For good reason, the blogosphere is going nuts linking this article from the Times, which challenges the notion that obesity is caused by dietary fat. There is increasing evidence that it is carbs that are the main culprit in modern diet, not fat. What if that's true?
The alternative hypothesis also comes with an implication that is worth considering for a moment, because it's a whopper, and it may indeed be an obstacle to its acceptance. If the alternative hypothesis is right -- still a big ''if'' -- then it strongly suggests that the ongoing epidemic of obesity in America and elsewhere is not, as we are constantly told, due simply to a collective lack of will power and a failure to exercise. Rather it occurred... because the public health authorities told us unwittingly, but with the best of intentions, to eat precisely those foods that would make us fat, and we did. We ate more fat-free carbohydrates, which, in turn, made us hungrier and then heavier.
Read that again: if this is right, then the cause of the "epidemic" of obesity is, in part, the incorrect recommendations of the State! Talk about unintended consequences; here's one the American people might actually get mad about: I believed and you made me fat and ugly!
PS: don't you hate when "epidemic" is used for health problems which are at least partially self-caused?
Anarchy in action: it seems that $3 tax on a $2 pack of cigarettes is a bit much to pay. Fortunately, there are Indian nations within striking range of NYC. Businesses in the nations are cleaning up, selling untaxed cigarettes.
This illustrates an important principle that I shall have more on eventually: competition in supplying law has the practical effect of laissez faire. As long as there are multiple sources of law, any of which one might affiliate with, there tends to be a "race to the bottom" effect between the law suppliers, bidding for customers. What's the "bottom"? Freedom - no law at all. In this case, huge taxes are applied by the monopoly protection agency covering most of the New York state area, but tiny agencies are starting to have a serious effect. Fewer taxes are collected, and the businesses affiliated with the tiny protection agencies are enriched.
Meanwhile, cigarette selling businesses who are subjects of the large and evil monopoly are fighting like hell to use legal means to crush the competition. (Let's hope for the sake of New Yorkers that they fail in that.) They do this because it's the easiest way for them to get an even playing field with the Indian merchants. (Getting the tax repealed in NY would be better, but they know it is practically impossible.) In full anarchy, they would simply switch agencies, voting with their feet that $3/pack is too much tax.
Protected by a "safe haven" declared by the United Nations and a "no-flight zone" patrolled by American and British warplanes, the Kurds, with barely 40,000 troops and only light weapons, have built a 17,000-square-mile mini-state that arcs across a 500-mile stretch of Iraqi territory bordering Syria, Turkey and Iran. ... In this "liberated area" of soaring mountains, fertile foothills and semi-desert, the Kurds have built a society with freedoms denied to the rest of Iraq's population.
The Kurdish-controlled area has opposition parties and newspapers, satellite television and international telephone calls, and an absence of the repressive apparatus that has prompted international human rights organizations to brand Mr. Hussein's Iraq a terror state.
The drawback is that all this exists outside international law, and could be made permanent only by a new government in Baghdad that embraced freedoms for all of Iraq.
Why does this exist outside international law? What good is international law if people cannot secede? How is self determination possible without secession?
Weird "weather" in Baltimore yesterday: Canadian Wildfires Generate Hazy Day. Fallout from wildfires 1000 miles north of here generated an overcast, light grey day smelling of smoke.
Eric Raymond ends his series on Islam with a call to war. The series has been analysis thus far, and I think very good. Now Raymond gets to suggesting policy, and suddenly loses all sense of history.
To people who view the entire world through the lens of the Western tradition, the strategy I will outline is doubtless going to sound bellicose and regressive. It is not; it is founded on a cold-blooded realization that Arab cultures (and the Arabized cultures of the rest of the Islamic world) regard victory in war as a sign of Allah's favor and regard compromise and concession as a sign of weakness.
Well, yes, what follows is bellicose. "Regressive" is a judgement call that I will leave aside. As for that cold-blooded realization: all societies that I am aware of have regarded victory in war as sign of favor of their favorite diety. And all regard compromise and concession, at least over matter of principle, as weakness, because they are.
I agree with Raymond that we should take measures to improve our self-defense: "these will include conventional police and security measures. It must also include a revival of the role of the unincorporated militia and the armed citizen."
Raymond proceeds to argue that somebody (practically, the USA) needs to project military power against the "terrorist bases and havens". Bases, no problem. (Proof is an issue, but I ignore it for the purpose of discussion.) Havens? Problem. Right now, every Arab country has citizens who that hate Jews, the West, and the USA. All offer "haven" to at least a few terrorists. What we are talking about here is full scale war, between the USA and essentially all of the Arab world. Raymond does not quite admit that, but close enough - his call for targeted countries: "the war must continue in Iraq, and it is likely to encompass Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia as well."
So the USA is to overthrow all the governments in the Islamic world. To what end? To change the minds of the Islamic people: "We must teach the Dar-al-Islam to respect and fear the power of the West. We must not negotiate or offer concessions until it is clear from the behavior of governments, the umma, and the 'Arab street' that the public will to support jihad has been broken."
In other words, Raymond is advocating a sort of memetic engineering: from outside, we will apply force of arms that will change the hearts and minds of Muslims, making them give up on the idea of terrorist jihad. This point is emphasized later in the article, where he talks about cultural subversion.
Now, there is one, huge, gaping problem with this idea. And that is, that there is zero historical evidence that memetic engineering has ever worked, without the application of truly horrific levels of violence. Examples of effective imposed meme engineering are few: the conversion of Japan to democracy after 1945. Failures are many: Reconstruction. Vietnam. The War on some Drugs. "Nation building" sounds simple, but it is not.
Even more unlikely is the idea of forceably meme-engineering a foreign religion. Religion tends to strongly resist all change, internal or external. The expansion of Islam by the sword is one of the few examples I can think of where people were converted by external force. And in fact, it was not external force after the conquerers won - they moved in, and waged a sort of permanent battle for a while against the infidel.
Why is it so difficult to forceably change the thoughts of the masses? The reason is quite simple: people do not like to blame themselves, for anything. Given a problem and an even vaguely plausible external cause (such as an occupying army), we avoid self-criticism and blame the other. This is only human. It makes engineering other people's cultures extremely difficult.
History shows that only excessive levels of violence will serve to change a culture from the outside. The US government killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians, for example, to put the survivors in the right frame of mind to accept American tutelage. But we are more progressive now, and we will not stand for our soldiers terminating Arabs in the street. Nor will we tolerate our boys and girls coming home in body bags, altruistically sacrificed for Arabs. Any attempt by the US government to inject new ideas into Islam will fail.
So what should we do?
