Tithing and taxes

This little gem found its way into my Facebook news feed recently:

I'm all for a flat tax. Everyone above the poverty level pays 10% of their total income. It sounds pretty damn fair to me. Yes, this includes corporations too. 10% is good enough for God, it should be good enough for our government. If it's not, then why does our government need more money than God?

Well, gee; it's not much of a flat tax if some are excluded from it, now is it? Taxes are nothing more than a way to transfer wealth from one group to another. Even this proposed system would do exactly that.

That's not the point I wanted to make, though.

What I want to make clear is that tithes and/or charity (in God's name) and taxes should never be conflated or confused with each other. Taxes are involuntarily expropriated via the threat of government force. God, on the other hand, makes no such threats against person or property for failing to give. Not only that, but He doesn't even require that you give to a middle man. Whether you buy a meal for someone in need or give to a church that does, it's the same.

I'm certainly no theologian or saint, so take the following for what it's worth: Our (Christian) salvation is gained through the sacrifice that Christ made by dying on the cross and our belief in what He said about Himself, namely that He is Christ. Paul explains this in Ephesians 2:8-9, saying:

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.

I say this to make the point that our salvation is not dependent upon our charity, and thus there is no "donate or go to hell"-type threat looming over Christians. Now, certainly, those who are saved will, by virtue of their salvation, by and large be found to be donating (time, money, etc.) to the church and/or charity as God has instructed them. However, given what Paul said, I find it hard to believe that failure to do works (i.e. give to charity) invalidates salvation. After all, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

There are volumes that could be written about these subjects, and I'm not qualified to write them, although I did find this article instructive. In short, tithing and charity are voluntary; taxes are enforced through violence and/or the threat thereof. Never confuse the two.

Taxes for thee but not for me

David Axelrod was on Fox News Sunday this past weekend and was asked about President Obama's taxes which were released this past week. I found the exchange over the Obamas' taxes very interesting and telling:

(CHRIS) WALLACE: It turns out that he [President Obama] paid a tax rate of 20.5 percent, which is a lot less than the 30 percent he talks about and yes, it is lower than what his secretary pays.

AXELROD: It is.

WALLACE: And the president has -- if I may, David, the question I have for you is: if the president feels so strongly about tax fairness, is he going to he contribute money to the Treasury and they have a special department just for this, to help with the deficit?

AXELROD: Listen, Chris, first of all, the reason that his tax rate was so low was in part because 22 percent of his income was donated to charity, mostly to these Fisher Houses around veteran hospitals. So --

At this point Wallace interrupted Axelrod to point out that Mitt Romney also contributes to charity. Axelrod agreed and then began to point out the differences between President Obama's tax proposal/plan and Governor Romney's. Wallace eventually returned to the original question:

WALLACE: I take it that he's [President Obama] not going to contribute money to the Treasury to help with the deficit.

AXELROD: Listen, well, that's not the way we operate our tax system, OK? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism. We all kick in according to the system. And the system allows that -- look, the fact that Mitt Romney pays 14 percent on $20 million income is not the issue. The issue is that the system permits it and he would perpetuate that and he would enhance it.

On the one hand, let me say, "good on Obama". If, as libertarians, we believe that taxes are theft, then we ought to commend any attempt to avoid paying them just as we would any defense against other criminal actions. On the other hand, it seems disingenuous of the president to call for the rich (millionaires, specifically) to pay 30% or more of their income in taxes while conspicuously failing to do so himself because the "system" allows it. Perhaps, it would have been wise for Mr. Axelrod to raise the point that the Obamas did not earn over a million dollars last year, and therefore, would not be subject to the president's proposal(s). But he didn't. In fact, he went on to defend the president's use of the system to lower his tax rate -- he's just following the rules. Nevermind that those rules permit him to contribute more.

There are a number of points raised by this story, all of which deserve a post of their own, but I don't have the time or energy to delve into each so deeply. Here they are, briefly and in no particular order:

• Taxes are not voluntary and are collected at the end of a government gun.
  
  Axelrod admits as much when he says [emphasis mine], "that's not the way we operate our tax system, OK? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism. We all kick in according to the system." The only issue I take with his description is the use of the phrase "kick in". Stop enforcing tax laws; only then can we truly know how "voluntary" taxes really are.


• No person should ever pay more than the "system" requires, the criminality of the system itself, notwithstanding.
  
  Obama's actions and Axelrod's defense of them (see the quote under the previous point) bear this out.


• It's hypocritical to call out Mitt Romney for paying "only" 15% of his income in taxes.
  
  Governor Romney lives under the same tax system that President Obama does. Why is it okay for Obama to "kick in according the system" while Romney is vilified for doing exactly the same thing?


• President Obama, himself, doesn't believe in his own tax proposal(s).
  
  As the Fox News story points out, Obama paid less in taxes, percentage-wise, than did his secretary. If he believes that a system in which this kind of "inequity" is allowed is "unfair", why wait for the system to change? Nothing is preventing him from correcting this particular injustice right now. Thus, we can infer that correcting this problem is less important to him than keeping his own money.


• Why are taxes proportional to income but not other things, too?
  
  If taxes are what we pay for government goods and services, why don't rich people pay more for everyday goods and services like groceries and carwashes?


• War is a racket.
  
  I note that the overwhelming majority of the Obamas' donations went to the Fisher House Foundation. It's been funny (interesting, not ha-ha) for me to see people on the political right who hate Obama with a passion turn around and lavish praise on him for donating money to this organization. Their love of war and support of those who fight it seemingly knows no bounds.
  
  The politics obscures the absurdity of it all. Why does the government pay for war and the private sector pay for cleaning up the messes left by it?
  

Twitter account

Anyone know the owner of @johntyner? Any chance he or she would be willing to turn that account over to me?

Distinction without difference

I've seen a lot of commentary over the last few days about the so-called "individual mandate" in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that discusses how the mandate is beyond the power(s) of the U.S. federal government and that the Supreme Court would be right to strike it down. Those same commentaries, however, then concede that the same federal government does have the authority to raise taxes and then use that money to provide health care, a la Social Security.

