Personal Libertarianism

In Praise of Social Security and Welfare

2011-07-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

Story Number One:
An eight year old girl spends every day of her life subject to seizures. Sometimes, she would experience a dozen a day, making any kind of normal childhood impossible. She cannot go to school, or play dates, or sleep overs. The doctors have no answers, though they try every drug they know to relieve the symptoms. The approved treatments are useless. The parents are getting desperate.

They stumble on a report that says stem cell treatments may provide a permanent solution to the seizures. However, the treatments are not available in the U.S., and the insurance company will not pay for a trip to Germany. The total bill for the first round of treatments is expected to be around $40,000, but it may as well be $40 million as the parents are strapped and already deeply in debt. What to do?

There are no government agencies to turn to. No programs. No institutions. No charities. The family is all alone with their plight, it seems.

Not entirely. The parents put out a call for assistance. They organize events for family and friends, and friends of friends, to attend and help pitch in toward the little girl's treatments. Through extended connections with hundreds of people, some of whom only have a passing connection with the family, donations start coming in. Event upon event the bank account grows until the total amount needed is assembled.

The little girl goes to Germany, receives treatment for two weeks, and comes back to the U.S. No more seizures. She begins to make developmental progress. She has a chance at a real life.

Story Number Two:
An elderly woman is living alone a dozen miles from the nearest town. She has been blessed with a lifetime of good health, but she is beginning to feel the frailty of her years. One evening, during a particularly bad snowstorm, she has the overwhelming feeling of being trapped and experiences her first panic attack. Since all of her grown sons are out of town, she calls the one who is driving a truck somewhere in Midwest and asks for help. The son calls a neighbor who then runs a snowplow through the old woman's driveway to help ease her mind. When a fuse blows that night, another neighbor stops by to change it. A third neighbor stops in with some cooked food. The woman's mind is eased, her house is lit, and her food needs are met.

The Web of Connections:
In both stories, it was the rich web of social connections that identified the need, assembled the resources, and solved the problem. One was a sustained event that took months to complete, the other was an instant problem that needed prompt attention. Human beings, one at a time, some with only a minor relationship with the victims, stepped up to fill the gaps until the needs were met. No institutions or government programs were contacted, applied to, or enlisted to assist. This was man helping man.

I tell these stories partly because we forget that real social security comes from our social network. We can, and often we do, watch out for one another. That natural compassion that we all (except perhaps sociopaths) feel for each other is our surest, most effective, and most dependable form of security. Government programs can be cut, modified, re-defined, understaffed, defunded and otherwise made unreliable, but the human social network is always there. Indeed, the social network doesn't take a day off. Nor does it have application fees or waiting periods. There are no queues, nor are there waiting lists. The network does not rely on one politician, or one bureaucrat. The network is a sticky web of intersecting concern and compassion by an unknown and unknowable number of people.

The network of social security and welfare has one vulnerability, however. It is susceptible to apathy, the feeling that it's not my problem...that's what we have (name your favorite institution) for. The more powerful the institution (the Church, United Way, the Federal Government) the more apathetic the network. An apathetic network of friends and family is like having no friends or family.

The irony of a compassionate people setting up institutions, especially government institutions, is that it tends to remove the need for the individual to act on behalf of a person in need. Let the government do it, we think. That's what we pay taxes for. But then little girls aren't sent to Germany for needed treatment, and old women don't get their driveways plowed out, their fuse changed, and a hot meal delivered to them late at night.

Privately funded organizations, like the United Way, at least have private commitment to their missions to help people. While an individual contributor may feel that 'they gave at the office' when their assistance is most needed, it takes a conscious effort to agree to support them and their mission. In a pinch, contributors may be tapped to give some more, or to volunteer, or assist in some other way. Government run institutions do not have public participation. They are funded by forced extractions that are often resented by the taxpayers, and they exercise their power rigidly and bureaucratically. They form a wide grid that, while very sturdy, has major gaps between the girders. What's more is that the typical taxpayer comes to believe the government institution has plenty of resources at its' disposal, no matter how meager that funding really is or how dire the needs really are. The people, though concerned about their fellow man, become apathetic about becoming personally involved. The web is no longer sticky. It becomes slick with apathy and needy people start falling through.

Ironically, if there were fewer institutions, and in particular government programs, to deal with human problems, we would naturally have to watch out for each other more. Each and every one of us would become another sticky strand of the network that would catch people as they fell. True caring. True compassion, and determination to use it.

That is what I call real social security.

I wonder how my neighbor is doing...I haven't seen him for a while.

(p.s.--both stories are 100% true)

Faith Based Economics

2011-06-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

A person makes an product he doesn't need but that he is willing to trade for things he does need. There is a faith, a deep assumption, that there will be other people making products for which he can swap. He offers his products and other people offer theirs. Trades are made, and everyone is richer. Repeat, and the economy rolls on.

I have just turned Keynesian Economics on its' head.

How so? Because I have not relied on the manipulation of the money supply to make trades possible. I have simply concentrated on a simple truth: there must be production before there can be trade. Keynesian theory holds that there cannot be production without demand, and thus the need for a surplus money supply to always be hunting for more goods to buy, which then 'stimulates' production. Get it? Keynesianism says production comes second, and the clammoring for goods comes first.

But that is not how it really works. People may say they need or want a good, but, until they actually lay their money down to buy it, producers can only guess. Consumers rarely contract for their purchases in advance of production. The farmer does not take orders and prepayment first, then plant the crops to be delivered in the future. No, the farmer takes a chance...he has faith...that he will be able to exchange his crops for money or goods someone else produced that he wants more. The demand is in the production; the demand is the supply.

But the Federal Reserve, and the Keynesian academics, have said that they must manipulate the money via low interest rates to spark consuming in order to encourage production. One can make the observation that goods not sold or exchanged will clog the market place and cause the producers of those goods to stop producing, thereby causing the entire chain of production to slow down or cease altogether. People will lose their jobs. Companies will go bankrupt. So the Federal Reserve must provide 'liquidity' via inflating of the money supply to keep the goods flowing through the marketplace.

But think about it...in their theory traders are coming to the market with nothing to trade. They have no goods or services to offer, just pieces of paper with which they garner some of the marketplace's goodies. They have a sweet deal. No need to sweat to produce, say, a chair to trade for a wheelbarrow. Instead, they can cheaply print up (or borrow) some paper with numbers, and exchange that paper for the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow makers is impressed with the quick sales. The market seems to be booming, but in fact it is short one chair. The traders who accepted the new money have less to choose from, as there is no chair in sight. As the wheelbarrow maker tries to spend his new money on the limited numbers of goods available, he will bid up prices and end up with less than he expected from his original trade.

The faith that underlies the entire market is an expectation of the availability of tradable goods. To produce a wheelbarrow with no hope of trading for a chair means there is no reason to produce the wheelbarrow in the first place. Production is an act of faith in other's production. If that faith is disrupted, then the amount of produced goods dwindles and the economy declines.

Ahem...I just Googled "supply side economics" on a hunch that I was not the first to think of the market economy as a place where people brought their goods to trade. Sure enough, the description for 'supply side economics' in Wikipedia is almost exactly what I have written above. I was pleased to see that the article referenced the Austrians and Classical economics as the ultimate 'supply siders,' but I was less happy with the general impression that the theory had been disproved. In fact, a tertiary belief, that tax revenues would go up as tax rates went down, was pretty convincingly disproven except in certain circumstances. The rest of the theory, stands.

So much for my 'original' thoughts.

Adam Kokesh Is Dancing

2011-05-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

Adam Kokesh is dancing.

We are surrounded, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 360 degrees by a multitude of tiny incremental stupid rules and taxes. Not a single one of them is cause for going to the barracades, but taken together they are more oppressive than the worst dictates of the worst dictators. And our police forces enforce these tiny stupid rules with a violent relish that any tin-pot dictator would approve.

If we think that a fascist state will arrive at our doorstep wearing full riot gear and demanding our obedience, we will be wrong. It will arrive, instead, by stealth and by almost imperceptible increments. It will, almost unnoticed, filch an extra penny from our pockets or require one more line of information on our applications. We think we will see it coming and that we will confront it like free men...with force if necessary. But it is already here, and despite our determination to resist, we cannot identify a single entity to resist against. The mailman who delivers the tax bill? The TV anchor who reports on the new ID rules? The Congressman who doesn't answer mail or phone calls, and whose vote only accounted for 1/3 of 1% of the votes that established the bureaucracy that hired the employees who contracted for the consultant who wrote the regulations that were published without a name?

There is no one to resist against.

The police, better known as Law Enforcement, are 'just doing their jobs' when they see that the rules are followed. They may even sympathize with your plight, but they have mouths to feed just like you. To keep their jobs, they will do whatever they have to, including the ocasional body slam or choke hold against a person who refuses to follow the tiniest of rules. It's not their fault, they say. They are just enforcing the rules. All the rules, no matter how stupid. That's their job. If you don't like the rules, change them. In the meantime, put your hands behind your back, and give them your name, address,....

Those of us who are advocates of liberty are more sensative than most to these restrictions on human freedom. Every little new rule grates on us, but we generally act like most people and learn to adapt. We may complain, but we pay the new taxes, show our ID's when requested, and stand in line for our new permission slips. We do this because it does not seem worth the effort, indeed it seems silly, to confront The Man over another dollar, or a five second flashing of ID card, or one more line asking for gender, date of birth, or race.

But there comes a point when the last indignity is the last one you can bear. To 'normal' people, your defiance is inexplicable. Why not go through the full body scanner? It just takes a few seconds; you're worrying about nothing and inconveniencing everyone.... You are making a mountain out of a molehill, they say. But you see it differently: you see the molehill is on top of the mountain.

So you break. And you do something silly, or at least seemingly silly to others. But it is important to you because, despite all the repressions you have put up with throughout your entire life, you will not take this last one. This last stupid, stupid, stupid rule. You protest, stupidly, doing something silly and over-the-top and out of proportion and crazy.

Adam Kokesh is dancing.

I can see from my life that the line in the sand is behind me, not in front. I should have Just Said No long ago. What will the trigger be that will make me the laughing stock of the neighborhood and an embarrassment to my family? I know it's coming, but I don't know what it is.

What's yours?

Letter to Russ Carnahan

2011-05-28T05:16:00.000-07:00

I usually write letters to Russ Carnahan to bash him for his bafflingly stupid votes. Today, however, I found something to congratulate him for:

I would like to commend Rep. Carnahan for voting against the renewal of the Patriot Act. The invasive provisions in that act provide a rich opportunity for various law enforcement agencies, as well as politicians, to collect information on, intimidate, manipulate, and persecute otherwise peaceful citizens. The Fourth Amendment is being violated daily with hardly a peep of concern by our representatives.

I supported Rand Paul's principled stand against government encroachment on our right to be secure in our persons and our papers, unless there is credible probable cause for the commission of a crime, and unless there is a warrant signed by a neutral third party judge who certifies there is legitimate probable cause. In our current fear-based environment, even the most innocent of citizens is subject to suspicion, harrassment, and surveillance, all in the name of making us 'secure' against a real, but vastly overblown, threat of possible 'terrorism.'

There is always a risk that someone may do something violent to others, but the compensating factor in a free society is that at least we have our freedom. However, when a society focuses on absolute security, it never succeeds in acheiving that goal, and in the process it takes away our freedom, too. Terrorism may be bad, but terrorism coupled with a police state is much much worse.

I hope Rep. Carnahan will continue to vote against the destruction of our civil liberties and help support measures that will remove the heavy hand of government from our daily lives.

Mr. Paul Goes To Washington

2011-05-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

Just a short note: Freshman Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has taken a principled stand against the renewal of the infamous Patriot Act. Despite the general inclination of the Senate to 'go along to get along,' Rand Paul has begun a fillibuster to prevent the Senate from rubber stamping the Patriot Act without a debate. He apparently held the Senate floor for seven hours yesterday in order to frustrate Harry Reid's (D-Nevada) attempt to rush the bill through for a vote.

Good for Rand.

The Patriot Act is an unreadable mishmash of legalese that handed to the FBI, CIA, and NSA extensive powers read and listen to our personal communications, as well as to pry into our personal lives via the issuance of secret National Security Letters and draconian penalties for disclosing to anyone the fact that one has been issued to you.

The Fourth Amendment prevents the Federal government from intruding into our personal lives without probable cause and without a search warrent signed by a neutral judge. The Patriot Act does away with any such niceties. Instead, it has given the National Security State license to run amok with no effective recourse for citizens to stop them.

Rand is proving to be the greatest champion of traditional American liberties, possibly even eclipsing his father.

Bin Laden Is Dead, Remember The Maine!

2011-05-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

I waited patiently for the President's big announcement. The talking heads on TV had assured me that Mr. Obama would momentarily appear at the podium and deliver some startling news. Some great news. OK, some news about Bin Laden. Earth shattering news about Bin Laden having been...captured or killed! Captured or killed...in a raid...in Pakistan...

And so the news dribbled out over the next hour while we waited for the procrastinator-in-chief to appear and tell us what we already knew. Thousands of young people gathered outside the White House, many waving little American flags, chanting 'USA, USA, USA,' having been informed by tweets and a spontaneous desire to show support for our President and our Global War On Terror.

The actual speech was mercifully short. It had few details. It was, after an hour of prepping by every talking head that ever drew a paycheck from a network, anticlimactic. Bin Laden had been killed in a firefight in Pakistan. We were in possession of his body.

From the moment I heard the words, I had two conflicting thoughts: I was wrong to believe Bin Laden had been dead since 2001, and this latest announcement was one great big fat lie. The only way to resolve this was to wait for the evidence.

A photo of the dead Bin Laden quickly appeared on Pakistani TV, and was published in the UK Guardian. It was not, as far as I know, issued by the U.S. government, and the photo was quickly exposed by bloggers as a photo shopped fake. Another photo appeared yesterday, again quickly exposed as fake.

By the morning after the announcement, the body had been dumped into the sea. Hmmm. Then it was said the body had been positively identified as Bin Laden through DNA tests, yet skeptics noted that DNA tests generally take a couple of days. The comeback was that the tests are new, faster, and done aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier. Hmmmm. Not verifiable at this time. Then the White House said the photos might be too gruesome to publish, with brains hanging out and all. I don't doubt that, and I personally don't really want to see it...but how else am I to assess the truthfulness of Mr. Obama's claims?

Today, May 4th, the government is backtracking and saying the events did not unfold exactly as originally announced. Bin Laden was not armed. Nor did he use a wife as a shield. Both were shot dead. Hmmmm. What else will we learn in time?

So here I am, once again thinking...this is all a big fat lie to be lined up with all the other big fat lies that have caused the world so much harm in the last 100 years.

A short history of lies:

1. Sinking of the USS Maine: Caused by a coal fire, not the Spanish navy. Tens of thousands of innocent Filipinos are put in concentration camps or die in our dirty war sparked by a lie.

2. Sinking of the Lusitania: Was carrying munitions, which made it a military target, but the U.S. government didn't tell the civilian passengers they were at risk. The Germans were within the rules of war to torpedo it. Nevertheless, the U.S. uses the sinking as the reason to get us into WWI, which extended the war, killed millions more, resulted in the punitive Treaty of Versailles, and gave Hitler something to rally the German people around.

3. Pearl Harbor: Hardly a sneak attack, it was the calculated result of U.S. foreign policy to push the Japanese into making the first "overt act." Our soldiers and sailors were left, undefended and blind, as bait for a trap set to ensnare the Japanese and allow the U.S. to enter WWII. Millions died.

4. Gulf of Tonkin: The attack never happened. The President knew it, but he used it as an excuse to send ground troops into Vietnam. 58,000 Americans died, and about 2 million Vietnamese.

5. Gulf War I: We green lighted Iraq's attack on Kuwait, then we were shocked, SHOCKED, that Iraq invaded Kuwait. The rest is history. Hundreds of thousands died.

6. Gulf War II: No weapons of mass destruction. But that was the official reason for our attack on Iraq, with a little Bin Laden fear mongering thrown in to sweeten the story. All lies. About a million Iraqis died.

