Father(land) knows best

Here in California, a slew of new laws went into effect yesterday, and many of them seem to have to do with children. New laws add additional regulations to what children can eat (child care centers, which serve up to 1.2 million children, can provide only unflavored nonfat or low-fat milk and beverages that lack added sweeteners), where they can spend their money (people under the age of 18 cannot use ultraviolet tanning devices (even with parents' permission)), and how they can travel:

Many young car passengers, meanwhile, will have to get back in the booster seat Sunday under legislation signed in October.  

The law requires kids to be in booster seats until they are at least 8 years old or 4 feet, 9 inches or taller. Since 2002, children have had to ride in booster seats until they are 6 years old or 60 pounds.

Note the first sentence... "will have to get back into the booster seat". Yes, that's right, a 6 or 7 year old who graduated from the nanny state's previous overbearing protection, who has safely ridden with a regular seat belt for possibly a year or more, has suddenly found him/herself in grave danger. Overnight, without warning, and by state decree, the world has once again become unsafe. What was legal (and safe) yesterday is illegal (and unsafe) today. Funny how that works, isn't it?

What's even more interesting is that SB 929 was signed by the same man who, only three months earlier, vetoed SB 105, saying, "Not every human problem deserves a law." For those unaware, SB 105 would have criminalized the act of skiing or snowboarding by a minor without a helmet. Given the intellectual inconsistency between the passage of SB 929 and the veto of SB 105, one might be given to believe that companies like Bell and Giro simply missed their opportunity to "grease the palm" of government. Fortunately, companies like Graco and Britax can rest easy knowing that the state is coercing consumers via the force of law into buying their products for at least two more years.

It's amazing to me that people will cry out when forced to purchase health insurance at the end of a government gun but see no trouble with imposing the purchase of car seats in the same manner. It's for the children, though! I mean, isn't it? Maybe not. For 7 years, at least, the data have been staring everyone in the face:

The answer can be found in a trove of government data called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which compiles police reports on all fatal crashes in the U.S. since 1975. These data include every imaginable variable in a crash, including whether the occupants were restrained and how. 

Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection. 

But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.)

If you're still not convinced that these laws serve no useful purpose except to enrich the companies that make the products that consumers are compelled to buy, then you need look no further than an earlier excerpt from the same article:

Perhaps the single most compelling statistic about car seats in the NHTSA manual was this one: ''They are 54 percent effective in reducing deaths for children ages 1 to 4 in passenger cars.'' 

But 54 percent effective compared with what? The answer, it turns out, is this: Compared with a child's riding completely unrestrained.

You read that right; in order to scare you into compliance, the government compares the effectiveness of child car seats, not against the effectiveness of seat belts, but against that of riding in a car completely unrestrained! The data show that car seats are no more effective than seat belts for children over 2 and in some cases can actually be worse. Why then is the government pushing car seats onto the populace for another 6 years?! Whether totalitarianism or corporatism, I'll leave for you to decide. One thing is for certain, however; it is not for your benefit.

Eyesores vs. Property Rights in a Libertarian Society

Non-libertarians love to come up with ideas about how, in a libertarian society, some ill would occur which (in their mind(s)) cannot be corrected without the violent force of government. Eyesores -- the kind of blight upon a neighborhood that lowers property values -- were recently considered at Libertarian News:

The way [an eyesore] would be dealt with, in the absence of home owners associations, state regulations, zoning restrictions, etc…, is through the homesteading principle. Private law courts would basically look at who was there first and decide based on the homesteading principle. 

Consider this example: 

If a person owns a home in a nice neighborhood and a pig farmer decides he’s going to setup shop across the street from them, private law courts would uphold any eyesore/smell complaints brought by that homeowner as being legitimate.  However, if a person buys a home across the street from a pig farm, then comes to the courts to complain about the eyesore/smell of the farm, the courts would not recognize that complaint as being legitimate.  The homeowner bought the home in full knowledge of the condition of the environment around it and agreed to purchase the home at that price, which would surely be at a bargain because of the pig farm.

This homesteading principle applies to all businesses and homes. If a person moves in next door and starts destroying their lawn and putting junkers up on blocks in the front yard, their neighbors have a legitimate right to sue for property value damages if the previous condition of the lot was in good upkeep.