The USA, and the West, should disengage with Islam. We should remove our standing armies. We should give up the embargo that is hurting the Iraqi people but not Saddam. We should stop training Arab secret police and other CIA-type interventions into their society. And we should strongarm Israel into unilateral separation from the Palestinians. We should, of course, trade freely with the Islamic world. And we should continue sniping at their lack of freedom, but only with words from private groups. Publicly we should simply say we believe in self-determination and let the Arab street figure it out.
We should also make it clear that any attack by an Arab country on a democracy will result in us entering the war, and either capturing or killing all Arab leaders that are plausibly responsible for the decision to fight.
What will happen? Well, terrorists will continue to attack us for a while, and we must be ready. That's why I agree with Raymond on self-defense measures. After a while, the terrorists (along with many good Arabs) will realize that the local dictators are vulnerable. Social revolution will break out. The dictators will be swept aside, replaced by nasty socialist theocratic regimes. (I hope they will be nice playful liberatarian Western regimes, but let's be realistic.) These regimes, in turn, will fail because socialism always fails, and both socialism and theocracy will be discredited. They will evolve fairly peacefully into democratic market economies. This is the pattern we have seen in the undeveloped world (substituting nationalism for theocracy). This is the pattern that we are seeing in Iran. It will work in the rest of the Arab world. Note the key to it all: they will evolve. Social evolution has to come from within. Raymond's open-ended war will only prolong the current period, of deeply angry people being turned against the West by clever rulers.
And guess what? The policy of peace is also moral. How about that?
Lew Rockwell correctly points out that Vouchers [are] Another Name for Welfare. Aren't I against welfare? Of course. So why I am so happy about the voucher decision?
The reaction to the decision reveals a split between hardcore moralist libertarians, and more practical ones. Now, I would almost never place myself on the side of practicality, but in this instance I find myself there.
As Rockwell argues, there is no doubt that vouchers are welfare. Welfare is different from charity; welfare is involuntary on the part of the giver. Broadly, any time taxes are handed out in such a way as to effect redistribution, that's welfare. Libertarians are all against welfare, for the simple reason that taxation is wrong. So Rockwell is certainly within the libertarian mainstream to be against vouchers, at least at a theoretical level.
The split between libertarians comes in adapting ideology to the real world, a world that is already deeply immoral. In this case, we already have a tax system up and running, and it is already spending huge amounts on horrid public schools that are damaging millions of children. Furthermore, student slavery (aka truancy) laws are already in place and don't appear likely to change.
In this context, I see vouchers not as a new form of welfare, because the welfare of public schools is already in place. In the sense of requiring immoral taxation, vouchers are no more or less moral than public schools. (Though it is worth pointing out that by saving money, vouchers will at least damp down the need for taxes.) Vouchers are unrelated to evil truancy laws.
Rockwell worries about the influence of vouchers on religious schools. Won't they be tempted, and thereby fall under the regulation of the state? Well, yes, many will. But they are not forced into the system. So I don't see it as a problem. Certainly some schools will hold out for religious reasons. Some won't. Probably in toto, the number of "pure" schools will decline. But that just represents the fact that most people, even now, are not sending kids to religious schools for religious reasons; rather they send them there because the alternatives suck. In any case, all the kids now in religious schools do, currently, have the option to go to a public school and thereby accept welfare. Tempting them with a voucher is no different, except for the practical reason that vouchers are likely to buy better schooling. Morally the two are equivalent.
Where vouchers are important and different, is that they hold out the possibility of introducing competition into the education market. This will drastically increase quality over that of public schools. Now, it is true that vouchers will not introduce as much market discipline as a true free market in education would. But so what? Vouchers are clearly superior, practically, to public schools in at least some ways, and morally inferior in none.
So can libertarians advocate a change to public policy that is evil, but less evil than the current public policy? That is the question. I would say the answer is yes. For if we can only make changes that change to moral end-states, we will achieve nothing.
Meanwhile, I think that vouchers will achieve a very great deal. What? Well, there will be a terrific social struggle for a while, as the teacher's unions fight to keep customers in their failed system. But over time the benefits of competition will become increasingly clear to the public, and they will implement voucher systems for everyone, not just the poor. The middle classes will leave the public schools. The public schools will remain as a rump system, but it will only be used by those that nobody else wants - handicapped kids and discipline cases. Meanwhile, the education in the new voucher funded private schools will become top-notch.
Why? Competition. Like Rockwell, I worry about the effect that state bureaucrats will have, attaching strings to vouchers. Inevitably they will. But I also think that the effects will be much smaller than the effects that those same bureaucrats have on the public schools. The reason is simple: currently both the administrators and the educators are the same set of people. They have the same interests in bilking the public. Therefore, it is very hard for politicians to get cover to say "no". To say no is to be against "the children".
In a partly private system, the interests of the educators will be opposed to those of bureaucrats. Therefore, not only will there be fewer bought Democrats, there will be political cover for Republicans that want to stand up to the school bureaucrats. The private school teachers will be happy to testify that such-and-such a regulation is hurting their ability to educate, that the regulation needs to be clipped "for the children". This opens up the politics so that the politicians are free to do what is right (for the non bought ones). It's a very different political situation than currently obtains.
So, while the state will regulate the voucher schools somewhat, there will be much less regulation than currently; furthermore of the regulation that is there, much less of it will worthless or counterproductive.
Less regulation, and much more competition - this is a formula for vast improvement. That improvement itself will feed back into the system over time, as kids become adults and can vote. It is a joke, currently, amongst libertarians, that our enemies were educated in public schools. That joke holds truth, though, as hurtful jokes often do. I don't know of any statistics on it, but my impression is that people who were privately educated are much more ideological than those who got public educations. They are more likely to be libertarian, whether of the left or right. They are more likely to be sceptical of the government. And they are more likely to be interesting friends. Now imagine a nation full of such people. That is what ultimately frightens the left about vouchers; it's not just the teacher's unions. And that is why almost all libertarians are cackling with glee over the recent Supreme Court decision.
In the National Review Online, James Bowman argues that Marx does influence us all in our political language.
when Mark Leibovich in the Washington Post says that the news from WorldCom is "yet another body blow to our national faith in capitalism triumphant," we have to wonder if the defenders of "capitalism" shouldn't consider the dangers of using their enemy's vocabulary. For "capitalism," as a man from Mars unfamiliar with the terms of political debate in the 20th century would have to conclude, is simply the socialist word for life.
Or, to put it another way, this supposed "system" of capitalism is simply the way things are, baby - even under "socialism," as the inevitable black markets in socialist countries bear witness. To give this fundamental economic reality its socialist name, to call it an "ism" and speak of that "ism" as a "system" implies that there is some alternative to it
An interesting piece, but ultimately wrong. "Capitalism" is the economics that spring up from private property. It is not "life", except insofar as we accept liberty as a default state which is so obvious as to be unchallengeable. But clearly liberty is challenged by many political ideas. The fact that "capitalism" of a sort exists even under socialist systems does not mean it's "the way things are". It means that the socialist system, for one reason or another, has not seen fit to extinguish defacto private property in some particular segment of the economy.