I could go on about the Jessica Lynch story, the Pat Tillman fable, and the most recent proven complete fabrication by Susan Rice that the Libyan army was issuing Viagra to it's soldiers as they went on a killing and raping spree. All completely made up stories intended to manipulate the American public. Sadly, Ms Rice still has her White House job.

Our government has lied repeatedly. Pathologically. That is not to say they don't sometimes tell the truth, but for god's sake, we can't be expected to know the truth from the fabrications unless we see evidence. "Because we said so" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Hate Mail?

2011-04-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

I received my first piece of...hate mail? I'm not sure how to interpret it. Maybe not hate for me...certainly hate for Ayn Rand...but by association, me too? I'm just not sure.

I had read an anti-Rand article in the Post Dispatch in which the writer mistated Rand's philosophy. I subsequently sent a Letter to the Editor to clarify the 'selfish' versus 'unselfish' issue, noting that Rand's philosophy did not prohibit donating to causes and helping people who you felt you wanted to help.

The response in the on-line discussion was swift and brutal from one particular detractor. I learned I was trying to keep the poor man down and enrich the rich. I wrote a couple of follow-up notes to my critic (I kept it clean, no name calling, no insinuation that his dog had more brains), and left it at that.

A couple of days later I received, in the mail, an small envelope with my name and address hand-scrawled in messy block letters on an angle across the front. No return address. When I opened it, I found a single sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, folded mutiple times to fit the small envelope, with the following message written in the same hastily drawn block letters:

AYN RAND IS A PHONY AND A FRAUD

That was all. No name. No 'Sincerely.' I'm not sure why the writer took the time and effort, and the 44 cent stamp, to express that particular message. Not exactly an argument. Hell, I don't know what to make of it, other than that it was supposed to make me think otherwise about Rand.

Maybe I would have, if the writer could have told me why Rand is a 'phony and a fraud.' I'm open to new evidence. But none was offered, so I am left to wonder what information the writer had that I do not.

Rand, and anyone who speaks well of her, elicits these kinds of responses. To some extent, Rand deserved it, as I noted in an earlier post. She was abrasive and she enjoyed labeling people in uncomplimentary ways. So she got back what she gave. Still, the over-the-top emotionalism of her detractors is puzzling.

Oh well, this letter goes into my 'keepers' as a kind of trophy. The menacing quality of it is too...weird...to discard.

Atlas Shrugged: a Reconsideration

2011-04-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

I am rereading Atlas Shrugged.

When I was in high school, a couple of self-described 'socialists' verbally pinned me to the wall and peppered me with questions to which I had no answers. My mile wide/inch deep opinions were quickly exposed, and my stuttering confusion was obvious to everyone. Growing up in a conservative Republican household does not really prepare one to do intellectual battle with the forces of evil...hell...I would have lost an intellectual fight with a stone.

So, in my embarrassment, I had three choices: shut up, accept the 'socialist' arguments (this was during the Cold War and this was NOT going to happen), or find some answers on my own. My visit to the local library yielded almost nothing on the subject of free markets or capitalism. The only book I found in the card catalog, circa 1973, was "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal," by Ayn Rand.

What a mind-blowing treasure trove! The book was not just a defense of capitalism, it was an attack on all non-capitalist systems. The logic was direct and powerful. It gave me live ammunition to use against my socialist tormentors...but it also opened up a divide between myself and mainstream conservatives.

At seventeen, I took on "Atlas Shrugged." If any book ever ruined a young man, this was it. The novel is over 1100 pages long, but I remember being so caught up in the story that I was disappointed when I had finished it. I had gotten sucked in. Life in the book was more real than the life I was living. This is not an uncommon phenomenon among young readers of Rand...that's how most 'Randoids' are created. I spent several years believing the answers to damned near any question could be found in one of the innumerable speeches, especially Galt's speech. I was insufferable to my friends and anyone unfortunate enough to be caught around me. I had the worst intellectual disease one can have: absolute certainty.

The circles I travelled in, however, did not think highly of Rand. She, her philosophy, and her novels, were denigrated as elitist, doggerel, simplistic, and unreadable. Though I initially vehemently disagreed, I faced three of decades of dismissive statements by uncountable academics, friends, pundits, and family. I ultimately came to believe that Rand was a flawed philosopher with mediocre writing skills. Whenever I dared to come to the defense of Atlas Shrugged, I usually started with "I know it is a deeply flawed novel, but...."

Let me apologize to Rand, post mortem. Atlas is a wonderful story. It is written with power, and color, and depth, and sensitivity. Contrary to what her critics claim, the story is internally consistent, the characters are complex, and the prose is direct...with pejorative power. This latter trait...the derogatory words used to describe commonly accepted political, economic, moral, and philosophical positions...makes her entertaining and enlightening to those who agree with her, but utterly disgusting to those who do not. Thus she is a lightning rod.

While I am always surprised at the intensity of the venom directed at Rand and her writings, I should not be. To a great extent, Rand gets back what she gives. She labels those who advocate for a welfare state "looters." Ok, I get it. Just like looters, they take from rightful owners, so they are morally and functionally little different from a common thief, albeit with the goal of "helping" people. Nevertheless, using the term "looters" virtually guarantees that advocates of the welfare state will cease to seriously consider the arguments put forward and instead strike back with their own put-downs. If Rand was intending to win over the people she thought were wrong headed "looters" with the force of her logic and the power of her words, she might have considered reading 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' before deciding how to label them. "Looters" and "moochers" was not a good place to start, because the push back resulted in similar name calling, such as "fascist," "Darwinian," "power worshipper," "egotistical," and "cult leader." Discussion of Rand usually gets no farther than this. The vocabulary gets in the way.

Her abrasiveness toward the people she believed held a faulty ideology aside, what about the other accusations? Prose style? Character development? Plot line?

Prose:
Rand's writing style is unique. Some people don't like it. I do. Hemingway had economy of words. Carlyle had biting verbosity. Shakespeare had poetry. Rand had an argument. She worked her ideas over with argumentative insistence, drilling down, down, through her characters and through their language to find the underlying premises. The style, therefore, seems to be direct, and as I said earlier, pejorative. If you agree with her, her language is celebratory. Yes!, you say, finally someone calling a spade a spade! If you disagree, however, it is doggerel. Eleven hundred pages of doggerel.

Characterization:
I used to believe Rand wrote two dimensional characters. Good guys. Bad guys. Stick figures spouting philosophy. Upon rereading Atlas, however, nothing could be further from the truth.
How did the critics miss it? How did I miss it? The self-torture of Hank Reardon. The crushing loneliness of Dagny Taggart. The conflicting loves of Francisco d'Anconia? One must understand their inner lives if one is to understand the things that they do and say. Far from being purple prose, the language these characters use provides the clues to their thoughts as they attempt to reconcile their inner conflicts. Rand leaves us the bread crumbs to follow, but we, the readers, must be willing to follow. Without understanding the inner conflicts, we cannot make sense of Hank's coldness and his inexplicable insults toward Dagny, the woman he loves, at Wyatt's house. Or Francisco's aloofness punctuated by tears. Or Dagny rejecting Hank. Many readers will refuse to follow, for reason's mentioned above, so the characterizations seem strangely stiff and bizarre. For example, they often refer to the sex scenes as sadistic/masochistic rape scenes because they cannot understand the push and pull going on in the characters' psyches. There is more to the characters than appears on the surface. It's a pity it has taken me many years to fully appreciate the depth of the characterizations, and it is unlikely the negative critics will ever discover it.

Plot:
When viewing a play, it has been said that an audience member has an obligation to suspend belief or the play cannot work. I think the same is true for reading a novel. I will admit that I have read novels that I could not 'get into' because for one reason or another I refused to suspend my disbelief. I never had that problem with Atlas Shrugged. Viewed from the inside, the plot development is internally coherent. Actions and events flow from their antecedents and further the story and the themes. I find the plot to be illustrative of the process by which societies go into decline, and so from that standpoint it is also coherent outside the story. Critics have dissed the plot as 'contrived' because it involves things that haven't happened (the collapse of the economy), or unlikely to happen (new source of energy from static electricity, or the disappearance of the most productive members of society...correction...that DID happen in Eastern Europe during the Brain Drain after WWII). Yet critics forget that fiction can do this...all it demands is internal consistency, not scientific proof. I cannot fault the plot. I find it an acceptable frame on which to hang the characters and the themes.

My new-found, or re-found, appreciation of Atlas Shrugged, and Ayn Rand, comes at a time when much of what she warned of is coming true. The corporatism, or crony-capitalism, of our modern society (Think G.E., Halliburton, Boeing) looks eerily like Orren Boyle's Associated Steel, or Paul Larken's mines. Government 'experts' on energy, the environment, and technology sound like Dr. Ferris from the State Science Institute, and the executive orders of Barack Obama sound like the pronouncements of Wesley Mouch. Is life imitating art? Or was Rand onto something when she said the primary evil in the world is the acceptance of the creed that we must give up our selves for the good of our communities and the country. President Obama recently opined how it is good to sacrifice some people (the rich) for the common good (a balanced national budget). This could have come directly out of the pages of Atlas...but the critics would have considered it nothing but exaggerated 'tea bagger' paranoia. Rand anticipated Obama because she recognized, and named, the principle under which he operates. Obama is just the latest in a long line of men who saw it as their right to demand sacrifice from others...then to stand there and collect the booty.

If Rand was right, and I believe she was, then the lessons of Atlas Shrugged have not yet been learned. Collectivism is still on the march. Our lives are not our own, from the assertion of government power to extract any tax they wish, to the power to regulate any behavior they don't like, to the power to lock away and torture people they fear (Bradley Manning?). I know we will not have learned our lesson until we can say "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will not live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."

Sharing a good piece of writing

2011-03-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

I wrote a pretty good piece over at the Daily Paul. Unfortunately, I'm not able to cut and paste to put it here, so below is the link. www.dailypaul.com/160508/violence-vs-non-violence-musings-on-a-conundrum

A Light Came On

2011-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

A light came on in my head. A moment of insight that still has me reeling. No, it's nothing profound that has never been thought of or said before. It's my own little spark of connection, simplification, and...awe.

My entire adult life has been spent reading about, thinking about, and talking about libertarianism, always struggling with the issues of public policy and 'how we get there from here' kind of subjects. The reason for all of the study, thought, and discussion is that the world is full of people who discount libertarian ideas as false, impractical, or idealistic. Of course, my argument has been that the ideas are true, eminently practical...and what's wrong with idealism if the ideals are right?

With a few notable exceptions, hardly anybody changes their minds during an argument or discussion. Usually people, especially poorly informed or misinformed people, bury themselves deeper into their belief system when they are challenged. I suppose this is natural. Nobody wants to be wrong. It strikes too close to our definition of ourselves, and we fear recanting, looking foolish, losing face, and believing we are lesser persons for having been corrected by another. The longer we hold a position, the harder to admit it has been proven false.

I have been operating under the assumption that if I could just find the right words...words...words...to comfort and convince, and...and...convert. So I played with words and arguments, forming them the way a never-satisfied wannabe sculpture artist tortures clay, to make all men into libertarians like me. Always failing. Always trying again. And again. I can be a bore at parties.

It was all so unnecessary. The light that came on was the realization that, without any argument, all men were already libertarians. All men and women, universally, around the world and across cultures and across national boundaries and regardless of religion, race, occupation, or gender, are naturally libertarians. Civil society could not exist if they were not, for libertarianism is nothing more, and nothing less, than treating other people and their property with respect. We all do this everyday and everywhere. Human interactions are overwhelmingly made up of personal contacts between equals. We live near, sell to, buy from, trade with, and leave alone others every single day. At no time do we feel it is our right to steal, maim, intrude, or kill. Those things are wrong in all cultures and all political systems. A society in which killing and stealing is every one's right is doomed to failure as it descends into war and flight. A non-libertarian society will not be a civil society, it will be a wasteland.

The struggle is not to sell libertarianism, but to illustrate the disconnect between our personal morals and our political convictions. It is no more right for me to put a gun to my neighbor's head and demand forty percent of their cash than it is for me to vote for someone to hire someone to put a gun to my neighbor's head and demand forty percent of their cash. Proxy politics removes the thought of moral culpability, but it does not remove the reality. Voting for politicians who vote for an aggressive war in which ninety percent of the casualties are civilians has the same moral dimensions as personally shooting an innocent, cowering Afghan peasant woman. We cannot be excused from the crime because our vote was filtered through politicians, generals, layers of military officers, until it arrived in the hands of a half-boy-half-man with an attitude and a gun.

Personal libertarianism must be reconnected to public libertarianism. That is our most urgent task and our moral duty.

Robert Parker

2011-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

I met Robert Parker in the Spring of 1983 at a Hillsdale College graduation party. He was the father of Lisa, a classmate of mine. Mr. Parker, a slight man with white hair and an openly friendly expression on his face, approached me and struck up small talk about how I liked Hillsdale and how my year went.

He was aware that I was going to school for a semester, then taking a semester off to earn money, then going back for another semester, etc. I had already done that twice and was prepared to do that two more times in order to get my degree. Four years to finish my last two years of college. He asked if I liked doing it that way. I replied that it wasn't a matter of liking or disliking it, it was a fact of life and I had accepted that. Mr. Parker asked the same question again in a different way, then again, and each time I answered that it really wasn't up for debate...it was what it was. He pressed...would I continue that way if I had access to enough funds to complete my education in one year?

I paused, confused. What was he proposing, I asked. Well, he said, how about a $4000 loan repayable after graduation. That would be the equivalent of about $12000 in today's money. Not an insignificant sum for a seasonal roofing laborer.

I was dumbfounded. Mr. Parker barely knew me. We had only just met, yet based on stories from his daughter and from our brief discussion, he and his wife were willing to float me a loan, with no collateral, so I could finish school earlier than planned.

Cutting to the chase: I took the loan. I finished school in the Spring of 1984, got a job with May Company, and repayed the loan in about eighteen months, a year earlier than planned.

I can't say I was good at staying in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Parker over the years, but that does not mean I did not think of them regularly. They came to my wedding in Cleveland in 1988. The Parkers dropped off a guitar once, while passing through Cleveland on their way to Pittsburgh where their daughter was living. Mrs. Parker would write letters every few months to keep me updated with what was going on in their lives. I dont' really remember, but I hope I wrote back. She passed away suddenly in the 1990's, and I think of her every time I pick up the guitar, which is almost every day.

My contact with Mr. Parker continued in the form of yearly "He Said/She Said" letters that my wife and I stuff into our Christmas cards. Mr. Parker would respond with a short friendly note, or through a comment included on one of Lisa's letters. (They are wonderfully funny letters, by the way, and I have kept every one of them.) I noticed in his letter from 2009 that we, he and I, shared deep misgivings about our country's direction and our current crop of political leaders. To have Mr. Parker in my foxhole seemed...comforting.

I was always aware that time was not my friend, and that one day I would have to deal with the inevitable loss of people who have been important to me. My father died in 1999. My wife's extraordinary Aunt Dot passed away around that time. This year, when addressing the Christmas card to Mr. Parker, I had the passing thought that one year the card would come back...

Shortly after Christmas, I received a large envelope in the mail. It was from Lisa. I knew, just knew, what it was going to tell me. I opened it. Read it. Sat and cried.

Robert Parker had passed away in the Spring of 2010. His passing was painless, and his daughter was with him. She detailed how they spent the last few weeks together, preparing, remembering, laughing, being happy. His eulogy, delivered by Lisa at his memorial, was typical of her: funny, insightful, deeply touching. Of course I wish I could have been there. But reading it, by myself, and letting the emotions flow, was in some ways better.