I don't think this is right at all. The first (and probably least costly) mistake, in my mind, is lumping homeowners associations in with state regulations and zoning restrictions. The latter are imposed by the state; the former is usually structured as a private corporation owned and run by the homeowners themselves -- one which would fall completely within the homesteading principle as the author describes it. It is very rare for someone to buy a home and have an association imposed on the property at some later date. Rather, the homeowners association is, almost without exception, the prior existing entity. In this situation, the prospective owner chooses to enter an agreement with the association upon buying a the property, or he selects a different property. The source and legitimacy of homeowners associations' power are of course muddied by state interference; however, for the purpose of this discussion, they can be considered to be completely private, voluntary entities relying solely on contract enforcement to achieve their ends. Inasmuch as this is the case, it is clear that there is at least one means by which eyesores can be dealt with in the absence of state regulation.

The more egregious mistake in the original article is in declaring that property owners have a right or ownership in the value of their property. One of the commenters to the original article jumped on this point:

Nobody has a right to the _value_ of their property, since value is subjective and exists in people's heads. Consider the entrepreneur who creates a brilliant new mode of transport, he hasn't infringed on the rights of car manufacturers, even though his invention has harmed the market price of the cars they're trying to sell. The same is true of the person who decorates his property in a way his neighbor disapproves of--absent a contractual breach, he hasn't infringed on anyone's rights.

And the author conceded the point:

Yeah, you are right that pollution needs to be some kind of physical violation of their property's integrity.

I'm actually not surprised by this mistake. It took me a day of thinking to figure out exactly where the fallacy was. What tipped me off to it, though, was the authors use of the homesteading principle to solve the problem. For those unfamiliar with the homesteading principle, it is the idea that one becomes the rightful owner of some previously unowned property (land) by "mixing his labor" with it. In the author's example, the prior landowner had some amount of veto authority over the latecomer. Using the idea of homesteading, this implies that the prior landowner/homesteader gains not only an interest in the land with which he actually mixes his labor but also in the surrounding land. Not only that, but his interest in the surrounding areas would have to be superior to the latecomer(s) by virtue of the fact that he (apparently) has veto authority over what the latecomer would do with his property. If we follow this line of reasoning further, we'd eventually find that the prior owner could restrict the latecomers free speech rights by declaring that political placards/signs were offensive, freedom of expression by vetoing his choice of color to paint his house, and possibly even his choice of Ford vs. Chevy.

Property rights must be (nearly) absolute as they are the basis for the idea that one owns his own body, the only restriction being that one does not use his property rights to violate another's. And, as I've often heard Stephen Kinsella say, "genuine rights cannot conflict". Therefore, either the latecomer doesn't really own his property -- and, by extension, the first owner owns not only his own land but also has controlling interest in all of the surrounding land -- or the first owner does not really have a right/ownership in the value of his property. I reject the first proposition simply on the basis of the homesteading principle. This owner has not "mixed his labor" with his neighbor's property. Furthermore, assuming the implications of the original author's description of homesteading, there is no logical end to the amount of land to which the first owner could lay claim. This solution is simply unworkable.

We are then left, as the quoted commenter points out, with the idea that there is no ownership in the value of property. This, in my opinion is the correct view. Values are subjective and therefore exist individually only in the minds of the people attempting to appraise the value of an object. As such, attempting to fix or determine a value by law or decree is essentially a form of (attempted) thought control. For more on this subject, Rothbard gives the ownership of "ideas" a thorough treatment in chapter 16 of The Ethics of Liberty.

Climate change denial != science-averse

I just watched this clip from last night's Daily Show:



Another segment of this show was devoted to poking fun at various pundits' criticism of science and scientists. Putting this interview in the context of that previous segment sheds a little more light on Mr. Stewart's apparent confusion about the "resistance" to science. The reason is apparently that climate change deniers are all crazy, liars, or idiots or possibly all of the above.

Let me suggest another alternative: people don't want more government intervention. Assuming for a second that climate change is real and further that it is man-made (thus implying that it is man-reversible), then the logical next step is government intervention to combat this scourge. This likely entails more regulations on emissions which means increased costs for fuel and cars, government subsidies to "green" businesses which means gambling tax dollars on politically connected businesses, and limitations on production of goods considered to be non-"green" or produced via non-"green" methods which means violation of property rights.

My point is that climate change "deniers" are not necessarily science averse. Their reticence to accept it may be based more on a desire to prevent greater government intervention or simply on the idea that climate change better be really "for-damn-sure" before government guns are used to forcefully reorganize society around its implications.

I can haz liberty now?

Late last week the New York state senate passed a bill allowing same-sex marriages in the state. A few years ago, I would have seen this as a great leap forward. When California had its big argument about Proposition 8 -- which sought to constitutionally declare that only a marriage between a man and a woman would be recognized by the state -- I argued with anyone and everyone that its passage was wrong because, at its core, it denied to one group of people rights that were granted to another group. I still believe that to be true, today, but what happened in New York last week caused me to see things a little bit differently.

