just drugs.”

Email from Bob Bidinotto:

For decades, arguments have raged between advocates of limited government and of anarchism, AKA

In the January 2004 Liberty, Leland Yeager has a piece, “Monarchy: Friend of Liberty”, which cites Hoppe‘s Democracy: The God that Failed favorably. Interestingly, Liberty previously published a piece by Tom Palmer critical of monarchy. I guess Liberty is okay with a pro-monarchist argument if the case, like Yeager’s, is sufficiently utilitarian.

(See previous discussion re the Palmer article on the LRC blog here (NSK); here (Tom D), and here (Lew).)

In the same issue of Liberty, law student Greg Newburn has a strange “Harangue”, “Time to Get Real,” arguing for a pragmatic strategy for achieving liberty, in which he mentions libertarian theorists and scholars Hoppe, Tom Palmer, Tom DiLorenzo, etc., apparently as examples of eggheads who are no longer relevant. He argues that the libertarian movement is “a joke,” and writes, e.g., “When you get right down to it, libertarianism is a political punch line. If Hans Hermann Hoppe [sic--there is a hyphen between the first 2 names] isn’t being mocked by political scientists for arguing that democracy is “the God that failed,” (or calling Gary Becker an “intellectual criminal,” or saying that Chicago School economists are “worse than communists,” or …), then “Bureaucrash” is being mocked by college kids across the country for coming up with yet another lame “counter-protest” in the futile effort to take liberty “to the streets.”

Methinks Newburn’s little efforts are also “futile” … and though his neutral, uncommitted style leaves it ambiguous as to whether he himself also views Hoppe, DiLorenzo, et al., with scorn, or only reporting that others do, it seems that he is endorsing it a bit. Moreover, he is confused when he attacks sound, radical, theoretical arguments for liberty, and Libertarian Party strategy/success in the same breath. He ends up endorsing Ron Paul as the model of political strategery we should adopt. But a “Paulist” need not dismiss the important insights of Hoppe, DiLorenzo, and others. Ron Paul himself is certainly not an anti-intellectual rube, so I’m not sure why Newburn implies his pragmatic strategery has to be.

From Ron Liebermann: “Here is an interesting article on Intellectual Property rights in China. The interesting part is the apparent attempt by the Chinese government to criminalize the sale of normal production equipment to “unauthorized” persons.”

From Colin in Shanghai:

“Hi Stephan,

I just read the interesting article about China’s enforcement of IP laws, that you mention on the LRC blog.

The article paints a very unrealistic picture of the ‘so called’ enforcement of IP laws here. Having lived in Shanghai for over 3 years I’ve watched the pirated DVD industry explode and become ever more open and easily obtained. Prices have dived from 10RMB (US$1.20) to 6RMB (US$0.80) per DVD and quality continues to improve. There must be at least 50,000 people employed in selling DVDs in Shanghai alone, just 1/80th of China’s population.

It would be hard to overstate the influence that Sex in the City, in particular, but also shows like Friends and Ally McBeal are having on the Chinese. It is the best thing for English learning that has ever happened to the country. The report above is just lip-service to the powerful industries that the Chinese government must please in order to fulfill its WTO obligations.

Thirteen-year-old “surfer Bethany Hamilton returned to competition Saturday, just 10 weeks after losing her left arm in a shark attack.” She “placed fifth in her age group in the Open Women Division of a National Scholastic Surfing Association meet at Banyans.”

But she “rejected any special treatment, said Bobbi Lee, NSSA Hawaii Conference director.”

“I offered to give her more time (between heats) or put her in a more favorable heat,” Lee said. “She refused. She said she wanted to be treated like anybody else.”

The nerve! How DARE she not take advantage of the therapeutic state’s munificent gifts like the Americans with Disabilities Act? She sounds like a pesky individualist, merit-oriented, achiever type. She probably bought herself a Homeland Security Department file with that brazen stunt.

Butler Shaffer has an interesting article on LRC today, What Is Anarchy?. It almost preempts an article on my to-do list, “What It Means To Be An Anarchist”–but I have some other points to make that Butler didn’t.

In any event, Shaffer makes the insightful point that we are in “anarchy” with our neighbors. Also of interest is the JLS article by Alfred G. Cuzan, Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?, which argues that even the government itself is in anarchy, internally–the President does not literally force others in government to obey his comments, after all; they obey them voluntarily, due to a recognized, hierarchical structure. Government’s anarchy is not a good anarchy, but it demonstrates anarchy is possible–indeed, that we never really get out of it.

(blame Tim Swanson)

U.S. To Give Every Iraqi $3,544.91, Let Free-Market Capitalism Do The Rest (from the hilarious The Onion)

From latest issue of NewsWeek: Going Beyond Atkins. “There’s no question that carbs can make you fat. But are bunless burgers the best alternative? Here’s a healthier, and tastier, way to cut carbs”. Says “many experts now believe that Atkins was at least half right in condemning carbohydrates” — but that the real key is to eat foods with a low glycemic load (good carbs) and shun those with a higher glycemic load (bad carbs).

(The article also points out that Atkins theory is just a revival of William Banting’s “Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public,” published in London in 1863.)

Technology is cool: Virtual Laser Keyboard Hitting the Market (link2). Cool idea, maybe better than the little playtoy Palm thingies in use now, but still won’t work well, with no tactile feedback. My view is none of this will really catch on until robust, easy, semi-smart voice-recognition becomes ubiquitous.

(Courtesy Jeremy Sapienza)

Re Karen’s post about the Reason blog discussion of anarchy and Butler Shaffer’s article, What is Anarchy?, I’ve posted my own reply, which I repeat below in case some joker takes it down.

“Most libertarian opponents of anarchy appear to be attacking a straw man. To be an anarchist does not mean you think anarchy will “work”; nor that you predict it will or “can” be achieved. It only means you believe (a) aggression is not justified; and (b) states necessarily employ aggression.

Anyone who is not an anarchist must either believe (1) aggression is justified; or (2) states do not necessarily employ aggression.

View (2) seems plainly false. States tax their citizens, which is a form of aggression. They outlaw competing defense agencies, thus also employing aggression.

As for (1), well, socialists and criminals also feel aggression is justified. But I have yet to see anyone–criminal, socialist, or anti-anarchist–show how the initiation of force against innocent victims is justified.

Conservative and minarchist-libertarian criticism of anarchy on the grounds that it won’t “work” or is not “practical” is just confused. Anarchists don’t (necessarily) predict anarchy will be achieved–I for one don’t think we will. But that does not mean states are justified.

Consider an analogy. Conservatives and libertarians of both stripes would all agree that private crime (murder, robbery, rape) is unjustified, and “should” not occur. Yet no matter how good most men become, there will always be at least some small element who will resort to crime. Crime will always be with us. Yet we still condemn it and work to reduce it.

To my claim that crime is evil and unjustified, it would just be silly and non-responsive to reply, “but that’s an impractical view, since there will always be crime.” The fact that there will always be crime–that not everyone will voluntarily respect others’ rights–does not mean that it’s “impractical” to oppose it; nor does it mean that crime is justified.

Likewise, to my claim that the state and its aggression is unjustified, it is disingenuous and/or confused to reply, “anarchy won’t work”. The fact that not enough people are willing to respect their neighbors’ rights to allow anarchy to emerge, i.e. the fact that enough people (erroneously) support the legitimacy of the state to permit it to exist, does not mean that the state, and its aggression, are justified.

Other utilitarian replies like “but we need a state” do not contradict the claim that states employ aggression and that aggression is unjustified. It simply means that the state-advocate does not mind the initiation of force against innocent victims–i.e., the criminal/socialist mentality.

As there are criminals and socialists among us, it is no surprise that there is a degree of criminal-mindedness in most people. But none of that means the criminal enterprises condoned by the masses are justified.

Lots of good emailed comments on my LRC article today, What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist–surprisingly, universally in agreement so far. E.g., this one by Frank Van Dun:

“Before I exceeded my disk quota on the server, I had the following remark on my website: ‘An anarchist does not want to rule others and does not want others to rule him. Nothing is so despicable as half-an-anarchist.’”

BTW, the debate on related topic continues on the Reason Blog.

Who says going to Mars is bad for capitalism? Not Long John Silver’s: “IF NASA FINDS CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE OF AN OCEAN ON MARS, AMERICA EATS FREE GIANT SHRIMP [...] LONG JOHN SILVER’S FIRST TO CAPITALIZE ON MARS EXPLORATION WITH OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD OFFER, SETS SIGHTS ON FIRST SEAFOOD RESTAURANT ON MARS”!

(Schwimpses is how some people in my home state pronounce “shrimps”.)
(Link courtesy Tim Swanson.)

… on the Reason blog discussing anarcho-capitalism. Reproduced below is my most recent entry, in reply to Robert Bidinotto’s latest post (Bidinotto’s remarks surrounced by > and <: >In light of the comments following my previous post, let’s recall that the core moral argument by anarchists was not that anarchism is “not as bad” as government; it was that government is inherently aggressive, while anarchism is not.

>Isn’t it fascinating, then, that when challenged on an inherent moral contradiction within their theory, anarchists suddenly switch their argument to: “Oh, but government is far worse!” (Says one: “What I find striking is almost every criticism minarchists hurl against anarchy, applies also to minarchy.”<

That was me–and it was meant to point out the criticisms of the minarchists are flawed criticisms, since the criticisms apply equally to minarchy. It was not switching ground.

>Now, now, folks: let’s stick with your original MORAL contention. Your MORAL rationale for anarchism is that it does not inherently entail aggression (initiation of force), while government inherently does.

>Specifically, the moral claims of anarchists are that (1) government must compel involuntary taxation to sustain its activities, (2) government initiates force and coercion to outlaw “competing” protection agencies and legal systems, and (3) anarcho-capitalism avoids both moral problems.

>Here are my summary replies:

>(1) There is no inherent reason why a government that’s limited only to bare-bones justice functions will require taxation to exist. The necessary services of government–police, laws, courts–could be funded voluntarily, on a fee-for-service basis, along with such supplemental mechanisms as lotteries.< No “inherent” reason? Okay. Fine. If you only advocate a government that does NOT have the power to tax, maybe we anarchists would have no problem with it. If someone advocates a state that can tax, anarchists are against it. If they advocate something called a state, but that can’t tax, it is less problematic, maybe not problematic at all. However, it is not unfair here to point out that no limited state — certainly not a tax-free one (other than the Vatican, which depends on voluntary donations, but which I suspect Objectivists do NOT want to hold up as an exemplary government) — has ever existed. This is indeed relevant — because it makes it clear that if someone advocates a state, they cannot avoid advocating taxation, since all states as at least a practical matter do tax. >(2) Governments do not need to outlaw “private protection agencies”–and in actuality, they don’t. We already have an abundance of private detectives, security police, mediators, arbitrators, bodyguards, prisons, etc., all operating legally and in parallel to the governmental system.