There are people who, without meaning to, teach life lessons by example. More than anything, I was affected by Mr. Parker's gentility. He was refined but not haughty, thoughtful but not didactic, and generous but not foolhardy. I can only hope to conduct myself in a similar manner. If, one day, I come upon a young person who deserves a bit of help, and if I am in a position to make a difference, I hope to have the generosity...no, the gentility...to do a good thing.

p.s.--My father and Mr. Parker met at my college graduation. In discussion, it turned out both men were the same age, both had been drafted in World War II, both men served in the South Pacific, and both men were on the same island on the same day, at the same place. They determined this because they both remembered being present when a ship exploded in the harbor. After the War, Mr. Parker went to college and became a lawyer while my father went to work as a truck driver, then a commercial fisherman, and finally as a self-employed logger. One man became a man of letters, one man could barely read. It was a study in contrasts, but it was also a study in similarities. Both men were admirable for their integrity and doing the best they could. That, in my opinion, is what gives meaning to life.

A Simple Statement

2011-01-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

The core idea of the libertarian philosophy is simple:
That all persons are equally free to live their lives as they see fit.

The "equal freedom" principle has a corollary: no person is entitled to initiate force against another.

Both statements, taken together, form a philosophical yin and yang, an image of positive and negative in the same way the dark image in an Escher print is the outline of the exact same image in the white space.

As an organizing principle for a society, libertarianism supports the rule of law, limits on government power, fairness in jurisprudence, and property rights. If a society attempts to operate without this as an organizing principle it leads to unlimited government power, pressure group politics, plastic rules of fairness in court, and no security of person or property. Many of the great democratic/republican convulsions of the 1700's and 1800's had a strong libertarian core. They were revolting against the despotism of kings and dictators who respected no rules of human fairness. Today, there is only a faint shadow of libertarian principles in old words, barely understood, written on faded parchment. The recent reading of the Constitution by the House of Representatives was a concrete demonstration of pious recitation without comprehension.

On a personal level, however, libertarianism is alive and strong. I would go so far as to say that most people, regardless of where they live, understand and practice libertarianism in their personal lives. In fact, I doubt any civil society can long survive without a firm foundation in the interpersonal respect for each other's person and property.

Wherever you go, the rules of interpersonal relations are the same:

Don't hit, don't hurt, don't murder.
Don't steal.
Don't cheat.
Flush.

The world continues to function because people everywhere practice these rules. A homeowner can keep a nice lawn because of the reasonable assurance no one will drive on it and do 'donuts' in the middle of the night. A shop owner can put goods in easy reach of strangers because he is reasonably sure the strangers will pay for them instead of steal them. An employee will do work for an employer for two weeks because of reasonable assurance they will be compensated at a specified time in the future. A pedestrian will walk down a sidewalk with the reasonable assurance he will not be accosted by thugs.

All of this is possible because each person carries within him a small voice saying: treat others and their belongings with circumspect respect. When enough of a society practices this principle, there is civil tranquility.

There are examples, however, of places where 'reasonable assurance' is not so reasonable. East St Louis. Detroit. Liberia. Why? It's not because people in general have rejected the idea of personal libertarianism. If that were the case, there would be a free-for-all of stealing, assault, and murder without a regret expressed. But because the majority of people living in those cursed places recognize the gross unfairness imposed on them by crooks and thugs, it can be said that their repugnance at the violence and criminality is their statement of desire for libertarian civility. Even most crooks realize what they do is harmful to others and try to hide their actions from view. Only the sociopaths have no consideration for others.

If people took their personal libertarianism and extended it to politics, the resulting government would concern itself only with protection of persons and their property from violence, theft, and fraud. The courts would focus on restitution to victims where possible, not vengeful punishment or coercive behavior modification. Incarceration would be limited to those who cannot be safely allowed to walk the streets: sociopaths. Unless a society is dominated by sociopaths, it is unlikely to need much of a government.

Why is it our politics is so unlibertarian? Because the people have been taught for over 100 years that there is something magical about governments and government officials. The Progressive Era included a faith in experts, bureaucracy (not always a pejorative word), and concentrated government power. The result was a disconnect between our personal lives and our political lives. We would never, personally, put a gun to our neighbor's head, take half of his money, and consider it our right to do so. However, we have accepted the idea that we are justified in doing the same thing as long as we have our 'representative' do it for us. We know it is not our business to force our neighbor to live only in a manner that we approve of, but we feel righteous demanding that our representative licence, tax, regulate, and punish personal lives. We would call it murder if we personally pulled the trigger to intentionally murder an illiterate farmer on the other side of the earth who has never done us harm, yet we demand our representatives put in motion a killing machine that accomplishes the same thing, and we wave flags and 'support the troops' in their misbegotten mission. Personally we respect each other and our property, politically we cancel that respect by endorsing government theft and murder.

(It should be no surprise that the people who tell us these actions are right and justified are themselves sociopaths. See the parallels between politicians and sick sociopaths below:

http://www.rejecttheherd.net/forum/big-brother/ministry-truth/politicians-are-psychopathssociopaths

I will blog on this angle another time.)

Personal libertarianism, practiced consistently, leads to a political system and policies very different from the ones we currently live under. I venture to say that only personal libertarianism can save us from the continued confiscation and despotism we are enduring.

Sometimes, There's Hope

2010-12-30T14:18:00.000-08:00

I have spent an adult lifetime talking to myself. I listen well. I even comment to myself on my comments, and sometimes I even tell myself I am full of it. I am grateful for my own company because at least I take myself seriously.

I can't say as much about my relatives, friends, and aquaintances. Often I am considered to be the strange one. "Oh, that's just Ron being Ron," they say as they giggle at my convoluted attempts to give them a concise rendition of some obscure aspect of libertarianism. Conversation quickly moves away from the Great Questions of our day and on to sports, or personalities, or music, etc.

Such is life. At times, I get a little down at my inability to engage others in serious and enlightening conversation. How, I ask myself (because I am the only one listening) are the problems of our society, our country, or the world to be dealt with if we fail to discuss them seriously, at some depth, and with some integrity? I have been told, and I have told myself, to not expect much because I am looking for what never will be.

But this year, on Christmas night, I saw something interesting happen. A couple of friends that I generally disagree with on all Great Questions, but whom I genuinely like and respect, were having sport with me over the blurb on the back of "The Creature From Jekyll Island." The blurb was fron Ron Paul, someone my friends have only cursory knowledge of and whom they consider just another Republican. One friend, the wife, read the blurb aloud in a faux dramatic voice as a way of poking at me. I did not take it personally, but I also was not sure how to respond to the sarcasm.

Then inspiration struck. I went to my book pile and found "End the Fed," by Ron Paul. I handed it to the husband, while his wife was still reading the other blurb, back cover first. Then I watched as his face went from neutral to wide eyed surprise and leaning back in his chair as if a force had reached out and pushed him backwards suddenly. He recovered, leaned forward, and showed his wife the front cover.

"Ron Paul, 'End the Fed,'" she said. "So?"

The husband flipped the book around and she read the blurb. She threw herself back in her chair. "No way! No fucking way!"

The blurb as by Arlo Guthrie, one of her counter-culture heros.

"We're taking the book home, and my husband is going to read it!"

My words, no matter how carefully chosen, had been unable to open a serious conversation about free markets or libertarianism for 20 years. Yet a simple sentence by Arlo opened the floodgates of interest and passion.

I trust our next gathering will be interesting.

There can be hope, even twenty years too late.

A Non-Conspiracy

2010-12-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I found this article on Cafehayk.com.

http://cafehayek.com/2010/12/simpler-story.html

He presents a world in which mundane forces move the world, not elite evil-doers pulling strings. I believe this to be true...to a great extent...but not exclusively. That there IS an elite group, interconnected and cooperating with each other, who at least attempt to 'rule the world' seems obvious enough. That would include powerful political figures such as the Clintons and the Bushes, Greenspan and Kissinger, as well as unimaginably wealthy men such as the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, and their friends in the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the G10 and the G20.

Nevertheless, this article reminds me that the world is a complex place that we make sense of when we look backward and impose our understanding of how things work on the assembled facts. We conjure up conpiracies and manipulations that neatly explain everything. Life, being lived forward, does not lend itself easily to manipulation. It is more like the weather: there are many influences, some of which are human, but mostly it's chaos playing itself out.

The Enemy is Us

2010-12-05T05:55:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reported yesterday that government workers have been warned not to read the latest Wikileaks dump of 250,000 diplomatic cables. To read them is to illegally access classified and secret documents.

The Office of Management and Budget warned that the documents must not be viewed by a government employee until they have been officially released by a proper authority. College students are warned not to view or download the documents...if they would like to have a career in government in the future. The Department of Defense stated that an unauthorized viewing of the documents creates a 'security violation.'

Security against....whom? Foreign enemies? No, non-Americans can read them at will without prosecution.

The security risk is that Americans may find out what their government is up to...and do something about it. Hillary Clinton, having been outed as a credit card number thief, is now political toast. The exposed connection between Israeli Mafia, Israeli government officials, and drug dealing in America could turn Americans against their most abusive client state. The world of international relations is being exposed as nothing but a game of childish cliques run by school-yard bullies, hardly worthy of the blood and treasure of innocents everywhere.

Can you imagine the terror Hillary Clinton must feel after spending a lifetime triangulating, positioning, posing, and pandering with the goal of one day becoming the most powerful person on the planet...only to see her life's ambition turning to shit before her eyes? In her view, and in the view of the thousands of other government posers out there, Americans must NOT be allowed to see that under their puffed up self-importantance they are nothing more than shifty-eyed convenience store clerks with an eye for filching credit card numbers. They are not likely to let it happen without a fight. A very dirty fight.

The New York Times article ('Government Workers Ordered Not To Read Cables') is so revealing of the true nature of our government's attitude toward American citizens that it is redundant to put it in plainer terms. But here it is:

We are the enemy. The war is against us. The government is not nearly as worried that foreigners will know about their shennanigans as it is fearful that we will know about them. We must be kept in the dark. We must be controlled. We must not be allowed the truth because we might do something no foreign power could ever do: exact justice.

We've Got You Surrounded!

2010-11-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

I had some time to ponder two totally unrelated events from last weekend. One was a craft show, and the other was a traffic stop. The only connection between the two events was the re-enforcement of the feeling we are surrounded, 360 degrees, by government force.

The craft show was held at Cape Girardeau. This was our fourth attempt to sell my wife's dyed silk garments for a profit. This one worked out pretty well because, unlike the first three shows, we reacted to our economic environment by changing our prices downward after the first two hours. The other vendors at this venue were selling handmade Christmas oriented stuff...santas, wreaths, ornaments, pillows, etc., cheap. The average price was around $20. Our product average was around $40. By taking the prices down $10 per piece, we were more in line with our customer's expectations even though our product was still among the most expensive in the room. I suggested we needed to lower our prices, but it was my wife who had to make the decision to do so. After all, this was all her work. Hours and days of standing in her studio wrapping, clamping, dying, rinsing, squeezing, ironing. Then the committent of renting booth space, the gas expense of getting there, the food and drink to keep us going for two days.

Every sale of every piece she had slaved over required the collection of sales tax. 7.99%. I have gotten used to the idea and I barely give it a thought anymore. However, I had some time on my hands and I reflected how twenty years ago my wife and I sold some handmade toys at craft shows and nobody paid or collected sales tax. Technically we were required to do so by the state, but as a practical matter it was disregarded by all concerned. Most crafters make their goods and offer them for sale as a break-even proposition. Between all of the show expenses, the travel, the hotels, the food, there's not much left over to compensate for the time spent creating the products. One crafting friend of ours had not made back her booth fees at the three previous shows, and except for this show at which we had to take a reduced margin, we barely scraped by also.

Now, however, the craft fairs are monitored by the state. As part of your 'show packet' that the fairs hand out, you receive a copy of the local sales tax tables. You WILL collect sales tax. The State, having done none of the work, taken none of the risk, was still making about 8% (more in some places). When one has dreamed up the concept, bought the materials, made the product, and sold it to the end-user, the tax seems like such a slap in the face.

(Update): my wife just received a threatening letter from the State of Missouri because she paid her sales tax without a valid State of Missouri tax license. Penalty: $500 for the first day, and $100 per day thereafter. There seems to be a 20 day grace period to straighten this out, so we are not too worried. But the tone...)

Unrelated. On the first day of the craft show, my son was driving with two friends to a state park to do some camping. However, he has a heavy foot and was pulled over by the state police for speeding. The cop, seeing three 19 year olds in a car, told my son he smelled pot in the car. This was an outright lie. I own the car, I have driven the car as recently as that morning, and it had no smell. Additionally, the three young people in the car do not smoke pot. Still, the cop insisted he smelled pot and asked for permission to search the car. My son mentioned that the cop did not have a warrant, then quickly backed down and agreed to the search. After all, he said, he knew there was no pot in the car. Besides, he thought, if he cooperated maybe the cop would go easy on him for speeding.

The the cop did something no one expected: he stood my son and his two friends by the side of the road, handcuffed them, and told them to look away from the car as it was searched. No one has any idea what the cop looked at or in during the five minutes he was going through the car, but after about five minutes the cop came back and released everybody. And he gave my son a speeding ticket. All three of the young people were shaken up by the experience, and when I heard about it later that day, I was furious. It just seemed so wrong! Handcuffing people for speeding 10 mph over the speed limit!

It turns out that the cop did something completely legal. It was called a "Terry Stop." If the cop has reason to be concerned about his own safety, he can immobilize you for a short period of time while he assesses the situation. You are not under arrest, but you are not allowed to leave. This cop told the three kids that because there was only one of him and three of them, he had to cuff them. That explanation makes sense, but it doesn't change the humiliation these kids felt standing along the side of a major interstate highway handcuffed with their hands behind their backs for all the world to see. Implication: these kids must have done something bad. Implication: the cop just made a good bust. Implication: can't trust young people and thank god we have cops to keep them in line.

Ironically, if my son had simply refused to give permission for the search, he would have gotten the ticket and been sent on his way. Additionally, it seems to me that, with 10,000 laws on the books, who knows what laws we are violating every single day? The search simply allowed the cop to find something else for which to fine or arrest my son.

The state seems to be all around us all the time. Like walls closing in. Like a noose tightening. Remember: you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

"There's Something Hard in Your Pants"

2010-11-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

The title is a quote from a TSA screener when he patted down my brother at a Washington D.C. airport. It seems my brother went through the body scanner, but the results were inconclusive so he was pulled aside for the full body grope, too. The TSA agent kept pushing on my brother's lower abdomen below his belt and asking what was in his pants. My brother took it good naturedly and replied that there was nothing there. The screener kept prodding and asking what was in his pants. My brother kept saying 'nothing' in an increasingly irritated tone.

"There's something hard in your pants," said the TSA agent one more time. My brother finally responded, "keep pushing and there will be!" The agent quickly decided it must be a fold in my brother's shirttail and let him continue on his way.

Great response.

Update to the Great Fizzle

2010-11-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I mused on the Daily Paul that the TSA could defuse the National Opt-Out Day by simply turning off the full body scanners for the day. No scanners means nothing to opt-out of means protest fizzles.

Lookie here:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/scandal-tsa-restricts-scanners-to-undermine-protest-in-crude-pr-stunt.html

I should take up sooth saying.

The Great Fizzle

2010-11-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

Today, National Opt-Out Day, has been a snorer. A few scattered protests. Some opt-outs. It was mostly business as usual.

Was it a total bust? Maybe not. The number of people who flew today is supposed to be up 3.5% over last year. We will not know the real number for a few more days. If the number of people actually went down, then maybe people decided to opt-out completely by driving instead of flying. Time will tell.

Other than that, it appears Americans lined up to do away with their human dignity and the Constitution for the sake of feel-good security theater. Their unwillingness to confront the government over a policy with such personal aspects as being required to display themselves naked before being allowed to fly means that they will absolutely not take on the government over less concrete violations. First Amendment? A luxury! Second Amendment? A potential threat to security! Fourth Amendment? Unnecessary! Tenth Amendment? An anachronism!

Not only will Americans not fight to take back the freedom that once was theirs, but they have signalled in no uncertain terms that they will not fight against future intrusions. That will embolden the statists to consolidate their gains, grab and exercise more power, and take control of more of our lives.

The protest fizzled. Americans are going to get a lot more of what they refused to refuse.