Coincidentally, a blog post at mises.org, today, links to an article that argues that libertarians should support New York's action:

[W]hile agreeing that the long-term goal is separation of marriage and State [...] given the slim chance of separation happening any time soon, classical-liberal principles require the State to treat all citizens as equal before the law.

The author of the original post sees it differently:

[O]ne needs to separate rights from privileges and [...] increasing the relative size of a privileged group does not constitute a step in any valuable direction (at least from a libertarian point of view). [...] Equality under the numerous government laws is not only impossible (since pretty much all of them constitute privilege), but may be directly counter-acting the cause of liberty.

There was a time when I subscribed to the former view. Somewhere along the line, I came to embrace the latter. Let me explain.

Rights vs. Privileges

Up until I embraced this latter view, the difference between a right and a privilege never entered my mind. In reality, my conception was that a right was something that one had or acquired under the law. My definition of "right" was closer to that of "privilege". Since the two are going to be treated as separate from here on, it is worth defining them:

right: a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral
privilege: a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most

A right exists independent of any governing body. One has a just claim, for example, to his/her own body. After all, it doesn't make sense for anyone else to own it. Therefore, as the owner, one has a right to do with his/her body as he/she wishes. A privilege, on the other hand is something that is granted to one person or group. Voting is an example of this. While women and non-whites got the privilege long ago, it is still denied to felons in a number of states. This brings up an important distinction between rights and privileges. Privileges are granted and, therefore, can be (legitimately) taken away; rights are preexisting and cannot be (again, legitimately) taken.

In addition, it is worth distinguishing between positive and negative rights. At its simplest, "a negative right forbids others from acting against the right holder, while a positive right obligates others to act with respect to the right holder." Libertarianism says that no person has the right to use or threaten another with force. This is, in fact, a negative right. Every person has the right to be free from the aggressive violence of another. In fact, civil rights such as freedom of speech and association and the right to bear arms all arise from this notion. None of these acts, in and of themselves, are aggressive in nature.

Under the idea of negative rights, two people have the "right" to voluntarily associate with each other in whatever manner they wish. Absent a government (and/or a church), a "marriage" is simply a compact or contract between two people and has no meaning beyond the participants in the contract. That is, I may welcome you into my house, but your marriage does not obligate me to also welcome your spouse. On the other hand, when someone says that he/she has a "right to marry" under the (government) law, he/she is asserting a "positive right". What that person is really saying is that he/she wishes -- is entitled by right -- to be afforded the privileges conferred upon other married people.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that these privileges eventually obligate others to act in a certain way, under penalty of government force, with respect to the marriage contract and its participants even though these "others" have nothing to do with the contract. The solution is equally obvious: leave government out of marriage completely.

But what of the first author's view that the goal should be equality under the law? Shouldn't gays who love each other and, if not for existing law, would marry be granted the privileges that accompany that marriage? Let's look quickly at the "spousal privilege" as it relates to testifying in court for an answer. The spousal privilege refers to the idea that a person cannot be compelled (via government force) to testify against his/her spouse at trial. But what of people who don't wish to marry? What of close friends? This "privilege" does not extend to them. Therefore, in this context, while gay marriage brings gays on equal footing with straights -- and doctors of various types, I might add -- it leaves a very sizable portion of the population out in the proverbial cold, still subject to being compelled to testify. Other benefits not granted to unmarried people include tax breaks, visitation rights, special immigration status, inheritance, etc. There is still no equality under the law, yet nobody that I am aware of is questioning this inequity.

Liberty as a privilege

Now that I've, I hope, made the right vs. privilege distinction clear, I think it is safe to say that, by and large, the rest of the population does not readily acknowledge this distinction. Instead, most of the population views the right to associate (via marriage, gay or otherwise) as indistinguishable from the privileges that come with the state recognition of that association. As such, arguably, this entire situation could be viewed as a group of people begging an even smaller group of people -- politicians -- to please, please, please grant them their liberty when it was the very institution for whom those politicians work that took it away in the first place.

Maybe marriage is a bad example, though. By that I mean, we can't rightly infer the intentions of all people who demand "marriage equality". Having muddied the waters by giving state sanction and privilege to marriage, the government has inextricably linked liberty/rights to privilege such that the population no longer recognizes the difference. And now, we arrive at the real reason I am not head over heels about the recent happenings in New York. The government has transformed liberty and natural rights into privileges.