>However, government does require that all such individuals and agencies conform to, and operate within, a single, overarching framework of law.< It is the recurring assumption of Objectivists that there has to be a “single” or “final” or “authoritative” (read: government or state issued) “source” of law. Why? Why is a “single” source more likely to lead to just results? Why is it axiomatic that this be the case? Why is it not at least POSSIBLE that equally good, or better, justice, might be obtained in some kind of plural system than one having a “single” or “final” decision-maker? Isn’t justice more important than finality? Isn’t substance more important than form? Further, what in the world makes people think that a “final” (read: one-world state) decision maker will, or even CAN, have a reliable system for generating just results? Every “monopoly” system we know of does NOT do this. > Why? Because you can’t allow “market competition” over the very definitions and meanings of such basic legal principles as “justice,” “rights,” “aggression,” “self-defense,” etc. < Here is where it is relevant, to point out that the criticisms minarchists hurl against anarchists apply to them too. When a given society-state per minarchists’ dreams is developing, it must have some way of arriving at the “correct” “meanings” of basic legal principles. Various people have input into this. There is “competition”. What makes any minarchist think the state would happen to stumble upon the RIGHT set of principles to enforce uniformly and finally upon all within its domain? Why is it more LIKELY that a state would happen to develop just principles, than those that would be adopted by private justice agencies? This just makes no sense to me. I suppose the minarchist would reply, “because that’s what we are ADVOCATING–that a state be formed with X,Y, and Z libertarian principles.” Well the anarchist could equally well say, “but we are in favor of private agencies that also abide by X, Y, Z libertarian principles.” >You can’t have a viable, peaceful society with each competing individual, demographic group, street gang, religious faction, et al., deciding, unilaterally and subjectively, who is a “victim” and who a “criminal”–then claiming the “sovereign right” to ignore the contrary legal claims, rules, definitions, principles, and verdicts of everyone else.< I do not understand the proof for this claim. Evidently the minarchist believes justice is somehow possible, in a state system, even though it is subject to the same “problems”–e.g., in a given state, or when it is developing, there are competing factions; there are individuals trying to decide things “unilaterally and subjectively”, and someone could claim the “sovereign right” to ignore the contrary legal claims, rules, definitions, principles, and verdicts of everyone else.” If states are immune from this criticism, why are private justice agencies subject to it? >Most of the saner anarchist theorists concede that a “just” agency or even an “innocent victim” has the right to forcibly respond to an “aggressor.” But in the marketplace, which is governed solely by profit incentives who will define who is the “aggressor” and who the “victim”?< But what is the government motivated by? The profit motive? or something else? altruism? benefvolence? some divinely inspired rulers who we can trust completely? If human nature is such that we would support and indeed insist upon government officials who abide by libertarian principles when setting up the government–why do we assume that the same individuals, when evaluating the standards of justice of their justice agencies, would be radically different? If they won’t stand for government tyranny, why would they stand for private agency tyranny?? It just makes no sense. > Which “private defense agency” has the final authority to enforce its definitions against those used by other competing agencies–or against individual “hold outs” who disagree–or against all those who proclaim a “sovereign right” to “secede” from that agency’s determination?< Again, why must there be a “final” authority? The libertarian is interested in justice, not in finality for finality’s sake. If the standard is that anarchy is not perfect, agreed, it is not. Nothing is. States certainly are not–even minarchist states would not be. Minarchist states’ justice functions could make mistakes. They could even apply the wrong standards. They could fail to prevent some criems. They could fail to punish some crimes. I.e., in ANY society, some crime will OCCUR–it will not be prevented. It might not even be caught later. I.e., sometimes, there will be travesties of justice. Sometimes, criminals WILL get away with it. If there are two justice agencies involved in a given crime situation, one would think they could work out some kind of solution or compromise. If not, justice just won’t be done in that case. So what? Why does any system, to be just, have to be 100% infallible and efficacious? This is an impossible standard, and ignores the reality that humans have volition and CAN and WILL sometimes commit crime. So if a criminal, or criminal gang, or criminal agency, somehow escapes punishment from some justice agency (e.g., it “secedes”), this is just a case where the criminal got away with it. This will happen in ANY justice system, of necessity. I fail to see the relevance re anarchy’s moral standing. >When “push comes to shove,” the “private defense agency” faces a basic choice. Either (a) it uses coercion to enforce its verdict upon the “hold out” (or upon the opposing “competitor agency”), or (b) it fails to enforce its verdicts.< Holdouts are different from competing agencies. Suppose a criminal is loose, and has robbed customers of agency A and B. A catches and imprisons him. B wants him to execute him. A might refuse to release him. That does not mean A is a criminal; it just means there is only one criminal to go between them and A got him first. A and B MIGHT fight, true, but it is unlikely (for various fairly obvious reasons). If B’s customer attacks A’s customer, and agency B refuses to punish its own customer and refuses to turn him over to A’s agency for punishment–yes, B would start to be seen as a rogue agency. But at worst, this is, again, only a case where justice was not done; but justice is never guaranteed to be done (if it were, there would never be crime, period). Moreover, similar things are possible even in today’s multi-state world; so the only way to avoid this, if it is really the serious problem minarchists say it is, is to have a one-world state (a serious charge which Bidinotto does not address). But in my view such a result is unlikely in anarhcy anyway: A and B would have agreements with each other about extradition, nepotism, etc.–it would make for good business sense and justice; and it would help attract customers. Etc. (Keep in mind too even in today’s society: we have a multilayer government, both vertical and horizontal/geographically; sometimes the feds, or states, all want a criminal; sometimes they work it out w/ extradition, sometimes they don’t. This is not some flaw of the justice system, but rather, one of the consequences of the fact that someone committed multiple crimes.) >If (a), then the “private defense agency” is coercively “eliminating the competition”–that is, it’s behaving as a “legal monopoly on force,” in exactly the same way that anarchists find morally intolerable when a government is doing it.< Not necessarily true. If agency A subdues B with force, b/c B is harboring criminals, in principle, this is not unlibertarian. This is different from a state outlawing on principle any competing defense agency. For example, no state would ever allow a private agency to arrest a state official on grounds that he is helping to promulgate/enforce unlibertarian laws. >If (b), however, then the agency’s pronouncements are toothless and impotent. In that case, all that anyone need do to evade the private agency’s criminal laws, verdicts, and sentences is simply to ignore them.< But this is such am empirical judgment it is not so easy to just pronounce upon. Let’s think. The minarchist society will NOT be achieved UNLESS most individuals improve their understanding of liberty, rights, economics, etc. Minarchy presupposes most people are more libertarian. Otherwise we could not get there. So while we’re presupposing away–consider: in today’s society, most people are pretty decent; they would not steal their neighbor’s car even if they could get away with it. They voluntarily respect each others’ rights. If people were several levels more moral–say, if they were moral enough to support the kind of minarchist government Bidinotto et al. favor–is it really such a leap of imagination to think that maybe, just maybe, that in anarchy they would not patronize “bad” agencies? Or that the problem of crime would be so low (most poeple would not voluntarily commit one, after all), so marginal, that the PDAs that exist would really have a pretty minor function. Say 999 out of 1000 people are law-abiding; and 1 is a bad guy. If he is spotted, or caught, why is it inconceivable that the 999 good guys–and their agencies–would not find some reasonable way to deal with him? (Yes, by force.) Why do minarchists think it’s possible to transform human nature enough to achieve minarchy, but not possible to go one small step further, to a situation where very little crime-prevention is needed anyway? Galt’s Gulch in Atlas Shrugged, if you read it closely, is virtually anarchistic. >To repeat, it’s really either/or. Either “private defense agencies” enforce their laws, or they don’t. If they do, then they’re coercively imposing their private legal systems on their competitors–and there goes their claim to morality.< I find this wording ambiguous. If they impose justice on criminals, no problem. If there is a rogue agency–one applying non-libertarian principles–then it’s just a criminal, basically. If there are multiple “libertarian” agencies–all applying “just” rules–then why do we automatically assume they would have to attack each other if there is a dispute? Why wouldn’t justice-agencies, which arise in a society where almost everyone already agrees upon libertarian principles, and applying primarily libertarian principles themselves, — why wouldn’t they try to have a peaceful way to solve a dispute? If A and B disagree about how to handle a given criminal case or defendant–why wouldn’t they submit the case to some neutral third party, like agency C? That would help them retain their reputation for being “peacelike” and civilized, for example. In fact A, B, C, and others would probably tend to have inter-agency agreements that establish ways of dealing with such cases. Why is there an assumption that multiple agencies MUST go to war? I know Rand opined that this must be the case, but I never found her reasoning on this very careful or sincere, or sound. >But if they don’t enforce their laws, then criminals will remain free to prey with impunity upon innocent individuals–and there goes the neighborhood.< Imagine 5 agencies in a city the size of Houston. If between them a given criminal gets away scot-free, that is not a fault of anarchy, but a fault of the fact that crime is possible. Even in a state system, crime happens, and sometiems criminals get away. So I suppose you are talking about a problem where 2 or more agencies disagree about how to handle a given criminal-? or case? Assuming the agencies themselves are not criminal and not fighting one another, seems like the most likelyl WORST case is that a more lenient (or more unjust–looser evidence standards, etc.) agency is the one who catches and convicts a given defendant. But even in this case–why is it automatically the case that the agency that does do the punishing is going to have an “unjust” verdict? Why can’t it be that all the agencies have different systems, yes, but all within an acceptable range? And even if the “worst” (most inept; most unfair, whatever) agency is the one who gets to hold the trial– why is this any worse than what happens in a state system–namely, a given court system with given rules hears the case! Why do we assume that the typical private agency’s substnative rules and procedures will be less-just than those that a state would have? If anything, it’s the other way around. >Again, the moral case for anarchism is not that it is LESS BAD than government, or that governments HISTORICALLY have not acted properly. The basic anarchist claim is that anarchism is inherently non-aggressive, while government is inherently aggressive.< No, that is MY argument. I think it is also a good argument that all government has been terrible, and that there is no reason to expect any state ever to be limited. Given this, one could argue that a state-less society might be better than the only other eal alternative–a LARGE state society. >There is nothing “immoral” or “aggressive” about an institution having the final authority to render and enforce just verdicts, according to objective procedures and rules of evidence.< Yes, there is, because “final” implies it can just rules/objective procedures. In fact, it seems that the only way you can justify this outlawing is to INSIST there there be ONE agency with FINAL decision making authority. But this begs the question, no?–since this means a state. >Experience tells us that criminals do not respond to suggestions.< Agreed. That is why people would employ force-wielding agencies to protect them. >And experience also tells us–or most of us–that to protect individual rights, society needs a single agency that retains the ultimate power to enforce justice for all.<

This desire for “a single agency” in “society” implies only a one-world state will do.

Moreover, how in the world can “experience” teach us we need a “single” agency, when we have never had one, we have always had a plurality of states. And experience does not even teach us that “a single agency” within a given geographic region is needed to “enforce justice for all”–since STATES NEVER DO, NEVER HAVE, NEVER WILL ENFORCE JUSTICE FOR ALL. This is what experience teaches.

I will say this. If Bidinotto is right that the case for anarchy is flawed–and he may be–all this means is that justice is IMPOSSIBLE to achieve. We will never achieve it, because anarchy won’t do it (according to Bidinotto), and states won’t do it either (according to experience and reason), since states will never stop exceeding the bounds they should stay within.

On the one hand, I love this. On the other hand, it frightens and confuses me. First saw this a couple years ago–a friend saw a flyer stuck on the wall of a Chinese restaurant. Ever since it’s been on the ledge of the whiteboard in my office. Every day… Lucy stares at me.

Re recent discussions of this topic–Fran

A thought: nothing is wrong with slavery per se–a criminal who is imprisoned as a result of a crime is in essence enslaved. The problem with slavery–e.g., of Africans in the antebellum US–is that the slave is enslaved not as punishment for a crime but because of some other irrelevant action or status (e.g., being black). But this is the same problem with all positive laws that outlaw peaceful behavior, e.g. tax laws, drug laws, and so on.

Yet most opponents of African slavery do not oppose all victimless crime laws. That is, they are not against slavery. They are happy with actual criminals (aggressors) being enslaved (as are we libertarians); and they have no problem with enslaving other non-aggressors, who happen to violate whatever arbitrary positive laws are on the books. They are not anti-slavery at all. They simply seem to oppose one narrow ground for slavery–that is, they are against enslaving people based on the blackness of skin, but don’t seem to have a problem with other arbitrary and unfair “grounds”.

Just kidding. The Tyranny of Copyright?, Robert Boynton, NY Times.

Raauurraauuhhgg! (slower; backwards; other links).

Followup to this post about Lewis Little’s physics theory of elementary waves (TEW). A report of a purported breakthrough in the TEW. According to Dr. Little, “I am pleased to announce that the TEW explanation for double delayed choice experiments has now been worked out … I welcome comments.” EXPLANATION OF THE INNSBRUCK DOUBLE DELAYED CHOICE EXPERIMENT By Lewis Little (link2).

Recent IP snippets: The Eagle Is Grounded, by Thomas Goetz, Wired. “While America works to protect intellectual property, everyone else is innovating”

Also: Dash for booty spurs uggly war with ugg boots

(Links courtesy of Tim Gillin)

From the Reason blog: “Lawrence Lessig is on the right side of this little spat with Cato’s Adam Thierer

The Fake Anarchists and Libertarians describes Anarcho-capitalism: “Most anarchists who have heard this term think it is an oxymoron. The anarchist movement has a tradition dating back over a hundred years of opposition to capitalism. This new concept, “anarcho-capitalism” as it’s called by its proponents, flies in the face of this history. It is probably better described as “libertarian capitalism,” which is similar to extropianism and contemporary party libertarianism in the United States. These are the folks who want to liberate themselves from government, but still want to be YOUR boss.”

In listing “Anarcho-capitalist” Websites, it refers to it as “Fake anarchism from boss-loving rich white boys who have never had to work a sh**ty job in their lives.”

The implicit reasoning: I have a bad job and dislike my boss; therefore, it is morally justifed to steal his property. [Link from Jeremy Sapienza]

Apropos Tom DiLorenzo’s remark in The Myth of the Morally Superior Yankee that “The word “Yankee” gained popularity in the early to mid nineteenth century to describe a particular brand of New Englander: arrogant, hypocritical, unfriendly, condescending, intolerant, extremely self-righteous, and believing that he and his were God

On the one hand, I am amazed at the degree of opposition some conservative/libertarian types have to gay marriage. It’ll “weaken marriage”–? Whose? Not mine. Say you’re given a choice: prevent an increase in taxes, or prevent gay marriage from being recognized. Easy choice! (Prevent tax increases, just in case you are on the fence.)

On the other hand, the problem with gay marriage is that it’s just the thin end of the wedge: the gays will use it next to argue that homosexuality should be included in all the antiidiscrimination laws.

The whole issue is confused. Part of it is because the leftist minority is disingenuously using this as a tactic to increase gay rights, e.g. to affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, etc. And partly it’s because people are not clear on the terms of dispute.

For many it comes down to mere semantics. For example, a conservative libertarian friend is opposed to gay marriage. But he admitted, he has no problem with the state enforcing agreements between people–two gays, two sibligs, a rock band–and calling it a civil union. If two people want to form a union whereby they pool their assets and liabilities, have power of attorney over each other in critical medical or death situations, why shouldn’t such agreements be enforced? So my friend’s only problem is if the statute legalizing such agreements refers to the union as “marriage”.