The economic results that grow from private property stand in stark contrast to the economic results that grow from public property. Succinctly, private property is good; public property, bad. And thus it is important and worthwhile to have words, "capitalism" and "socialism", to use to contrast to such ideas. One could, I suppose, instead say "the system of natural liberty and its economic aspects", or something like that. But hey, we have the word. Why not use it? Indeed, given that it is a compact description of a complex thing, we will never expurgate it from the language.
As for the idea that the ideological enemy is shaping the discourse, I think that is only true if we, the defenders of liberty, let it be true. I use "capitalism" myself all the time, without irony, as a good, desirable, and even wonderful thing. As in, "look at all these brands of cereal! Ain't capitalism great?!" Capitalism is great, and we ought to say so. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either uneducated in economics, or an idiot.
Doesn't copyright require novelty? No, I guess not. John Cage's publishers go after some guy who "wrote" a minute of silence.
UPDATE: I was just cruising slashdot, and this was there on Monday. You know you are a geek when you find a piece and blog it, then later discover you are following slashdot.
I was just getting ready to leave for work this morning, when I heard beeping. Spitting toothpaste, I went to look and sure enough, it was my UPS. Power was out. So much for that last look at the web before commuting. I turned the computer off and left.
All the lights on 29th street were out, most of the way to the interstate. I made great time. I waited briefly at one intersection for traffic the other way, but mostly it was going my way and I cruised all the darkened intersections.
Do traffic lights serve a useful purpose? Well, yes. In heavy flow both ways, they clearly create fairness in accessing the intersection. In light flow, they tend not to be that efficient. Mainly they make it clear who has right of way, thereby eliminating "chicken" games in an intersection. That is, they may not be efficient in terms of traffic flow (which was what I was perceiving), but they may be efficient in terms of safety and traffic flow collectively.
Would road companies competing with each other for customers find more efficiencies? I expect so. The state has little or no incentive to do so. It suffers neither from loss of customers to competitors nor to liability when the streets are not safe. Why should it change anything?
Jim at Objectionable Content has some comments regarding my piece on the price of civil order. He calculates it per-household and per-adult. He also calculates per-household defense spending as $253/month.
I did not calculate defense spending in the original, even though I thought about doing so, for a good reason. Most of what the justice system produces is private goods. If you don't subscribe to a company A, it doesn't protect you. Most of what we think of as "defense" spending is a public good. Public goods are underproduced, or not produced by for-profit producers. Defense being a very broad-scale public good, in anarchy I expect it will not be produced on the market. Since defense is valuable, it will be produced in other ways - primarily, I think, charity. But the total spent would almost certainly be far less than the USA currently spends. And the cost is likely to be spread much less evenly than that for protection (which everyone needs all the time).
Economics lesson for those confused by "public good" and "private good": a private good is a good which you can exclude others from (and because you can exclude, you can make money!). Most normal goods are like this. If I eat the apple, you can't also eat it. A public good is a good that, once produced, benefits a set of people who cannot be excluded from enjoying it. Think of a NPR radio broadcast: regardless of whether you cough up money at the begathon, you can still listen. Economic theory tells us that private goods will be produced in the correct amount in a market, but that public goods will be underproduced.
I just read Brink Lindsey's blog, as I occasionally do, because he is a libertarian. In this case I was looking to see what he thought about the pledge thing.
I found this, which is wonderful and short enough to quote in its entirety:
Yesterday evening I did a live segment on CNBC on agricultural trade issues. When I got home, my 5 year-old boy was waiting at the door, grinning expectantly and asking: "Did you see me? Did you see me?"
I asked him what he meant, since I had no idea what he was talking about. "I saw you on TV," he explained. "Could you see me?"
I remember, when I was around his age, thinking that if I smashed open the TV all my favorite cartoon people would scamper out into my living room. I never had the guts to try.
Against the Pledge: I crowed over the Pledge decision, earlier. Why?
I always disliked the pledge. Not just because of the God reference, though that was offensive. But because it didn't make any sense and felt creepy to boot. Of course at the age where I was reciting it I was not as critical as I am now. But now I think I can analyze it adequately enough to explain my earlier feelings.
It did not make any sense for me to be standing there showing respect for a piece of cloth. It's a piece of cloth. What does it mean to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth?
Plainly seen, the use of the flag in the pledge of allegiance is idolatry: the worship of a physical object. (One wonders why so few conservative Christians and Jews abjure it for this reason; they are commanded against idolatry many times.) Forget about "under God". The entire ritual is religious, and should not be performed in government schools.
Well, what if we removed the flag and god references and the use of the flag too? I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Nope, still wrong. What is allegiance? It is "the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government". I'm an American, not a serf. The government exists to serve me; not vice-versa. I owe it no fidelity; if it ceases to serve me I should (and do) call for its abolition. To pledge allegiance even in this attenuated form, is to declare oneself a vassal, to declare oneself owned. I am, or at least should be, a free man. And I want all other Americans to be free, too. I don't want them declaring servility.
And I especially don't want children being brainwashed with servility memes that they are not sophisticated enough to really understand.
OK, that's my blast of negativity. It's easy to be a critic. So what would make me happy? Well, I am happy to declare allegiance to principles. The pledge should state principles that are common to all Americans. Here's a pledge I would recite happily enough: I pledge allegiance to the principles of the United States of America: limited government, private property, life, liberty and justice for all.
Do I want that performed in the government schools? No, it's still too much like brainwashing for my taste. Of course, I don't think there should be any government schools for exactly that reason.
Imagine that as part of the settlement with Microsoft, some of the terms were that Microsoft would get out of the spreadsheet business. But imagine, further, that Microsoft had appealed the decision, and reliable observers thought there was a good chance that the ruling would be reversed in the Supreme Court.
Question: would you start a business to make and sell spreadsheet software?
Answer: no chance. You would be a fool to go up against a 50-50 chance of outright bankruptcy completely out of your own control. No responsible bank would lend you money for such an endeavor. They would tell you: why not wait for a few years to see how it goes in the courts, and then, if the ruling goes against Microsoft, come back and we'll deal?
The preceding is completely hypothetical. I thought it up to help think about the effect of the recent Supreme Court decision on school choice. It's no wonder that 95% or so of the kids choose religious schools - there are many more of them already in the inexpensive education market than there are cheap secular private schools. With the decision, though, I expect more private schools to enter the low-end market. Not because they couldn't make a profit there before, but because they stood to have their entire market killed at the stroke of a pen.
Her religion requires her not to expose her face to strangers. Florida requires full-face shots for drivers licences. But it also guarantees religious freedom. Lifting Veil for Photo ID Goes Too Far.