Marriage, admittedly, is possibly not the best example. So, let's turn our attention to the right to keep and bear arms. In California, among other places, the right to carry a gun in public has been all but completely denied. Open carry of a loaded gun has long been illegal. Open carry of an unloaded gun has been legal by virtue of the legislature not realizing that it had not forbidden it, but it is quickly working to rectify that. Concealed carry is only an option if one lives in a rural area or is buddy, buddy with the sheriff of his/her county. Carrying a gun in an urban area of California is, no doubt, a privilege reserved to government officials and those that donate to them.

Let's go a step further. Earlier, I mentioned that each person is the proper owner of his/her own body (if for no other reason than because no other owner makes any sense) and can do whatever he or she wishes with it so long as the action does not violate another's ownership of his or her body. If this is true -- and it would be impossible in my mind to argue differently -- then one has the right to put whatever one wants into his or her own body. This includes not only so called illicit drugs but prescriptions as well. Why should one have to obtain permission from a doctor who has in turn been granted permission from the state to get a prescription?

Maybe drugs aren't your thing. Perhaps you like milk? I hope it's not raw milk. The FDA doesn't like raw milk and has even gone so far as to say that individuals do not have the right to eat what they wish. The FDA is quickly moving in the same direction against mothers who share breast milk.

All of these liberties have been transformed into government-granted privileges. As if that wasn't bad enough, the system is self perpetuating. As a monopoly provider of law and enforcement, the government has been put in the position of having the power to deny a right by law and enforce that denial through its police power, thus rendering it a privilege. Citizens are left with two options, neither of which is appealing: 1) ignore the law and risk ending up in jail, or 2) beg the government to recognize/grant their liberty.

The latter option seems to be the government's approved method of attempting to maintain/regain one's liberty, and there is a very simple reason for that. To utilize this method is to implicitly acknowledge that liberty is a government-granted privilege.

Crappy Meals

I think this clip speaks for itself. The insanity really kicks in at about 3:02.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
San Francisco's Happy Meal Ban
www.thedailyshow.com
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Flying is a "privilege"

I've gotten a lot of feedback from people about my interaction with the TSA last week stating that flying is a privilege, not a right. It is a privilege granted to me in consideration of payment of a fee to the carrier and comes with terms defined by a contract that I agree to when I purchase a ticket. The arguments along these lines fall generally into one of two categories: 1.) the purchase of the ticket implies agreement with the conditions of the contract and, thus, there is no right to complain about or opt out of the security procedures, or 2.) if one doesn't like the security procedures, one doesn't have to or shouldn't fly.

The first argument has simply to do with contract "law". (I admit, right here at the beginning, that I am not a lawyer of any kind, so don't misconstrue any of what you are about to read as legal advice.) A contract is essentially an agreement between two or more parties in which they define the terms of their interaction. In this case, I (actually, my father-in-law, but I'll pretend it was me) gave money to the airline. In exchange, they agreed to fly me to my destination subject to a number of conditions, the most important of which (for this discussion) were those pertaining to the security screening to which I would be subject. At the time of purchase and up until I arrived at the airport, it was my understanding that this screening involved passing through a metal detector, not an AIT machine. This was based on information on the TSA's own website. So, at this point in time, I have paid for a ticket and have agreed to be screened via metal detector and perhaps a "wanding" and pat down of a specific area, if necessary.

Upon arriving at the airport, I found that AIT machines were in use. From my perspective, this would put the airline in breach of contract. That is, the terms to which I agreed, that I would be subject to a metal detector, had been unilaterally altered. However, the metal detectors were still in use. There was a possibility that the contract, as understood at the time of creation, could still be carried out by the original terms. When I was selected for the AIT machine, though, this became an extremely remote possibility. (Since the TSA agents never allowed me to use the metal detector, the contract had at this point been breached.) I opted out of the machine, as TSA procedures allow. Still, I believed there was a possibility that I would receive a "standard" pat down as opposed to the one described in the video documenting my experience. I was willing to continue to try to keep the contract from being broken. Once the pat down procedure was described, however, there was no continuing. I would not subject myself to the described procedure, and now both parties were in breach of contract.

There are two ways to deal with this situation. The first is to enforce the contract. This means that I could require that the airline, via the TSA, live up to the terms as understood at the time of the creation of the contract. Alternatively, the airline, via the TSA, could require that I submit to the new screening methods. We both suggested these alternatives during the course of the discussion, but neither was mutually agreeable. Since neither party, at the time, seemed given to coercion, we had to turn to the second option. This second option is to void the contract. In this scenario, one or both (or all) parties determine that the contract is no longer in their best interest(s), and they agree to void the contract. Here, they all agree to return things to the state at which they were prior to entering the contract, possibly subject to some damages for duties performed under the contract that cannot be undone. I agreed not to fly; the airline refunded my money. Actually, the airline could have had a strong argument that they could not reasonably expect to resell the seat that I gave up and should be able to keep some or all of the money paid to them. In this case, they were gracious enough to refund the full fare. My contract with the airline was now over.