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

1. If the commentary, as described above, is correct, why is there such an uproar about the mandate? If the federal government really does have the authority--assuming it does so via the "proper" means--to force health care on every person within its jurisdiction, wouldn't it be far less injurious to individual liberty to allow people to choose from which provider they will get their insurance and the terms of that insurance? Furthermore, wouldn't it be far more economically efficient if individuals purchased insurance for themselves, saving the cost--both monetary and bureaucratic--of the government having to hire more IRS agents to collect the money and more functionaries to manage it?


2. Isn't the real problem that the U.S. Constitution is all but worthless at this point? That is, if the mandate is such an affront to individual liberty, but the constitution allows the government to achieve the same ends via different means, what good is it as a protector of that liberty?

Unjust laws

For some reason, today, the quote alongside the picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. got me thinking. The phrase "unjust laws", in particular, struck me. What is an unjust law? Who makes the determination?

King's quote is not new. It was said before by Aquinas who was in turn drawing on Augustine, quoted as saying, "an unjust law is no law at all". I tend to agree with the sentiment, as I imagine most people would, but the rub occurs, of course, when trying to determine exactly which laws are "unjust". Based solely on this quote, it seems that King is suggesting that humans have the ability to determine for themselves what is just and what is unjust. If this is the case, then we can infer that laws are completely unnecessary in the first place. For if a law is unjust, then no one is obligated to follow it. If, on the other hand, it is just, then there was no need for the law in the first place because people would have acted accordingly on their own.

This latter point is predicated on the idea that humans are, by and large, innately interested in living in a peaceful and just society. I believe this to be true simply because society exists at all, because

no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are "good" in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos.

The idea of no laws probably conjures images in people's minds of masked marauders throwing Molotov cocktails in the streets. I'll make the leap of suggesting that this is objectively unjust. (I'm skipping ahead with that assumption, but we'll circle back.) In order to right this injustice, we need to haul the perpetrators into court and try them. Without laws, however, the court--whether by judge or jury--is helpless to judge the actions of the defendants. In fact, any judgment against them should probably be tossed on the grounds that it would be based on the imposition of an ex post facto standard. Since the law didn't exist before the "crime" was committed, no one can be convicted of having broken it.

But, look. We've tossed the conviction based on the idea of ex post facto laws being unjust, an idea clearly introduced into our theoretical justice system ex post facto. Clearly, we need laws, if only to codify what is (believed to be) just. Whether these laws must be promulgated by a single authority, the state, or whether society can adopt them on its own is the subject of another article. Instead, this article is concerned with the idea of (un)just laws.

Aquinas doesn't leave us hanging, fortunately. He lists three things, all of which must be true, in order for the law to be "just":

1. The law is created for the "common good".
2. The law does not exceed the authority of the lawmaker.
3. The law burdens all equally.

For the sake of completeness, Aquinas also describes a law as being unjust if it is opposed to the "divine good". In this way, he is adding a fourth requirement that for a law to be just it must not oppose the "divine good" as dictated by Aquinas' particular religion. This point violates the third point if we wish to allow for the possibility of the existence of other religions or even the right of individuals to choose not to observe any religion. Therefore, this requirement must be rejected.

Let us now consider the remaining requirements. First, the "common good". The phrase, itself, suggests that this "good" can be objectively known and that there is some good or end to which all people subscribe. The only end to which we can confidently assert that all people are working toward is the preservation of their own lives. We know this because any who are not working toward this end presumably would have killed themselves. Thus, any remaining people can objectively be said to value life over death. Therefore, all just laws must be made in the pursuance of the preservation of life.

Second, we consider the authority of the lawmaker. This must start by determining from where this authority comes in the first place. The simplest way to do this is to conduct a thought experiment in which one person and subsequently two people exist in isolation from anyone else. This has been covered before. The conclusion of this experiment is that each person exclusively controls his/her body. If one of these two people is to become the lawmaker, he or she can only assume that role with the consent of the other. That is, a lawmaker's authority extends no further than that which is given by those who would be subject to it.

Given this, we can now determine the extent of that authority. In practice, the lawmaker can have no more authority than any individual, for an individual cannot grant authority that he himself does not possess. It is worth noting that the logical extension of this is that two individuals have no more authority than one; nor four more than two; etc. In order to determine the limits of individual authority, we return to the thought experiment in which we've already concluded that each person has the exclusive right to control his or her body. In order to maintain this right, it is necessary that neither person engage in aggressive (as opposed to defensive) force against the other. This simple rule--the golden rule--is all that is necessary to maintain that status quo. Thus, the authority of the lawmaker is limited to the prevention of the violation of the exclusive control of bodies--the use of aggressive force--between a person or people against another person or people.

Finally, there is the idea that the law, to the extent that it burdens any, must burden all equally. Given the narrow constraints on the law created by the first two requirements, equal burden of the law is not a topic that requires much, if any, investigation except to say that the law must apply to all, including the lawmaker. Failure to apply the law equally, such as it may be under the first two requirements, would be to allow an individual or individuals to act contrary to Aquinas' second provision, and as already discussed, this authority cannot properly be granted by anyone. If the discussion had turned to taxes, a debate could be had on the equality of burden created by progressive vs. flat tax systems, but the imposition of taxes by the law again falls outside of, at least, the second of Aquinas' first two requirements.

To sum up, we find under Aquinas' "modified" requirements (remember, the fourth was dropped), that just laws must be enacted to preserve life; that the scope of these laws is limited to the prevention of the use of aggressive force between persons or peoples; and that all must be subject equally to said laws. (Having arrived at these requirements through the objective observations of human actions, we can now return to the earlier statement that the masked marauders throwing Molotov cocktails were acting "unjustly". To the extent that these actions are against people, they are objectively unjust. A discussion of the propriety of such actions with respect to "property" is purposely excluded from this article.) Given these limitations on the law, we are led to the (perhaps, not so) startling conclusion that nearly all laws on the books today are "unjust".

Bruce Schneier <3's TSA

Yesterday, Bruce Schneier wrote a blog post about abolishing the Department of Homeland Security. It was based, in large part, on a CATO report calling for the same citing that

DHS has too many subdivisions in too many disparate fields to operate effectively. Agencies with responsibilities for counterfeiting investigations, border security, disaster preparedness, federal law enforcement training, biological warfare defense, and computer incident response find themselves under the same cabinet official. This arrangement has not enhanced the government's competence. Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics.