Like the pledge in schools, this is yet another instance of the struggle set off by public property. In the case of the pledge, the state owns the schools and by predatory pricing makes it very difficult to compete. People who are not rich can't opt out, and thus they try to have their ideas of what should be taught in school implemented. There can be only one policy, but there are many contradictory ideas, so it is a fight. If the pro-pledge people win, the anti-pledge people lose, and vice versa. Both sides cannot have the imprimateur of the state upon their preferred outcome, because the state is singular.
Similarly, the state runs a monopoly road system, using predatory pricing (and coercive funding) to prevent anyone from competing. So access to the government roads becomes something everyone must have. And so competing interests must fight to set policy.
These two cases are both small things. Principle is involved, so they are well worth fighting over. But the actual effect of the decisions, whichever way they go, is small to nonexistent. Some people seem to think this is a reason not to fight. I disagree totally. If you won't fight for principle, what will you fight for? If you shouldn't fight for principle, what should you fight for?
But there are many cases where the stakes are not as small. For instance, can they teach evolution in the public schools? Or even larger: can they teach science? The problems are an inevitable result of public property. The solution is private property. Once you see that for the schools (where it is obvious to anyone who understands economics), then you are set to start questioning where else the same solution can be applied.
What Does Protection Cost? I have been talking about "Protection Agencies" that compete in a market for the business of consumers. One question worth considering is: how much does protection cost? If it is a lot of money, then perhaps the poor will not be able to afford it. That may or may not be a problem, per se, but certainly it raises issues of justice.
Well, check out the Statistical Abstract of the United States. In table 424, we find that the total spent by states and localities on "Police protection" in 1998 was $187 per capita. On "Corrections", per capita spending was $157. I infer that costs of running the court system are included in that, since there is nothing else it fits under, other than possibly "Financial administration", $96 per capita. But let's assume courts are under administration. Total: $460 per capita - per year.
The Federal court and prison systems are much smaller than the states, something like 10% or less. So we can ignore them for this.
Keep in mind that a good bit of both the law enforcement costs and the corrections costs are the costs of apprehending and imprisoning victimless "criminals". This is perhaps half of the total. Then we should also decrease the amount one might pay in anarchy based on the near-certain fact that the current system is bloated and inefficient. That will also be perhaps half. So the costs of protection in an anarchic system should be something on the order of $115/year, about $10/month. Anyone can afford that.
Now, I think that anarchy will do even better than that. I have written before about the function of our current prison system as rapist factories. More generally, our current prisons are fantastic places to learn to be a criminal and not very good for anything else. So, reducing their throughput drastically would cut crime disproportionately. Another advantage of anarchy is that prisoners will work to earn their keep and to pay restitution to their victims. This would be a huge gain in financial efficiency, since currently incarceration costs an average of $20000/prisoner/year. Finally, I suspect that given a highly competitive market, protection agencies will not just "cut out fat" and get leaner, but they will invent whole new ways to police that we won't try today. As I said yesterday, liberty is like that - unpredictable. So the price may well come down even further. I can certainly imagine "free" policing that really poor people provide by themselves, for themselves, as a sort of militia system.
In short, currently the State spends surprisingly little on protection, especially given how much they steal in taxes. In anarchy, total spending will be less. It's affordable.
I have suggested thus far a few ways to think at anarchy, and I hope to post another when I have the time. But I wanted to stop off a second to make something clear. I can certainly kick out some ideas of what I think anarchy will be like. My ideas might be accurate. But then, they might not. One of the striking aspects of freedom is that you don't know what people will do with it without actually giving it to them, letting them mess around, and seeing what comes out.
Consider, for a second, the following thought experiment. Say I had come to you, 20 years ago, and told you that the U.S. government was considering privatizing the U.S. postal service. Next I would have asked for your prediction: what will the business of carrying mail be like in 20 years? If you had been up on things at the time, you would have predicted UPS would be big, and FedEx too. You probably would have predicted many other package services would have entered the market. But would you have predicted email would dominate the market? Probably not.
Similarly, when I propose ideas for what I think anarchy will be like, it's just that: ideas. The system itself has a logic that may or may not match what I think; and what will happen is what will happen. That's freedom. With most political ideologies, people do things the other way around. They posit the outcomes they want, then they try to construct a political system such that it will force those outcomes to obtain, or at least make them likely (in the opinion of the ideologue). That's what I meant a couple days ago, when I said that "Libertarians try to take a moral framework and construct politics out of it." You take an idea, say, the idea that people should be able to carry around guns. Then you try to create a system such that it must hold true, i.e. a court system chartered with a bill of rights that has the right to keep and bear arms in it. This sort of construction often runs into problems: what's a "arm"? Do machineguns count? Artillery? Shoulder launched anti air missiles? Thermonuclear ICBMs? What does "keep" mean? What does "bear" mean? Etc. etc.
Now, I am a libertarian from the point of view of most people. I support the libertarian (and Libertarian) agenda pretty much without caveat. I also happen to think that anarchy will have a very libertarian politics supervening over it. But, I could be wrong about that. If push comes to shove (and it will, at least in tiny ways), I will take anarchy. As, for example, the RKBA example: a rights absolutist will have to admit that a thermonuclear weapon is not really different from an assault rifle, from the point of view of being "arms". Both are useful for the militia to deter the state. Now most people, even libertarians, would be uncomfortable with the idea of just anyone with a nuclear device. That's an ideological problem. To an anarchist, it's not, because "rights" as such, while convenient ways to think of what the system will produce, are not reified in the system. The protection companies (if that's what evolves) can easily decide to allow their clients to have guns, but not nukes. They are businesses and they don't have to be ideological.
How can a person espouse a system without knowing exactly what it will produce? Well, it's easy to me. I see that most people are generally good, at least publicly, and will fight at least a bit for justice. Give them freedom, and I think it is enough; over time they will create a system, whatever it may be, that will work pretty well. If they keep the simple axioms of liberty in mind, it will be a great system. If they don't, it will have problems, but it will still probably be OK. In this, I point to the current systems that have evolved around us. Sure, they are statist and ultimately unacceptable. They violate rights all over the place, are inconsistent and even dangerous occasionally. Nonetheless, they more-or-less work most of the time. That's not too bad for systems designed and/or evolved without a modern understanding of economics and human evolution. Knowing so much more, we can do even better. And we will.
A teacher explains why she's quitting the New York public school system.
How does one keep order without a threat to punish or exclude? You don't. But if the rationale for educating children is equality, how can you exclude them? You don't. So you end up with a system that allows children to threaten teachers. And the teachers, of course, can't be paid enough to take such jobs. The article strongly implies that the only way New York keeps the positions filled is by the ignorance of incoming teachers, who teach a year or two then leave. No wonder we pay so much for public school teachers, and still get so little.