The interesting thing about this is that after the agreement had been terminated, the TSA continued to try to enforce the terms of the contract by asking me to return to the screening area. Not only that, but the TSA was employing coercive means (the threat of a fine) to enforce a non-existent contract. This is where the second argument, that if I don't like it, I shouldn't fly comes into play. This argument is not as black and white as it would seem on the surface. If the airlines were responsible for security, the "if you don't like it, you don't fly" argument would be a valid one, and this final interaction with the TSA would not have occurred. Once the government becomes involved, however, it is a party unto itself. By that, I mean that it creates rules that to which one can "agree" via entering into contract with the airline but from which, it contends, one cannot escape. Given that the TSA, over the years, has employed rules, policies, and procedures that have been kept secret from the flying public, there is no way that anyone can legitimately claim that a passenger has knowingly agreed to all of them. In spite of that, as a government agency, the TSA believes that it has the authority to use coercion to enforce contracts that cannot possibly be fully understood and, in my case, no longer exist.

The problem is bigger than that, though. The government, via the TSA, is saying that travelers can opt out of the protections afforded them by the U.S. Constitution. The problem with this is that there is no comparable alternative to flying for travel over long distances. By federalizing the security of all air travel, the government has severely limited (note that I do not say "removed") people's ability to move freely about the country by making them choose between air travel and their 4th amendment protections. Taken as a whole, the government is effectively removing the restrictions placed on it by the constitution by making it seem as though the people are willingly accepting the change:

1. The government finds an activity in which a great many people engage and which is difficult for them to avoid.
2. The government then begins to regulate said activity with disregard for whether or not the authority to regulate said activity or the manner in which it regulates is constitutional.
3. The government then uses people's continued participation in said activity and acquiescence to the regulation as an indication that its regulation is not only legal, but desired.

At this point, the government is free to operate outside of its own laws because it has forced the people to accept its actions because the alternative would be financially ruinous or prohibitively time consuming.

Just... hold on a second

I came across a number of weird/wacky news stories this morning, and since I didn't really feel like writing very much, I was going to just post a few links with some commentary to accompany them. Then a friend of mine posted a link to an opinion piece entitled "Just Stop" over on the Mesa Democratic Club's website. Well, I loves me some politics, so I went over to read it. The article started out well enough (read: I agreed with it), but then it lost me. Since this friend of mine and I have agreed not to discuss politics over our social network of choice, I decided to write this post.

The article starts out pointing out that Sarah Palin is not a "political outsider", that the Tea Party is not an independent group, and that John McCain no longer has any discernible political positions outside of whatever it takes to get elected. These are all excellent points with which I could not agree more. It's at this point that our respective positions diverge.

Stop pretending that the deficit we’re all facing is the fault of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. During the Bush administration, we went from a surplus to a massive deficit, largely thanks to two wars that were never (until Obama) added to the federal budget—wars, in other words, fought entirely on credit. We compounded the problem with tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, and a huge Medicare increase, and all those were also on credit. When the economy tanked in fall 2008, Bush quickly pushed through the TARP bailout, adding to the deficit (but pulling the economy back from the cliff).

President Obama is not entirely responsible for the deficit. He is quickly adding to it, though. Yes, Obama added the wars to the federal budget, but that does not change the fact that they (along with the much of the rest of the budget) are still paid for on credit. And while Bush may have pulled the economy back from the cliff, he did not change it's direction; it is still headed that way under Obama.

Stop pretending that the near-ruinous economic crash that we’re still reeling from was Obama’s fault, too. The root causes stretch back decades, to a continued process of deregulating financial institutions, allowing them ever more leeway to prey on the vulnerable, to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and to manipulate financial products that were ultimately guaranteed to fall apart.

And stop pretending that Obama and the current Congress should have been able to fix the two above problems in 18 months, when it took eight years to create the first one and literally decades of foxes guarding financial henhouses to create the second.

Again, the author is correct that the economic crash was not caused by Obama, and that it is unrealistic to think that the government would be able to fix it (I would argue, in any amount of time). The author implicitly places the blame on the private sector, however, when he talks about mortgages and financial products. Those mortgages that people couldn't afford were promoted and backed by the government in the form of Fannie and Freddie and FHA and VA loans. Obama has continued this process with the homebuyer tax credit and the HAFA and HAMP programs. For non-mortgage related financial instruments, look no further than the Federal Reserve serving as the "lender of last resort". Even though the Fed is nominally a private entity, it's ludicrous to think that they really are, and when banks get into trouble, the Fed bails them out via the power of "printing" money, a power that Congress abdicated to it long ago.