Schneier agrees, citing his own writing from 2003:

Our nation may actually be less secure if the Department of Homeland Security eventually takes over the responsibilities of existing agencies. [...] Security is the responsibility of everyone in government. We won't defeat terrorism by finding a single thing that works all the time. We'll defeat terrorism when every little thing works in its own way, and together provides an immune system for our society. Unless the DHS distributes security responsibility even as it centralizes coordination, it won't improve our nation's security.

But Schneier takes issue with CATO's suggestion, later in the above linked report, that the TSA should abolished. Instead, he believes

abolishing the TSA isn't a good idea. Airport security should be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels, but someone is going to have to be in charge of it. Putting the airlines in charge of it doesn't make sense; their incentives are going to be passenger service rather than security. Some government agency either has to hire the screeners and staff the checkpoints, or make and enforce rules for contractor-staffed checkpoints to follow.

It would be very easy, at this point, to attack Schneier on the basis that the TSA is a colossal failure. However, that TSA is not a failure of epic proportions is not what he is arguing. In fact, Schneier himself is the progenitor of the idea that exactly "two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers". Furthermore, just this week, he penned an article calling the TSA irrelevant. So, let's look at exactly what he did say: that airline security should return to pre-9/11 levels with the government being in charge of it, either directly (government-hired goons staffing the checkpoints) or indirectly (private contractors acting under government regulation). If we hearken back to the pre-9/11 days, we find that his statement is redundant. Prior to 9/11, the government via the FAA was in charge of airline security, and what Schneier is suggesting is exactly how we arrived -- ignoring the reason(s) for the attacks themselves -- at 9/11 in the first place.

Before addressing Schneier's claim that putting the airlines in charge of airport security doesn't make sense, let's start with why his own solution doesn't make sense. First, there is the empirical evidence. As I just pointed out, 9/11 happened on the government's watch. While I agree that airline security should be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels, putting/leaving the government in charge of it is ludicrous, and the reason for that is that the government's interests do not align with that of the traveling public. Ostensibly, both care about flight safety. But in reality, as Schneier himself points out relentlessly, the TSA fails to provide this on any level. Just last month, a Vanity Fair writer explained how Schneier helped him circumvent TSA security to meet Schneier at the gate when his flight arrived. Then there's my own personal experience: after leaving the screening area (without being screened), the TSA demanded that I return because they feared that I may have an explosive device on my person. Why would they usher me back to the most crowed area of the airport if they feared that I had explosives? In reality, the government's interest(s) lie in an ever increasing role in security. This provides, not an actual increase in security, but an ever increasing ability to funnel money to favored contractors and further ratchet up the police state apparatus for the same reason.

The other reason that having the government in charge of airline security doesn't make sense is the same reason that letting the airlines manage their own security does: the profit and loss test. The basic idea is that when a business produces a product that consumers want at a cost that is less than what consumers are willing to pay, then the business profits. If any of these conditions are not met, the business suffers a loss. If the business does not change, then it goes out of business, government intervention notwithstanding.

Let's apply this test to the government's handling of airline security. It is producing a product that consumers want, namely, security. It is producing it at a cost of approximately $8.8 billion per year according to the federal government's 2011 budget. But this is where the profit and loss test ends for the TSA or any government entity. The profit and loss test requires that consumers of a product voluntarily pay or not pay for it. The government is funded via compulsory taxation. Therefore, the government need not concern itself with whether or not it is producing a product that people want or, more importantly, in a way that they want. That the government acts in exactly this way is borne out by reality. The TSA's budget during its first full year of funding in 2003 was $4.8 billion. It's current budget, only 8 years on, is a near 100% increase from that initial budget. This comes despite repeated TSA bungles including sleeping on the job, physically harassing passengers, allowing criminal activity to bypass security, stealing from passengers... the list goes on and on. If the TSA was a private corporation, consumers would have put it out of business almost 10 years ago. Instead, its costs are higher than ever and rising with no end in sight. In fact, the TSA's only measurable goal is total security, something that requires an absolute police state. Despite the desire on the part of the traveling public for total security, I'd wager that none would actually want to pay for it in terms of money or liberty required to implement said police state.

Now we can return to Schneier's claim that putting airline security in the hands of the airlines makes no sense. He believes this because he thinks that the airlines' focus will be on passenger service instead of security. Somebody didn't think through his rationale, completely. Tsk, tsk. Security is part and parcel of the service provided by the airlines. No passenger is going to be concerned about a glass of soda and a bag of peanuts or that he didn't get a blanket and a fluffy pillow if his plane is commandeered or blown up by a terrorist. Not only that, but the loss of a plane costs an airline hugely. There is of course the capital loss of the plane and the fuel, but more than that, if the airline wants to stay in business it's not only going to have to beef up its security, but it is going to have to figure out how to prove to passengers that it had changed its ways so that they'd be willing to fly again. We see then, that the airlines' interests, unlike the government's, align perfectly with the traveling public. In addition, airlines carry insurance for their operations. This means that airlines want their operations to be safe and secure because they don't want their premiums to rise in the event of an accident, and the airlines' insurance companies have every incentive to pressure the airlines to keep their operations safe and secure lest the insurance company have to pay out a multi-million, possibly billion, dollar claim.

"We can't trust the airlines", I hear you scream. "They're greedy capitalists!" Indeed they are, and that's exactly why the system would work. The airlines, unlike the government, cannot just take consumers' money to fund their operations. They must induce consumers to voluntarily give money to them. Thus, the airlines are subject to the profit and loss test described earlier. If the airlines provide too little security, passengers won't be willing to fly. The airlines will have saved some money by skimping on security, but the lack of income will ultimately result in losses. If they provide too much security, either the costs will drive ticket prices to a level that consumers are unwilling to pay, or consumers will find alternate means of travel because they find the security required by the airlines too onerous. In either event, the airlines will again find themselves losing money. In order to make money, the airlines will have to provide enough security to satisfy their passengers' desire for safety and their insurance companies' risk tolerance while not imposing so much security that passengers seek other airlines or other modes of travel entirely to avoid the costs and hassles.