Has the Sleeping Giant Awakened?

2010-11-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

I used to wonder what it would take for Americans to rise up, enmass, and confront their government. If the news reports are any indication, it is the stories, the voice recordings, and the video of people, some as young as three years old, or as infirm as a disabled cancer patient, being put through a full body scanner or being groped as a prior condition for getting on an airplane. One man, to prove a point, refused the scanners, then refused the pat-down, but willingly stripped to his bike shorts so the TSA could see he had nothing to hide. He was told to put on his clothes so they could pat him down! Then they arrested him for not following instructions!
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/21/gun-crusader-strips-down-shorts-hauled-out-san-die/
Indignation at the overreach of the TSA has gone viral. Someone started the call for a National Opt-Out Day, and over the course of two weeks it has snowballed into a fearsome threat to on-time air travel on the day before Thanksgiving.

The TSA reacted this past weekend. They stated that anyone who disrupts the scanning process or the pat downs will be arrested and fined $10,000. The pat-downs and the scans would go forward as planned, said Mr. Pistole, the head of the TSA. His tough guy attitude struck the exact wrong cord, and the calls for opting out of the naked body scanners intensified. Today, he was somewhat more concilliatory by saying they were looking at procedures to see if they could be made more palatable, and pleading with air travellers to cooperate with the TSA out of consideration for other travellers.

On my way home tonight, my Congressman, Russ Carnahan, got some airtime by saying he was reviewing TSA procedures to see if they couldn't be modified. Russ has never demonstrated the slightest concern for the Constitution. His concern was strictly to make TSA procedures less of a lightning rod. He doesn't want to kill the beast, he wants to tame it.

Debates have raged on TV between civil libertarians, who oppose the very idea of the TSA as well as the security measures they have put in place, and the Safety First crowd that repeats the mantra "anything for safety." One of their best critiques is "if you (libertarians) don't want the TSA to do body scans to keep us safe, what would YOU do to keep us safe?" The best response to that critique is: "it is not the government's job to keep us safe in the air, it is the airlines job to keep us safe in the air." That doesn't directly answer the question so much as it tries to reframe the debate: it's not WHAT will keep us safe, but WHO. I'm not sure most viewers get this.

Nevertheless, there is extensive buzz on the internet and in the mainstream press. We'll know in two days if it has any teeth. It seems to me that the easy way for the TSA to defang the entire threat is to turn off the machines for a day. No machines and no pat downs means no opt-out. The whole protest fizzles. They can always put the rules in place at another time when everyone has gotten a little tired of the arguments.

Personally, I hope the TSA sticks with its' hardline position. That could be the catalyst for a nationwide reality check, some citizen activism, and maybe for some citizen empowerment. If people see the TSA run away from one of their cherished programs because of an incensed public, maybe the public will sense their own power and continue spontaneous challenges to other programs, bureaucracies, and government institutions.

I wonder if the sleeping giant has awakened.

Scanner Update

2010-11-11T19:48:00.000-08:00

Just an update to my earlier post about the backscatter machines at airports:

I flew out of St Louis Lambert on Monday. The scanner was there, but it was not being used. Everyone in the very, very long security line was put through the old metal detectors. No drama here.

I flew back out of Phoenix Sky Harbor...no scanners in sight.

From stories I have read elsewhere, the TSA is dealing with the 'opt out' crowd by doing simple pat-downs. No cavity searches. No genital probing. Some of the overheated rhetoric on some websites accuses the TSA of almost demonic procedures, yet the evidence is that the TSA are being careful and respectful. I'm sure there will be exceptions, and those will be publicized repeatedly. People will 'opt out' to avoid being seen naked, and they'll fear getting a pat-down and a feel-up at the same time. I think they are worrying about the wrong stuff. They ought to be considering the fear-mongering that is at the core of the whole scanning/probing issue. They ought to 'opt out' while dreaming of the Fourth Amendment.

The good news is that the dilemma I felt in an earlier post is somewhat muted now. Of course I will 'opt out,' not because I might be seen naked, but because it's all just wrong.

Communicating with a Pol

2010-11-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following letter to Ed Martin, Republican candidate for Missouri's 3rd Congressional District:

Dear Ed,
This is to inform you that I intend to vote for you on November 2nd.
However, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: this is not an endorsement. I cannot know what you are really going to do when you get to Washington. The words you have written indicate at least a cursory knowledge of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the libertarian philosophy of liberty. Whether or not you truly understand those words...that is to be seen. You may have won my vote, but you have to earn my trust.
At this time I have no reason to trust you.
Most Republican candidates are going to benefit from the rising wave of anti-Obama revulsion. The Republicans will win many seats and they will pat themselves on the back and say "see, they love us." Nothing could be further from the truth. Republicans forget that they were thrown out just two years ago amid similar disgust with Bush and his run-amok cronies and Congressional lapdogs. Voters are looking for something else, a different way of governing. They didn't get it with the Bush Republicans, they tried the Democrats and were deeply disappointed; now they're trying to find what they are looking for with the Republicans again. I fear we will be shafted again.
I have no illusions about the daunting task of reversing the course of government. It is likely that the new 'tea party' congressmen will constitute such a small part of the overall Congress that they will have little direct influence on day-to-day legislation. They will be considered to be irrelevant by the mainstream. The pressure will be to go along to get along in hopes of having influence somewhere in the future. This is a pipe dream. This is the reason the Republicans were thrown out two years ago, and the reason the Democrats will be thrown out this year.
What I am voting for is a Congressman who will stand up, even if all alone, and say: this is contrary to the Constitution. Even if you never vote with the majority, even if you forever are marginalized by the people who have caused the mess in this country, you will be representing me and people like me every time you take those hard, principled, difficult-to-explain-in-soundbite stands. All alone.
If you do that, you will be representing people like me. And you will win the kind of devoted following enjoyed by statesmen, but never by politicians.
I wish you luck in the upcoming election.

Ron Johnson

Later that same day, I received the following reply:

Ron,
Thanks for this note. I agree with you: vote for me, hold me accountable, and, if I falter, vote me out!
Thanks for your vote.
All the best.
Ed
Ed Martin

Ten Thousand Indignities

2010-10-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

St Louis Lambert Airport has installed full body scanners in the terminal I usually use when traveling for business. I knew it was coming, ever since the rush-job purchase of the scanners (lobbied for by the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, who just happened to represent a company that sells the machines) after the incident with the crotch bomber in Detroit last December.

The whole idea that strip searches of all passengers traveling by plane is a reasonable precaution against the danger of a terrorist event is...well...a real head scratcher. Does it make travellers safer? Not really. Terrorists, like any motivated criminal, look upon fixed solutions, such as metal detectors, bomb sniffing machines, xrayed luggage, etc., as just another wrinkle to be overcome. As was pointed out by one security expert, if the terrorist is on a suicide mission, they may as well have the bomb installed inside their bodies...as supposedly has already been documented:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247338/Terrorists-plan-attack-Britain-bombs-INSIDE-bodies-foil-new-airport-scanners.html

The fact that planes have not been falling out of the sky for the last ten years is not because airports have done a superb job 'keeping us safe,' because the FBI has noted, repeatedly, that the failure rate of TSA at catching test weapons, even weapons barely concealed, is abysmal. Something like 40% are not detected. Since a motivated terrorist is going to be far more creative than a civil service bureaucrat, I have to conclude they haven't attacked the planes because they don't want to.

Are the scanners safe? The manufacturers say they are, but no independent testing can verify it. There is significant debate by xray technicians and engineers about possible damage due to improper calibration, focus, and training. Do the scanners save the naked photos? The government says 'no,' but they lie. The government specifications for construction require that the machines have the ability to store images, even though that function may be turned off. Do the scanners blur the 'sensative' areas? No. If they did, then that would be a prime place to hide a bomb, right? So forget blurring.

None of these issues cause me to lose sleep. If someone in another room somewhere gets herself in a sweat seeing me in the all-together, I consider it a compliment. But that's just me. On the other hand, if it's a guy...I'd rather not think about it.

No, the issues that haunt me are: Does it violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, and does this open the door to even more invasive surveilance? Unqualified yes to both.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (4th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

Ok, so the counterargument is that we live in a new era and that the Founding Fathers could not have understood 21st century terrorism. To keep us safe, full body scanning is a reasonable measure. As one pundit put it, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, meaning that if it gets in the way of making us safe, then it should be discarded as needed.

I don't have to tell anyone how much this distresses a civil libertarian. It is not in the times of peace and ease when we need to worry about our civil liberties, but in the times of stress and conflict. Infact, during hard times it is more important than ever to jealously guard our personal liberties, such as our rights to due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Tyrants have always used times of distress to impose themselves upon their people under the guise of protecting them. Hermann Goering said all governments bring the people to the bidding of the leaders through crisis. Rahm Emmanual is famous for his phrase "Never let a good crisis go to waste." So in times of difficulty, we need to guard our civil liberties even closer.

The argument from civil liberties, however, generally fails in the face of the argument from 'safety.' As a nation, we crave absolute safety in everything and in the process we have steadily given up our freedom to be armed, to travel, to write and speak freely, to consume what we wish, to take risks, to keep our privacy. All intrusions, ten thousand if there is one, are treated individually as no big deal. Indeed, we usually give the restrictions on our privacy and our independence no serious thought, as they seem to be more of a nusance than anything. Sometimes, however, in moments of clarity, as we stand in line for a permit, license, or other official government approval before going on to do what we would have done anyway, and we sense the oppressiveness of the situation. We see the government functionary behind the desk and feel the uselessness of the paper-shuffling, stamping, stapling, collating, and filing that our lives have become. We wish we could find the words that would make the petty bureaucrat sit back and say...you're right sir, no need for approval, I am interferring with your life, you can go about your business.

That's not the way it works, however. The System is a self-reinforcing network of laws, social norms, and expectations, glued together with 'safety' as a common denominator. Objecting to any given mandated rule, like the need for a building permit to install a new water heater, or the requirement to have a virtual a strip search to get on a plane makes you sound somewhat looney because, after all, it's for your safety. Remember, this is a society where police have announced random voluntary bag searches (NY subway) and people have approached the cops and asked to participate, then THANKED the officers for searching the bag they have been carrying all over town. What? Yes! Or requiring a background check on everyone who wants to buy a gun from a dealer...so only the law abiding go through the process while the scofflaws don't bother...yet the gun laws make us safer because the people who were no danger to anyone are still no danger to anyone? The norm is lunacy. Anyone who calls out the lunacy is the nut!

I am planning to travel via plane out of Lambert Airport in the next few weeks. Though I am conflicted about the process of going through security to get on the plane, I know I have only two choices if I wish to fly: get into that full body scanner, or let a TSA agent give me a hands-on full body pat-down, including a probing of the genitals. Either way, I have to submit or I don't fly. By itself, this latest intrusion into my life does not make or break me...but it is the totality of the experience of life in America, the "freest nation on earth," that is weighing heavily on my mind.

I will not go to the barracades over this. Any protestation will fall on deaf ears, or worse, will get me put on a list with no possible positive outcome. My fellow travellers will not sympathize; TSA agents will continue to 'just do their jobs.' I will either fly or not fly and the TSA could care less. One way or the other, they win this one. Just add it to my list of indignities to be endured.

We think we can pick and choose the indignities we will object to or endure. The truth is: It is all of a kind. We will either reject the 'safety' argument and choose to live with uncertainty, or we will take the 'safety' argument to its' logical conclusion, one little indignity at a time. If we want a different kind of society, we will have to do it from a principled conviction that the grand experiment in human freedom is due for a major 'reset.'

Busy, busy

2010-09-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

I've been busy lately responding to things I have read. My responses, in my humble opinion, are pretty good. Below are the e-mail exchanges and the context inwhich they happened:
First, I read an article by a guy named Jeff Jacoby about the economics of recycling. I first stumbled on the article as a link on Cafe Hayek:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/09/19/get_excited_about_recycling_not_me/

I decided to write to Mr. Jacoby:
"I've read the comments section after your article on recycling
and...wow...did you ever hit a nerve with a lot of people.

Your point about the value of recycling was lost on them entirely.

Let me add two small factoids:

I lived in Cleveland when they first started mandatory recycling. Up until
then, the only real recycling was done at the aluminum can collection
machines scattered around town. You rarely saw an aluminum can laying
around because it represented cash to someone. Anyway, we had to separate
our recyclables into bags for three different types of materials, each
color coded to make them easy for the recycling company to identify.
Aluminum, as I recall, was blue. You could drive the streets of Cleveland
on trash day and find everyone's various colored recycling bags at the
curb...but hardly ever see a blue bag. Why? Because the early morning
trash pickers beat the recycling trucks to the aluminum. This caused such
a disruption in the recycler's cash flow plans that the City of Cleveland
had to pass an ordinance against anyone except the City's chosen recycling
company from taking the blue bags.
Implication: the only thing worth recycling was aluminum...and it was
already being recycled before the mandatory recycling scheme.

Second story:
I live in a suburb of St Louis. We have single stream recycling. My
family pays about $43 per quarter for the recycling service, and I estimate
that we produce about 400 pounds of recyclables during that time. That
comes to about $215 per ton. Hmmmm. Doesn't seem like such a good deal to
me. I wonder how many resources are consumed by those $215 worth of
expenses...versus the $40 to landfill a ton (or $8 for our 400 lbs of
recyclables).....

Ron Johnson
Webster Groves, MO"

Mr Jacoby responded:

"<< Because the early morning trash pickers beat the recycling trucks to
the aluminum. >>

Funny you should mention that -- it is *precisely* the point I am going to
begin my second column with. In my neighborhood every week, a little old
Vietnamese lady goes through the trash, diligently removing all the
aluminum cans. I have no idea what she'll do with the big new bins, which
are as tall as she is.

I'm a transplanted Clevelander too -- grew up in South Euclid and
University Heights.

all the best,

Jeff Jacoby
Op-Ed Columnist
The Boston Globe"

Ahhhh. My new best friend.

I also responded to an invitation by the local Republican Party to view a movie about radical islam. I declined by writing:

"I will not be attending this showing. While I have not seen this particular movie, I have researched the subject sufficiently to no longer be concerned with radical muslims. They are no more a threat to our national security than is the KKK, which is not to say that they don't exist, just that they are of such marginal significance that the real danger is in overstating their power. In our fear of an impotent enemy, we have passed the Constitution-busting Patriot Act, damaged habeas corpus, initiated domestic spying on innocent Americans, passed the Real ID Act, passed the Military Commissions Act, excused torture, intiated two wars (maybe soon to be three), and have now introduced full body scanners at airports. All this in what used to be a free country. Our fear is our enemy, not radical muslims.

We need to be cognisant of our provocations that have helped to fuel the Jihad. Invading muslim countries that have not attacked us, propping up muslim dicators, overthrowing elected muslim governments, etc., has given the radical muslims legitimate cause celebre around which to chant their hate for America. If we followed the traditional Republican formula of NOT policing the world, we would remove from them the little traction they have in the muslim world, and virtually all traction in the West.

Now, more than ever, we need a non-interventionist foreign policy and we need to reject fear-mongering.

I can't see how this movie can possibly help in that regard.

Ron Johnson"

I was surprised, and pleased, to get the following response:

"You raise some valid points. I am only the messenger on this one. I was asked to forward the invitation from Gravois Township and did so. I know nothing about the content of the movie. It would be interesting to see if the issues you raised are mentioned in the movie or how the history of attacks have/when occurred. I believe we have mishandled several issues and I have concerns about those as well. I don't know who produced this film and I don't know if it only concerns incidents in the United States.

But thanks for letting me know and again, I was just asked to pass this along.

Gretchen"

I think she likes me.

Is It Safe?

2010-09-09T05:14:00.000-07:00

The short answer: no.

The United States Court of Appeals has ruled that a U.S. citizen may not sue for damages if he has been falsely imprisoned and tortured by the CIA or one of its' private contractors. Allowing a suit, says the court, may reveal secret and top secret information.