I.e., the objection is just to the label the state happens to use. Thin gruel, it seems to me. My view is agreements should of course be enforced. The labeling of the ontology of the relationships protected by the legal system should be left up to tradition and individuals–to private society. Gays would probably try to have “marriage” ceremonies; the civil union would be one legal result flowing from this. Gays and englightened liberals and other moral relativists would then refer to such gay couples as “married.” They would try to nudge others to do the same–much as ethic jokes have been pushed into the closet and certain official labels like African-American or visually impaired have been foisted on us and others, like black or colored or blind, are frowned upon.

Whether mainstream religions or mainstream (hetero) people would adopt the gays’ denoting of this relationship as “marriage” has nothing to do with law or the public policy debate. I can say I am “married” to my dog. No one is obliged to treat this seriously. Etc. It’s not a legal issue. Nor a political issue. Nor a libertarian issue.

One final comment. Bush wants to constitutionally define marriage as between one man and one woman. But if this is the case, doesn’t it mean bigamy can’t be a crime? After all, bigamy is marriage to multiple partners; but if marriage is only marriage between one man and one woman, bigamy is just impossible, legally. Clearly bigamy is a type of marriage, albeit an illegal one. The definition of marriage is broader than what’s legally permitted. Bigamy is funny (not funny-funny, but strange-funny). It’s not illegal to live with multiple women. Nor to refer to them as your wives. It’s illegal to apply for the official status with multiple wives. You see how the state here subtly equates its dictates with reality.

But presumably, if we “define” marriage as a union of one man and one woman, bigamy would still be regarded as illegal. Yet if two men attempt to marry, it just will be ignored, and treated as a non-event. So the federal attempt to officially “define” marriage has this result: a man (trying to) marry a second woman is illegal; but a man marrying another man is not (because it is not given status). How’s that–the traditionlists penalize heterosexual bigamy more than they do homosexuality. Methinks they are all confused; they should stop relying on the state to define what is or is not marriage; and should drop all causes secondary to that of lowering taxes and spending.

I agree with Lew’s and Dan‘s responses to my post. Dan’s comment is correct: “There is no good reason that I can see for libertarians to support gay marriage.” By the same token, there is no good reason to make opposition to it the highest priority. And there is no reason not to acknowlege that there is nothing unlibertarian, in principle, with the contractual regimes established by two or more individuals being recognized legally; nor with recognizing that it should be up to private civil society, not the state, to decide how to conventionally label a self-described “homosexual marriage” relationship.

Some may recall that a few years back R.W. Bradford, editor of Liberty, argued that the age of “moralistic” or “rights-based” libertarianism a la Rotbhard and Rand, had passed, and had evolved to a superior pragmatic or consequentialist view (I’m recalling from memory here). That is, he dismissed the non-aggression principle as some kind of simplistic, undefendable position.

So it’s kind of interesting how Bradford tries to use the non-aggression principle in the latest (March 2004) issue, in support of his anti-war position. In a reply to a pro-war libertarian, Bradford writes:

You propose that the libertarian ethical imperative against initiating force is incomplete, and suggest that it ought not to apply “in the world of nation-states.” My view is that the non-initiation principle ought to be considered a general ethcal rule, rather than an ethical imperative, so we have no real argument here. I should add, however, that I do not share your proposal that nation-states be exempted from it. It seems to me that states should be bound more tightly by it than should individuals.

I.e., the non-aggression principle is not really a rigorous, real principle for libertarianism; at best, it is some kind of suggestion or rule of thumb. And yet, this “non-rule” should be applied more strictly against states than against individuals. What? Why? If it’s just a suggestion, or rule of thumb, what does it mean to apply it more stringently…? Does he mean that is’s a real ethical imperative when it comes to states?

This is yet another example of why ethical skepticism is inevitably self-defeating. Those who engage in normative arguments, ultimately, have no choice but to adopt some normative, moral views. Rights-skeptics and similar types thus either (a) fall into contradiction when they start to utter moral or normative opinions; or (b) if they want to remain consistent, must just keep their mouths shut and not enter the moral fray.

Re a recent debate about anarchy, a new entry from Roderick Long:

“For those who’ve been following my online debate on anarchism with Robert Bidinotto, my latest contribution is available here.”

Hardman asks, “I’d like to hear an anarchist response to this in regard to intellectual property. I’m familiar with the normal stance based on a definition of property (requires scarcity), and have always felt that it, like many definition-based arguments, was too tidy

It’s understandable why we are bothered by the statists around us: our rights are violated on a daily basis. We are taxed, regulated, threatened with jail for engaging in victimless crimes.

But why are statists so hot and bothered by us? Get into a discussion with a mainstreamer and if he finds out you oppose public education, or high taxes, or welfare, or anti-discrimination laws… they go apoplectic. But why? They are getting their way. Yes, I might bitch about taxes–but the advocate of the state and its programs and its power to tax is getting my tax dollars. I am not able to resist. I am only able to gripe about it. Why does this bug them so much. Must their victory be so complete? Or is there a gnawing guilt there?

If we were to achieve a taxless, peaceful, libertarian society, and some yahoo came along griping about the good old days, how we should have taxation–no doubt people would cock an eyebrow or two and view him as an amusing oddity. But get riled up? Why? We’d be living in libertarian paradise. Probably too busy living life retired at the age of 32 to bother with political argumentation any more.

One reader writes: “I was pondering this point myself today. Leftists have won every single major cultural battle/decision of the last 50 years with the exception of the recently overturned partial birth abortion. Yet every year brings a more vile, demanding and insulting version of the left. The only answer I can come up with is that leftism must have a thread of a pathology running through it that refuses to rest and treats each new step leftward as a missed opportunity to make 2 steps leftward. ….puzzling”

Re this post: Several readers have written interesting responses, including this one:

“Why? Because there are two distinct types of human brains. The first, Mentalist, is designed to control and manipulate other human beings for reproductive and survival advantages. The second, Mechanist, foregoes controlling other humans for controlling and manipulating things.

“When you challenge a method of control, government, you are challenging their method of operation, and consequently, them personally. It is worse if they benefit from it, real or perceived, and have an interest in politics.

“I think it was E. O. Wilson who said that human history would be reinterpreted in terms of genetics in the first couple decades of this century. Below is an excellent article that provides some groundwork.

“Mentalism and Mechanism: the twin modes of human cognition, by Christopher Badcock.”

From a recent Federalist Society press release about recess appointments of federal judges:

“RECESS APPOINTMENT OF WILLIAM H. PRYOR JR.
February 20, 2004

President George W. Bush used his executive authority to recess appoint 11th Circuit nominee William H. Pryor Jr. As a result of this intrasession appointment during the Senate’s current 11-day recess, General Pryor will serve on the Federal bench through congressional adjournment in 2005.

For a comprehensive explanation of what constitutes an intrasession appointment, the difference between an intersession appointment (Charles Pickering) and an intrasession appointment (William Pryor), and the appropriate length of a recess for an intrasession appointment (the current recess is 11 days long), please click HERE to read a Federalist Society white paper titled, “Judicial Recess Appointments: A Survey of the Arguments.”

Regardless of the substantive merits of whether a particular state or state sub-unit “should” “recognize” “gay marriage”–no right-thinking libertarian ought to be in favor of the feds–or even California–forcing San Francisco to abandon its recent policy of marrying gays. You can say the SF government should not exist; should not marry gays; should not be in the business of marrying anyone. But that does not imply that California or the Feds should have the power to do anything about it (and in the case of the Feds, constitutionally, they do NOT have the power to do anything other than to refuse to force other states to give full faith and credit California’s gay marriage policy).

IMHO, libertarians who are against gay marriage should not make the mistake of abandoning decentralization by endorsing the feds’ interference with local government policies on this issue.

For those curious about the actual patent process, Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Weston, Inc. is an interesting and short recent case. This is a typical example of how patent attorneys describe reality and how federal judges handle patent disputes.

The case concerns U.S. Pat. No. 4,761,290 (PDF version; USPTO version), owned by plaintiff Chef America.

The patent covers

From an article on the proposed Gay Marriage Amendment: “Bush plans to endorse language introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) that backers contend would ban gay marriage but not prevent state legislatures from allowing the kind of civil unions and same-sex partnership arrangements that exist in Vermont and California. …

“Musgrave’s proposal, called the Federal Marriage Amendment, states: ‘Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.’”

This is bizarre. First, what would happen to bigamy statutes which prohibit one man marrying two women? One reading of the amendment would be that marriage is “defined” so that bigamy cannot exist–after all, it’s not just “a” man and “a” woman. So would bigamy now be decriminalized?

Second, even this wording does not seem to prohibit “gay marriage”. Suppose Louisiana passed a law permitting gays to marry. They are not being required to do it by a judge or the feds; they just do it. Does this amendment mean that even a clear law letting gays marry can’t be “construed” to mean what it says? And what is “marital status”? Does it refer to the status that society confers upon marriage? If so, how can the Constitution affect it? Or does it simply refer to the *label* used in the state statutes? After all, even its drafters admit civil unions could be permitted–these could be identical to marriage in every way except the label used in the title of the statute.

In sum, this proposed amendment seems to do the following: it prevents judges from forcing states to include gays in their marriage laws. But it does not seem to prevent states from having civil unions, or even from enacting their own marriage laws.

Nor does it seem to do a good job at making it clear that one state’s gay marriage laws need not be given full faith and credit by others.

A better amendment would be simply: “No State may be required by the Federal government, including Federal judges, to recognize gay marriage, nor to give full faith and credit to gay marriage laws of Sister States.”

An even better amendment would be: “The Federal government shall have no power to tax.” Let’s keep our eyes on the ball, people!

N.B.: I am of course NOT calling for or endorsing a constitutional amendment or convention–I don’t trust any of these bozos.

Re Karen’s post, “Every lifestyle guru that comes along steals from Atkins – every single one of them. Carb talk is all the rage, everywhere you go, because Atkins put it on the map.”

Carb talk is all the rage; so much so that there is now even talk of a “low-carb backlash“!

I admit I can’t tell which of the varying theories–sugarbusters, Atkins, South Beach–is the soundest, but as I noted in a previous post, one recent article points out that Atkins theory is just a revival of William Banting’s “Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public,” published in London in 1863. I wonder if I should get on the Banting diet!

A French-German Tulane law student acquaintance of mine (he speaks nine languages–I only speak about 0.7), Frederic Sourgens, sent me his Inn of Court brief where he argues for the impeachment of President Jefferson for undertaking the unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase. A bit rough, but fun… Download file. After 30 pages of legal reasoning, it concludes: “President Jefferson must be removed from office because of his blatant disregard of the Constitution constituting a high misdemeanor of state and high treason against the United States.“

Thom, this reminds me of one reason I quit the Federalist Society. While they are more conservative and even more free market than most lawyers, the ones I’ve met have been woefully non-intellectual, ignorant, and completely unlibertarian. I remember a few years ago I was at a luncheon w/ some fellow members of the Houston chapter. I was sitting next to one guy who is an extremely intelligent lawyer, at a big firm, very well educated from some posh New England law school, etc. Trying to draw some interesting conversation out of him–he was kind of quiet and reserved, and I was not sure of how conservative, or libertarian, or whatever he was–I finally asked him something like, “Well, which political philosophers would you say you admire?” The answer stunned me, almost left me speechless: “Oh, I’d say Newt Gingrich.”

‘Nuff said.

I must say the pro-bullying comments are baffling. They seem either confused or unlibertarian to me.

Kantor is quite correct here: “Marcus wrote, “Obviously fights can get out of hand, just as bullying can…” From a libertarian perspective, bullying is inherently out of hand”. Sure, there is minor bullying and more severe bullying; just as there is minor and major aggression. But giving someone a “wedgie” is not some trivial, minor event. A large kid grabbing, roughing up, manhandling a small kid in this way is a clear-cut, significant act of aggression and cause severe emotional torment in the victim. A bunch of beer-swilling, frat-boy, jock types who watch pro football and throw their empty beer cans at the mom’s chihauhau sitting by the TV might yuck it up about this and guffaw about little puny kids getting wedgies–but this is not the stuff of libertarian discourse.

Kirkwood writes: “The sense I get from some posts is that some bloggers believe those of us who don’t think bullying is a big problem also believe we excuse it. Not true. We just don’t think the acts or their consequences rise to the level of serious philosphical discussion. In other words, all this is a little silly.”

This reply does not counter the assertion that bullying is immoral and aggressive, and a crime. What is clear is that libertarianism opposes aggression–whether minor or major–and that clearly, bullying is a type of aggression. What is strange about bullying is that it is one sub-class of aggression that is overlooked by most people and blown off as if it is “no big deal”–including some of the posters here. Now libertarianism can distinguish between minor and more severe acts of aggression by having the proportionality requirement for punishment; but it is not clear that bullying is per se trivial or minor aggression. In fact it is typically significant aggression.

Kirkwood continues, “You can have all the theoretical and ideological debate you want about aggression and how its violates libertarian principles, but your average bully isn’t really concerned about this or that libertarian axiom, and the kid who loses his lunch money can’t whip out a copy of “For A New Liberty” and explain to the bully why he’s wrong.”