Stop pretending that saying “No” is the same as governing. We pay our legislators good money to go to Washington and make difficult decisions that keep the country moving. By voting “No” on every bill, by refusing to negotiate in good faith, by deciding that short-term political advantage was more important than the everyday lives of Americans, the Republicans set back our recovery, made needed reforms fall short, and put our lives and our economy at unnecessary risk.

I hate the idea that governing means "doing something". Saying "no" is a legitimate act, one in which all politicians engage because nobody can agree on the exact role of government. In this way, saying "no" is doing something. That is not to say that Republicans are not being obstructionist for political gains; however, the author would be better advised to point out Republican hypocrisy on things like expanding Medicare under Bush but railing against the PPACA, now.

Stop pretending that the economy is magic. You can’t continue to give millionaires and billionaires huge tax cuts, make tiny, cosmetic cuts at the margins of things, and still reduce the deficit. You can’t create jobs without spending money. Tax cuts for millionaires and up are not stimulative because those people don’t spend the money from the cut—it’s not like you’re giving them a wad of cash and sending them to the store. When you put an unemployed person to work or give a tax cut to a poor or middle class family, that’s exactly what it’s like—they go buy things they need and those dollars flow through the economy, creating jobs and wealth everywhere they go.

I'm not sure anyone is pretending that the economy is magic; however it is far more complex than most imagine. Not only that, but the government via regulation or the Fed often arbitrarily moves the market in ways that could only be predicted by magic. The author is correct that tax cuts (to anyone) won't balance the budget. He is mistaken, though, if he thinks that tax increases will do the job, either. Federal spending is out of control, and the only way to save this country's economy, over the long term, is to start cutting Social Security, Medicare, the military, everything.

And stop talking about stimulus. It's too bad that people believe that Keynesian economics preaches deficit spending. Keynes, mistaken as I believe his theories to be, spoke of stimulative spending out of savings. Yes, it takes money to create jobs, but it also takes money to keep those jobs. To think that the government (or anyone) can throw a one-time bucket of cash at the economy to "unstick" it is ridiculous. It will only lead to the government having to throw ever increasing amounts of money at the economy. It's amazing to me that most people agree that easy credit was the proximate cause of the economic conditions in which we all now live and at the same time believe that if the government just borrows more from China that that will fix the problem. We will end up back in this very situation again, only it will be much, much worse.

The things that Pelosi and Reid have supported these past 18 months have been programs that will help America move into the 21st century. Health care reform, in spite of great efforts at pretending, is not a “government takeover” of health care—it institutionalizes, in law, the presence of the health insurance industry, and gives that industry millions of new clients.

Whoa! Stop right there! Did you catch that? The government, under Democratic control, via the coercion of law, just delivered millions of customers to the health insurance industry. It's not just the Republicans that are in bed with big business.

It will, in the long run, reduce the deficit and create a healthier nation, by allowing more people to get preventive care and long-term care and keeping the sick and impoverished from turning to emergency rooms when there’s a crisis.

This entire problem was created by the government in the first place, though.

Stop pretending that “lifelong politician” is some kind of curse. Most people who hold public office do so because they genuinely want to help people, they genuinely want to make government responsive to the needs of their fellow Americans, and they’re willing to put themselves on the line every few years to get the chance to do so.

Here's a thought experiment: If "most" people who hold public office genuinely want to help people and make government better, why hasn't it happened?

Stop pretending that “big government” is the problem. When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?

Gay rights, TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level. Not only that, but all of this ignores the fact that every year I have to fill out a number of forms figuring out, on the government's behalf, how much money they want from me, and then send them that amount under the threat of force if I either figure wrong or don't send the right amount.

Stop pretending that anybody’s going to come and take your guns away. [...] There’s no truth to it, there’s never been any truth to it, and if you actually believe it, you just might be so simple-minded that you shouldn’t be trusted with a firearm.

They may not be trying to take them away, per se, but the laws (at least in CA) are clearly not conducive to gun purchases or ownership. One must wait 10 days to purchase any gun, even if one already owns one or one hundred of them. AB962, once in effect, will make the mail-ordering of handgun ammunition illegal and require fingerprints be taken of law-abiding citizens when they do purchase ammunition. It is illegal to actually carry one's gun in a manner that would actually allow it to be used effectively in self-defense, and many counties around the state deny CCW applications to all but the wealthy and connected.