Couple this with the statement by the Department of Justice that self-proclaimed 'Constitutionalists,' Ron Paul followers, and Tea Party advocates are "potential terrorists." Obama has asserted and won the power to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone he deems to be a 'suspected terrorist.' He has also asserted and won the power to deny and abridge habeas corpus in suspected terrorist cases.

I am an admirer of Ron Paul. I have written favorably about the Constitution and Ron Paul. According to the DOJ, I could be a potential terrorist. The Executive branch could cull through my writings, collect evidence via secret 'National Security Letters' (that I would not be allowed to discuss with a lawyer), and determine I fit the profile of a potential terrorist (the law does not require them to present any evidence to any neutral third party, so reading my drivel is not really necessary, nor is giving reasons for labeling me a 'potential terrorist,' though even the old Soviet Union liked to have confessions and the patina of evidence to justify its' oppressions) and have me arrested and put in jail. As a 'terror suspect,' I would not have the right to see the evidence against me or challenge my detention in any court. The Executive could do with me as he/she wished, including having me tortured with 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' This could go on for days, weeks, months, or years. If, or when, it is found I was incarcerated and tortured based on the evidence of lies or, worse, political persecution, I could be released at a whim, but I would have no right to sue my persecutors for the injustice they committed because the act of arbitrary imprisonment could, itself, be considered a state secret.

They hold all the cards. I have an empty hand. They can do with me as they wish. They can do with YOU as they wish.

This is not paranoia. This is real in every way except magnitude. So far, these rules have only been used against brown people. Muslims. That they have not been used more widely should not be looked upon as proof that it never will be. On the contrary, it is a near certainty that uninhibited power will be exercised in an unlimited way.

It is not safe to speak one's mind. It is not safe to write. It is not safe to associate.

It is not safe.

Oh, How The World Has Changed

2010-08-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

This YouTube got me to thinking about the Bush/Obama "free speech zones," and how far we have come in just one generation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP3kJwjG0RE

And then there was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djlWmg8wDj0

I was a freshman at the University of Michigan in the 1975-76 school year when Gerald Ford decided to announce at his alma mater his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President.

The event was held at the basketball arena not too far from Central Campus. I, and thousands of other U of M students and local residents, flooded the streets as if we were going to a sporting event. I remember reaching the door to the arena and being surprized that every single person was given a once-over and a bag check before being allowed inside. They even took my umbrella and examined it closely (it was a rainy day). I'd never been exposed to official paranoia before. I remember thinking how silly it was.

The arena was packed. I don't remember exactly, but I think it held about 15,000, and since this was not that long after the Nixon pardon, it was not a friendly crowd. When the president finally appeared at the podium for his speech, the place went nuts. There was little chance of actually hearing Ford over the screaming, yelling, chants, insults, and general mayhem. At one point, someone lit a string of firecrackers (remember, Ford had been the target of two prior assassination attempts) and Secret Service agents came out of the woodwork, tackled Ford, then dashed out into the audience to look for the perpetrator. A half minute later, Ford stepped back to the podium and continued speaking through the renewed chants and cat-calls.

I'm sure Ford could not have picked a worse place to launch his candidacy. The opposition to him was fierce. He must have left Ann Arbor with a very bad feeling about his political future.

Contrast that event 35 years ago with the Bush/Obama era of "free speech zones." Shunted off to fenced-in locations blocks away from the President, the protesters shout but no one hears. They wave signs, but no one sees. How in heaven's name is our government to know when the people are angry? This cannot end well.

I'm afraid our children will come to think of this as normal.

The Escape Clause

2010-08-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Most Americans are sympathetic to the libertarian ideas of small government, low taxes, equality before the law, innocent until proven guilty, and self-reliance. Many a Tea Party speech has begun with a quote from Jefferson, Madison, and Thoreau. The Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are enshrined as near perfect documents. Why, then, are people repelled by the term 'libertarian?' Why do some of the advocates of small government attack 'libertarianism' with terms like 'juvenile,' or 'moronic,' or worse? Even regular posters at the dailypaul.com are dismissive of libertarianism, though Ron Paul himself describes himself as a libertarian. How could it be libertarianism could come to be so reviled among people who would otherwise be considered fellow travelers?

I think it's because there is no Escape Clause.

There are different approaches to the origins of libertarian philosophy, but the most common one is the 'non-agression' principle. Stated simply, you may do as you wish with with your life and your property as long as you do not initiate aggression against anyone else's life or property. Nearly everyone says, 'this is all fine, but...'

But what about the poor...we need to steal from some people to give wealth to others.
But what about drug users...we need to take control of their lives because we don't like what they are doing.
But what about health care...we need to force people to value it as much as we do.
But what about (your favorite cause)...we need to enslave others because the results will be good.

Everyone has their Escape Clause. They are happy to agree to the non-aggression principle...as long as they are exempt from it. Everyone seems to have a little larceny in them. Of course, and entire society built around larceny quickly becomes a free-for-all for pickpockets. That, I think is the society we currently live in. Many of my friends would say, "So...?" They accept the idea that everyone is out to steal from everyone else...that's just the way it is.

Yet these same people are the Tea Partiers who decry the confiscation by taxes of their hard earned money. I believe they are concious of their hypocrisy...they just can't help themselves. They feel they need the legal option to steal or enslave, at least a little, if they feel like it. They WANT their Escape Clause.

So they have it. And they have the society that results from it, and they are not happy. What these Tea Partiers can't fathom is that once it is accepted that robbing, maiming, and killing others for what they consider necessary reasons, they have essentially muttered the open sesame that makes all other reasons acceptable. The tepid conservatives, who mouth the words about individual liberty, hand to their big-government, big spending, high tax, regulate-them-'till-they bleed, opposition all the justifications for every confiscation, imposition, and oppression known to man. The big government people don't need an escape clause. They just need the small government people to agree there must be one. Or one hundred. Or seventy thousand (the number of pages of Federal Regulations, minus the sixteen thousand pages of the Tax Code).

This is the essence of the Escape Clause. It is the escape from morality, the blessing of the cruel, and the justification of the unjust. It is the purposeful breaking of our moral compass so we can be freed from the dictates of universal principles that cross over all cultures and epochs: It is wrong to rob, injure, enslave, or kill another human being. Indeed, an entire class of educated, attractive, and engaging people argues that not only are these actions acceptable, they are necessary and noble. Psychology labels these people 'sociopaths;' they label themselves 'public servants.'

Libertarianism does not have Escape Clauses. It says you should not rob, nor is it acceptable to get your Congressman to rob for you. You should not injure, nor should you get the police to do it for you. You should not enslave, and no government should force other's to live for your sake.

So because libertarianism advocates individual liberty, but does not twist itself in a knot creating moral loopholes, it is considered moronic.

Got it.

Ok, smarty, what would YOU do?

2010-06-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

The country is in a tough economic spot. All indications are that there is no recovery from this two year old recession. More people are losing their jobs. More businesses are going bankrupt. A general gloom has decended over the marketplace.

The federal government has tried the standard remedies: lower interest rates, deficit spending, make-work programs, and bailouts. Nothing has worked. The critics of the current, and former, government have been crying that the powers-that-be are impoverishing us all. The supporters of the government are responding that the critics have no better ideas and that they are just playing politics with a national tragedy.

Fair enough. I have been a critic by claiming, from early on, the government's programs won't work and will probably make the problems worse. So far I have been right. But do I have any positive contribution to make beyond sniping at our Dear Leader? As a card-carrying amateur pundit and economic seer, let me try my hand.

My Take On The Situation:

First, I believe the cause of this recession is the same as all the other recessions and depressions of the past. Credit booms lead to credit busts, as day leads to night. The Austrian economists von Mises and Hayek constructed an understanding of the boom and bust cycle almost a hundred years ago that explains in clear cause-and-effect terms how new credit money causes malinvestment and cannot be sustained, therefore there is credit contraction, deflation, and correction (recession, bankruptcies, etc.). So, if you want to stop a recession, don't have a credit boom. Once the credit expansion has happened, the rest is inevitable.

Where are we in this cycle today? We have just endured 40 years of credit expansion exacerbated by the disconnection of our money supply from the only anchor it had: gold. With the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971, and our reniging on agreements to redeem our dollars with gold, the door was left wide open for monetary expansion without limit. All things being equal, a currency that is inflated far beyond the economy's increases in goods and services will lose value. Prices would go up. People would demand more pay. The spiral of "cost-push inflation" and continuing loose money policies would result in ever accelerating price increases until the money lost all value in a hyper-inflation. That did not happen in the U.S. because the dollar became the "reserve currency of the world," thereby soaking up the newly minted dollars to be used in other international exchanges. We were able to create the money instead of products, and send it overseas to trade for goods. The effect was to make it economically silly to produce products here when we could buy all we wanted with paper and electronic dollars created from nothing.

That new money, however, came into our hands via debt. The loans we, and our government, took out fueled the boom in the stock market, the dot-coms, housing, and now bonds. But at the core, they were still loans that needed to be serviced. When the debt load became excessive, we, as individuals, stopped funding our purchases with new debt and the recession began. When banks stopped lending, credit cards cancelled customers, and consumers started paying down their debts, the money supply reversed.

Deflation became the name of the game, and according to the Federal Reserve, the enemy. Ben Bernanke earned the name "Helicopter Ben" when he pledged to prevent deflation (sometimes referred to as 'liquidity crisis') by dropping money from the air if need be. So far, despite doubling the M1 money supply in a recent 12 month period, the total M3 money supply has been shrinking by over 9% on an annualized basis. Thus the growing unemployment, downward pressure on prices, and bankruptcies. You can see why he would consider deflation to be the enemy.

What Can Be Done?

The danger in trying to reinflate the money supply is that the result could easily be a newer and bigger bubble, total loss of confidence in the dollar, and hyperinflation, or, just as bad, the economy may refuse to reinflate with new lending and instead painfully deflate over a long period of time instead of all at once. Decades of precious life could be squandered.

The first thing that must be acknowledged is that the correction is inevitable. Stop trying to fight it, because all you will do is expend resources you will need later. As Churchill was supposed to have said: when you're going through hell, keep going. We need to get through this, and as quickly as possible.

So, no bailouts, no stimulus, no subsidies, no zero interest rates. These are the things that caused our injury, so we need to stop doing them. The immediate result will be a sudden deflation.

The Federal budget will have to be slashed, and not by a little, but by a lot. Forget our overseas empire...it will have to go. The military will have to refocus on defending the U.S., not nationbuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm guessing an 80% reduction would be about right.

Subsidies for all our Federally funded pet projects will have to end, from arts projects, to cash for clunkers, to the space program. Done. Over. If we don't, there will be no way to stop Federal borrowing that's putting us on the path to becoming a banana republic.

Social programs are in a different league. Programs that help those who reasonably cannot help themselves should be kept intact. I'm talking about Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Because each of these programs is essentially broke today, they may require even more funding in the future as the economy tanks and the demographics of the baby-boom retirement looms. I believe that each of these programs is doomed to fail, so I advocate, long term, planning their reduction and elimination. But that's for another day. Today, if they were eliminated, helpless people would starve to death.

Next, take some positive steps. Allow people to escape from the crashing dollar system by giving them the option to make deals or settle their debts in any currency or commodity they please. This could be done by repealing the legal tender laws that require settlement of debts in dollars. The dollar would quickly seek its' own value amongst all the options out there. For the average person, however, they would have an escape from the inflate/deflate rollercoaster, and this one move alone could give the economy the ability to quickly correct and rebound.

During a deflation, it is critical that expenses be reduced to match the reduced money supply. The biggest single expense in most people's lives is the burden of government: taxes. The burden must not be allowed to grow, and ideally will shrink, as a percent of income. Less money for the government means more money for the people to service their debts, accumulate savings, invest in their future, and enjoy their lives. But make no mistake: if tax cuts mean more government borrowing, nothing is gained! Government spending at all levels must be cut AND taxes must be cut in order to lighten the burdens on the economy and allow it to rebuild.

I would make it illegal for the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air. That is where the inflationary boom and deflationary bust cycle has its' beginning. Fractional reserve banking is the mechanism by which a small amount of currency becomes are large amount of credit, and it is also the point of failure in our monetary system. Banks create debt in the society by lending the same money out multiple times at once, thereby falsely increasing the apparent money in the economy. When the people are overburdened with debt, they cease new borrowing and begin to pay back their loans, which causes the apparent money supply to contract (deflation). The banks are now at risk of runs on their deposits, as there is not enough money in reserve to satisfy all of the claimants, so they build their reserves by not lending, and the economy goes into a tailspin. It all started with the Federal Reserve and the practice of fractional reserve banking. Both must be stopped, or the boom and bust cycle can never be brought under control.

I don't think we can outlaw fractional reserve banking overnight, though that might be the moral thing to do, because the deflationary shock to the economy would shake our society down to its' bones. I also would not change the reserve requirements to make the banks more resistant to runs, because that would provide the people with a false sense that the banks are "safe" when infact they are still insolvent. 100% reserves would be 100% safe, but the deflation that would be required to get there might do serious social and political harm to our society. Instead, I would eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and make it clear that nothing is completely safe. Suddenly companies and the people will want to know that their bank is treating their money with care, and banks will become more careful with their loan porfolio. If the Federal Reserve is prevented from printing money to 'loan' to banks to save them from their mistakes, then there would be a real chance that banks could go out of business if they are reckless with their depositors' money. The market would discipline banks in a way no regulator ever could.

Finally, to allow full employment at lower money supply levels, wage rates must be allowed to fluctuate. While it may seem cruel to eliminate the minimum wage, it is far far more cruel to condemn an entire class of people (the people who have the least education, are aged or inexperienced, disabled, or otherwise less productive) to institutional unemployment. They must be allowed to work for an agreed upon wage, even if they wage is very low. Full employment would ensue, and because the costs of overhead would plummet, prices would drop also. This is not so radical an idea as most people would assume. One of the tenants of Keynesian economics is that inflation of the money supply is needed to achieve full employment because people are resistant to accepting lower wages. An increase in the money supply means devalued purchasing power, which means REAL wages are lowered without the worker's knowledge. As all economists know, Keynesians included, real wages must go down if large masses of unemployed are to find jobs again. I believe inflating the money supply to acheive full employment introduces us to the boom and bust cycle detailed above. Let's be up front with the unemployed and tell them they will need to work for less instead of stealing their purchasing power and creating the boom and bust cycle to achieve the same end.

Those are my thoughts today. I'll get back to you when they are on the verge of being adopted.

It's Not All or Nothing

2010-06-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

There was a long piece in the Daily Kos this week that 'exposed' libertarians and their goofy-subversive-dangerous ideas. Outside of the general snarky patina of the article, it was actually a pretty good survey of libertarian positions on most issues. There were some key, and common, characterizations that were, I felt, wide of the mark. I have chosen to highlight one that I feel is fundamental to the overall misunderstanding of the libertarian philosophy.

I am often accused of being an idealist. Unable to deal with the 'real world,' they say, I adhere to an ideology that has no practical application. There is no constituency to abolish the FDA, SSA, CIA, IRS, or DEA. Also, a libertarian society would provide no safety net and people could starve, or be homeless, or die without all these government programs. Imposing the libertarian system on a modern society would require everyone to accept it, and that ain't going to happen. Idealism never works, they say, which is why all 'isms' fail. Libertarianism is no different from Communism. Pie in the sky, impractical, doomed to failure.

Perhaps the critique of Communism is correct. It does seem to require a violent revolution to wipe away the old bourgeois regime and replace it with a worker's paradise in one fell swoop. If the program is not adopted in its' entirety, it fails. Let one bourgeois remain in power and he will ruin the Communist stew. Root them out! Kill them all! Purge society of the wreckers so Communism can flourish and create a worker's paradise. So when critics of Communism say it doesn't work, and Communists reply that it hasn't been tried, the Communists have a point. (Forget for a moment that successful small scale communist experiments have been carried out in the U.S. since the early 1800's, in towns such as New Harmony and New Economy.) Both the critics of Communism and the supporters of Communism agree: what has been tried in various nations around the world has lacked the requisite purity, and they have all failed miserably. Maybe it would work if pure, but we know it won't work if it is impure.