But this is completely irrelevant. The same could be said to a rape victim or murder victim–that their little theories about why rape or murder is “wrong” won’t be listened to by the perpetrator. Of course they won’t; perpetrators are animals, which is why we should deal with them as such–e.g., locking them up, shooting them, etc. But that does not mean we who are purportedly on the civilized side of the fence should dismiss the rightful claim of a victim that aggression against them is wrong. This is what being a libertarian is all about: being willing to stand up with the victim and proclaim that aggression, while sometimes unavoidable, IS WRONG!

Government-granted monopolies on inventions and original “works” (i.e., patent and copyright) are bad enough; now it might be extended to “collections of information,” i.e., databases. Does government do anything well, other than break things and kill people?

From PC Magazine:
“Few examples of technology-related federal legislation have stirred up more controversy in recent years than the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Now the European Union is considering a similar, yet far more sweeping act that could extend to virtually all kinds of intellectual-property protections. Critics describe these proposals as “nuclear weapons of IP law enforcement.” A coalition of over 50 civil-liberties groups is opposing the draft legislation, which is titled the European Union Directive for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. March 8 through 11, the European Plenary will consider whether to pass EUDEIPR into law throughout Europe. More is available here“

Pretty libertarian article, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Wealth,” in SmartMoney, by Jonathan Hoenig, of Capitalistpig Asset Management.

Some of the best fiction I’ve read in some time, maybe ever, definitely just about the best sci-fi I’ve ever read: The Golden Age trilogy, by John C. Wright. If you liked Atlas Shrugged and like hard sci-fi (e.g., fans of Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center saga; Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels; Orson Scott Card’s Ender books; and Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon The Deep), you’ll like this. It’s sci-fi by an obvious libertarian and proponent of individualism and free-market, if not Austrian, economics (some of the mini-speeches about the necessity of money even in an advanced society a million years down the road, are very impressive), but it’s not “libertarian sci-fi” of the jokey, preachy, or humorless (no offense, Ayn Rand) type. Highly recommended.

Interesting interviews with Wright: here; and here.

The following informal memo (Download file) was passed on to me by a pro-Israel, pro-war attorney. Apparently this is what passes for sober wisdom among neocons; this is the kind of thing they are apparently passing along to each other in secret, wink-wink emails.

The piece is, as far as I can tell, anonymous, but draws on Colonel Ralph Peters views. The memo breathlessly argues that “our enemy” is basically Arab culture. As it suggests: “We’re facing a 14th century culture engaged in a 14th century war against us. The problem is that they are armed with 20th century weapons, which may eventually include nuclear weapons. … It may sound strange to say, but what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we’ve done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century, but that will be much easier.”

I’m reminded of Rothbard’s proposal to repeal the Twentieth Century (unlike the William Buckley/National Review crowd, who advocated that conservatives “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.”)

So it seems to me that instead of bringing Arab culture from the 14th to the 21st century, we should meet them halfway, around the 18th or so. What the hell, let’s make it the 16th.

One of the great uncles of libertarianism, Walter Block, now has a website up and running, WalterBlock.com, which has recently been updated to include online links to dozens of his hundreds of publications. A cornucopia for libertarians.

Scholar Distributes Book Online for Free: “Lawrence Lessig, an influential scholar who advocates greater consumer rights to use copyright works, is making his latest book available for free on the Internet.

“The book, “Free Culture,” explores technical and legal restrictions that publishers and other large media corporations use to control information and keep it from the public domain. Lessig says the process limits creativity.

“Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, argues that making information more widely available can make business sense. His publisher, The Penguin Press, agreed to make the book available online to demonstrate the point.”

Per Jeff Tucker’s request, since he gets frequent requests from readers for IP-related resources–listed below are links to several IP-related articles, including those available on LewRockwell.com, Mises.org and selected others:

Property/Rights-based Arguments

• Against Intellectual Property, Spring 2001, Vol. 15, no. 2 Journal of Libertarian Studies, Stephan Kinsella
• In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule, September 4, 2000, LewRockwell.com, Stephan Kinsella (summary version of some of the arguments presented in “Against Intellectual Property”)
• The Morality of Acquiring and Enforcing Patents, Stephan Kinsella
• Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market, Scholars Edition, liv, 745-54, 1133-38, 1181-86
• Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, pp. 123

Oh, no, Tom, I hope we don’t get a Department of Homeland Information Sharing… because you know that would draw in a bunch of Hayekians and spontaneously corrupt them.

According to Woman challenges Trump ‘You’re fired’ trademark:

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) – Chicago pottery merchant Susan Brenner has a message for real-estate mogul Donald Trump: in the Windy City, she’ll do the firing.

Capitalizing on the success of his reality-television show, “The Apprentice,” Trump has sought to trademark the phrase “You’re Fired!” for use on clothing and casino equipment.

But the copper-maned mogul might want to tread carefully in the Chicago area, where Brenner says she has emblazoned the phrase on plates, mugs, birdhouses and other items in her suburban ceramics studio since 1997.

[...] For Brenner, “You’re fired” is a clever pun on the process of painting and glazing ceramics in her Northbrook, Illinois, studio, said attorney Marvin Benn. [...] Brenner is entitled to local trademark protection even though she has not filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Benn said in a telephone interview. [...] Had she filed a patent application, she would be entitled to nationwide protection, he said.

And here I thought, all these years, that patent applications were for inventions, trademark applications were for, well, trademarks. Just goes to show you–the press is as good at IP law as they are at economics and politics. What an idiot. And this example should be of interest to those libertarians who think that, while patent rights, and maybe even copyright, may be problematic, “of course” the state should protect trademark rights.

Tony Deden’s latest Sage Chronicle blog, as usual, has some interesting posts, e.g. Unemployment Musings, and There is no inflation. Part 1.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, of which I used to be a member) wins a battle against federal censorship.

The IEEE has members all over the world and has dozens of journals and publications. It publishes papers from all over the world. In 2001 IEEE becamse concerned that the Department of the Treasury

An attorney for some Bell companies sent a survey to my company (we make lasers for telecom applications) to ask about our “philosophy” on the regulation of the telecom industry.

Choices were: “… as a general proposition my company believes that the best way for regulators to help stimulate new products and services by a multitude of suppliers is to –
A. subject all participants in a gven telecom service market to the same regulatory oversight and reduce government telecom regulation considerably from what exists today; or
B. reduce government oversight of non-Bell-company participants in a gven telecom service market but maintain or increase the regulatory controls on Bell companies…”

How about Download filenone of the above?

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Defying Leviathan, by Andy Duncan: good review of The Myth of National Defense, edited by Hoppe.

(Other reviews/discussions of The Myth of National Defense.)

From the PatNews newsletter, comes this funny post from a reader:

“PTO ALMOST ALLOWS TRADEMARK ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LOGO

“Greg,

“I recently heard that some person, sensing money to be made, very nearly was successful in trademarking the Department of Education’s logo of the No Child Left Behind act. It was nearing final acceptance by the PTO until the Ed Dept got wind of it and intervened. I guess the fame of No Child Left Behind has escaped the trademark office.

“FBI doesn’t talk to the CIA. DOE doesn’t talk to the PTO. Exactly why am I paying taxes this week?”

They may be referring to this trademark application, not sure.

For some strange reason, this reminds me of the joke, “Q: Why did the little Greek boy, who had run away from home, return? A: He couldn’t bear to leave his brothers behind.”

William Peterson, adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute and Heritage Foundation, has a Washington Times book review about Randy Barnett’s latest book, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty.

Some libertarians may have difficulty with Barnett’s views about the 14th Amendment. Peterson sums up, “Also, the 14th Amendment requires that the privileges or immunities of citizens shall not be abridged. So it sets tight textual limits on the exercise of the states’ police power

Where would Iraq be without America’s munificence–

According to the PatNews newsletter, the following, sent by an anonymous Patent Office examiner, was on the PTO’s Intranet:

“Assignment Iraq

“Linda Lourie, an Attorney-Advisor in the USPTO’s Office of External Affairs has begun an assignment in Iraq to assist the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in rebuilding that nation’s intellectual property offices.

“Attorney-Advisor Lourie will be working within the commercial law section and will focus her efforts on bringing Iraq’s IP law in compliance with international treaties and modern standards. …. [Iraq is in the Paris Convention, not Berne]

“Developing strong intellectual property protection in Iraq is a high priority for the Coalition Provisional Authority, particularly since it will encourage foreign and local investment in IP dependent industries. Ms. Lourie expects to be in Iraq for three to four months.”

Real Dialogue: The Tech interviews Jack Valenti — it’s hilarious to see Jack Valenti scramble and squirm and try to defend the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. He comes off like a buffoon. (Thanks to Tim Swanson.)

but I don’t understand this: Iraqis polled: War did more harm than good but worth it. If it was “worth it”, doesn’t that imply the benefit was greater than the harm? And if so, doesn’t this contradict saying that more harm than good was done? Sigh. This sophistocated utilitarian reasoning is just beyond dis heah Cajun.

Barnwell mentions the draconian sentence imposed on spammers by federal anti-spam legislation. The law is clearly unconstitutional since the Constitution nowhere authorizes the feds to regulate such activity. But in principle, in my view, spam is a crime. As found (correctly, in my view) in the now-classic case CompuServe v. Cyber Promotions, “where defendants engaged in a course of conduct of transmitting a substantial volume of electronic data in the form of unsolicited e-mail to plaintiff’s proprietary computer equipment, where defendants continued such practice after repeated demands to cease and desist, and where defendants deliberately evaded plaintiff’s affirmative efforts to protect its computer equipment from such use, plaintiff has a viable claim for trespass to personal property.”

Why is this consistent with libertarianism? Because the owner of property (such as a PC) has the right to control it, which means the right to excluse others from using it. Sending an email to someone is a means of using the PC–it causes things to happen with the PC. It is analogous to knocking on someone’s door. Normally, this is permitted by the owner; and in many contexts, this permission or license is implied by the context. E.g., my neighbor does not trespass if she walks on my sidewalk and knocks on my front door to borrow a cup of sugar. My consent for such innocuous uses of my property is implied. Yet it can be revoked: e.g., I can erect a fence or “no trespassing” sign, or I can tell my neighber she is no longer welcome on my property. If she then knocks on my door she has commited trespass, since she is now using my property without permission.

Similarly in the case of spamming: especially where warned not to spam, someone is using the victim’s computer without their permission; and I would argue there is an implied denial of consent to send unsolicited commercial email, just as there is implied lack of consent for a dozen of my neighbors to hold an Amway meeting on my front lawn.

Coda: Gil Guillory’s Mises blogpost, dissent on spam, raises some good points. Gil may like getting spam, but I get probably 300 a day lately, and it is becoming a serious problem. It is not so easy to simply delete them. Second, in a free market, I would envision ways of publicizing your preferences as to whether you do, or do not, consent to receive unsolicited faxes, emails, even mail. After all, when someone shoves a letter in my mailbox I have to dispose of it, which costs. I regard all the tons of snail mail I get as littering on my property.

Marginal movements tend to draw their share of nuts and cranks; unfortunately, libertarianism is no exception. In addition to claims that we don’t (not “shouldn’t” but “don’t”) owe income tax, or “that hiring an attorney means abandoning personal sovereignty before the law, or that having a yellow-[or gold-]fringed flag in a room means you are under martial [or admiralty/maritime] law,” there are also a fair number of libertarians who view the modern corporation with suspicion. They are concerned that the corporation is viewed as a “person” and believe, erroneously, that corporations shield corporate employees from liability for negligence.

I usually find that the opposition to corporations comes from leftists, or, if libertarians, from ignorance of contract and corporate law…. most people don’t even realize that if a FedEx truck runs you over negligently you can sue the driver. They think he is immune from suit or something. But it is the other way around; if a FedEx truck negligently hits you, it is of course the driver that is responsible. His employer is responsible for its employee’s own negligence and liability only because of the doctrine of respondeat superior; but if the employee is found to be non-negligent, the employer-corporation is off the hook too. This is in fact why corporations usually defend their employee and themselves when sued for the employee’s actions.

But opposition does not always stem from ignorance of the law or leftism: for example, one critique comes from two libertarian-Austrian attorneys: “De-legitimizing the Corporation: An Austrian analysis of the firm”, Jeffrey F. Barr & Lee Iglody, Austrian Scholars Conference 7, March 30-31, 2001, Auburn, Alabama.