The answer is not raising pay. The answer is effective discipline, which means either real punishment, or real exclusion of kids that won't toe the line. Neither of these things is likely, or perhaps even possible coming from the state. That's a reason that education should be completely private.
Some interesting thoughts of Eric Olsen on "work" vs "play". Is blogging work? Sometimes. Cranking out a screed on anarchism is a certain amount of work. Even crafting this little snippet is a little teeny work, though it is much more play than anything else.
I don't thinking blogging per se is ever gonna make money, but that's fine. Some bloggers will make money, writing longer pieces or selling reprint rights to for-profit publications. For these few bloggers, writing will be work. But meanwhile, most bloggers will never make any money nor even fame outside of a small circle, like kids who play hoops down at the local rec center once a week. For these folks blogging had better be play - or else, they will just stop doing it.
First Principles: Another way to get at anarchy, is to imagine Locke's state of nature then see what evolves. In the state of nature, everyone is perfectly free to do what he wishes, but nonetheless people have their instinctive sense of property, and of justice. Most people will therefore refrain from obviously hurting each other, or taking each other's obvious property. But some people won't - natural "criminals" if you will. People can punish each other if they will; though most normal people will only punish if they feel wronged. But again, there will be a minority who may claim that they are wronged by others and proceed to punish them, even though there is no wrong.
Now, there are several fairly obvious and large problems with the state of nature as thus far described. One is, it seems that the strong can terrorize the weak. A second is that, justice is haphazard even among equally strong peers. A third is that feuds are possible. I am sure you can imagine others. Locke jumped pretty much directly from this point to a social compact to create the state. That's fine as far as it goes, which is exactly to the next generation, or until someone wants to withdraw. At which point you either assert "sovereignty" and tell the non-member to join or die, or you have a state of nature again (at least for that one person; and the problem will grow as others join him).
Can these problems be solved without a state? Fairly easily, yes. People can band together to form mutual aid groups, or protection societies. If one member is attacked or harmed, the others pledge to help, and viceversa. Division of labor always works in capitalism, so these agencies will likely specialize into "cops" and customers, for most day-to-day functions. Adjudication is still a problem, but that can be solved too. People with a good reputation for justice and fairness will be able to sell their services as judges. Again, firms will arise to do judging. So the executive and judicial functions are fairly easy to see arising.
What of legislative? Well, the law is whatever the protection agencies succeed at enforcing. It is possible they will use democracy, internally, to decide on what laws they will enforce amongst their members. Or perhaps they will simply make up their laws, as a corporation. (Perhaps a vice president will do it in powerpoint.) It does not really matter that much how they get laws, because they are not monopolies. There are many such protection agencies, all competing in the market for protection/enforcement services. That means that if your agency decides to enforce a new law which you disagree with, you can exert consumer choice and immediately punish the agency, by taking your business elsewhere. The practical outcome of this is that agencies will be very conservative about changing their laws.
That's what law will be between two customers of the same agency. But what about customers of different agencies? In the long run, all agencies which might have conflicts will have agreements of some sort with each other to determine which one has "venue" for a particular enforcement action. Why? Consider what happens if they don't. I steal your TV. You complain to your agency. It comes to get me (and/or the TV); I call my agency. My agency has no rule against theft for some reason (it's possible, albeit unlikely) and tells yours to buzz off. Now the agencies can either (a) negotiate sometime (b) do nothing (c) have a war. Wars are very costly. Any two agencies engaging in a war have two big problems. One is, that their own profits drop; they may well go bankrupt. Another is, that if they cause any collateral damage, they will either pay for it or they are likely to have other agencies waiting to hit them when they are weak. Their customers, too, are likely to want nothing of the war, and defect to other agencies. In short, war between agencies is likely to be catastrophic to their market position, and so they will not do it for reasons less than deeply vital ones.
How about the "do nothing" option. Well, if my agency won't defend me, I'll get another. If yours won't defend you, you will get another. Do nothing is not really a viable option.
So, the two agencies will negotiate; they are likely to take their conflict to an arbiter. In fact, all agencies are likely to enter into standing agreements with each other to deal with this problem.
What about different laws? What's to stop an agency that allows the murder of non-customers? Well, in that case, there would be a war; all the other agencies would likely band together and wipe out the transgressor agency if it did not change its policy.
There are plenty of other cases to think about, and some serious problems. The most serious problem, by far, is this: what happens if a protective agency manages to get a monopoly? In that case, it is likely to turn oppressive and ban competitors, which will then allow it to rob and enslave its customers - in short to become a state. What's to stop that? Ultimately, it must be an informed citizenry, who start to get very uncomfortable whenever a protection agency gets too large. Is that likely? I don't know, but I do think it is possible.
Glenn Reynolds finds "the statements made by Hauerwas in this article are so profoundly idiotic -- and worse yet for a philospher, incoherent and contradictory -- that I find it hard to believe that he said them as reported."
I read the article and I have no idea what Reynolds is talking about. There are a few incoherent statements, clearly decontextualized. But most of what Hauerwas is saying grows out of a pacifist philosophy clearly gotten from, yes, the New Testament. When you go around saying stuff like "love your enemies", and "turn the other cheek", there is a very real danger that someone might understand you.
Efficiency: Here's another way to get to anarchy. Efficiency. We live in a world of physical things (including ourselves). Control of these things can be looked at a lot of ways, but the simplest is a binary division. All things are either private property, or public property. It is a striking fact about the world that where there are similar goods or services provided publicly and privately, the privately provided ones are better.
Our public schools, for instance, range from very good to abysmal daycare prisons. Spending is tremendous. Private schools, by contrast, don't have any bad examples (or very few), and they are cheaper to boot.
Another example? The provision of protection. In the inner cities, protection is mostly public, being provided by the police. People are generally forbidden to effectively defend themselves. In suburbia, there are many things guarded by private guards, who do a much better job of protecting them. In our more rural states, people are allowed to bear arms to protect themselves, another private means of protection that works.
How about another? Adjudication. The government court system is woefully overwhelmed with cases. Minor cases get almost zero attention; major ones can spend years in the system. A trial by a jury who know nothing special is a bad way to settle many specialized disputes. In contrast, arbitration offers speed and informed judges.
How about news and reporting? The State gives us NPR. The private market gives us a thousand sources, many of which are pro freedom.
Mail? The State gives us the USPS. The private market, FedEx, UPS, Airborne Express, etc.
Retirement? The State: ponzi scheme. Private market: stocks and bonds.
In fact, looking at the many things the government does it is hard to avoid the notion that the State has a sort of reverse Midas touch. Whatever it does turns to shit. There are good reasons for this, to be found in economics: competition; the problem of agency and control; etc. But we don't necessarily need the reasons to notice the problems with government services. Now, generally efficiency is a good thing. Efficient provision of goods and services means we are not wasting money, meaning we are richer. We have more money to spend on other things. Efficiency is a good thing, and the government is inefficient. It is reasonable, then to start wondering: how much of this stuff can we privatize?