While Libertarianism tries to be a comprehensive political philosophy, like the Marxist and Communist theories, it does not run afoul of the same purity problem as other 'isms.' Impure libertarian societies have existed on a national scale, and they have been highly successful. I'm thinking of the U.S. prior to World War I. The Roman Republic before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Hong Kong. Even the ancient Hebrews lived in a kind of libertarian world with no kings or rulers (the Jews were warned not to get a king because he would tax their wealth and send their children off to war...oh how prophetic!) In each case, the relative freedom enjoyed by individuals in those societies resulted in stable and wealthy communities. As their freedoms were curtailed, each of those societies experienced a decline in wealth, stability, and vitality (Hong Kong has not yet seen a decline, as it remains one of the freest places on earth despite belonging to a 'communist' country). Libertarian theory endorses the idea that more freedom means more wealth, stability, and security, while less freedom means more poverty, discontent, and conflict.

Taken to its' logical extreme, Libertarianism calls for an entirely voluntary society. A century and a half ago, that might have been imaginable. Today, from the perspective of people who are taxed, licensed, mandated, regulated, and subsidized by a 360 degree government that alternates between kind paternalism and nasty scold, this is a ridiculous thought. Surely the Libertarian ideal is so disconnected with the world as it exists that it is not worthy of serious consideration. Problems today must be fixed with practical solutions, not pie-in-the-sky theories.

Actually, this is where Libertarianism excels. Since Libertarianism does not require perfect execution to generate positive results, it can be taken in small pieces. Example: When the airlines were "deregulated" in the late 1970's and early 1980's, there was loud complaining that air travel would become more expensive and unsafe. Libertarian theory said it would become more affordable, flexible, and safer (if that was important to consumers). Indeed, that is exactly what happened. Air travel boomed. Over the next ten years fares dropped by some 50% and the number of carriers and routes doubled, making air travel affordable and practical for millions of Americans who otherwise would not have considered flying. The entire economy did not have to be deregulated, just a portion of a portion. More freedom was better, however limited.

The same thing happened with the trucking business at about the same time. The result was lower freight rates for industry and lower merchandise prices for consumers.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920's resulted in a wave of violent crime as gangs battled over the black market while doing little to decrease drinking. Making alcohol legal again was another step in the direction of freedom, and the unintended consequences of prohibition disappeared overnight. A similar approach is needed with marijuana, and for the same reasons: it is practical and it is the right thing to do in a free society. Theory says that society would benefit from legalizing all drugs, but it will benefit from just the first small step with marijuana.

Libertarianism is not all or nothing. In general, freedom is good, more freedom is better. It is not necessary to have a pure Libertarian system to experience the benefits of freedom. Libertarian theory can be taken to the extreme...if you want...but it can also be taken is small pieces if that is all your society can handle. No need for a violent revolution. Just the steady drip, drip, drip of ideals and practical compromise. Then, one day, we may all be free. Perfectly free.

And it will seem perfectly reasonable.

Musings on History as it Is and as it Was

2010-05-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Rand Paul was in trouble this week. He touched on the sacrosanct 1964 Civil Rights Act and mentioned it was less than perfect. For three news cycles he was vilified as a wide-eyed idealist out of touch with reality, or as a closet racist. No amount of denial mattered. The hole he had dug kept getting deeper...until he did the only thing left and shut up. Now he is a silent racist, I guess.

What Rand came to appreciate is that history comes in two parts: Is and Was. The "Is" part clobbered him his week. "Was" could have defended him, but it was no where to be found. My experience is that "Was" always shows up a little late, but in a tux. "Is" is always johnny-on-the-spot with hair-on-fire.

Sorry, dear reader, if I've lost you. Let me try again.

A question was posed to me by a fellow on the dailypaul.com: How could I defend the sanctity of property rights, as a libertarian, if a black person came to town and no one would give him a meal or a hotel room? Wouldn't the 1964 Civil Rights Act be necessary to save the black man from starvation or the elements? (In other words, Mr. Libertarian Fancy Pants, I challenge you to apply your principles consistently and commit social and poltical hari kari for the amusement of all). I nearly took the bait and responded by putting my head in that noose, but then I read the question again...and I sought more information.

The office a couple of doors from mine is occupied by a most interesting person. He is a tall thin man of about seventy years who speaks with the slow drawl of a life-long Mississippian. He is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, though that doesn't prevent him from taking sides in a political fight, sometimes for one and sometimes for the other. As a Jew, he was taught by his father to treat all persons equally because, his father said, "when they're done with the blacks, they'll come for the Jews."

Who better to ask about conditions in the pre-1964 South? So I layed out the question as it had been posed to me and watched him as he leaned back and wound-up his story-telling machine.

"Well....my first job out of college was selling shoes in Jackson, Mississippi. I will tell you that growing up in Vicksburg, I never saw an act of blatant racism. I'm sure there was some, but I never saw it. Blacks and whites worked together, lived together. Hell, two black women raised me, and if I did something I wasn't supposed to, they whupped me, too. But I won't mislead you...there were separate drinking fountains and restrooms, and I'm sure blacks couldn't sit in the front of many restaurants. There was probably no trouble because blacks 'knew their place,'" I caught a little wince in his face as he finished his sentence.

"In Jackson, just out of college, the owner of the shoe store I worked in was a terrible racist. He was so bad that he didn't allow his black customers to sit down. They had to buy the shoes standing up and take them home to try them on. When I saw that, I asked myself if I could even work for an asshole like that. But there was a manager in that store who would keep watch for the owner, and when the coast was clear, he'd have the black customers step into the stockroom where they could try on the shoes without being seen. Word got out in the black community and the black customers would come in when that manager was on duty."

He continued. "My own father owned a clothing store and he sold expensive clothes. Many of our customers bought on the layaway plan. Every week they'd come in a make a payment, and I'd remember the black women coming in and pulling cash out of their brassieres or their hose to put down on those clothes. If they couldn't make a payment, they'd stop in and say, 'sorry, Mr. B, but my husband got laid off from the mill this week and I can't pay you, but I promise I'll be back as soon as he gets a job.' My dad would hold the goods, unless the situation got abusive, and wait for them to pay. They usually did. I remember him showing me the card file where all of the layaway accounts were kept, and him telling me 'look here, our worst accounts are white, with not one colored customer in that stack.' I never forgot it."

I relayed to him how my father did not meet a black person until he was drafted into the army in World War II. Whatever his experience was there, he had nothing but derogatory comments to make about blacks, yet one night at about 10:00 there was a knock on our door. Two black men were asking for a lift into town, as their car had broken down a couple of miles up the road. My dad put on his coat and drove them fifteen miles into the nearest town. We all stayed up until he returned. After all, these were BLACK people and outside of my dad's army stories the only thing we knew about blacks was that Bill Cosby was funny, but the rest of blacks were burning down Detroit, Cleveland, and LA (this was the 1960's). When my dad returned, he said 'those were two of the nicest n*****rs I ever met.'

I told my friend that my own convictions were formed by reading "Black Like Me" in high school, and forever after that my father and I were at loggerheads concerning race. Nevertheless, my friend told me that even within families, there was no consistent approach to race. Heck, I replied, even within a single person there's no consistent approach.

And, I said, as a Northerner I was taught that there was blatant racism everywhere in the South. Whites against blacks. No middle ground. This whole discussion about Rand, the Civil Rights Act, and the South is based on stereotypes. The reality was much more nuanced, and much more humane, even if it had elements of terrible bigotry.

I went back to my desk and drafted my response to my dailypaul.com questioner.

"It is said that extreme cases make bad law, meaning that the law cannot be written to right every possible wrong. To do so would create solutions that are worse than the sin. Is your scenario possible? Yes. Is your scenario probable? No. It didn't happen that way in the past and there is no reason to believe it would in the future."

"Is" gets right to the point and says before 1964 whites were racists and blacks were oppressed victims. "Was" isn't so kind as to wrap it all up in a single sentence and instead likes to start by pulling out an old cigar, leaning back in a chair, and musing..."Well....in 1955 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a town of sixteen thousand or so, I remember...."

The Last Resort

2010-03-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

In a community college acting class many years ago, I learned a life lesson that haunts me to this day: the trump card in any dispute, whether personal or political, is always violence.

The teacher paired up the class and gave each of us scenarios that we had to improvise our way through, with the "winner" being the one who achieved the particular goal he was assigned. I was paired with Mike, a large man a few years older than me, who had a very overbearing presence. Our scenario was this: Mike was an auto mechanic who never refunds money when he has an unhappy customer. Me? I was the unhappy customer hell bent on getting my money back on a bad repair job.

I walked into Mike's garage on stage to confront him, but he immediately slipped under a "car," which was a bunch of metal chairs arranged in a rectangle. As I tried to explain that I wanted a refund, he began banging on the "car" with a hammer and making an god-awful racket. No matter what I said, he yelled back that he couldn't hear me. I crawled under the "car" and began yelling at him so he couldn't ignore me, but Mike just banged louder. This scene went on for several minutes, much to the amusement of our classmates.

I was stymied. I couldn't make an argument, indeed I couldn't be heard, so I was being totally ineffectual in achieving the goal of getting the refund. As this was leading to a failure in the task, I switched gears, crawled out from under the "car," and in a moment of inspiration I announced that I found the imaginary cash box, pantomimed opening it, declared there was 50 bucks in there, and made like I had tucked it under my arm as I declared that was good enough, and I marched out of the garage with Mike sputtering in the background. I had won.

I observed my classmates going through their scenarios and noted that it was not eloquence, or wit, or technique that would win the task, but rather some physical action such as a punch, or a shot from a gun, or, in my case, a robbery. The actor who was most effective was often the one who resorted to the most violent solution.

In the context of life, the lesson, I fear, is all too real. There is great anger in the country right now. Despite strong nationwide opposition, our Congressmen, Senators, and President, have spent trillions bailing out the rich bankers, taking over General Motors, expanding wars, and nationalizing the health care industry. The anger in the street is palpable. By god, we say, we will VOTE OUT ALL THE BUGGERS and take our country back...except that we the people don't control the voting booth. The government does. We mass thousands to protest...but the government literally pretends we don't exist. We write to our representatives, but they send us back form letters full of pablum excusing their votes. We can almost imagine the government sitting in their offices sniggering at the utter uselessness of all that storming around. What's worse is we KNOW they are laughing at us.

Breaking points are as varied as the people who have them. And we all have them. Joe Stack found his. Jim Koresh found his. Tim McVeigh found his. As the disconnect between the people and the politicians gets wider, more and more people will find theirs'. One by one, as talking, protesting, and voting doesn't work, people will turn to other means. The government knows this, and it has an enormous stockpile of weapons and agents trained to use them to try to keep a lid on the people's anger. Both sides are likely to turn to violence: the people to random acts of destruction, maiming, and killing, and the government to harsh repression against everyone, guilty and innocent alike, which will push even more to the breaking point. The spiral downward appears inevitable.

Except that I believe that where there is life, there is hope. I hope the people can find the right levers of power to influence that will return the government to its' proper size and role. I pray, though I am not a praying man, the petty tyrants in Washington will sense that the only way to defuse this anger is with talk or with blood, and I hope they choose the former.

If they don't, they will surely get the latter.

I don't revel in this insight. I fear it. I fight against it. I advocate non-violence. But I see the strength of government prompting a response from the people to meet force with more force. The most ruthless will win...and after that how will they conduct themselves? With honor? Unlikely.

Violent revolution, like violent repression, leads to societies of fear and barrenness. If we don't meet the government with violence, they will steamroll us. If we do, we are likely to become the new oppressors.

Dark thoughts for dark times.

A Letter To An Awakening Friend

2010-01-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

I wrote the letter below to a friend of mine who has just discovered thesurvivalistblog.net. He and I had spoken many times in the past couple of years about the mid-east wars, the economy, politics, etc., and I always knew he was more of a neo-con than a conservative. But he has an open mind, so we were able to talk productively even though we disagreed on the interpretation of current events. Having stumbled on libertarian/conservative information on his own and finding it convincing enough to be disturbed by it means that he is moving more in my direction. I wanted to let him know I agreed.

Chuck,

(Sorry, in advance, for my long response)
I checked out the blog. Interesting. There is a lot of crossover information here with the websites I frequent. My focus has been on the current economic/political situation and the likely unfolding of events in the future. The Survivalist Blog seems to cover much of the same information with the added twist of advising how people can protect themselves. The writer seems sane and measured, not wooly haired and crazy-eyed. There is probably good prudent advice in there that we should all take.

As for the alarming nature of the information: I lose sleep sometimes when I get too far "down the rabbit hole." The causal connections, several times removed, between actions of our "leaders" and the meltdown of our economy and the perversion of our Constitution, sometimes is so clear to me that I cannot understand why other people cannot see it. Then I remember that I've been reading related stuff for the last 35 years, and that I cannot expect the average person to just read one book or article, or even a dozen books and articles, and expect them to come to the same conclusions I have.

I believe we are in for a very difficult time in the future. The large picture is: our economy was fooled by easy money generated by deficit spending, expansionist Federal Reserve policy, and fractional reserve banking.

People thought they were richer than they really were (I was one of them); they borrowed and bought and pushed prices upward for thirty years with the expectation there would be more money tomorrow.

When the new money was not sufficient to fulfull our expectations of ever-increasing prices, prices began to fall.

Falling prices began to reveal unsound investments (think: real estate, but it applies to other areas of the economy also) and the loans that supported them could not be repaid.

The banks and investment houses that were the most leveraged (fractional reserve banks are always insolvent, by their nature) were the first to collapse, leading to a chain reaction of insolvencies and credit contraction, which destroys the circulating money supply (just as increasing credit in a fractional reserve system creates money) and principle paydowns (which sucks money out of the economy).

With a decreasing circulating money supply (despite the trillions the Fed pumped into favored banks to prop them up, which they either can't or won't lend), asset prices will continue to drop...for a while...so far...leading to bone-crunching deflation, unemployment, bankruptcies, etc., a process that, if allowed to happen, would be complete in a year or so as the economy adjusted to the new reality of a lower money supply, then started growing again...

But the trillions of dollars being lavished on the financial houses by the Fed will eventually find its' way back into the circulating money supply.

The new money will begin competing with existing money for existing goods and services, and in a very short time prices will skyrocket...but wages will not (why? because of the large number of unemployed workers who, due to competition with other unemployed workers, cannot demand higher pay).

This will result in bone-crushing inflation for everyone, but especially for people on Social Security, pensions, or other fixed state aid.

If the scenario I have written above is correct, our country is in for an extreme amount of instability, both political and economic. People will be discouraged, and maybe even dangeously hungry. They will get restive, possibly violent. With the instability will come calls for more law and order, which will come at the expense of the Bill of Rights. The question will be: will the American people rediscover the wisdom of the Constitution (which, if followed, would have prevented this scenario to begin with), or will they adopt a different political framework, such as a leader cult or an oligopoly?

There is no way of knowing how it will all resolve itself, but it is unlikely that the America of our youth will be the America of our future.

Review: "How America Can Rise Again"

2010-01-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

A Canadian friend of mine sent me a link to James Fallows' latest Atlantic Online article entitled "How America Can Rise Again." While I think highly of Mr. Fallows' writing, I am usually at odds with his conclusions. My reaction to this article was no exception.

In presenting his case, first he catalogs the ills currently plaguing the U.S.: high unemployment and loss of the middle class, disintegrating infrastructure, lagging communications development, dysfunctional Federal government, and military overreach. Then, as if laying out a balance sheet, he points to assets that offset these liabilities: relative openness of the society, welcoming of immigrants, plenty of money, world-leading university system, and a 400 year tradition of "jeremiads" leading to reflection and change. These strengths, he believes, will allow America to reshape itself through political reforms (he is partial to the Parliamentary system).