Robert Hessen’s (a Randian) In Defense of the Corporation is a good defense of corporations. He shows that they don’t require privilege from the state to exist; they can be constructed from private contracts. One of Hessen’s articles nicely summarizes some of his views. Some excerpts are pasted below. My view is that corporations are essentially compatible with libertarianism. As for voluntary debts being limited to the corporation’s assets; this is no problem since the creditor knows these limitations when he loans money. What about limited liability for torts or crimes? As mentioned, the person direclty responsible for a tort or crime is always liable; sometimes the employer (which is often a corporation) is also liable for the employee’s actions, via respondeat superior. Who else should be responsible? In my view, those who cause the damage are responsible. Shareholders don’t cause it any more than a bank who loans money to a company causes its employees to commit torts. The shareholders give money; and elect directors. The directors appoint officers/executives. The officers hire employees and direct what goes on. Now to the extent a given manager orders or otherwise causes a given action that damages someone, a case can be made that the manager is causally responsible, jointly liable with the employee who directly caused the damage. It’s harder to argue the directors are so directly responsible, but depending on the facts, it could be argued in some cases. But it’s very fact specific. Perhaps the rules on causation should be relaxed or modified, but this has nothing to do with there being a corporation or not–for the laws of causation should apply to any manager or person of sufficient influence in the organization hierarchy, regardless of legal form of the organization (that is, whether it’s a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or what have you).

Excerpts from the Hessen article–

The actual procedure for creating a corporation consists of filing a registration document with a state official (like recording the use of a fictitious business name), and the state’s role is purely formal and automatic. Moreover, to call incorporation a “privilege” implies that individuals have no right to create a corporation. But why is governmental permission needed? Who would be wronged if businesses adopted corporate features by contract? Whose rights would be violated if a firm declared itself to be a unit for the purposes of suing and being sued, holding and conveying title to property, or that it would continue in existence despite the death or withdrawal of its officers or investors, that its shares are freely transferable, or if it asserted limited liability for its debt obligations? (Liability for torts is a separate issue; see Hessen, pp. 18-21.) If potential creditors find any of these features objectionable, they can negotiate to exclude or modify them.

Economists invariably declare limited liability to be the crucial corporate feature. According to this view the corporation, as an entity, contracts debts in “its” own name, not “theirs” (the shareholders), so they are not responsible for its debts. But there is no need for such mental gymnastics because limited liability actually involves an implied contract between shareholders and outside creditors. By incorporating (that is, complying with the registration procedure prescribed by state law) and then by using the symbols “Inc.” or “Corp.,” shareholders are warning potential creditors that they do not accept unlimited personal liability, that creditors must look only to the corporation’s assets (if any) for satisfaction of their claims. This process, known as “constructive notice,” offers an easy means of economizing on transactions costs. It is an alternative to negotiating explicit limited-liability contracts with each creditor.

Creditors, however, are not obligated to accept limited liability. As Professor Bayless Manning observes; “As a part of the bargain negotiated when the corporation incurs the indebtedness, the creditor may, of course, succeed in extracting from a shareholder (or someone else who wants to see the loan go through) an outside pledge agreement, guaranty, endorsement, or the like that will have the effect of subjecting non-corporate assets to the creditor’s claim against the corporation.” This familiar pattern explains why limited liability is likely to be a mirage or delusion for a new, untested business, and thus also explains why some enterprises are not incorporated despite the ease of creating a corporation.

Another textbook myth is that limited liability explains why corporations were able to attract vast amounts of capital from nineteenth-century investors to carry out America’s industrialization. In fact, the industrial revolution was carried out chiefly by partnerships and unincorporated joint stock companies, rarely by corporations. The chief sources of capital for the early New England textile corporations were the founders’ personal savings, money borrowed from banks, the proceeds from state-approved lotteries, and the sale of bonds and debentures.

Even in the late nineteenth century, none of the giant industrial corporations drew equity capital from the general investment public. They were privately held and drew primarily on retained earnings for expansion. (The largest enterprise, Carnegie Brothers, was organized as a Limited Partnership Association in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a status that did not inhibit its ability to own properties and sell steel in other states.)

External financing, through the sale of common stock, was nearly impossible in the nineteenth century because of asymmetrical information

A couple years ago I clipped some pages from recent Texas Bar Journal issues that had me shaking my head. I planned to write up a little article for Lew on it, but never got ’round to it and there was not enough for an article anyway. Glory be, the Internet and blogs makes it possible now. I just came across it cleaning out some old paper files, so here it is. “The Back Page” is interesting because here, in a magazine for Texas’ tens of thousands of lawyers, one would expect news about law or lawyers, tips for lawyers, etc., but the headlines on that page include: “Attorneys Answer Call for Cell Phones” (donating old cell phones for battered women to help prevent domestic violence); “Siebert, Cisneros to Headline TMCP [Texas Minority Counsel Program],” and “Lawyers Provide Legal Help to Flood Victims.” And see the July 2001 Executive Report, “Protecting the Best Interests of our Children,” full of 3rd grade civics class platitudes about public education and democracy.

Why should I be surprised? Just because it’s Texas doesn’t mean the legal establishment isn’t liberal and rotten to the core. This is the same journal to which I submitted an article back in July 1993–”Oilfield Indemnity and ‘Separate Insurance’ Provisions in the Wake of Getty Oil”; I got a letter back saying that accepted my article for publication and it might take 9-12 months, but that if I qualified for the “Affirmative Action Plan for Legal Publications Policy”–i.e. if I proved I was black or Hispanic–they would publish it within a couple months. In other words, if you’re white, you get moved to the back of the bus. I was so offended by the rudeness that I withdrew my article and published it elsewhere.

From Tony Deden, in the most recent SageChronicle:

“Join us in welcoming to our firm long time colleague and friend Sean Corrigan who joins us today as Investment Strategist. After months of weighing out the benefits of leaving the glamorous world of writing and explaining economic theory in television debate for the more understated and secretive world of a Swiss investment manager, we are all happy for this decision and look forward to his intellectual and practical contributions, not to speak of his irreverent wit.”

Full announcement

Hans Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed is now also available in a Spanish translation under the title Monarquia, Democracia Y Orden Natural. Una Vision Austriaca De La Era Americana. The book has been translated by Prof. Jeronimo Molina (University of Murcia), who has also written a Spanish introduction. The book can be ordered by email.

Interesting response to my previous post about spam:

“I would extend your

Karen’s post about women in war calls to mind the comments of one of my favorite writers, C.S. Lewis, in the classic Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chapter ten, “The Spell Begins to Break,” the children are on their way to meet Aslan (who represents Jesus) at the Stone Table (Calvary). The spell of the White Witch (Satan) has been weakened by Aslan’s sacrifice, the snow begins to melt, and Father Christmas returns to Narnia to distribute his gifts. But the Witch will not give up without a battle:

“Peter, Adam’s Son,” said Father Christmas. “Here, sir,” said Peter. “These are your presents,” was the answer, “and they are tools not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well.” With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword

It’s a bit amusing that Walter Block is now apparently teaching at Social Justice University, aka Loyola New Orleans.
Coda: Aaron Gunn writes: “Don’t know if you noticed, but the sweater message is a randomly rotating pic with other messages, including: Catholic Humanism University and Critical Thinking University. I’m furiously refreshing the page to see if I can get it to show me the one that says ‘How Mind Splittingly Idiotic Can We Get? University.’”

Browsing through an old law school text recently (by Professor A.N. Yiannopoulos of Tulane), I noticed with interest the following comments on nature of property rights:

“Property may be defined as an exclusive right to control an economic good, corporeal or incorporeal; it is the name of a concept that refers to the rights and obligations, privileges and restrictions that govern the relations of man with respect to things of value. People everywhere and at all times desire the possession of things that are necessary for survival or valuable by cultural definition and which, as a result of the demand placed upon them, become scarce. Laws enforced by organized society control the competition for, and guarantee the enjoyment of, these desired things. What is guaranteed to be one’s own is property.”

This practical-legal definition dovetails nicely with libertarianism’s more political-philosophical theories of property and rights, e.g. those in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (e.g., chapters 1 and 2, esp. pp. 5-6 & 8-18, discussing notions of scarcity, aggression, property, norms, and justification; and chapter 9, “The Ethical Justification of Capitalism and Why Socialism Is Morally Indefensible”, esp. pp. 130-145).

I’ve written on this in Defending Argumentation Ethics; and on the civil law versus the common law in Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society.

I heard on Fox News this a.m. that there is a new Bushism making the rounds, in addition to strategery, one of my favorites–”misunderestimate,” as in Gore misunderestimated me. Gotta love it.

Gotta love this poem, composed, according to Snopes, of actual quotes from George W. Bush:

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

The yin and yang of copyright and copyleft, by Arrow Augerot

From your friendly neighborhood WalterBlock.com webmaster: online versions for literally dozens of Professor Block’s articles have been added to his publications page tonight. Thanks, in part, to the scanning and coding efforts of his tireless Loyola assistant Charles Long.

An oldie but a goodie recently posted on HansHoppe.com: Hoppephobia. Published in the March 1990 Liberty, this was a reply to “The Argument from Mere Argument,” Loren Lomasky’s “hysterical review of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s A Theory of Capitalism and Socialism.

More discussion of Hoppe’s “argumentation ethics” here. You got to give the Hoppinater his props.

A worthy aspiration for most humans: To be like your own dog.

Classic article by Il Hoppster now available online: Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization – From Monarchy to Democracy, Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, Vol.5, 2, 1994; also published in John Denson, ed., The Cost of War (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997).

And yet another Hoppe classic just put online: Murray N. Rothbard: Economics, Science, and Liberty, in: Randall Holcombe, ed., Fifteen Great Austrian Economists (Auburn, Al.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), wherein one Austrian giant who stands on the shoulders of another Austrian giant writes an article commenting on said other other Austrian giant, and in which, the giantness of said one Austrian economist makes certain detractors look like morons.

After some problems, not to speak of the whole Mark Skousen debacle, the venerable FEE seems to be on the right track.

But an interesting PC episode has been on my mind recently. The November 1996 issue of The Freeman contained a Book Review by Hans-Hermann Hoppe of The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger).

In the review, Hoppe pointed out

Lew recently linked to a great Brian Doherty column on the Americans With Disabilities Act. Doherty has a great line: “Studying the language and reasoning of the decisions, concurrences, and dissents in Tennessee v. Lane shines a light on a weird constitutional alchemy whereby citizen’s rights morph into government powers

Tim Swanson’s blog linked to Isaac Waisberg’s blogpost regarding the nonsensical nature of the owning-a-word mentality. Waisberg links to a Harry Browne Liberty article on Galambos. What a crankish nutball.

Browne writes: “A few years later, I realized that the inability to conduct controlled, repeatable experiments made it impossible to transfer the methods of the physical sciences to the social sciences

I’ve long maintained that you can be a true environmentalist only if you are pro-nuclear. Nuclear fission is the only real, long-term, currently-available solution to our energy needs.

Despite breathless, irrational hysterial to the conrary, nuclear is safer and more plentiful than other sources, pollutes less than all others, and would be cheaper if not demonized. But so-called environmental activists, at best, are silent on the nuclear issue.

It’s been clear for some time that we WILL eventually go nuclear. Either that, or we will die. And since I believe the survival instinct can outweigh even whatever stupid gene makes people socialistic, we will eventually someday have to revv up nuclear fission plants once again. Now, finally, some green has sense, and also admits this.

Electrical Engineer hawking himself on ebay (thanks to Tim Swanson).

It’s about time the Kingom of Hawaii be liberated from the American Occupation.

Despite my love of sci-fi and love-hate for technology, I’ve always been skeptical of the wide-eyed “gee-whiz the future will be so advanced” claims of the futurists. I enjoyed Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, but he argues, breathlessly, that we will have exponentially increasing technological gains. Written in 2000, he predicts various leaps in technology by 2010, 2020, and so on. For example, computers will exceed the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain by the year 2020 (with human-level capabilities not far behind).

Fat chance. The future dystopias and utopias always show older items like today’s clothing, furniture, houses, cars, etc., all replaced by gleaming brushed-nickel-facade hyperplastic. This is just stupid. I know people with 20 year old color televisions (their mom’s or grandma’s console with the prototype remotes or the rotating changer with the variable UHF knob) and 30 year old cars. They don’t throw stuff away, even if a “better” replacement is available for cheap.

I can’t remember what Kurzweil’s predictions were for 2010. But they were radical. “Everything different,” blah blah blah. Hey, it’s just around the corner. I predict people will still have crashing PCs, 7 versions of their address files on different systems, all uncoordinated and lost. When you buy a new cell phone the minimum wage idiot at the counter will scratch his head and tell you he dos not think you can transfer the address book from the old one to the new one. Etc.

An article on the Future of Windows buttresses this point (and after all, points need buttressing, do they not? Do I hear an amen?). As the article points out: “Microsoft’s initial plans for Longhorn were ambitious. Last year, Bill Gates described the next Windows as a “technological breakthrough” … Considering all the attention it’s been getting … you’d think the new Windows was going to change your life tomorrow. But you’d think wrong. … Although a beta version of Longhorn was originally due later this year [i.e., 2004], that target slipped to next year [2005] as the company shifted programmers to bolstering Windows XP’s security …. Now, Microsoft says, Longhorn won’t show up on new PCs or store shelves until 2006. … Facing real-world development deadlines, however, Microsoft executives have started to scale back their Longhorn ambitions, saying that Longhorn will not deliver all of its planned improvements, and Gates’s complete vision–Longhorn with all its bells and whistles–might not reach PC users until 2009.”

Hmm, the world’s most successful and pervasive software company. They schedule a software upgrade for 2004 … then 2005, wait, 2006, umm, might be 2009 before we see it. Yeah, the future is just around the corner, Ray.