Astonishingly, a self-correcting and self-policing system like this hasn't taken hold. Part of the reason for this is human nature. Humans have demonstrated a surprising inability to correlate events with the likelihood of their occurrence. For example, very few people are concerned about choking to death on their own vomit. However, it turns out that one is 9 times more likely to die by this method than via an act of terrorism. This is a topic that Bruce Schneier has also written about repeatedly. Because of this, people always demand ever more security in the event of some kind of accident or attack. Normally, the costs of these demands would temper them somewhat, but this doesn't happen because of government involvement. This is the other reason that a free market system has not taken hold: the government provides moral hazard. The airlines prefer that the government be involved because by using government provided security and/or standards, responsibility for security failures falls on the government, not the airlines. When something tragic occurs, the airlines can point to the government as the failure. Insurance companies are likewise not terribly worried about having to pay airline claims because the government has proven willing to bail them out. Even consumers are unwitting accomplices in this system because the costs of security have been separated from the cost of a ticket. Instead, these costs are (or would normally be) imposed as taxes, but even if one went looking for them, they would be difficult to find as the government has taken to inflating the currency in order to finance its operations. The increased costs of security are found in the rising prices of everyday items like milk, rent, electricity, and gasoline.

The government's involvement in airline security is not only an abject failure but an impediment to allowing a free(d) market to discover what the people really want when it comes to airline security. Bruce Schneier is a smart guy, and he's one of the TSA's harshest critics. He's written extensively about security and the trade-offs made in its name; he's no stranger to economics, especially when it comes to security. In light of this, I can only conclude from his desire to keep the government involved in airline security that he secretly loves the TSA.

Who's still standing?

This morning I was reading a story on the Volokh Conspiracy about how a judge in Georgia has allowed a lawsuit challenging Obama's listing on that state's presidential election ballot. A sentence in the middle of the article caught my attention:

Similar challenges have generally been rejected on procedural grounds, such as on the grounds that plaintiffs lack standing to sue because they have no greater stake in the matter than any other citizen. Generally speaking, federal courts have concluded that in such cases where the plaintiff doesn’t have a particularized stake in the matter, the resolution even of constitutional controversies should be left to the political process and not to courts.

This reminded me of the Kucinich lawsuit against Obama claiming the latter's violation of the War Powers Act in sending forces to Libya in early 2011. This lawsuit was dismissed for a similar reason -- lack of standing:

Judge Walton held the members of Congress lacked standing to bring the challenge, as they had ample legislative means at their disposal to oppose the President’s use of military force.

I haven't read the decision in this case, but I suspect that the judge's decision rested, at least partially, on the "political question" doctrine. This is the idea that the judicial branch should "avoid inserting itself into conflicts between branches of the federal government" and that "some questions [are] best resolved through the political process". This strikes me as incorrect, as it should be justiciable as to whether or not the president's actions were in accordance with the War Powers Act (or whether that act is itself constitutional). But I digress.

The point is that if the government breaks the law (in a general enough way), it would seem that no one has standing to challenge that action. Say the executive branch eavesdrops on everyone's communications, in clear violation of the fourth amendment, and that this is readily provable and a potential court case is not subject to being tossed under the state secrets doctrine. It seems that the case would still be tossed under the theory that everyone is equally harmed/oppressed, so none have standing to challenge. Furthermore, Congess is powerless here (via the courts) for the same reason Kucinich was unable to stop Obama's action in Libya: Congress has "ample legislative means at their disposal to oppose the President", namely defunding and impeachment.

But defunding and impeachment are themselves political, not judicial actions. They require the votes of members that (may) have an interest in the outcome of these actions that is not necessarily aligned with upholding the constitution or the laws or even the interests of justice. The entire idea underlying the court system is that it is comprised of impartial, disinterested officials. (Whether or not this is true in practice is a separate matter.) The executive and legislative branches are explicitly not comprised of such people. If the court is unwilling to get involved, then we must resign ourselves to the idea that the law is whatever the majority of the Congress says it is (or fails to say that it isn't).

While this may be comforting to some, in that these officers are (in theory) the "people" themselves, democracy is no panacea:

But what kind of person runs for public office? Madison failed to foresee that even the so-called "separation of powers" could not restrain men forever. Entry into politics does not require any particular skill or morality. It simply requires some combination of money, connections, personality, and a desire to rule others, particularly the last one. In fact, that last reason is probably the main reason that anyone runs for office. The idea that the world would be a better place if was in charge is probably not foreign to anyone. To succeed in government, however, involves backroom deals and "compromises" ensuring that only the least moral and most willing to deal away their principles will rise to the top. Thus, government will ultimately be populated with the worst people in society, and it is only a matter of time before they decide to work together to turn their legal authority to use force on the people themselves.

It would seem that we are inexorably on a path to this end in which we will be ruled by the oligarchs in office and their benefactors or by the "people" both of which, in practice, believe that positive law is superior to and therefore trumps natural law. No matter which prevails, one thing is certain: it's not going to be pleasant.

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.

Where's the beef (with capitalism)?

Over at Arm Your Mind for Liberty, a recent article takes issue with capitalism. I read this article with great interest because (I assume) it grew out of a discussion between myself and the author as well as some others regarding capitalism. When I read it, though, I couldn't find that the "beef" is really with capitalism at all. Before going too much further, we should probably start with a (common) definition of capitalism, but I'm not going to attempt to define capitalism in great detail. It seems that if you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers about what capitalism means to them as the linked article states:

‘Capitalism’ is a funny word. It means so many different things to so many different people, that it’s become entirely useless as a basis for any kind of rational or constructive communication. [...] Some will mention wage labor, others exploitation and yet others will talk of free trade. But I think the defining feature is the ability to accumulate lots and lots and lots of stuff (capital).

Fair enough. The ability to accumulate lots (and lots and lots) of stuff, or capital, is most assuredly a characteristic of capitalism and, as we will see, the article's main problem with it, so let's focus our attention there. Before we do so, the original article takes a slight detour:

And then, most importantly, [a characteristic of capitalism is] to have a third party protect your ability to control that stuff even when you’re not using it. That third party, of course, is the state (the government). [...] Without this ability to accumulate and have your title to said stuff protected at little to no cost to yourself, things like wage labor, exploitation and managed trade could not happen. These all depend on the power imbalances that stem from the state protecting capitalists’ control of their property.