Mr. Fallows admits he has been away from the country for a few years and that his impressions of America, upon his return, are somewhat skewed by his experience in
China. Certainly, compared with China, America is more open, multi-ethnic, flexible, rich, and educated. One could stand in China today and compare it to China of twenty five years ago and make the same comparisons and come to the same conclusions. But it is questionable whether one can say that about America of 1985 and America of 2010. The weaknesses in America are real and growing, whereas the strengths, also real, are almost all in decline. Following the trend line of the past couple of decades, the future is bleak.

What do I mean? Let's take openness to immigrants, for example. Yes, Americans are generally an accepting people. It is common to find foreign born citizens or permanent residents in all walks of life, and there is absolutely no animosity aimed at them (unless they are Arab, which is a whole other discussion). If there is an anti-immigrant constituency, it is limited to "illegal" immigrants (read: Mexican). However, the laws and government policies concerning foreigners coming to the U.S. are a very different story. The visa hurdles, the quizzing and profiling at points of entry, the heavy hand of the Transportation Safety Administration, and the bureaucratic nightmare of running afoul of immigration rules (especially if you are Arab), has led to a decline in the number of foreign visits to the U.S. in the last ten years, despite a general rise in tourism and transnational travel in the rest of the world. Highly publicized incidents, such as that of the British little-old-ladies en-route to Australia who refueled in L.A. only to be forced to deplane and stand for hours with no bathroom breaks while awaiting interrogation by the TSA, have only served to shine a spotlight on our official "unwelcome" mat at the door. Official policy: if you are foreign, you are a potential enemy.

As for the flexibility of our society, that, too, is a relic of the past. What made us flexible economically and socially in the past was a relative dearth of legal restrictions. It has long been noted by European economists that the U.S. has been a marvelous job-creating machine over the last several decades in contrast to the relative stagnation of much of Europe. Double digit unemployment in France, Spain, and Germany has been the norm for over a generation. Why not in the U.S.? Because we had fewer reasons NOT to invest, NOT to hire, NOT to expand. In France, for example, it is very difficult to fire a worker (this was intended to tip the power scales in favor of workers), so employers are very reluctant to hire in the first place for fear of being burdened with unproductive workers. The result is institutionally encouraged unemployment. No such rules existed in the U.S., but when glancing at the ever-expanding mandates on employers for documentation, citizenship verification, mandatory leave, matching taxes, minimum wages, and soon-to-be government required insurance, one can see the disincentives to hiring building up. We are not yet France, but we are no longer encouraging employment.

And employment is only one area of rigidity. Business licenses, zoning, permits, professional licensing, and continuously changing IRS accounting rules make starting a new enterprise a daunting task. John Stossel did a report on a French company that made pay-per-use curbside toilets and the trials and tribulations they endured trying to get through New York City's regulatory maze. In the end, the company chose not to enter the U.S. market due to onerous regulation, despite strong approval and demand from the New Yorkers who got try out the prototype. When our business environment is less flexible than that of France, we are almost certainly headed in the wrong direction.

What's more is that the mood in Washington is toward more, not less, regulations and mandates. The recent TARP program, the Stimulus Bill of 2009, and the actions of the Federal Reserve in bailing out large financial institutions send a clear message: We Will Not Allow Change To Happen. James Fallows considers our flexibility to be one of our greatest strengths, as indeed it has been, but it is quickly fading as we build institutional firewalls that prevent change from happening.

Mr. Fallows makes the puzzling case that we are wealthy enough to remake the countries of the Middle East, so we are wealthy enough to rebuild our infrastructure. It does not seem to occur to him that one of the main reasons our infrastructure has not been repaired is BECAUSE we are bleeding our wealth into the sands of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and maybe soon Iran. One expense precludes the other. The longer we are expending our limited wealth (and ALL wealth is limited) overseas, the less likely we will have the resources to rebuild our roads and bridges. With the Obama administration seemly committed to never ending war, our infrastructure will continue to fray and unravel.

What's more is that it is becoming more apparent that for the last several decades Americans have been, at best, treading economic water. Due to anomalies in measuring wealth over time, it is difficult to put an exact number on it, but it is becoming disturbingly clear that where one income used to be enough to finance a middle class household, it now almost invariably takes two. In the past ten years, middle class Americans' incomes have been in decline. Draw that trend line again, and weep.

As far as the assertion that institutions of higher education will lead the way to the new American revival, I say, huh? For the last several decades, the vast majority of college graduates do not work in any field they studied for. Indeed, my own experience tells me that a college degree is particularly good at narrowing the field of candidates for an employer to consider, but with the exception of task-specific professions such as engineering, medicine, or law, most education takes place on the job. Our ever-increasing college graduate population has failed to guarantee our continuous growth, so I would not now look to the Universities to lead us out of our current decline.

Mr. Fallows talks about our history of jeremiads. I never heard that word before, but I like it. Yes, we have a long history of bleating into the wind how we are in decline due to our sins, then we pull out of it with some new a bigger advance in wealth and living standards. He states that this current decline may, in fact, be irreversible, but he goes back to the jeremiads of the past and shows how we roused ourselves from our stupor and conquered our ailments. He's betting on that happening again, just because it always happened in the past.

I hesitantly concur. There are numerous voices out there. Some are calling for more and bigger roles for government, some are calling for less. Some are wanting more war, some want to bring all our troops home. Some are clambering for more surveillance and security, and some are lobbying for the return of habeas corpus and our Bill of Rights. Some voices are even calling for a plutocracy of experts to run things (oh, how Platonic!). Which voices will be heard will determine whether or not we will recover or stagnate.

And finally, Mr. Fallows presents us with a political choice to make: "Doing more, or doing less." He chooses doing more with our political system in the form of public/private partnerships, though recognizing that the body politic is sick and "gangrenous." Without active public institutions, private efforts will dissolve into chaos and criminality, he says. To me, this is a bit of a jump. Maybe even a straw man. Doing less is exactly what the Chinese did in order to revive their economy. The Russians have also been experiencing growth as a result of "doing less."

If less can deliver more, then why shall we not consider that avenue of action? Fifty years of continuous government growth have led us to the "lost decade," so maybe it is time to reverse course a bit. The assertion that less government would deprive the society of wealth making opportunities, or even result in the breakdown of private institutions, is unsupported by American history, post cold-war history, economic theory, and current practical experience. James Fallows comes to, ironically, a very conservative don't-rock-the-boat conclusion: let's muddle through and everything will be fine.

This is almost certainly not how America can rise again.

Guns for Hire

2009-11-22T19:03:00.000-08:00

In the Old West, young men with fast hands and no scruples could make a living hiring themselves out as private enforcers. It didn't matter what they were enforcing; matters of justice were irrelevant to the business of enforcing. With the general lack of peace officers spread over large areas, these young men filled the power vacum and became, defacto, the law.

One hundred and thirty years later, those young gunmen with no scruples have become respected officers of the court. They still carry guns, but they wear blue uniforms and a shiny badge. What are they hired to do? Whatever the law tells them to do, no matter how wrongheaded. Their mantra is that they are Law Enforcement, not Peace Officers.

Whatever the law says, that is what they will enforce. There are easy examples: arresting peaceful people who have inhaled smoke that they law has proscribed, even though they have hurt no one and damaged no property. Arresting people who choose to pay for their sexual pleasures. Arresting people by setting speed traps. Arresting people for not wearing seat belts. They live to arrest. It really does not matter what the law is.

Because of this, and because there are literally thousands of laws that one can violate without even knowing it, the police have become feared and hated. A wonderful Youtube entitled "Never Talk To The Cops" includes a presentation given by a former cop who said he merely needed to follow someone in his car long enough...they WILL commit a crime for which he will pull them over, legitimately, and begin the process of interrogation in order to ticket or arrest them. This is scary: when a cop believes there can be no such thing as an innocent citizen, then it is understandable that they would feel free to push, prod, threaten, and harrass you because, after all, you HAVE DONE SOMETHING. You just don't know it yet.

The response to this point of view is that cops are the ones that rush to the scene of accidents, put their lives on the line when responding to robberies, and help find and arrest murderers. My response: not quite. Yes, they rush to accidents...but it is the EMTs who provide the life saving care. Yes, they rush to scenes of violence, like robberies, but it is rare that they arrive in time to do anything about it except take down information and write up a report. Ditto for murders. I don't mean to belittle the importance of their contributions to solving crimes, but let's not make their contribution out to be more than it really is.

Few of us will experience violence in our lives. Those of us who do will find the cops generally are not there to do anything except take the report. On the other hand, we are all, daily, confronted by the very real possibility of being arrested or ticketed for violating one law or another, few of which are designed to protect life and property. The fines generated will fund some government body, and a cop will get another notch in his career belt. We, on the other hand, will have to deal with the fines, the increased insurance rates, and the public record.

In this day and age of innumerable and unknowable laws, Law Enforcement Officers are NOT our friends. They are the enemy. Tell your children.

Capitalism: The Unknown Definition

2009-11-06T15:16:00.001-08:00

I don't have a clue what Capitalism is.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I've got a pretty good handle on the ins-and-outs of Friedman, Mises, Rothbard, Rand, and Hayek. The people with whom I discuss issues, political and economic, have read the New York Times, Krugman, Keynes, Marx, and Samuelson. I may as well be speaking Hindu, and they are probably speaking Gaelic. I'm not sure, because I can hardly understand a word.

I often argue with my favorite self-described "socialist." Mind you, we both work for a retail company, buying and selling consumer products, trying to produce a profit in a very tough environment. We agree on business issues to the extent my job overlaps with his (his is in IT, I'm a merchant). Me, the Capitalist and, he, the Socialist have made common cause to run a for-profit business. My socialist friend is worried we won't make a profit this year. Odd, eh?

Yet when we discuss what is going on in the larger economy we can find no common ground at all. Over the years we have had numerous heated debates which sometimes resulted in each of us resolving to go to our respective corners of the office and avoid further conversation except for the most banal pleasantries. The more serious the issue, the deeper the disagreement.

Today, we discussed elements of the current credit meltdown that are putting our company in jeopardy. The discussion quickly spiraled into a debate over Capitalism and whether or not it is doomed to failure unless it is carefully regulated. I could see that this was going to be another unproductive sharing of views, my Hindu versus his Gaelic, so I did something I usually cannot do: I shut up and listened.

My friend trotted out his parade of economic criminals: corporate robbers, lobbyists for corporate interests, Wall Street insiders, lapdog regulators, etc. In other words, "Capitalists."

Normally I would have bristled at his distorted view of my "Capitalism." A fight over the proper definition would have ensued. Just as I was about to launch into my tirade, I said instead: I don't believe in Capitalism, because I don't know what it is.

He was stunned. I continued.

"I believe in a Free Peoples' Market, where everyone is entitled to keep or trade the fruits of their labor, freely."

"Ahhhh," he said with a smirk, "Communism!"

"Ok, Communism! Whatever word you like. If that means we're free to live our lives without coercion, then I am a Communist."

Amazingly, the argument was diffused and the discussion turned to the Federal Reserve, Fractional Reserve Banking, and the gold standard. We disagree about these things, too, but at least they are more concrete and can be discussed with some precision. Oddly, the socialist was defending the central bankers, and the Free Peoples' Market person was arguing against the current monetary system.

We didn't get very far in our discussion today. I'm sure there will be longer and deeper conversations in the future. I can guarantee, however, we won't be debating definitions.

Death to Capitalism, whatever the hell it is!

Mr Officer, arrest me...I am a criminal

2009-11-04T04:39:00.000-08:00

I am a drug user. The law requires a fine and jail time, and in the interest of solidarity with my fellow druggies, I'm asking the law to come and get me. Now. Before more time lapses.

My story is an old one. Weak will. Peer pressure. Low self esteem. A comely woman. How many have gone down this path that led to fines, jail, embarrassment, and a failed life? Millions. No matter how I try to dress it up, I am one of them. The veneer of respectability is a lie.

It began during my college years. My roommate sold drugs, mostly pot, to friends and acquaintances to help fund his education. He would buy large wafers of pot from a supplier, then spend hours carefully weighing out one ounce bags for sale. Despite being a drug kingpin in our dorm, he was scrupulously honest with his weights and measures. After all, his reputation, such as it was, depended on it.

I did not smoke during college. My roommate and the guys next door threatened violence on me to get me hooked (they would look at me a little askew as they took hits from the bong, then through the clenched teeth of carefully controlled exhaling they would say that, dude, we ought to put a bag on your head and pipe it in. Then they would giggle. OK, maybe it wasn't real violence they were talking about, but technically....) My roommate even tried to grow some pot in the room, but I was not careful about who I let in and I was afraid that some maintenance workers saw the plants. So I helped hide the plants all over the dorm until the danger of arrest had passed. That was the beginning of my long slide down the path of law breaking.

(As a footnote, I would mention that just because my old roommate and the guys next door survived their pot addiction and their raging hormones to become a CPA, a doctor, and a dentist, does not excuse them for breaking the law. After all, the law was the only thing between them and the gutter.)

When I quit college, I dated a girl in my hometown who popped pills. I can't say what kind, nor can I say that I knew when she used them because I really couldn't tell any difference in her behavior. When my old college roommate came to visit, she and he hit it off right away, and soon the conversation turned to getting high on a little weed. None of us had papers to roll joints, and I did not have a bong, of course, so I was taught the finer points of creating a "shotgun" out of an empty soda can. At least I think it was soda. Maybe it was beer. I don't remember exactly.

My old roommate and my girlfriend traded hits on the soda-beer-can-shotgun until I felt they were getting a little too close and I was feeling like an uncool dweeb. So I took my first hit. Suddenly, I was one of them. I took more hits (one? two? I don't remember) before the small stash of pot was burned up. No cares; my girlfriend liked me again. My roommate thought I had gained some cool.

I was an official druggie. I had inhaled, held in the smoke to maximize the effects, and went back for more. I can't say that I got high that day, nor did I particularly like the taste the pot left in my mouth, but I very much liked the fact that I was liked. It was a pattern I would repeat.

A few months later, at a party in the next door apartment, a joint was passed around and when it got to me I sucked on it. My fellow partiers ooooooh'ed and aaaaaaah'ed, and in their low-key-mellowed-out way they applauded me. Even the man of the house, who was a cop in real life, smiled a little. He didn't smoke. Those days were behind him, and besides, smoking dope could end his career. Nevertheless, as an ex-druggie, he did not arrest kids for having pot. He would confiscate it, then dump it on the ground. He would give them a little warning about the law and the likelihood that some other cop would not do as he had done, then send them on their way. No record of the stop. No punishment. He was the personification of graft and corruption in the local police department.

I continued down the path of drug dependence by becoming a groupie for a rock band made up of old high school buddies, one of whom, the lead singer, made no secret of liking her pot. Once, during a break between sets, the woman and I went out to her Subaru parked behind the bar and lit up a joint. I remember being paranoid of being discovered, since it was a very public place. She, however, was calm and cool. She thought I was, too, since the last time she'd seen me was when I was an uptight dork in high school in buttoned down shirts and plaid polyester dress pants. I liked that she liked the new me. I didn't much like the paranoia, however. Sadly, my friend, the lead singer, died of cancer a couple of years later. I must be truely twisted because I cannot help forever treasuring that moment in her car, sharing a joint.

That is my story. I never touched the stuff again, not because I had learned to reform my scofflaw ways, but because I didn't see much point to it. My experimentation was over. I had other things to do, like make some money, go back to college, and get a career going. I had been a late bloomer my entire life, but my time had finally come.

My use of pot ended around 1980. I can't remember exactly, since those years were stewed in alcohol. The legal drinking age was 18 at that time, so that's one thing the cops can't bust me for.

I am tired of living the lie. Bust me. I need to atone for my wicked druggie ways. Then maybe I won't feel bad for the 800,000 people who get busted, booked, charged, and punished every year for what I got away with scot-free.

A Religious Belief

2009-10-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

It is a truism that there are two things one does not discuss in polite company: politics and religion. I've found it impossible to shut up about the first, and almost impossible to avoid discussing the second.

The most common assertion by my conservative friends is that our society is based on belief in God and the teachings of Christ. Therefore, any attempt to create a society without reference to God is to build an edifice on the quicksand of highly debatable human reason. Human reason, after all, is what Communism was based on...and that didn't turn out so well!