Coda: John Bartel writes:

“It is wise to exercise skepticism about a technologist’s claim of imminent revolutionary change.

“An example from the field of artificial intelligence is illuminating:

“* In the 1960′s, artificial intelligence researchers predicted that they could build a computer ten times smarter than a human being.
* In the 1970′s, they predicted they could build a computer as smart as a single human being.
* In the 1980′s, they predicted they could write a program that would do as well as a human expert in a specialized field.
* In the 1990′s, they predicted they could create “expert” systems that would aid humans in making decisions.

“Needless to say, none of these predictions came true. The interesting problems invariably turn out to be much more complex than expected, and the capabilities of our technologies are quite primitive in comparison.

“One would hope that such a dismal track record would build some humility and perspective, but those are rare traits today.

“As a footnote to the above story, it is amusing that one of the complaints of the artificial intelligence experts is that the human experts in medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc., are unwilling to spend time with the computer types trying to build “expert” systems. The human experts were more interested in extending the boundaries of knowledge and working on real problems then to waste endless hours answering clueless questions in an attempt to build human insight into lifeless machines.”

Coda 2:

Gil “The Gilster” Guillory writes:

“Keeping in line with subjectivism, what the heck would exponential progress be, anyway? By some (false) measure, maybe we are undergoing exponential
progress.

“I saw a great show on food tv this weekend, “Kitchens of the Future“. It was mainly filled with “futuristic” footage earlier periods showing what the kitchen of the future might look like. This was punctuated with some current incarnations of the same. (Microsoft and MIT and Phillips have kitchens of the future with lots of obviously useless stuff.) Hosted by Alton Brown.”

Re the first point–yes, this is correct. However even by their own standards the futurists have a miserable record. Their technical predictions usually do not come true or only come true much later than predicted.

Fantastic column by Wendy McElroy this week, Death by Theory?, which describes the tragic story of a boy raised as a girl, based on the feminist-inpired, utopian, pseudo-scientific view that “gender [is] not determined by DNA but by environment.”

I’m reading a wonderful little book, Virginia Hunt Newman’s Teaching an Infant to Swim. Published back in 1967, it’s a bit anachronistic. I came across the following explanation which implicitly makes the analogy: girls are to boys as monkeys are to humans:

“Baby girls usually learn more rapidly than boys of the same age because they are more advanced in co-ordination and balance. Although the boys don’t learn as rapidly as the girls, they will be better than the girls later on.

“… a two-year-old monkey has a reasoning ability far beyond that of a human being of the same age. … Later on, the monkey’s intelligence levels off, whereas the child’s continues to grow. When each has reached adulthood, the man has far surpassed the monkey in brain power. The same contrast is true in the physical development of boys and girls. The baby girl is more advanced than the boy. In adulthuood most men are stronger and have better co-ordination and balance than women.”

I have a feeling she would not dare write this in today’s politically-correct age! Nor would she say that boys will be “better” than girls at swimming.

Interesting short piece by attorney Adam Freedman (whose book Elated by Details looks interesting) on space law–what laws govern activities in outer space.

Not nearly as ominous as a world criminal or government court, a world investment court may be on the horizon. The idea is to provide a forum to appeal arbitral decisions of disputes between foreign investors and host states. The article also mentions the doomed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) (discussed previously in this post).

Interesting to see allegedly “liberal” but pro-Bush, pro-War radio talk-show host Phil Hendrie flashing these words of Lincoln, not in condemnation but in support.

Hendrie is usually funny, but his Morton Downey, Michael Savage-esque vein-pulsing, beet-red-forehead-screaming, table-pounding type of jingoism leaves one cold. Not as bad as the smarmy faux-libertarian Bill Maher, admittedly. I don’t know anything libertarian about that guy except he thinks it’s “silly” to outlaw mary jane.

My guesstimate is that at least $500K a year was spent on secret service protection (figure 7 or so agents, costing at least $70K a year each in salary and support). How much does that come down to per person? Probably 100 million of our 270 million citizens pay taxes; so on average those of us gainfully employed were paying about a penny a year for Reagan’s protection; higher-income types were paying, say, five to ten cents a year.

Myron Tereshchuk, who broke into MicroPatents’ computers and staged an inept attempt to extort them for $17million.

Grading nations’ flags. A, B, C, D, F….

(Courtesy Paul Comeaux)

As Tom Woods recently noted, though he was too polite to name names, Thomas Fleming and others at Chronicles (related posts: 1, 2, 3) have attacked his published views on Austrian economics and some economically illiterate pronouncements of certain popes.

Woods’s exquisitely brilliant and eloquent response speaks for itself. But Fleming, who is genuinely brilliant on some issues, like other conservatives (no offense, Pat Buchanan) sometimes flails when he goes out of his depth, as here:

Fleming writes:

Even major economic thinkers on basically the same side

Regarding Professor King‘s comments on my post, another thing comes to mind. Suppose a person interested in economics also adheres to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. This means you believe when the Pope speaks ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter), solemnly defining a dogma concerning faith and morals to be held by the entire Church, it is impossible for the pronouncement to be incorrect. Thus, it may be relied upon concerning one’s own moral conduct.

Now, clearly some pronouncements by the Pope are, under this doctrine, infallible; others are not. How do we know whether a given pronouncement is ex cathedra or not? There has been much written on this, but wouldn’t it be reasonable, to recognize that a given pronouncement cannot be, indeed must not be, one of the ex cathedra, infallible pronouncements, if it is known to be false? If I, as a mathematician, know that pi is greater than 3.14, and the Pope declares it to be exactly 3.14, then I know not only that the Pope is incorrect; but also that his statement was not ex cathedra.

Likewise, if the Pope makes some statement based on fallacious economic reasoning–e.g., he espouses some kind of socialist system as being more efficacious or efficient than capitalism at achieving prosperity–then this statement also cannot be infallible. The point is, if we know something is false, we know it cannot be infallible; so having knowledge, gained through reason, can be used as a simple test to determine whether a statement is ex cathedra or not.

No doubt there are more sophistocated, established tests for determining when a papal decree or teaching is infallible or not. But this is a simple one, useful in some circumstances. Storck et al., by claiming that obviously false propositions are infallible, are in fact undermining the idea of infallibility.

In any event, they are trying to take a shortcut to establishing truth–trying to use authority, rather than grapple with the substance of Woods’s economic views. They do not even mount a serious argument trying to show that or why socialistic-economic pronouncements of certain popes are indeed ex cathedra; they just seem to assume this, because it would shut up Woods.

And this is the tactic modern socailists are increasingly adopting: the “shut up” tactic. As the collapse of communism and spectactular failures of the welfare state have become more visible and manifest, it has become ever more difficult for liberals to argue for outright socialism with a straight face, and increasingly difficult for them to justify their socialistic policies such as affirmative action, antidiscrimination laws, minimum wage, political correctness, and so on. Therefore–since they have virtually no arguments left anymore; the failure of their policy prescriptions has become too obvious– they have increasingly, in their desperation, increased their tone and resort to ad hominem and attempts to literally silence the opposition by force. Thus, the modern phenomenon of being labeled racist or anti-semite at the slightest, mildest challenge to prevailing mainstream orthodoxy (to the extent where if someone is called a racist or anti-semite, the prima facie conclusion has to be that the person is probably not), and the resort to antidiscrimination laws and their penumbras and emanations which indeed exert a severe chilling effect on free speech. The “liberals” are the biggest threat to free speech, yet have the chutzpah to pretend to be defenders of liberalism.

In response to recent posts concerning Tom Woods and the folks at Chronicles, Scott Richert, Executive Editor of Chronicles, wrote to tell me that I was incorrect to “have claimed that Storck, Fleming, and I regarded papal encyclicals on Catholic social thought to be ‘infallible.’ None of us has said that; we do not believe it.”

He then asked that I “withdraw” my claim and to “make a public apology for misrepresenting our position.”

While I find this entire exercise a bit too over-indulgent, I’ll try to respond. But let me first emphasize that I respect Fleming and Chronicles, and none of this is meant personally.

Now it seemed to me obvious that when Storck and Fleming attacked Woods’s pro-capitalist views on the grounds that they are somehow incompatible with Church “teaching”, the Church teaching in question was supposed to be some kind of unchallengeable, established-as-true Catholic dogma–i.e., infallible. It seems to me that unless the “Church teachings” in question are indeed infallible, then the dispute between Storck/Fleming and Woods is merely economic and has nothing to do with the Church. Therefore I assumed Fleming and Storck view the Church teachings that Woods disagrees with as ex cathedra.

According to Richert, none of them hold this view. But his demand for apology is unwarranted, for no harm was intended if I indeed did, mistate their view; at worst, their own ambiguity led to their view being misconstrued. I have no idea what it means to “withdraw” something already said–it’s not as if there is some big statement-deed-registry office in the sky who keeps track of these things–but I will be happy to state “for the record”–if any of these gentlemen do not “regard papal encyclicals on Catholic social thought to be ‘infallible,’” then I retract stating this as a fact.

Yet it seems to me they are trying to have it both ways. For their attack on Woods is based not on economic substance or arguments but on the incompatibility of (pure) capitalism with certain Church teachings. This only carries weight only if the Church teachings have some kind of authority to guarantee they are right. To my mind, this must be infallibility. I am unware of some intermediate “infallibility-lite” status. Yet Richert denies they are saying the teachings are infallible.

So which way is it, guys? Are the teachings infallible (in which case, show how they are matters of faith or morals); or if not, what’s the big deal with contradicting these teachings? After all, if you say something true that contradicts a non-infallible, possibly-false “teaching,” you are in the right, no? So the question then simply becomes, are Woods’s economic-related views correct, or not? Are they sound? No appeal to authority makes any sense at that stage of inquiry.

Now far be it from me to accuse them of holding a view which an editor of a magazine with which they are associated insists they do not. But I may be excused for quoting some comments of theirs that can perhaps excuse my error. Storck writes,

the hallmark of dissenters and heretics throughout the ages has been precisely to take some human science, theology or philosophy often, elevate it above the teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church and pose the false quandary: If I accept such and such a teaching of the Church I must go against my God-given reason. But since reason is from God, I cannot contradict it. Therefore I must reject this teaching of the Church.

Storck here mentions the “magisterium” of the Church; and implies that a Catholic should not go against the “teaching of the Church”, which, to me, implies the teaching must be infallible. If Storck does not mean this, then he is speaking of non-infallible teaching, in which case, there is nothing at all wrong, from the point of view of Catholicism, with Woods disagreeing with it. I for one would be happy to see Storck clearly and explicitly state precisely what is the basis of his critique.

As for Fleming, in his piece he writes,

Second, the issue is not about Papal infallibility, and those who say it is are, as usual, lying. Popes make mistakes all the time, and, as I pointed out in my column, even Councils of the Church have had to reverse direction from time to time. The basic question is whether or not the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit over time. If it is, then the foundational principles of the Church in theology and ethics are true. If not, it is time to find another religion.

[...]Catholicism requires a certain amount of patience and humility, and if I am going to be asked to reject the infallibility of the Church, I am certainly not going to replace it with the infallibility of non-professional economists.

Now Fleming first denies it’s about infallibilty. However, he then implies that the Church’s teachings on economics–even the non-capitalist oriented ones–are “guided by the Holy spirit”; foundational principles of ethics that are true. I am not sure what this is; it seems to be some kind of intermediate “infallibility lite” standard. And what can it mean when Fleming implies that adopting free market economics means “reject[ing] the infallibility of the Church” As with Storck, I regret if I have mistated or am misstating Fleming’s views; but if so, I am not quite sure what they are, in this respect.

Some final comments (some drawn from private correspondence with Woods). Fleming et al. say these teachings are not infallible. However, if they’re saying it represents 2,000 years of traditional thought, then almost by definition that makes it infallible by virtue of the ordinary Magisterium. For example, Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, on contraception, is not ipso facto infallible — nowhere does he say, “As Pope, I bind you all with this infallible statement” (that would be the extraordinary Magisterium at work) — but because it follows an uninterrupted line of thought, it is considered infallible.

Additional knowledge has come to light over the years that must influence these questions. Fleming is not quite correct when he says that the usury teaching changed only because conditions changed. Theologians had begun to realize that certain factors made certain loans not immoral; these factors became more and more numerous until finally, the prohibition essentially withered away. That is what Woods is suggesting should happen here.

Consider the case of Galileo: Fleming’s views here would justify Urban VIII’s treatment of Galileo. Hadn’t 1500 years of tradition opposed Copernicanism? Hadn’t all the Fathers interpreted the Bible to imply a stationary earth?

In a follow up, Fleming writes,

I am still waiting for a libertarian to respond to my challenge. Can they show that their liberal-individualist ethic is represented either in the New Testament or in the authoritative teachings of the Church? In the Beatitudes, for example, or in Christ’s admonition to the rich young man, in the writings of Augustine and Thomas on the obligations of charity? If they were not sunk in the mire of 19th century liberalism–a dead tradtion of thought, if ever there was one–they might be able to understand what the issue is. Come on, boys, we are waiting for a single rational argument that is not simply a recital of liberal platitudes.