A libertarian would say, we should privatize everything but the core functions of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. These things, of course, must be public.
Anarchists say, of course? Nope - let's privatize all of it.
On Anarchy: There are lots of ways to think about anarchy. I hope to suggest a few in the next few days. This is one: a moralist approach.
Is secession a right? I think so. It's what I think of when I hear the phrase "self-determination of peoples", and the phrase "consent of the governed". If people want their own government, they should have it. Given that the world is fully divided and ruled by existing states, that means that any new state must be created out of part of one of the existing ones. Many people would vaguely agree thus far, though holding out caveats that of course the Confederacy did not deserve its own government ('cause they were evil).
But now let us ask: what sort of right is the right of secession? I would say, it is a natural, individual right. States have it only because they proxy for their citizens. It springs from the fundamental moral equality of all human beings: to rule another, you must either have their consent, or else you initiate force. Yet nobody has the right to initiate force against another; in this we are equal. So Maryland can secede from the Union, if it wants to, and (morally speaking) the Union must let her go. People believe that this issue was settled in 1865, but it was not. Anyway, it was not settled morally. Rather the Union immorally aggressed and conquered the South. The test of arms tends to be decisive, but it only shows which side is stronger and more willing to commit war crimes, not which side is right.
This nation is a different place now than it was in 1865. One interesting thought experiment is to consider: what would happen if a state seceded today? Let's say, Alaska votes to pull out of the Union. Would Bush move in an army and conquer? Would he be willing to order the army to replace the judges, governor and legislature? Would this stand in federal court? Would he be able to allow free elections, and if not, what would happen? Would guerillas start sniping at federal troops, and if so, would the American people be willing to have their boys and girls dying to oppress Alaska? Would the American people be willing to require their boys and girls to kill children in Alaska to terrorize the Alaskans into accepting federal rule?
But now an anarchist thought experiment. Earlier I said it is the right of Maryland to leave the Union if she wishes. That's because Maryland as a corporation proxies the rights of her citizens. By the same logic, Baltimore city can secede from Maryland. And by the same logic, Charles Village (my neighborhood) can secede from Baltimore city. And by the same logic, my block can secede from Charles Village. And by the same logic, I, personally, can secede from my block. None of these entities has any "right to rule" its citizens outside of their individual consent.
We can skip the intermediaries. It is my right, as a human being, to pull out of all of the corporations that would rule me without my consent. Federal, State, County, City. Of course, that will not happen - in the test of arms, they would conquer me. Therefore I don't try, which is prudent. But again, the test of arms proves nothing other than who is stronger and/or more immoral.
Try to imagine a society where rules are imposed on peaceful citizens only with their consent. That is anarchy.
When they get this far, most people quit. They think: it's a warzone, criminals running free, somalia, mafia, war of all against all. Therefore something must be wrong. Maybe people are really not equal in authority; maybe the State really does have a right to rule that does not spring from the governed. Maybe self-determination is a crock. But some of us see anarchy, and see the problems that one would naively expect, and wonder: how could you solve those sorts of problems within anarchy? And having given the matter some thought, we conclude that while the world is never going to be perfect, anarchy would be able to provide good solutions to most problems. The society would not resemble the naive version of war of all against all. Rather, it would be an extremely moral, peaceful and profitable place: a place that is inspiring.
Why the Blog? When I started this blog, my idea was to gradually write up a body of essays about anarchy and freedom, as I see it. This, I thought (and still think), will be useful in the sorts of arguments I occasionally get into with family or friends. If they read this blog, they know what I think and we can skip past the simple stuff. If they haven't read the blog, I can demur gracefully. "But what about X? Doesn't that mean Y in anarchy, which is Bad?" "Have you read my blog on that?" "No." "Well, I'd like to discuss this but I think I said it best there. Can we talk about it some other time?"
Another reason for unruled is meme imperialism. I think I am right, and I am out to spread memes.
Both of these reasons are well described by David Friedman in the preface to the second edition of the anarchocapitalist classic, The Machinery of Freedom:
One reason for writing a book like this is to avoid having to explain the same set of ideas a hundred times to a hundred different people. One of the associated rewards is discovering, years later, people who have incorporated my ideas into their own intellectual framework. This second edition is dedicated to one such person... someone who starts out already knowing and understanding everything I had to say on the subjects of this book as of 1973, which makes the ensuing argument very much more interesting.
I still hope, in time, to be able to do in this blog what Friedman does in 250 pages in this book.
On the other hand, the blog is also a handy forum for less focused commentary, and I find myself doing that, too. The medium is message? No, but the medium does have at least a bit of influence on how it is used.
Eugene Volokh raises an interesting question: Can the cops drive a Geiger counter down your street? Though almost everyone would agree that the answer is yes, how you get there can be complicated by existing constitutional jurisprudence. Also read the followups at the Volokh blog, here.
My thoughts on the matter: this sort of case is an example of one reason I am an anarchist, not a libertarian. Libertarians try to take a moral framework and construct politics out of it. Most people don't think it is OK to use high-powered microphones to record their neighbors' conversations. The same principle extends to warrantless examination of people's homes for heat (as in Kyllo). But then the same principle extends to warrantless searches for gamma rays. There is no simple dividing line between any of these: each involves energy of some sort that is radiating off of private property. Can you look, or not? From a moral absolutist point of view, looking at such radiation is either OK in all cases, or none.
As a constitutionalist, you (often) don't have to make such hard choices. In this case, the word "unreasonable" in the 4th amendment saves the day. Heat searches: unreasonable. Radiation: reasonable. No problem. Note, though, that it makes a loophole you can drive a truck through. (That's the downside of constitutionalism.)
As an anarchist, you also don't have to make such choices. The law for an anarchist ultimately comes back to consumer choice. If the consumers choose laws which are not morally consistent, that's just fine.
Eugene Volokh has been posting a lot about torture. Recently here, and a previous post here. He reviews some pro and con arguments, but ultimately does not (cannot?) decide.
Some comments on his arguments, first. Volokh writes: "constitutionalism and the rule of law, I think, are generally good ideologies". Yes. Given that torture is cruel almost by definition, how can it possibly be justified while the eighth amendment stands? I don't think it can. But then I am one of those people capable of reading the second amendment as guaranteeing a right to possess and carry around guns.
Of course, original intent is not an argument against torture per se. It's just an argument that torture is not compatible with the words on a particular piece of paper. If torture is really worthwhile, then we should amend the constitution to allow it. So the other arguments Volokh makes must be pondered seriously.
On risks, I agree with Volokh that the slippery slope applies to torture in a big way. But Volokh is willing to consider playing around at the top of that slope; I'm not. Even 100000 lives saved when a nuke is revealed pale in comparison to the lives at risk if this society turns repressive.