Perhaps the author can explain to me why the BATFE and the state of CA keep records of gun sales if not to retain the possibility of rounding up guns in the future. I realize that that has a bit of a "tin foil hat" sound to it, but it is a legitimate question.

The author goes off the rails at this point with a lot of name calling. He tries to bring it home at the end, though.

Finally, stop pretending that voting doesn’t matter, and don’t let the 2010 Class of Crazy take office and convince you otherwise.

A variation on the previous thought experiment I proposed is apropos here: If voting mattered, why is government the way that it is? Perhaps it's because we've gotten the very government for which we voted. Voting doesn't matter and arguably does more harm than good. A voter is statistically more likely to be killed going to or coming from his/her polling place than to cast the deciding vote in an election. I refer the reader my previous posts on voting and the nature of government.

City gets up on its high horse

This morning I caught a story about a proposed jewelery/pawn shop trying to open in downtown Oceanside.

A plan to open an upscale pawn shop in the heart of downtown Oceanside ran into a wall of opposition from a citizens advisory group Wednesday whose members said a pawn shop wasn't what they had in mind for revitalizing the area.

[...]

The committee voted 5-0 to advise the City Council to reject a proposal to open a pawn shop in a vacant store at 205 N. Coast Highway.

This seemed like kind of a bummer to me. The last time my wife and I were in the downtown Oceanside area, we tried to go into a pawn shop. We thought it would be fun to look around. (The place was closed on the day that we were there, unfortunately.) And this place looks like it would be more of a jewelery than pawn shop, anyway.

The pawn shop ---- Coast Jewelry & More ---- would deal in "mostly high-end jewelry pieces and watches," said Jason Lambert, who would manage the store. "We want to fit in, and we want to make everyone happy."

Over time, the focus of the store would likely shift away from offering loans on pawned items to a more conventional retail operation, Lambert said, although he said it would continue offering collateral loans.

The advisory group sees it differently, though.

But committee members said a downtown pawn shop would harken back to a past the city is trying to leave behind, when downtown had a reputation for sleazy bars, strip joints and tattoo parlors.

"It's the wrong location, downtown, as we're trying to bring in more residential and tourists," said committee member Carolyn Krammer. "We don't want our tourists to be subject to people trying to pawn merchandise."

Is the committee afraid that people are going to begin trying to sell their wares to tourists right on the street (as if that weren't already possible)? Or do they just detest the "kind of people" who would patronize a pawn shop for a loan? One thing is clear; the group isn't actually interested in "redevelopment" or increased tax revenue.

[...] the owner of the proposed store, David Mueller, would remodel what has been a vacant space for more than four years and has been "kind of an area for people to hang out and maybe do things we're not crazy about."

Former Oceanside newspaper publisher Tom Missett, who presented the pawn shop plan to the committee, said Mueller would invest about $2 million on the pawn shop.

The committee would prefer that the building (already owned by Mr. Mueller!) remain vacant. His $2 million investment isn't the "kind of money" they want. But the insanity doesn't end with the committee.

Oceanside police also oppose the plan, fearing a new pawn shop would lead to more crime downtown and mean more work for a department already stretched thin, said Lt. Valencia Saadat.

According to police statistics, seven arrests have been made so far this year related to stolen property taken in by pawn shops and $21,000 in stolen property has been recovered.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it seems to me that stolen goods were recovered and the offenders arrested and taken off the streets because of pawn shops. Those crimes likely would have never been solved if those goods had simply been sold on the street. The police don't want the extra work (doing what they're paid to do!), though. They don't want it even though the shop manager is willing to jump through all sorts of hoops to make their jobs easier in order to get his store opened.

Besides installing security cameras throughout the store, Lambert said anyone pawning items would have to show identification, sign a slip saying the property belonged to them and have photographs taken of themselves and whatever they're pawning. He said the photographs and other information would be made available to police daily.

Apparently the insanity isn't limited to the city. Sign a slip saying the property isn't stolen? If he thinks that is going to work, then why submit information to the police on a daily basis? Why not just go all the way and take finger prints and a DNA swab? It's too bad. I wouldn't sell anything to a shop that treats its customers like common criminals in this way.

And finally, we have the government serving its own interest.

Bartlett said he'd be fine with the business if it was a jewelry store, but the very use of the term pawn shop is troubling.

"That's semantics but it bothers me," said Bartlett, who lives downtown."I will be strung up if my neighbors are told we are going to have a pawn shop in downtown."

We certainly wouldn't want Mr. Bartlett to lose his position of power, looking down on honest people and crushing their entrepreneurial spirit because he doesn't like the type of business they would open or the clientele it might draw. That empty building will be a much better symbol of his ability to direct the redevelopment of the downtown area.