I personally don’t base my libertarian principles on statements in the New Testament, but rather on the simple notion that committing violence against other individuals requires justification; on the idea that peace, cooperation, civilization, and prosperity are preferable to their opposite–war, mayhem, strife, struggle, animal-like hand-to-mouth life, rape, murder, theft, conflict. I don’t care to see if I can find statements justifying this in the NT; but it seems to me Jesus would choose the former over the latter.

The bottom line is if someone “opposes” libertarianism, that means he does endorse the propriety of aggression–the initiation of violent force against peaceful neighbors–in some cases. It’s that simple. Fleming writes:

Third, the issue is not about economic liberty or private property. The Church has consistently defended both. But it is only in the Modern Age that property rights became absolute, while other moral considerations had to be bracketed as matters of private opinion–a position to which the Church has never subscribed.

My first comment is–the Church never subscribed to absolute property rights? What about Roman law?

In any event, note here, Fleming apparently thinks property rights are not “absolute,” presumably because “other moral considerations” outweigh them or something. But this is just euphemistic or sterile language to disguise the naked truth, which is simply, that Fleming is in favor, in some cases, of institutionalized aggression against the bodies and/or private property of peaceful, innocent individuals. (If he is not, then he is a libertarian.)

Why Fleming thinks there is some kind of burden of proof on those who endorse, advocate, and strive for peace, cooperate, prosperity, and civilization to prove that it is morally permissible to be in favor of these things is beyond me. It’s reminiscent of the Randian’s hand-wringing attempts to find some basis for benevolence–as if you should feel guilty for wanting to be nice to your neighbors unless you can prove it’s permitted. Rather, the view of those consistently in favor of peace and cooperation and prosperity is not really that those willing to commit, or endorse, aggression have the burden of justifying it; rather, their view is that criminals, like animals, disasters, disease, and forces of nature, which, while unfortunate and a cause of tragedy, misery, and impoverishemnt, are merely technical problems that those who oppose aggression must try to find ways to combat and protect against.

[Usenet] “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin’s Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. (Courtesy Paul Comeaux)

I agree with Tom‘s and Jeff‘s recent posts. On a related topic, Scott Richert of Chronicles recently posed a simple hypothetical to try to suss out the libertarian view. I have replied.

With the danger of the UN turning into a one-world government looking remoter all the time (if anything, the US is more likely to do this), the UN is looking more attractive, if only as a brake on US bellicosity and imperialism.

The latest praiseworthy action by the UN is the ruling by its top court, the International Court of Justice (sometimes called the World Court) that the West Bank barrier is illegal.

In this case, the ICJ was asked “to urgently render an advisory opinion on the following question”:

“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary-General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?”

The court ruled today “that the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank breaches international law and cannot be justified by Israel’s security concerns. ‘The wall … cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order,’ said Judge Shi Jiuyong of China. ‘The construction of such a wall accordingly constitutes breaches by Israel of its obligations under the applicable international humanitarian law.’”

The advisory opinion, “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” should be posted here later today, after the completion of its reading of the opinion. Israel has already said it would ignore the ruling.

I will be curious to see how my former teacher, the brilliant (and, if I am not mistaken, Jewish) Judge Rosalyn Higgins–the British member of the Court–votes in this case.

Re my earlier post: Still waiting for the advisory opinion to be posted, but someone alerted me that War Nut Daily has an article claiming that a leaked copy of the opinion reveals: “Fourteen votes favored the decision and the sole opponent was the American Judge, Thomas Buerghenthal.” If correct, even the (Jewish) British judge, Rosalyn Higgins, voted against the wall. Interestinger and interestinger.

Coda: The advisory opinion is up. It, and some of the separate concurring opinions (including that of Judge Higgins) are quite interesting. There is also a summary available.

The article “Life, Liberty, and ..: Jefferson on Property Rights” by Marco Bassani, in the latest issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, is absolutely fantastic. Articles like this make the JLS well worth reading. This article is bound to be a classic; Bassani is a master of his material; a superb writer; and powerfully backs up his contentions.

It joins my list of all-time favorite articles, which includes many by Hoppe, such as “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” “Banking, Nation States and International Politics,” “How is Fiat Money Possible?-or, The Devolution of Money and Credit,” “In Defense of Extreme Rationalism,” and “On Certainty and Uncertainty, Or: How Rational Can Our Expectations Be?”; and others (that would only interest international lawyers) such as The Importance of “Nutshells” and From Concessions to Service Contracts.

Re-reading Bassani’s great article on Jefferson, about which I recently blogged, I note an interesting quote by Jefferson, from one of his letters. In the letter Jefferson speaks about the self-evident status of certain truths (such as those mentioned in the Declaration of Independence):

These axioms are so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something.

Now what I find interesting is that it is clear that a criminal determined to attack a peaceful man’s body or property is also “not to be reasoned with”. It simply is pointless to try to rationally dissuade someone who does not care about justifying his actions or about the victim’s life. Therefore, it would seem to follow that, since criminals (aggressors) are “not to be reasoned with,” then the rights which the criminal is invading are by this token “self-evident”.

Put it this way: if I claim I have a right to be secure in my person and possessions, why do I need to prove it? To whom do I need to prove it? Either to fellow civilized men, or to those determined to invade these supposed rights. but if the former, no proof is necessary, since these fellow men share my belief in individual rights; and if the latter, any proof is pointless since they are directed, as it were, at the equivalent of animals. One does not talk a tiger out of attacking him.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: A Unified Theory of Everything: a nice, spirited book review, by Andy Duncan of Hoppe’s classic A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.

Or so is the implicit concern of many quoted in Online Battle of Low-Cost Books. Publishers and author activists are getting concerned that “Amazon.com [may be] becoming the Napster of the book business”, with its growing sales of used books. When you find a book on Amazon, used books–very cheap–are often listed next to the new book. And the author (and publisher) make no additional royalty or revenues from sale of the used book. One publishing consultant frets,

Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry …. The question becomes, “How does the book industry address its used-book problem?” There aren’t any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here.

Well, we’ll just have to do something about that! After all, laws are easy to make, just pass ‘em! Can’t have authors not getting a royalty when someone buys a copy of their book, it might reduce authors’ incentives to write. My prediction: the libertarian Cato Institute will soon come out in favor of a federal law (2), based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment (2, 3), that outlaws the re-sale of a used book unless the author gets a cut. JUST kidding.

Supreme Court cases have ruled that it is unconstitutional–cruel and unusual punishment–to execute a mentally retarded or insane or mentally incompetent person. The reasoning for these prohibitions is a bit vague, but the idea is that the state may no kill someone who is unable to appreciate the punishment being carried out.

Given this it is really seems to make no sense that the state could ever carry out an execution, since the death is not instantaneous. For example, if a criminal is lethally injected, no doubt it takes several minutes, or many seconds, for him to die. At first he is unconscious; then when some amount of poison has been administered, he is no doubt injured to a certain point where he is equivalent to a retarded or incompetent person. If the injection were to stop at that point, where the criminal was allowed to survive but he would have suffered brain damage so that he is incompetent, it would presumably be unconstitutional to resume the execution at a later point, since it would be execution of an incompetent. Why then can the execution proceed if there is not a break?

Re Jesse Ogden’s query, “Does it even matter who wins?” I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter whether it matters.

I’m working with an Iraqi attorney on a project. In email I gingerly made the offhand comment, “hope all is going well for you.” He replied wryly, “Well, it

Your boy David Frum has a post about the lack of a “federalist” approach in both opponents and deponents (sayeth not) of the Federal Marriage Amendment. He writes, “For the sake of clarity, at least, we should understand what the senators who vote

Re my post about the Defense of Marriage amendment to the Constitution, a couple of people pointed out that the proponents of the Amendment think it prevents states from having gay marriage, and point to the first sentence in the proposed amendment, “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”

I agree that many proponents, at least the ones I have heard–as well as opponents–seem to think the Amendment prevents states from having gay marriage.

Now the proposed amendment is certainly poorly drafted. No doubt it would be clarified before being ever seriously considered. To repeat, the version I found states:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

Now does the first sentence prevent a state from legislatively providing for gay marriage? I do not think so, for a few reasons.

First, if it did, why are the other sentences necessary? Why say that a state constitution or the federal Constitution shall not be construed to require gay marriage? After all, this amendment is to be in the Constitution itself, and if the first sentence prohibits all gay marriage, then of cousre the federal Constitution can’t be “construed” to require it; and it would not matter if a state constitution did, for it would be in conflict with the federal. Therefore, these other sentences would be superfluous. But by standard constitutional interpretative techniques we have to assume they are in there for a reason, this implies the first sentence does not automatically do anything like this. So it is kind of precatory, but has no effect on its own.

And consider this. Suppose this amendment is enacted. Now California enacts a civil union statute, that says that any two people co-habiting may sign up for a civil union, in which case they will inherit from each other “as if” they are married, can make decisions for each other, can bind each other in debts, have community property etc. Or, instead of saying “as if” they are married, the statute could simply list all the rights and obligations, and these could mirror those in force for married couples. This would not be unconstitutional, would it? It would not violate the amendment, would it?

I think it would clearly not.

Then gay couples start signing up for the civil union. Some of them will no doubt call themselves “married”, and have “marriage” ceremonies. Some of their friends, maybe even employers, will refer to civil-union-partners as “spouses.” Now this private use of langauge is not illegal, or unconstitutional, is it?

Now: Suppose the next year the California legislature simply changes the TITLE of the civil union statute to “Homosexual Marriage Act.” That’s all they change. Surely, it cannot be unconstitutional for an otherwise unconstitutional act to be LABELED a certain way by the legislature, can it? And if it was, the legislature could get around it by simply adopting a non-binding “comment” to the statute and by adopting the habit of referring to it as the “California Homosexual Marriage Act of 2004″. Surely it can’t be illegal or unconstitutional for California legislators to adopt an informal, shorthand label for the act, can it?

***

This gets to the heart of the problem with both sides of the gay marriage debate. They are not clear about whether they are debating substance or semantics. In my view, no conservative or libertarian can have a principled objection to a state recognizing civil unions; it’s just a matter of contract, after all. Therefore, the entire debate seems to be what label should be used in the title of the statute. Does it really matter whether a statute is LABELED “marriage” or “civil union”? Who cares?

Lew’s post about Raico’s great article reminds me of the funny episode about Cato and Palmer versus Raico and the Kaiser. Posts 1, 2, 3.

China decided recently to rescind Pfizer’s (Chinese) patent for Viagra. An official from China’s patent office reportedly said, “We are very cautious when we grant a patent, because a patent means a market, and that can mean allowing the monopolization of a market.” The article noted that the “Viagra pill costs about one yuan (US$0.10) to make but Pfizer sells them in China for 98 yuan a tablet. … The entry of local producers is likely to see the price drop to 22 yuan a pill.”

Just what China needs, more reproduction. Anyway, a step in the right direction from the point of view of property rights.

Lew, you’re right about smoking being cool–and as I pointed out in my very first LRC article back in 2000 (and still the one that generated the most hate mail), it shouldn’t be illegal for kids to smoke!

p.s.: Unlike in 2000, I now have a kid, and have not changed my mind…

Ed Feser’s recent article, The Trouble with Libertarianism (blogged here by Stephen Carson), like your boy Jonah Goldberg and one-hit neocon wonder Francis Fukuyama, has to misconstrue libertarianism in order to attack it. He sets up straw men that are easily knocked down. But the libertarianism that he attacks is not the libertarianism I know.

First, note his definition:

“Libertarianism” is usually defined as the view in political philosophy that the only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens’ dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous.

This is not too far off, but I would say libertarianism is, at its essence (2), simply based on the preference for peaceful interaction and opposition to violent conflict with our neighbors. In short, it is opposed to aggression, the initiation of force against others; or worded differently, the unconsented to use or invasion of the borders of the bodies or property of others. As a consequence of this, we naturally oppose institutionalized aggression, i.e., the state, or at least seek to keep the state within strict limits and to only a few, narrowly-defined functions.

But what makes Feser’s argument an attack on a straw man is his insistence that libertarianism is correct because it is “genuinely neutral between diverse moral and religious worldviews.” Not only tradition or natural-law based versions of libertarianism, but also contractarianism and utilitarian strands of libertarianism “fail to be neutral between moral and religious points of view.”

I find this utterly bizarre. Of course libertarianism is not “neutral.” True, we support a political ideal that does permit individuals freedom to pursue a diverse variety of modes of life. But it does not permit, say, axe-murdering, if that happens to be your gig. No, we aren’t neutral about that, sorry to say. It of course is opposed by its nature to those who want to use the institutionalized force of the state to outlaw non-aggressive behavior that they don’t like.

Libertarians are opposed to aggression. We favor voluntary, peaceful, cooperative interaction between people. So we are not neutral as between the entrepreneur and the criminal, the saint and the socialist , the victim and the aggressor, the civilized man and the savage. We are not neutral at all. I, for one, am not. I hate the latter, and love the former. I would stamp out the latter, for the sake of the former. The criminals are a wretched excuse for humanity, but really just a technical problem. Our fellow, civilized kith and kin are what life is all about.