This is not a discussion of the relative merits of belief or non-belief, nor the political ramifications of excising God from the Constitution (actually, He's been missing from that document from the very beginning). No, this is about dealing with my friends, acquaintances, and people who think I am the tool of the devil.

To the true believers out there, there is nothing I can say that will put you at ease about my intentions. Nevertheless, let me repeat: I have no desire nor intention to curtail the free practice and evangelizing of your religion. I don't mind churches (I find many of them quite beautiful), I am not offended by religious displays (even on public land, though that's another can of worms), and I do not get bent out of shape when the occasional religious solicitor comes to my door to save my soul.

A little part of me gets annoyed, however, when I (a non-believer) am accused of destroying Western Civilization via immorality and hate. I believe allowing those kinds of statements to go unchallenged can lead to an appearance of agreement, not only about religion (which I could care less), but also about ipso facto policy prescriptions. Like mandatory recitation of the Pledge of
Allegience. Like outlawing the purchase of liquor on Sundays. Like banning pictures of naked women. Like justifying the killing of Muslims.

So I draw the line and I dispute. This is where it can quickly turn into an all-out war of misunderstanding topped with willful distortion. Defusing the situation is sometimes not possible and the best course of action is to walk away before really nasty things get said. Most often, however, I find that taking (ironically!) Jesus' advice and turning the other cheek while refusing to attack in-kind tones things down considerably. Then sticking to the facts of the libertarian philosophy (the principle of non-aggression, whether arrived at by a belief in God or Nature) means I cannot be a threat to others.

This is the point at which the discussion often morphs into an attack on freedom in general, and that is a good thing. Now, instead of discussing belief or non-belief in God, we are discussing the very real and very important definition of human freedom and the likely results. Preconceptions die hard. I will do ten rounds defending drug use, prostitution, and price gouging. But in the end, I have introduced ideas that will rattle around in their brains for a long time.

I don't like these religion based discussions because they are highly emotional (on the other side). Nevertheless, these are some of the most important discussions I can have. Many of the public policies advocated by the Religious Right are every bit as anti-freedom as those of the Radical Left. Usually, after some time, the advocates of religion come to understand I am not endorsing an anti-religious public policy, they themselves become more circumspect in their approach to libertarianism. They, indeed, become mini-libertarians themselves!

Good sense?

2009-10-15T17:09:00.001-07:00

Carrying a weapon is an individual's natural right. Threatening others with the weapon is not. The difficult question is: when is carrying, threatening?

There was a post on the dailypaul.com today that told the story of a father who took his son to the neighborhood park while openly carrying a sidearm in a holster. When walking home, the police stopped him and, through a series of give and take exchanges, the father ended up handcuffed and peppered with questions from several cops. Eventually he was released with no charges, but the event was traumatizing to him and his son.

The story is about the encounter, but I have a hard time getting past the initial event. What possessed the father to wear a handgun to a park with his young (4 year old?) son? Was he legitimately concerned about his safety in a dangerous neighborhood? Was he making a point about his right to carry? Was this his normal habit on any given day?

All of these reasons are perfectly defensible from a traditional libertarian perspective. Being armed is not, in and of itself, anything to condemn anyone for. On the other hand, wearing a gun to a children's park is something akin to a touched homeless person haranguing passersby on a busy city sidewalk. He may be harmless, but his actions are disconcerting to the point of being threatening to some people. Does civil society assume the peaceful intentions of the gun carrier and ignore all displays of weaponry until a shot is fired, or does society work to protect the gentle feelings of the people who are shocked and fearful of the sight of an openly carried gun?

The people who responded to the post at dailypaul.com generally agreed that the father had done nothing wrong. The police, they said, overreacted and violated the father's rights. I sympathize...to a point. Then I remember another story from a number of years ago....

A man chose to carry a shotgun down a busy city sidewalk. The state in which he did this had an open-carry law, so technically he was within his rights to do so. The man was stopped by police, and questioned. The police agreed that he was within his rights to carry the gun down the street. Then they ticketed him....for disturbing the peace. The man had caused such a fright by his actions, the police contended, that it was very similar to intolerable unruly behavior. In other words: go ahead and carry, but don't scare people. I was tickled when I read that story because it showed uncommon common sense on the part of the police.

As humans living among other humans, interpersonal relations are messy. The exact points at which my rights begin and end are anything but totally objective, though the general outlines should be visible for anyone with the willingness to see. On the raw edges between people, sometimes rights don't mean much. Sometimes it comes down to the very unphilosophical and sloppy approach known as "common sense."

Instead of the gun toting father insisting that every last drip of his "rights" be respected, a little charity toward his fellow humans (in the form of considering how his actions will affect others) would go a long way toward gaining the respect he desires.

My Stumble

2009-10-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep the other night because I had not been honest. Well, that doesn't really get to the root of the matter. I couldn't sleep because I knew I had to correct a dishonest decision and, no matter what I did to fix my transgression, it could all end up badly.

One of my favorite people called me up and informed me that, while closing stores in the latest round of downsizings, she was going to sell off some electrical accessories and use the money to give her people a party. The amount of money was a few hundred dollars, the fixtures were going to be thrown away anyway, so I paused for a second or two, then said "we didn't have this discussion."

The moment the words came out of my mouth I knew it was wrong. If it were my business, I'd have given her the money without a second thought. But that was the thing that weighed on my mind: it was not my business and I had just condoned stealing from the owner. Worse yet, my employee, though she presented the plan to me as a done-deal, was more honest than me because she was asking for my official approval, albeit after the fact. In my career, I'd seen people make such a personal attachment to the company they worked for that the lines of ownership were, in their minds, confused. They believed, wrongly, that they had been entrusted with powers well within their rights to exercise, though in doing so they went well over the line. These people were usually good, loyal, dedicated, honest, and well meaning. They were, also, usually fired and disgraced.

I believe I had fallen into that same mindset. My authority to make decisions affecting finances and business operations is quite extensive. I can obligate the company to large expenses merely on my say-so and without any counter signature. I can hire and fire; I can give raises and pay cuts. I literally have the power to make or break the company.

What I don't have is the power to use or authorize the use of company assets for personal gain, and that is what I had agreed to by using the wormy phrase "we didn't have this discussion." I was no better than a thief, for I had been informed of a future theft of assets I was charged with protecting and had done nothing to discourage or prevent it.

I had a few options. I could call the employee and tell her I could not condone the appropriation of company property, even though it was being discarded, for personal purposes. It seemed, on its' face, to be a petty thing to do. I could tell the owner someone was going to steal from him, but that seemed equally petty and just about as dishonest since I had already given tacit approval to the theft. Or, finally, I could ask permission to allow the sale of useless assets for employee use.

I took the last option. If the owner said "no," then I'd have to rescind my approval and be vigilant to be sure no assets were being sold without my knowledge, which would put the strain of distrust between me and my favorite employee. I might even find myself in the position of firing her for theft. Oh, how I could have avoided all this with just a simple statement of "this is not right."

I put the question to the owner simply, "would you mind..." He said he didn't. Total time of discussion: fifteen seconds. Total amount of sleep lost: hours and hours.

Today I called the employee. I told her I had gotten approval for her plan and it was all good. She thanked me profusely. I could hear the sound of relief in her voice. She, too, had been bothered by her own plan. Maybe she had been bothered by my response, since I had not given official approval and therefore had put her in jeopardy if the scheme had been found out. Whatever the case, we both breathed easier.

There is not much about this story that is exclusively libertarian except that being libertarian is, at its' core, perfect respect for the property of others. I had failed to live up to my principles. Or maybe I had just stumbled on my path and regained my balance.

Legitimate beneficiary, or tax sucker?

2009-10-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

I graduated from high school during the late 70's, when the country was in a blue funk from losing the Vietnam War, there were periodic shortages of the strange things like toilet paper and paper clips, inflation and interest rates were in the double digits, and unemployment was higher than at any time since the Great Depression. Prospects seemed dim.

Neverthelessw, my parents instilled in me and my brothers that there was no excuse for being on the dole, and they would sometimes speak in hushed tones of someone they knew who had succumbed to taking unemployment insurance. Their tone and delivery made it clear that unemployment was a moral failure, and taking unemployment insurance was a scandal.

When I attended the University of Michigan, I hooked up with the local Ann Arbor Libertarian League. I found in that rag tag group of students, grad students, former students, assistant professors, and various adult leftovers from the 60's, kindred spirits and fellow travelers. We partied together, ran petition drives to get Roger McBride on the presidential ballot, and hung out at the office. These were my kind of people: fiercely independent, intellectual, and principled.
Imagine my dismay when I found that the reason some of these people, especially the adults, were able to spend extraordinary amounts of time being politically active was they were unemployed and living on unemployment insurance payments. The argument was that unemployment insurance was a tax on their wages, so they in effect paid premiums and were now due the benefits.

I didn't buy it. In fact, I felt it was a major cop-out for a libertarian to succumb to taking government money of any kind (which was one of the reasons I quit U of M).

Thirty years later I am watching the company I work for go through a major downsizing during the deepest recession since the 70's, maybe even the 30's. We have had to let many good people go and some of them seemed to have had extraordinary problems getting back on their feet. During that time, most of those let go have taken unemployment insurance. One of the managers who will lose her job soon has flat-out stated that she is done working, and she has every intention of taking unemployment payments for as long as they are offered, but she has no intention of looking for or taking work.

She and I argue about politics and policy on a regular basis. When we took up the subject of unemployment insurance, she made her position clear that if I argued with her over it "we'd come to blows." She said it with total conviction in her always intimidating deep south drawl. If we ever "came to blows" I would not bet on the winner.

She is a conservative Republican, yet she believes with all her being that the money paid by the company for unemployment insurance is no different than the money paid for health insurance. No one is expected to live with discomfort, pain, or chronic disease...that's what the insurance is for. Even non-life-threatening medical events are considered good reason to take advantage of the insurance offered. Could unemployment insurance be any different? They're unemployed...so that's what the insurance was paid for.

As I grapple with this issue, I note that there is a difference in intent and use of unemployment insurance versus health insurance. Health insurance restores you to health after an outside event (disease, accident, etc.) that made you unhealthy. Presumably you cannot simply wait-out the disease/injury (unlike a cold or a flu) but instead require some kind of medical intervention to restore your health. That restoration requires doctors and hospitals, and paying for all that is the purpose of insurance. On the other hand, unemployment may also be an outside event (you are not considered "unemployed" if you quit your job voluntarily), but its' continuance is very subject to personal actions. You can, as the "patient" of unemployment insurance, frustrate attempts to make you whole again by simply refusing to take work that is offered. The insurance pays you to be unemployed, unlike health insurance which pays to make you healthy.

The next question is: does any of this matter? Insurance can be structured to cover anything you like, including bets at the blackjack table. That is true, so maybe the difference is more cosmetic than substantial.

The premiums for unemployment insurance, unlike health insurance, often do not cover the real expense of the payouts. During difficult economic times, like now, the unemployment funds often run dry and require an infusion of tax money to keep them afloat. Anyone accepting unemployment checks once the fund has been depleted is, for all practical purposes, living at the expense of someone else. Is it reasonable for a beneficiary to worry about what the source of the money that pays the benefits? Didn't they, after all, pay premiums in good faith? Maybe it was the OTHER guy who got the tax money.

If libertarians adhere to the non-aggression principle, then unemployment insurance is tricky ground. Yes, it is a form of insurance that is at least partly paid for by the worker in the form of premiums (taxes) that are specifically earmarked for paying the benefits. However, the morality of taking the insurance payments once the fund is depleted seems clear: the fund is bankrupt and you are just plain SOL.

My parents were correct, at least in part. The extent to which we have paid for a service, we deserve the benefits, but once the money is gone, even if we did not get any, we no longer have a legitimate claim. Forcing someone else to pay the benefits is aggression. Unemployment insurance benefits, when the fund is dry, is nothing more than the dole. It behooves a good libertarian to avoid it.

With my mind now made up, I can prepare for my beating from my good friend in Texas. It won't be fun, and it won't be pretty, but it will be right. Let the abuse begin.

Very little big lesson

2009-09-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

This is not a difficult one. Your boss asks you to take an action that will hurt someone else's ability to make an honest living. The action is legal. Indeed, the law encourages the action. The penalty is minor, maybe a small fine. The guys who will be fined are scrappy and will probably find other work.

You, however, believe the law to be immoral. If you refuse to take the action, you could lose your job. You stick to the high ground and refuse to take an immoral action, right? Oh yeah, you live in a small town and it has been hit hard by double digit unemployment in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. So, again, do you risk losing your job, a job you can't afford to lose, so someone else won't have to pay a minor fine for violating an ordinance, or do you protect yourself and go along to get along?

This wasn't my first dillema with my libertarian principles, but it was the first one that got my heart pumping.

The year was around 1981-82. I was working for a small roofing company in my hometown of about 10,000 residents. It was a family owned and operated business, completely above board with all the proper licenses, permits, certifications, insurances, etc. With a crew of about 15 guys, we were the largest roofer in town.

My job was to do whatever the owner needed me to do. One day I'm answering phones and making coffee, the next day I'm carrying 500 degree hot asphalt in buckets up and down slippery roofs in 90 degree heat because a crew member didn't show up as scheduled. I was his right hand and his boy-friday. I cheerfully did anything he needed done because that was the nature of my job.

On that particular day, the boss and I were driving around town measuring roofs and preparing estimates. It was work that, for some reason, the boss hated to do. He much prefered to start a big job, say the tear-off and replacement of a factory roof that could occupy him for weeks at a time, than to give attention to the dozens of little residential roof replacements and repairs that were worth a couple thousand dollars and produced less than $100 profit each.

I was holding on my lap the sheaf of files I had created for each of the requests for estimates that had been previously phoned in. All of the files carried the date of the call, so I could see that some of the files were weeks old. More than once we would drive up and be met by an irate homeowner who did not understand why his call (usually in the middle of a rainstorm) was being responded to many weeks later. More than once we would find the request for an estimate to be a moot point as, clearly, the roof had already been replaced. I'd draw a slash across the information sheet inside the folder and put it aside, then move on to the next location.

At one of the homes we visited, we could see our services were not going to be needed because half of the roof had already been replaced and there were a couple of scraggly looking shinglers still working on the other half. The boss recognized the workers. Fly-by-night's, he called them. He hrumphed and told me to note this address, then call the City Building Commission when we got back to the office.

I didn't say anything, but I felt an instant stab to my gut. I put the folder aside as I was told, and we moved on.

Back at the office, I went to work on estimates, calling customers, cleaning the warehouse, filing, making coffee...anything...to keep myself busy, waiting impatiently for the boss to go home. He announced he was heading home (he usually knocked off an hour early, though he might come back to the office later and work until midnight) and I was relieved that the incident with the "fly-by-nights" had been forgotten.

"Goodnight," he said. "Oh, yeah, did you report the fly-by-nights to the Building Commission?"

"No." My stomach felt that stab again.

"Call them in the morning, then."

I paused a split second.

"No. I can't." My heart was pounding.

He looked at me, puzzled. I had never, ever, refused to do any work. I felt I was being in-your-face insubordinate.

"Why not?"

"I don't believe in building permits or licensing roofers. I can't turn them in."

He just stared at me for a few seconds.

"We have to follow the law, why don't they?" he asked.

"We shouldn't have to follow those law, either," I anwsered. The stab in my stomach eased a little.

"You understand, they're probably not even insured, don't have a license, don't have a permit, and so don't have our expenses. They can undercut us on every job if we don't stop them. It's not fair."

"No, it's not fair. But we shouldn't be forced to have those expenses."

"Hmmmm. Sounds good in theory, but that's not the way the world works," he said.

"It doesn't matter. I can't. It's not right."

The boss didn't answer. He just nodded, said goodnight again, and left.

The subject did not come up again. I don't know if he made the phone call himself. I was not reprimanded and I was not fired. Life went on. I don't think I ever again had the same fear of the effects of sticking to my principles. This was a very little big lesson in my life.