Alternatively, we might keep torture illegal but sometimes do it anyway. Volokh is unsatisfied with that line of argument: won't it result in contempt for constitutionalism? No, I don't think so. For one thing, in any instance of torture it is unlikely to be clear whether or not it actually proved useful. Might the bomb have been found some other way? Was the bomb actually constructed properly? When would it actually have gone off, and how many might have been killed? Etc. Second, even given clear evidence that lives were saved, it will be unclear that torture is something anyone should do. Even people that believe that in some particular instance torture paid off, should be uncomfortable with the torture itself. There will never be a push to "rationalize" it with the 5th amendment. And therefore I don't think the damage to constitutionalism will be more than trivial. (Certainly, the recent Supreme Court selection of the president caused much greater damage.)
Now, the arguments above are but responses to Volokh. But here's a new question: why torture at all? Why now? The answer is, of course, "terrorism". But why can't we just live in peace? The answer lies in part with the terrorists -- they don't like our culture for reasons we won't control, like say Britney's belly. But it lies in part with us -- we are trying to run the world, including most particularly helping despots rule Islam. Ideologically, America holds out hope of a better world -- self determination of peoples; rule by consent of the governed. But we give the lie to our own words, supporting dictators like the Shah, Saddam Hussein, the Saudis, Arafat, Musharraf. This has gone on for 50 years, and the people there are not blind. They know that the USA is their enemy, when it should be their friend. That's why some of their anger gets directed at Americans.
The solution is simple. America should stop supporting dictators, and stop using power to push other people around. We should pull out of Saudi controlled Arabia - let Saddam attack 'em; I don't care. We should stop the embargo against Iraq. We should cease all military sales to Israel, and convert our $4b/year to Israel into a program to buy out West Bank settlers. We should arm-twist Israel into unilateral separation from Palestine, guaranteeing their survival during the transition with our military but no longer supplying them anything for day to day use against Palestinians. (Israel is beginning to do this anyway, no thanks to the USA.)
If we were to do these things in the Middle East (and similarly stop pushing around people elsewhere), a wonderful thing would happen. Instead of being looked with a mixture of love, hate, envy, and annoyance by the world, we would be ignored. Over time even the radical islamicists would stop worrying about us, and turn their anger instead where it belongs -- against their own oppressive governments. Then, as in Iran, they will have revolutions, and turn into even worse theocratic nightmares for a while. And then, as revolutions do, they will moderate. And finally Islamic democracy will result.
The logic of repression is gradualist. You oppress a little; a reaction happens; you oppress a little more. You send in troops, force a boycott, get more police, build more prisons. People are hurt by it; the oppression is obvious and fringe lunatics take up arms. That's when you end up talking about torture. It's yet another control oriented fix for deeper social problems, all originating in the actions of the state. The solution is not more and more harshness, but to stop the state from doing what it should not have been doing in the first place.
Here's a rather standard pro-gun rights editorial. No need to read it for a guy like me... but for one thing. Down at the end: a new meme!
it is argued that the right should not apply to modern small arms, which are supposedly so much deadlier than 18th-century guns. But the fact is that 18th-century firearms were far more deadly, given the difference in medical care.
Imagine that in 1789 someone fired a double-barreled shotgun into a crowded area. Fifty to 60 people would have been struck and at least 90 percent would have died. Now imagine that a modern crowd just stands there while someone fires four magazines from a 15-shot semiautomatic pistol into them. Assuming the same number of people are hit, fewer than 10 would die while the rest would recover.
I am not sure I buy the comparison, but it is worth thinking about. Certainly the difference in medical care is tremendous. I am less inclined to think that shotguns of the time were likely to hit most of the people in a crowd, though.
In any case, what's really remarkable about this is that I have watched and occasionally added to the victim disarmament debate for years without seeing this meme. Is it just me?
The bad news is, the crowd he held hostage allowed themselves to be handcuffed, even while this guy sprayed kerosene on them. Um... when to fight, people?
The good news is two heros jumped the freak (one of them taking a bullet for her trouble) and prevented him setting everyone on fire.
If New York had a must-issue regime for concealed carry, odds are one of the 40+ people this nut had contact with in his rampage would have been armed, and the rampage would have been over before it started. And we would not be reading about it.
I drove up to NYC yesterday to attend blogapalooza NYC. It was a lot of fun to meet other bloggers and see if they are like normal people. Mostly, they are. But they tend to talk a lot. I felt like the only introvert there. There were a lot of smart people there. I talked to lots of them -- forgive me on the names (or lack thereof) for what follows.
I talked to Edie about dating and daring (hers). I got into lots of conversations I could only hear part of. Loud bar. I talked with Megan about the Times (she's a critic). I had an actual conversation about anarchocapitalism not of my instigation with Jim from objectionable content. That was cool. Anyone wants to charm me, just ask me about David Friedman.
Right now I can't figure out how to get back to the RSVP list, so my names are purely from memory. Unk. Once I get the list I can hopefully dress this up. UPDATE -- got it, thanks Jane. Names and pix added.
I talked to Mindless Dreck for a while before I put 2 (more than zero sum) and 2 (him) together. That was a cool lightbulb moment. There was some discussion of anonymity/exposure and blogging.
Then, let's see. Dr. Weevil was expansive and charming. Then I met Ravenwolf and had to admire her from near for a bit. Lots of other people met who I have not mentioned. Y'all probably know better than I who you are.
After hanging around in the bar for a few hours shouting at each other, eventually hunger won out and we all went out for pizza. Pizza! NYC! These things are made for each other, and it always amazes me in the City how you just sort of walk around a corner, and there is pizza, and it is good pizza.
Anyway, I am sure you are just here for the pictures. Let's get to 'em. Those pictured: if you don't want to be shown, let me know and I will remove you. If you have more information (like, name of blog), I hope to suck all that off the RSVP list once Jane tells me where it is again. But feel free to mail me if you want.
First, the mysterious Jane Galt, pictured on the web for the first time! Jane's site I really need to stick over there on the left since I read it all the time. But I am lazy. Kudos to Jane for organizing.
Nick and Dr. Weevil. Nick Marsala (not a very good shot of him, oh well), on the left, from arrogant rants. His vile reputation is spoiled by his demeanor in person. He's a low maintenance loving guy! That's Dr W on the right; I just read his blog for the first time, and I am impressed. Go doc go!
Liz, from nycbloggers.com. Her co-author/programmer Matt was also there, but he escaped photography. A lot of people did, actually. But I actually learned his name and site, so what the heck.
Paul Frankenstein and Ravenwolf. Paul's blog. Raven likes the camera, and it likes her right back. I suppose she has a name other than that, but I never learned it.