To emphasize: note that nothing Feser says about us not being “neutral” in any way justifies the initiation of violent force against one’s peaceful neighbors.

Hanah Metchis has a decent article in Reason on some absurd extensions of trademark law. Metchis discusses Geico’s suit against Google for trademark infringement because Google sells targeted ads that might display a competing insurance company’s ad or site when a user searches for “Geico”.

Of course, it’s not surprising that things like this happen when inherently ambiguous and arbitrary rights are granted in “intellectual’ property; such rights necessarily infringe on individuals’ rights to their tangible property.

A car with expressions (patent)! Wow, what a novel idea! I bet no one ever thought of that before.

Herbie the Love Bug and

Speed Buggy, where are you?

BTW, claim 1, a model of clarity, reads:

A vehicle expression operation control system for controlling an expression operation of a vehicle, comprising:

a vehicle condition detecting device for detecting condition of the vehicle, including a state of operation of the vehicle or a state of operation of a device equipped to the vehicle; and

a reaction control device for determining a reaction of the vehicle based on the condition of the vehicle detected by the vehicle condition detecting device to control performance of an expression operation corresponding to the reaction determined, wherein the expression operation corresponds to an expression timing chart to produce a controlled expression state of a plurality of expression states for a controlled time interval.

These people can vote. The CNN caption reads, “New Mexico delegate Frances Williams wears a hat illustrating her state’s history.”

Mr. Feser replied to my earlier blogpost. His reply, reprinted below (with permission), and my response to it, follows:

Dear Mr. Kinsella,

A friend directed me to your reply to my article. Unfortunately, like others who’ve criticized it, you don’t seem to have read it very carefully. Some comments on your comments:

1. I didn’t “attack” libertarianism. Rather, I attacked the claims that (a) libertarianism is neutral between comprehensive doctrines, and (b) that there is a common core to all the main theories usually classified as “libertarian.” All of this leaves open the possibility that some doctrine usually classified as “libertarian” is true; indeed, I am personally inclined to accept some version of Aristotelian-natural law based
libertarianism, combined with insights drawn from Hayek (though these days
I’d probably prefer the label “classical liberal” or, with Hayek, “Burkean
Whig,” to the label “libertarian,” which, partly for the reasons I discuss
in the article, is often extremely misleading). Moreover, someone familiar
with my other writings on libertarianism — as I know you are, since you
once sent me a nice note about one of my articles — would realize that
“attacking libertarianism” wasn’t quite what I intended.

2. Yes, I realize that no libertarian claims that his view is neutral between _every single_ worldview, however bizarre, any more than Rawls does. (Obviously, ax-murdering is, as you say, out.) What I said was that libertarians generally take their view to be neutral between the main worldviews represented in contemporary pluralistic societies: this sort of thing is usually what is meant by the claim that a view like Rawlsian liberalism or libertarianism is “neutral,” and it is this claim that was my target. (For an example of this sort of libertarian claim to “neutrality,”
think of Nozick’s concept of the minimal state as a “meta-utopia” in which
different visions of how society should be ordered can be tried out.)

3. It is simply no good to say that “non-aggression” etc. is the core to all versions of libertarianism, because the real question is what counts as “aggression” — after all, NO ONE, libertarian or otherwise, claims to be in favor of aggression, so what is the point of appealing to “non-aggression” as if it answered all questions? In fact it doesn’t answer anything, because what counts as aggression can only be determined once we’ve first determined what rights we have and why we have them. Does abortion count as aggression? Does refusing to legalize same-sex marriage count as aggression? Does outlawing stem-cell research count as aggression?
Different versions of libertarianism will give very different answers to
these questions, because they have very different conceptions of rights.

The point of my article was to suggest that the differences between these versions of libertarianism are often far more important and interesting than the similarities. Libertarians of a Lockean, Aristotelian, or Hayekian bent are, in my view, miles away from libertarians of the contractarian or utilitarian type. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that the latter are closer to modern liberals and the former closer to modern conservatives than the two camps of libertarians are to each other. That many
libertarians don’t see this is, I think, a consequence of their not paying
sufficient attention to the very different implications that the foundations
one gives libertarianism might have for what _counts_ as “libertarianism.”
(If you want to see just how radically different the Aristotelian-Hayekian
sort of libertarianism is going to be from other varieties, once its
implications are consistently drawn out, you might find of interest my
article “Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children,” forthcoming
in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.)

Best,

Ed Feser

My reply is as folllows. First, let me make it clear that I meant no disrespect to the Fesenator, nor that I uncharitably construed his words. But after all, his article was entitled “The Trouble with Libertarianism,” hardly something a diehard, hardcore, irascible libertarian like me can be expected to resist responding to (see, e.g., my responses to previous attacks on libertarianism by Jonah Goldberg and Francis Fukuyama).

I do not think it matters much whether Feser’s argument is characterized as an “attack” on “libertarianism” per se or not. The main question for me is: has Feser set forth any arguments that show that the main libertarian case is wrong? If he does not, his title is inapropos and frankly, I am (qua libertarian) completely uninterested. If he does not assert or maintain that libertarianism is flawed or incorrect, then I withdraw my response.

If, on the other hand, he does for whatever reason claim that libertarianism is flawed, then I feel compelled to take issue with this. I disagree with this. Now the question in this case is, what is his argument? As I said in my previous post, his main argument seems to be that libertarianism somehow rests upon the idea that it is “neutral between comprehensive doctrines” and also “that
there is a common core to all the main theories usually classified as ‘libertarian.’”

I’ll be honest that this country boy’s eyes glaze over when philosopher and humanities types use terms like “neutral between comprehensive doctrines” or even “common core.” In fact this makes my trigger finger itch. Just kidding.

I went right to what I saw as the heart of the matter, when I read this, so I’m sorry Feser thinks I didn’t “seem to have read it very carefully.” The bottom line to me is: does Feser mount any kind of case against the primary libertarian belief? This belief is, as I noted, that the unconsented-to use of another’s body or property–what is commonly referred to as aggression–is unjustiifed. It has nothing to do with being “neutral between comprehensive doctrines”. Nor does its justification.

So to be honest, I find Feser’s attack to be completely beside the point. That is why I did not delve into the details (that, and I am short on time). I really don’t mind if Feser wants to prove libertarianism is not “neutral between comprehensive doctrines”, any more than I mind if he wants to prove libertarianism “has no position on the length of the universe.” This is because the principled opposition to aggression does not rely in the slightest upon being “neutral between comprehensive doctrines”. In fact, as I said before, this view is NOT “neutral.” It is anti-aggression, and pro-victim.

Let’s make it even clearer. To disprove libertarianism’s central contention–that aggression is unjustified–one must actually try to (a) show that aggression is actually justified (in some cases); or (b) show that what we view as aggression (e.g., murder and other private crime; or activities of the state such as taxation, regulation, conscription) is not actually aggression. I honestly see no other logical alternative.

Now I ask you: Does Feser’s demonstration (if it is that) that libertarianism is not “neutral between comprehensive doctrines” show either thing? Of course it does not. Feser may be interested in this and indeed it may be an interesting thing to show, but I fail to see how it shows that aggression is justified; or that the state does not necessarily employ aggression.

Accordingly, I conclude that our view that aggression is unjustified and the state is inherently aggressive (and therefore unjustified) is simply not challenged by Feser’s opinion or observation that libertarianism isn’t “neutral between comprehensive doctrines”!

Of course, I am focusing with a monomania on aggression. But then, I am a libertarian. Shall I apologize for that? To whom? The savages? In the words of The Mighty Thor, I say thee … NAY!

The looney chick that stalked Catherine Zeta-Jones provides a good example of why stalking should be a punishable offense; why it is a type of aggression. As discussed in pp. 68-69 of this article, the section on Standing Threats (p. 80) of this article, pp. 65-66 of this article. Certainly, under the “are we better off with or without her” test, this stalker chick should be put in jail. (Pat Tinsley and I will address some of these issues in great detail in a forthcoming paper, “Causation and Aggression”.)

Because, for just a short while–maybe 30 seconds–the other night, watching various speakers at the Democrat Convention, even I felt a brief tug of hope, “hey, maybe they can improve things … maybe they can improve the economy, improve our standing in the world, make us get along better…” Then I snapped out of it, and shuddered. If they can suck even me in, a lifelong hater of Democrats and other socialists…

Following up on recent blogposts: The Fesenator wrote me back:

Thanks for your note, and for your latest comments on the Rockwell blog. My impression from what you say is that we probably don’t disagree here about anything of substance. My article was intended to criticize, not libertarianism, but rather certain claims _about_ libertarianism, such as the claim that it is, as Rawls’s position aims to be, “neutral” between “reasonable comprehensive doctrines.” (I know the jargon is ugly, but discussions of this issue since the time Rawls wrote have tended to adopt it, so I’m afraid I’m stuck with it.)

I gather that you don’t necessarily disagree with this point as long as it does not entail that your own version of libertarianism is false — and as far as I can tell, it does not entail this, any more than it entails the falsity of the Aristotelian and Hayekian versions of libertarianism I favor.

If you wonder whether there are libertarians who do care whether libertarianism is “neutral,” though, you might check out Will Wilkinson’s reply (2) to my article on TCS. Wilkinson seems to think it is desperately important to defend the claim that libertarianism is neutral in this Rawlsian sense, so my article was by no means directed against a view that no libertarians are committed to. I plan to respond to Wilkinson in another TCS piece.

As I wrote Ed back–if all Ed is discussing is whether libertarianism is “neutral” in some sense, that is fine but it simply does not interest me–at least, not qua libertarian. All I care about–qua libertarian–is whether the claim that aggression is unjustified (and I do believe the content of “aggression” is well understood), is true or not. And, of course, applications of this, details, investigations into what aggression is, in the gray or difficult issues, etc.

Wilkinson does go on about “Liberal Order and Liberal Neutrality” but my eyes tend to glaze over at this stuff. I don’t see how showing there is some kind of “neutrality” in libertarianism is either necessary or sufficient to justify it. In the end, libertarianism is about being civilized: about co-existing peacefully with one’s neighbors; cooperating with them rather than violently struggling with them; respecting their stuff rather than trying to take it and treating it like it’s yours.

Now we have this to a certain degree; we have a certain amount of voluntary respect for others’ rights already, otherwise we would not have obtained the degree of prosperity and civilization we do have. Now the question of why or how or whether this view is justified is an interesting one; so is the question of to what degree it is followed, or could be followed, or will be followed; and the question of what things can be done or will be done to achieve a higher compliance with the libertarian idea; and so is the issue of what is one’s personal ethical obligation in terms of devoting part of one’s own life to strategizing, activism, rhetoric, etc.

But none of these are libertarianism per se. To be a libertarian is to endorse the simple proposition that peaceful interaction is preferable to violence. It does not mean one believes we have liberty; or that perfect liberty will ever be achieved. It does not commit one to being some irritating activist who thinks it’s his duty to vote a certain way or “fight” for liberty. It does not mean that one even thinks that true liberty is possible.

Re Norm’s post–sure, Kerry’s a monster. But he’s gonna win. Let’s face it, the country has become ineradicably in the thrall of egalitarianism, political correctness, and redistrubution of wealth. The hounds have been loosed; there is not even any pretense any more that redistribution of wealth and socialism is bad, that economic reality matters.

Do a thought experiment. Picture Carter (vs. Reagan). Picture the prissy, lispy, sneering, stiff, scary Gore. Remember the goofy, wobble-headed, effete, above-it-all Dukakis.

Now picture Kerry. He is not like the others. He is not goofy. He has experience and gravitas. And who is he up against?–that doofus Bush.

Mark my words. Kerry will win. Big. Face it. Get ready for tax increases, cave-ins to immigration, an administration riddled with token but incompetent minorities preening with their newfound power and position. Get ready for a new generation of liberal judges.

I’m not happy about it. I’m almost embarassed to say I would prefer Bush to win. But Bush would be better on taxes, and much better on federal judge appointments. Other than this, Kerry should not be much worse than Bush.

On the Law of War and Peace, Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius’s classic 1625 treatise on international law, is available online. This translation is inferior to the more recent one by Louise Loomis, but still great. Bush should read this!

From The Economist, an article on the astonishing new Georgian minister of economics: Face value: A different sort of oligarch: Having got rich in Russia, Kakha Bendukidze now wants to be the world’s most capitalistic politician.

He [Bendukidze] says that Georgia should be ready to sell

340 people were killed in a supermarket fire in Paraguay. The reason–security staff locked doors to prevent customers from running out without paying. Doubtless the owner and guards are to blame. But would this have happened in a free society? Unlikely. In a capitalist society theft would be radically lower, if only because things would be cheaper and people would have more money. There would be much less concern about shoplifting or theft. See, you can almost always find a way to blame government for tragedies. In this case, government socialism and regulation impoverish people, making theft more likely and making everyone distrust each other, making it more likely the guards would be ordered to bar the doors even in an emergency situation.

For those with a legal bent–I’ve arranged for an Iraqi law firm to provide a chapter elaborating on Iraq’s rapidly-changing commercial laws for a legal treatise I edit. Here’s an excerpt of an unedited draft of the chapter.