Whoa, wait just a minute! Now, we're not talking about capitalism any more. We're talking about a state-directed ("managed trade") and state-enforced ("stuff protected at little or no cost to yourself", presumably via taxation on the whole population and "power imbalances" in the form of state-chartered police and enforcement mechanisms) economic system, our current system, what many call crony-capitalism. So, we can already see that the author's problem is not with capitalism, per se, but with crony-capitalism and the state enforcement of it. The author continues by stating that he doesn't "think capitalism would survive without the state".

But we're not talking about capitalism any more. We're talking about the state. The author offers no evidence or theories as to why capitalism cannot or will not exist without a state other than to say, "I don’t think a non-aggressive organization will go to the same lengths as the state to protect property". This is demonstrably false, however:

Just think for a moment about the following:

• Who is responsible for protecting you at most major shopping centers? Ever see a private mall cop? I bet you have.
• How about casinos? Almost all casinos have private armed security.
• What about at the dance club? Ever see a bouncer throw out a belligerent drunk?
• What about at the university? You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a public safety officer and a cop. Many universities have private police forces.
• How about warehouses, ports and apartment complexes? It is not uncommon to have private security guards protecting all of those. My apartment complex has its own security.
• Airports used to be entirely protected by private security – and guess what? No one was complaining about being molested. Further, after 9/11, it was the airlines who made real improvements to security by putting in steel cockpit doors and arming the pilots.
• Banks? - Almost all bank cash transfers are dealt with by way of private armored car, and many banks have private armed security as well.

Now I've been drawn into a digression about capitalism on a larger scale. Let's return to the accumulation of stuff in the original article and look at an example provided by the author describing his issue with it: "if someone fences off 1,000 acres of land but consistently uses only 2, I don’t consider that legitimate". This situation draws its basis from the Lockean idea of homesteading, that one becomes an owner of land by "mixing" his labor with it. I'm not going to argue whether fencing 1,000 acres constitutes a mixing of labor. A debate on such a matter is not likely easily resolved.

Instead, what if we arrived at this situation differently, voluntarily? Let's assume two people and call them A and B. Each of them own 501 acres (via legal means, homesteading or otherwise) and farm the entirety of their respective plots. A and B both consume only what they need to survive and sell the rest of their produce into the marketplace. A saves the proceeds from his sales under his mattress while B spends his money on vacations and house keepers and other consumable goods and services. (One has to wonder, at this point, if B has a claim to A's money since storage under A's mattress is not "productive" use in B's mind.) At some point, bad weather conditions befall A and B. A, having saved his money, is able to buy what he needs from the marketplace, but B has nothing. Seeing B's plight, A offers to use some of the rest of his savings to buy 499 acres of B's land. B, needing to feed himself and his family, reluctantly agrees. Now A owns 1,000 acres, and B owns 2. We've arrived at the evil capitalist situation described by the author in the original article, but we've arrived by completely legal and voluntary means.

Let's assume that A, having just bought the land and exhausting much of his savings, does not have the capacity to expand his farming operations into his newly acquired 499 acres. When the weather improves, does B have a legal right to reacquire the land, via homesteading? What if B had kept the land but sold his farming equipment to A to pay for his food? Now that B is incapable of farming his land (and has no reasonable prospects for doing so since he has no farming equipment and no savings with which to buy any), can A also freely acquire B's land under the homesteading principle?

The author of the original article seems to think so: "If someone needed land and had a solid intention to use it to sustain his life, I would support that person in any attempt to homestead a reasonable parcel out of the 1,000 acres". B, in our example, has every "intention to use [the land] to sustain his life" as well as others'. The author goes so far as to suggest that force is an appropriate means to affect this outcome:

In a stateless society, people would be freer to rise up against people who attempt to control more property than they actually use. Acting in concert, great numbers of people could, in the worst case, purchase arms, form a defense force and fight capitalists on a more level playing field. Squatters, worker-owned cooperatives and similar direct actors would take control of more of the capitalists’ property. In the process, their power would be eaten away.

In fact, A has saved B's life as well as his family's, and in return B should have the right to use violent force to take back from A what was voluntarily given/traded (by B himself!) to A? What the author is suggesting is either a clear violation of the non-aggression principle or will require a state, with a legal monopoly on the use of violence, to forcibly give A's land to B.

The only other argument in favor of what the original author is suggesting hinges on the word "reasonable". Perhaps 1,000 acres is an "unreasonable" amount. Much like the hypothetical debate about homesteading to which I alluded earlier, a common definition of what is "reasonable" is not easily resolved. As an example, here are a bunch of pro-gun people on a pro-gun forum disagreeing about what "reasonable" gun laws would look like. At any rate, the example I gave above works with any sized parcel of land. In fact it becomes even more difficult to reason out on a smaller scale. Consider if A and B each owned two acres and A bought 1 acre from B. A is in a much better position to farm an additional 1 acre than he is an additional 499. What if A incrementally continues the process, voluntarily acquiring parcels from C, D, E, etc. in a similar manner? When does the amount of land that A owns become "unreasonable"? Does the situation change if A rents the land back to B, C, D, E, etc.? Who makes that decision and who enforces it? What authority does this entity have when A can show that his property was acquired legally? None, according to the author of the original article: "If a person prospers legitimately, I have no basis to challenge any accumulation of wealth." Wait, what? Does B have a claim to A's legitimate accumulation of wealth (in the form land) or not?

In short, capitalism, true capitalism, is not an economic system that is imposed on anyone. It is an economic system that arises from, or rather is the result of, voluntary interactions in a truly free society. In fact, the economic system proposed in the original article is not only incoherent but, in the author's own words, requires violent enforcement. I suggest that the author's "beef" is not with capitalism but with a free and voluntary society.

Torture instead of prison

Leo Katz has been blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy this week. He's written a book called Why the Law Is So Perverse, and Volokh is giving him the opportunity to pimp it by writing about subjects covered within it. Today, he posted an entry entitled The Problem of Voluntary Torture in which he lays out the following (imaginary) proposal:

Imagine the following proposal by a wild-eyed legislator for making our criminal justice system more efficient. “The point of punishment is pain,” he explains.”Obviously. Without pain, we don’t get deterrence and we don’t get retribution. But prison happens to be a very expensive pain delivery system. There is a much cheaper one which for some reason we haven’t really adequately considered. Instead of making a prisoner’s life moderately painful for a prolonged period of time, which is what prison does, why not just make it intensely painful for a very short period of time: a lot of pain, but for a short duration—that should give us as much retribution and deterrence as before but at a fraction of the cost.”