The arrival of the total state will not be televised

Yesterday, a federal judge in Michigan handed down a ruling upholding the new health care law. Here is an excerpt:

There is a rational basis to conclude that, in the aggregate, decisions to forego insurance coverage in preference to attempting to pay for health care out of pocket drive up the cost of insurance. The costs of caring for the uninsured who prove unable to pay are shifted to health care providers, to the insured population in the form of higher premiums, to governments, and to taxpayers. The decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic. These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance. These are the economic effects addressed by Congress in enacting the Act and the minimum coverage provision.

The health care market is unlike other markets. No one can guarantee his or her health, or ensure that he or she will never participate in the health care market. Indeed, the opposite is nearly always true. [...]

The plaintiffs have not opted out of the health care services market because, as living, breathing beings, who do not oppose medical services on religious grounds, they cannot opt out of this market. [...]

The decision, in simpler terms, is this. Unless a person opposes the medical establishment on religious grounds, that person will at some point avail himself of services provided by the health care market. That person, at the time of service, may not be able to pay for the service. Therefore, that person's original refusal to participate in the market by purchasing insurance constitutes economic activity (because if he can't pay, his costs will be shifted to other participants) which the congress may regulate under the commerce clause. In even more simple terms, refusal to participate in an economic activity constitutes an economic activity that congress may regulate.

I want to address the mental gymnastics undertaken by the judge in arriving at this decision, e.g. that a person can't not get sick; that a person, once sick, can't avoid the health care market; and the fact that that person may not be able to pay means that he can be forced to buy insurance. I'm not going to, though. At least, I'm not going to any more than I just did.

Instead, I'll focus solely at the situation in which a person does get sick, does avail himself of the health care market, and can't pay for the service(s) since that is the situation on which the judge's upholding of the PPACA is based. So, what happens when an uninsured person arrives at a hospital emergency room? Under the EMTALA, that person must be treated. Nobody [explicitly] pays for this treatment, though. The federal government has mandated that hospitals treat such patients but does not reimburse them for these costs. Instead, hospitals can write this cost off as charity or bad debt on their taxes. They can also shift these costs to paying customers in the form of higher charges for service. (Note, too, that there is nothing preventing a hospital from doing both.)

So, the judge is correct that caring for uninsured patients creates additional costs for taxpayers (in the form of tax deductions taken by hospitals) and for paying participants in the health care market (in the form of increased costs for service). Here's the rub, though. The government created that additional cost in the first place by passing the EMTALA! The absurdity of trying to fix the problems created by government interference in the market by further interfering in the market should be obvious to everyone. The problem is more insidious than that, however.

The government has dropped all pretense of "legally" taking people's money via taxation. It is now explicitly assuming the ability to force people to spend money in the ways that it directs and is using its own policy as an excuse for the authority. By this logic, there is nothing that the government cannot regulate. The total state has arrived.

Wealth distribution

I came across the following image here a few days ago:

The above referenced link is to a story about the disconnect between Americans' belief(s) about wealth distribution in the U.S. and reality. Specifically, it says:

It's fine if reasonable people have different ideas about whether we should extend the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. Or think estate taxes are unfair. But when we have those debates, it's critical that everyone has a clear understanding of how things really are. We're becoming a plutocracy.

I'm not going to argue against that last sentence. Debating the merits of tax cuts for certain brackets or in certain situations in an effort to stave off a plutocracy, in my mind, though, ignores the bigger picture.

It seems to me that the dangers of a plutocracy lie, not necessarily with those that control the wealth, but with the government that can be controlled via that wealth. Specifically, there is very little that the U.S. federal government currently does not regulate. Under such a system, the aforementioned wealth can be very dangerous as it can be used to steer that regulation, which carries all the force of law, in directions that benefit only those controlling the wealth.

Contrast that with a government under which there is very little or even no economic regulation. In this system, plutocrats are not able to influence regulation to protect their wealth. They must simply produce goods and services that consumers are willing to buy; they must actually compete on the merits of their wares and business methods. The risk is that if they don't, other businesses will spring up in their place and eat their lunches, so to speak. Under such a system, consumers hold all of the power, and the "problem" of unequal distribution of wealth may work itself out.

I say "may" because, if we remove government from the equation, it's not immediately clear to me that the wealth distribution in the chart above is necessarily a problem. For example, the chart does not give the reader any indication that those in the lower quintiles do not have enough money to sustain their needs. Note that I'm not arguing that they currently do have sufficient money. Assuming for a moment that they do, though, and that there is no government to be influenced in economic matters, is there a problem?