Ordinarily, there few laws I can imagine the US Congress passing that are worthwhile. Practically all the stuff that ought be illegal already is, and has been so for hundreds of years. Almost all of the rest is bad law.
That said, the Congress can still pass good laws. Namely, laws repealing other laws, or laws to address or undo problems they have created, or which have been created by the states, or more generally any government level.
Case in point: prisoner rape. Looks like congress is going to address it, though I am not sure how effective the new law will be. Still, it is a start.
Let's look at the problem of imprisonment, from the point of view of the state. Concentrate a bunch of violent men with no effective way to punish them. (How do you punish a life-without-parole prisoner? Slap his wrist?) Deny the men anything constructive whatsoever to do, other than lift weights. Now, apply financial constraint: try to keep them more-or-less from killing each other, at the absolute minimum price in guards' salaries, physical infrastructure, etc.
How to minimize price? You could hire enough guards to keep order physically, but that's expensive -- you would need something on the order of a guard per prisoner. So you want to use the prisoners against each other. How? Get the more physically powerful ones to accept your rule, by allowing them sex slaves -- if they are good.
Of course this "contract" is not explicit. But nonetheless, it is there. And the staff really has no choice, in the sense that if they seriously tried to crack down on rape, they would face the ugly reality of their tiny numbers trying to control tens of violent criminals, each.
The prisons are rape factories. They are also rapist factories.
And lest the heartless reader think, "well they earned it" -- no, they did not. Some of them did, perhaps, if you are the eye-for-eye type. But a good number are there for victimless "crimes" like selling drugs. A good many others are drug entrepreneurs that did something bad (like shooting someone), but consequent to the business they are in. And a lot of others are just dumb kids that made a mistake.
If rape is a just punishment, it should be assigned by judges. Not by happenstance.
And in any case, heartless reader (if I have any), consider this. Rapists, and the raped, in prisons don't stay there. Almost all of them get out. These men are thrown out in the street, many boiling with rage over the way the prison system stood idle, or laughed, at their violation and degradation. These men have been indoctrinated into a hypermasculine rape culture where women are bitches and whores, and where men must literally fight off slavery, to keep other men out of their mouths and anus. If you have listened to gansta rap, you have heard the ugliness. Gansta rap is prisoner culture, leaking out into the mainstream.
The best thing I have read on prison culture, is A Million Jockers, Punks, and Queens by Stephen Donaldson. Donaldson was a kid who got unlucky and made some bad choices early on. He was raped and enslaved, and spent a number of years in prisons observing the culture from the inside. (You can find his story at the SPR site.)
One thing that is clear from an understanding of prison culture: stopping rape will not be easy. I think the valuable part of the new bill, is simply putting funds into studying the problem. What is not valuable, is threatening prisons with loss of federal funds. Does anyone think that federal or state authorities will close a prison because of too much rape? Not likely. Where will the prisoners go? Furthermore, rape must be reported effectively to even show up in statistics. I fear the new bill will create the wrong incentives for prison administrators. The new incentive will be to minimize reported rape; and when you control the reporting, there are two ways to do that.
To really reduce prisoner rape effectively, here are my quick recommendations.
First, allow prisoners to work if they wish, and to contract their labor freely. Then invite businesses into prisons to employ. This gives men something to do other than plot booty-banditry. It also gives the men a means of self respect currently denied them, and hopefully a trade or skill other than crime that they can use when they get out. (I realize this idea is impractical politically because of unions.)
Second, make there be "somewhere worse" to put rapists, in order to have a reasonable threat to hold over prisoners. Divide prisons into two classes: prisons where we do tolerate rape, and prisons where we don't. Men who rape currently locked up in a "don't rape" prison should be assigned to the other class of prison. This, at least, concentrates the rapists together and will serve to hold down rape elsewhere.
Finally, and probably most importantly: surrender the drug war. The creation of a huge class of prisoners for no good reason at all, and exposing them to rape culture, is about the dumbest thing the USA ever did. (I realize this one too is completely impractical politically.)
Catholics seem to have a great tradition of rationalism. Case in point:
Scalia on the death penalty. How about this for a crystal clear line of reason:
If I subscribed to the proposition that I am authorized (indeed, I suppose compelled) to intuit and impose our "maturing" society's "evolving standards of decency," this essay would be a preview of my next vote in a death penalty case. As it is, however, the Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead - or, as I prefer to put it, enduring. It means today not what current society (much less the Court) thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted. For me, therefore, the constitutionality of the death penalty is not a difficult, soul-wrenching question. It was clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment was adopted ... And so it is clearly permitted today.
(python:) 'E's not dead! 'E's enduring!
Nonetheless, Scalia is no anarchist. He's not even a democrat (which is a bit surprising to me). Check this out:
The mistaken tendency to believe that a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals has adverse effects in other areas as well. It fosters civil disobedience, for example, which proceeds on the assumption that what the individual citizen considers an unjust law - even if it does not compel him to act unjustly - need not be obeyed.
Whoa. Well, it is a well-argued piece in any case, even if proceeding from some rather weird bases.
The New York Times in the mid-1850s sniffed that lager was "getting a good deal too fashionable." And soon the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce noticed a growth in beer drinking due "in no little degree to the taste which has been acquired for `lager' as a beverage, not only among the native German population, but all classes."
A new cultural institution arose to feed the new frenzy: the beer garden. Distant but recognizable ancestors to the amusement park, the gardens, which could be either open to the air or enclosed "winter" gardens, welcomed families on Sunday outings and featured live music. They had tables and chairs instead of bars, and they were known for their food.
The news generally being doom and gloom, it is always refreshing to read a piece that looks at the other side: David Brooks on Why the U.S. Will Always Be Rich.
In fact, we won't necessarily always be rich. Richness is a result of laissez faire (you will note almost nothing in the piece about the government). We are rich because we had no government until 150 years after the founding. (Well, we had none to the first approximation, if we compare to the average sizes of government now.) By the time FDR et al created the welfare state, we were rich enough that even with that deadweight drag, we kept getting richer.
By now, the process of democratization feared by the founders (read the piece) is well under way. To someone like me, it presents a conundrum. On one hand, the government never shrinks. People say that's what the Republicans want, and maybe some do. But what Republicans do, given power, is simply to grow the government less fast than the Democrats might have. Government has not shrunk in absolute size since I don't know when. Probably a small reduction after WWII was the last. On the other hand, productivity keeps growing. Is it possible in the future that only 1% of the people will create enough wealth to keep the other 99% on the dole (or in government jobs)? And can we keep growing the economy even with only 1% doing anything productive? Given robotization and artificial intelligence, a future is imaginable with nobody working at all -- at least, nobody who is human.
But that's for the future. In the present, Americans still have retained much of the entrepreneurial attitudes and healthy, accepting attitudes towards wealth that were created by and reinforced this country's anarchic origins. Read Brook's piece and think on that.