He then gives his own opinion of it:

I view the deal the legislator is suggesting we offer each prisoner as the quintessential win-win transaction. Everyone is better off. The prisoners (though only marginally so, to be sure) and society at large which now has to pay only a fraction of what it used to have to pay for deterrence and retribution. 

Nevertheless, like most other people, I would not for a moment contemplate seriously adopting the legislator’s proposal. The question is why?

In answering his own question, he assumes the win-win nature of the proposal to be a given and then argues that there are valid reasons for certain kinds of mutually beneficial arrangements to be prohibited including "force or fraud or incompetence or bad effects on third parties", none of which, he admits, are applicable in this case. Ultimately, he concludes "that some other as yet unidentified reason must be at work here". He, of course, will explain this in another post or, for the impatient reader, already does in his book which the reader is invited to purchase.

First, Mr. Katz' belief that this proposal, despite his reticence to implement it, is a win-win is spectacularly incorrect. Given his starting point, the current prison system, it's not hard to see why he went wrong. Society already already pays a great price to imprison criminals. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. spend almost $75 billion per year to house inmates. States vary widely on costs, but with the prison population hovering a little under 3 million, the average is just over $23,000 per inmate per year. Just imagine if instead society tortured these individuals mercilessly for a few days or a week or even a month! If the costs scale linearly, then society would pay less than $2,000 per inmate per incarceration, and surely torture would provide enough deterrent to keep prisoners from committing their crimes again.

The obvious problem with this is that torture is not simply a physical act that ends when the pain subsides. It is also has psychological components, and both of these have long lasting effects. Nor are these effects limited to the recipients of this torture. Imagine being an employee at a facility that offers this type of "correction". It would be like watching the Saw movies back-to-back-to-back for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, only the characters are real people, and there is no way to turn off the movie. Employees of such a facility would, in the end, suffer just as much -- probably more -- than the prisoners themselves. Imagine further those actually charged with carrying out the torture as a regular profession. We would literally have to find the worst of the worst of society -- worse than the prisoners themselves -- train those people to become perfect in their craft, and then pay them to carry out the most heinous acts that one human being could commit against another. That, I submit, is not a society.

Exposing the sheer insanity of this proposal has probably been a waste of time given that even Mr. Katz is against it. But the fact that it is even brought up is incredibly ironic, given the reaction to the idea of torturing prisoners. Mr. Katz, like the rest of the population, doesn't fully comprehend the nature of the prison system even though he mentions it a number of times in his post. It is so ingrained in most people's minds that they don't even see it. Look back to the "wild-eyed" legislator's first words:

“The point of punishment is pain,” he explains.”Obviously. Without pain, we don’t get deterrence and we don’t get retribution.

The purpose of the prison system is to punish, and "the point of punishment is pain". If we accept this premise, then society is already engaging in torture of a more mild variety. A variation on an old joke springs to mind:

A: Should society imprison criminals?
B: Absolutely.
A: Should society torture criminals?
B: Absolutely not; what kind of society would that be?
A: We've already established that; now we're just seeing how far it will go.

Back to the legislator's words, the point of punishment is pain and the point of pain is deterrence and retribution. Deterrence is well and good, but the fundamental problem with the prison system is the retribution. When someone commits a crime, the justice system metes out retribution. Who benefits from this retribution? Only the justice system -- and, to an extent, the prisoner -- benefits. The victim doesn't benefit in any tangible way. Whatever damage may have been done is not repaired, nor is the victim compensated (over and above the actual damages) for the  "inconvenience" of being victimized. Nor does society benefit since society has to pay for the trial and incarceration of the criminal. Furthermore, it has to deal with the effects of prison on the criminal (no marketable job skills, inability to function in the "real world") when the criminal has finally served his/her time and is released. But the justice system benefits as money must be poured into it to house an ever growing number of inmates. And while incarceration is certainly no picnic, the incarcerated "enjoy" 3 meals, a bed, and a roof over their heads at the victims' expense.

What if, instead, the criminal justice system focused on restitution instead of retribution? First, a number of crimes would simply disappear. If police picked up a prostitute, to whom would he/she pay restitution? In order to answer that, we would have to pinpoint the damages caused of which there are none. The same goes for someone getting high in his garage. Second, victims, instead of the justice system would be compensated for the commission of a criminal act. This is obviously straightforward in the case of crimes involving money or things that can easily be assigned a monetary value. The victim is repaid his loss plus some extra as compensation for the inconvenience and to serve as deterrence of future crime on the aggressor's part. It seems less straightforward in the event of non-monetary damages like physical violence, but this should not be so. Society has already decided how long a prison sentence should be based on murder, manslaughter, physical violence, etc.; it is not a far leap to think that money could be substituted for time. And what of failure to abide by a sentence? Imagine if when someone refused to obey the law and by extension punishment for breaking it, society simply refused to extend the protections of the law to that person? This is what a criminal justice system in a voluntary society, one without an entity granted the legal ability to use force might look like.

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.

How quickly we forget

I received an email containing a number of complaints about the current administration. On the theory that, in reality, this administration is no different from the last, or any other for that matter, I present the following.

If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

When Clinton left office, the federal debt stood at 5.8 trillion. Bush increased this to 10.4 trillion by the time he left office. The current federal debt as of the government's last fiscal year stood at 11.9 trillion. Bush doubled the debt, not Obama.

If any other of our presidents had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

In Bush's last year in office, the federal government spent 3.1 trillion dollars. The federal government spent 3.09 trillion in the last fiscal year on record, a 2.4% decrease from Bush's last year.

One also has to remember that Bush refused to make the wars part of his budget and continually funded them through emergency funding measures. So, any claims that Bush was going to balance the budget are without merit.

If any other of our presidents had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think that he is just an ignorant hot head?

"As a governor, he did not appreciate the federal government stepping in, telling states what to do," Fleischer said. 

Later, he amended his comments: "The president believes that all policies, state or federal, need to respect the culture of life. He differs with Gov. Davis on this."

If any other of our presidents joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who's side he was on?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341316,00.html

If any other of our presidents had pronounced the Marine Corps like Marine Corpse, would you think him an idiot?

http://www.ehow.com/how_2272065_mispronounce-words-like-george-bush.html

If any other of our presidents had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one foreign company had an accident, would you have agreed?

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-09-18/news/mn-596_1_offshore-drilling 

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/bush-pelosi-and-reid-deserve-scorn-for-destroying-jobs-for-teenagers/ 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/01/us-usa-economy-employment-idUSTRE5303F820090401

If any other of our presidents had used a forged document as the basis of the moratorium that would render 87000 American workers unemployed would you support him?

http://articles.cnn.com/2003-03-14/us/sprj.irq.documents_1_weapons-inspectors-documents-nuclear-weapons?_s=PM:US

If any other of our presidents had been the first President to need a Teleprompter instaled to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/weird/jorj-booshs-fo-ne-tik-promt/story-e6frev20-1111114505516 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/blundering-bush-winks-at-queen/story-e6frev00-1111113491771

If any other of our presidents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take his First Lady to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

http://www.politicususa.com/en/obama-bush-vacation 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-06-01-air-force-one_x.htm

If any other of our presidents had reduced your retirement plan holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16740.html

If any other of our presidents had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/26/usa.iraq

If any other of our presidents had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If any other of our presidents had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought it a proud moment for America?

Is this what it's come to? Gift giving? Fine.

If any other of our presidents had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia would you have approved?

http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+bows+to+saudi+king

If any other of our presidents had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/bush-slips-up-at-apec-on-opec/story-e6frev8r-1111114365415

If any other of our presidents had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2006/04/28/5088/rove-legal-trouble-more-extensive/ 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Miers#Supreme_Court_nomination_and_withdrawal 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Brown#Resignation_from_FEMA

If any other of our presidents had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, wouldn't you have had second thoughts about his capabilities?

http://quietmumblings.blogspot.com/2006/08/bushisms-bush-and-geography.html

If any other of our presidents had flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in his home town, would you not have thought he was a self-important, conceited, egotistical jerk.

http://andyfinn.us/bush_league/bushisms20_bush_bravado.htm

If any other of our presidents had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, wouldn't you have winced in embarrassment?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bush-takes-stab-at-speaking-spanish-with-mixed-results-673744.html 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcHlXNFpr-s

If any other of our presidents had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?

http://whateveritisimagainstit.blogspot.com/2006/04/george-w-bushs-earth-day.html

If any other of our presidents' administrations had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/20/tom-ridge-i-was-pressured_n_264127.html

If any other of our presidents had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/video-shows-bush-got-explicit-katrina-warning/ 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11255379/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/brown-blames-homeland-katrina-response/

If any other of our presidents had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have ever approved.

http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+bypasses+congress

If any other of our presidents had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/14/us-banks-bailout-bush 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/19/bush-administrations-holi_n_152292.html

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

Nothing. He's exactly the same as every other politician.

Is the state a criminal conspiracy?

Murray Rothbard famously called the state "a bandit gang writ large", or as it is more commonly rephrased, "a gang of thieves writ large". I have to admit that the first time I read this I was quite taken aback. I think I was first exposed to this idea early on after becoming a libertarian, and I wrote it off, in large part, to fiery rhetoric intended to get readers' attentions. Fortunately, it didn't scare me off, and as I read more and more, I came to understand the logic behind the assertion. As it usually goes for me, I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees right away.

This assertion -- government as a criminal gang -- often accompanies, or occurs during, a discussion of taxes. In fact, I had a discussion with someone just this past weekend during which I said that taxes were theft because I had never consented to them. Invariably, this leads (as it did in this case) into discussion about helping the poor, benefits of services paid for by tax revenue, and "civic duty" and what it means to be a "good citizen". The argument goes: taxes are fine and good as long as we put them to "good" use; to be against taxes is to be against the good that taxes provide. Don't get me wrong. I believe in helping the poor; I drive my car on roads; and I'm all for peaceful cooperation and being a productive member of society. I simply differ from the bulk of the population on how these ends should be achieved.

Since I'm likely in agreement with most about what can be achieved with the proper use of tax revenue (assuming the "proper" use could really be known), let's back up a bit and look at taxes themselves. A tax is simply a financial charge imposed by a state (or functionally equivalent "legal" entity), the payment of which is enforced under penalty of law. This is a somewhat euphemistic definition, though. A tax "is not a voluntary payment or donation, but an enforced contribution, exacted pursuant to legislative authority" according to Black's Law Dictionary. With that definition in mind, we begin to see now the shape of the criminal gang metaphor. The state imposes a financial charge on its subjects and enforces the payment of said charge with force. In less civilized societies, failure to pay may be immediately met with the state's armed enforcers stopping by to collect the charges. In more civilized societies, one might first be given a trial in a state-run court, after which failure to pay will be met by the state's armed enforcers. The result is always the same, though. Taxes are ultimately, always collected by force be it through property confiscation or (the threat of) incarceration. (A discussion of the equality of the threat and actual use of force is omitted.)

When a criminal gang takes money by force, it is theft. When the state does it, it is taxation. The difference is curious, to say the least. Looking back at Black's definition of taxation, note that taxes are "exacted pursuant to legislative authority". So, despite all outward appearances, taking money from someone against their will is not always a crime; the legality of the act depends on who is doing the taking. The state is empowered by "legislative authority" while the "criminal" gang has no such authority. So, let's step further back and examine from where the state derives this authority.

Imagine, for a second, a person living alone on an island. For all intents and purposes, this person owns the island and everything on it, if for no other reason than there is no one else contending for ownership. Now let's add a second person into the mix. There are myriad ways for the two to decide how to divide up the land and coexist, but they all begin with the question of the proper ownership of each person's body. The simplest, most common sense solution to this question is that each person is the exclusive owner of his or her body. After all, it doesn't make sense for each person to own the other's body but not his or her own. Nor does it make any sense for the two to own both bodies jointly. These latter solutions would only produce conflict as the two would never be able to agree on how best to use their bodies. Indeed, the only viable solution is for each person to be the exclusive owner of his or her own body.

If we accept this premise, then it follows that the initiation of force/violence against another (without this other's consent) is never justified as it constitutes a violation of the person's ownership of his or her body and sole discretion as to how that body should be used. It further follows that if a person does not have the authority to initiate violence against another, he or she cannot contract this authority out to a third party, namely, the state. That is, one cannot grant power or authority to another that one does not have in the first place. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that the initiation of force/violence by the state is never justified, and since all state actions are predicated on the use of force, we must further conclude that all state actions are without proper authority, at a minimum, with respect to those who do not consent to violence against them.

By now, it should be clear that there is little difference between the actions of a "criminal gang" and the state in terms of their authority to commit those actions. The only place where the two may differ is in the fact that, occasionally, the state may use its ill-gotten gains to help the public in the form of welfare, roads, etc. But the state is no Robin Hood. It steals from the rich, the middle class, and the poor, alike. Not only that, but it pays its bureaucrats first and then uses what's left to pay for these services. So, even when the state does good, the taxpayers are forced to overpay for these services since they can be provided by and found in the private sector -- often the state ends up contracting with private sector businesses -- with less bureaucracy and the added benefit of market competition to keep prices down. We must also note that money left, after paying bureaucrats, is further reduced by the state's spending on warfare and all that that entails. Taxpayers really aren't getting a good bang, no pun intended, for their buck.

All of this talk about how the state spends money, though, is simply a giant misdirection intended to confuse the issue. After all, we don't tolerate crime when the proceeds are used for ostensibly "good" purposes. Nor would we tolerate it if the criminal offered to give us a partial say -- a vote if you will -- in how he or she might use the proceeds. The criminal act must be addressed first and foremost, and this should be no different when it applies to the state. When there are different rules for the state and for the subject/citizen, what we have is most definitely not the rule of law.

The state is indeed criminal in its actions; the next step is to establish conspiracy. Strictly speaking, a conspiracy is "an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud,or other wrongful act". Under this definition, a conviction of the state is all but certain. This isn't exactly what I have in mind, when I say conspiracy, however. Conspiracy, in reference to the state, implies to me some larger goal: not only to keep power but to further and further enhance and centralize it. It also implies that the state is always working toward this goal as an end unto itself. Now, I won't argue that this isn't what happens, in practice; however, I have a hard time believing that the state, at all levels, is always and everywhere conspiring toward this end for one simple reason. Again, Murray Rothbard:

[I]n a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are "good" in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos.

If Mr. Rothbard is correct, which I believe him to be, that most people are "good", then we must conclude that either a significant number of people working for the state are "good" or that by some sort of social malfunction the state exclusively employs the "bad" people in society. There is certainly a good argument to be made for the latter possibility, but I'm a believer in the former.

If I am correct in that belief, then there only remains the question of why the state continues to exist. I believe there are two, related reasons: 1.) people do not understand the nature of the state, and 2.) people believe that they are not responsible for the actions of the state. I've addressed the former in this post; I'll try to address the latter in the next.

Pardon the dust, centralization in progress

A couple of weeks ago, California became the 8th state, joined by the District of Columbia, to pass a law that will give all of its electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide, popular vote. In order for this law to take effect, however, a number of states whose combined electoral votes total 270 (enough to win in the electoral college) must all pass similar legislation. If that happens, then the electoral college, while (likely) still in place, would be rendered moot.

Disturbingly, this change seems to have broad appeal and public support. According to Gallup surveys in 2001 and in 2004, about 60% of the population supports electing the president by popular vote. Editorial writings seem to hold an especially dim view of the federal government's presidential election process, stating that "[i]n a country that purports to be the world's greatest democracy, the Electoral College is an undemocratic embarrassment." Politico says that the bill signed by (California's) governor Jerry Brown is "designed to fix our broken presidential election system." And according to nationalpopularvote.com, 2,110 state legislators have endorsed the change.

I say disturbingly because this represents a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the design and history of the federal government. There is evidence for this in Ali Velshi's comments on Jon Stewart's show from earlier this week (starting at about 4:50, specifically 5:18) in which he complains that members of congress are representing their constituents instead of the "entire country":

In his comments, he explicitly states that he believes that there is some solution to our problem(s) that benefits everyone. For someone who reports on business and markets, this is a surprising position. It has a very "central planning" ring to it. That is, if we would all just trust the government, they'll do what's best for us because they know best. But a discussion of (the evils of) central planning is for another article. More to my current point, who should representatives represent if not their constituents -- the very people who elected them? Representatives are not sent to congress to do what's best for the country. They're sent to represent the interests of their constituents -- apparently much to the chagrin of Mr. Velshi -- and in doing so, the ideas that move forward are the ones shared by a majority of the people. (Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of democracy or what has become of our republic.)

This misunderstanding extends beyond the punditocracy, though. I found this comment (repeated in a blog by an author who took issue with it for a different reason):

...no federal protections for us is just a wee bit troublesome too; we're either one country or fifty different ones. You can't have one State treating minorities as equals while another treats them like dirt.

The fact is that the United States are (or were intended to be) fifty different countries. Because these countries are small and share a common geography, they decided to form a federal government that would allow them to act together for mutual benefit in areas like defense and economics. This federal government was never intended to regulate individuals so much is its function was to govern the states. The states would in turn govern their individual populations. (I've written previously about the sovereignty of the states.)

If the federal government were kept small and limited to its original intent, then

dysfuctional state policies are constrained by the possibility of "voting with your feet." If a state imposes overly high taxes, adopts flawed regulations, or provides poor public services, people and businesses will tend to migrate elsewhere, thereby incentivizing the state government to clean up its act in order to preserve its tax base.

Instead, as the federal government grows and the states weaken, this ability to vote with one's feet will be no more. If you think that the taxes, regulations, or public services of a particular state are bad, wait until they are uniform nationwide. Make no mistake, giving the presidential election to the winner of the popular vote has nothing to do with furthering democracy or preventing what happened to Al Gore in 2000 (something that has happened only 3 other times in the 200+ year history of the U.S. federal government). It's ultimate effect will be to push state power and sovereignty further and further into obscurity until all political power is fully centralized at the federal level.

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I didn't have the space to delve more deeply into the evils of central planning or other problems with the proposal to elect the president by popular vote. Some of those are addressed in an editorial by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In that editorial, I found a reference to a doctrine often (incorrectly, it would seem) attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. It reads:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

It sounded very apropos and also reminded me of this quote, attributed to George Washington:

The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.

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Wikipedia also summarizes some of the theory behind indirect election of the president.