Current Events

Measles Vaccine? Not Me!

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty , , , , , ,

That’s because the vaccine didn’t exist when I was a kid. I got the disease instead, leaving me with natural immunity. I think my chums all got it too and it amounted to a few days of discomfort, no big deal. But there must have been some who got it and suffered serious consequences, even death. News just didn’t get around in those days (ca. 1950) like it does today.

It’s terrific that a vaccine now exists, but like all vaccines it entails perverse incentives. When nearly everyone is vaccinated, there is little incentive for an individual parent to get it for his child because the disease can’t spread through a vaccinated population, and at least some incentive not to get it: cost, bother, and a remote chance of ill effects. And if enough parents skip the vaccine, the percentage of vaccinated children may fall low enough to permit the disease to propagate as, in fact, it has begun to do lately in some areas.

The solution for public schools is simple: require vaccination for all entering school children. As long as we have public schools, there have to be rules and this would be a quite sensible rule. For private schools the situation is trickier. Should the government require private schools to require vaccination? I think not. Most parents would have sense enough to keep their kids away from such schools. A no-measles policy would be a selling point for private schools.

The Saudis, the Holy Lands, and double standards

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics, Religion , , , , , , , , ,

I know we’ve been linking to Irfan and the PoT heads a lot lately, but there’s a good reason for it. Check out Dr Khawaja’s thoughts on the recent death of King Abdullah:

The late Pakistani journalist Tashbih Sayyid, editor of Pakistan Today, put the point to me in this way: “Muslims complain so loudly about the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank. What about the Saudi occupation of Mecca and Medina?” It sounds like a joke, but it really isn’t one. He might well have added: What about the Saudi occupation of the Arabian peninsula?

Here’s an article on Saudi Arabia’s criticizing Norway’s human rights record. This criticism comes from a country where it’s illegal for women to drive. Of course, to be fair, Saudi Arabia is making progress. It abolished slavery in 1962.

I don’t agree with defenders of Israel who insist that the movement to divest from Israel is “anti-Semitic,” but I do think there is a double standard in the way activists think about and deal with Israel by contrast with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has all the features that members of BDS find objectionable in Israel. Like Israel, Saudi Arabia is guilty of systematic human rights abuses. Like Israel, Saudi Arabia gets massive and systematic U.S. support. Like Israel, Saudi Arabia exerts enormous influence over the U.S. government. The difference is just that Saudi Arabia is a lot worse than Israel on every relevant dimension.

Read the rest, it’s an excellent analysis as usual.

Jacques has a piece on Islam in France up over at Liberty that you might want to check out, too. He doesn’t make any new arguments that he hasn’t made before, and I don’t think he is advancing the conversation at all (see here and here, for example), but it’s still worth the read.

The Gold Standard is Not Without its Costs

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics , , , ,

News from the department of “life is bigger than art:” A few days ago I posted a fictitious account of a future Wells Fargo Bank operating on a revived gold standard. Turns out the real Wells Fargo, now a regular large commercial bank with its roots in the California gold rush, has a branch in downtown San Francisco at the site where the bank was first opened in 1852. The branch had an exhibit of historic artifacts, including gold nuggets from the gold rush era. I say had, because last night thieves rammed an SUV into the lobby and made off with the nuggets!

All of which underscores the fact that security is among the real costs associated with a gold standard. There is no law of nature that says free banking has to be based on gold, as I pointed out in my post. The market would, if free to do so, sort out costs and benefits and find the sort of system or systems that best satisfies consumers.

I love Wells Fargo; They Hate Me.

While I have this blog window open I’ll add some unrelated comments about Wells Fargo. I am a happy customer and I credit this to the stiff competition among banks at the retail level. I regularly get solicitations from banks offering $100 bonus to open an account, with strings attached, of course but I stick with Wells Fargo. At the macro level our current banking system is gravely flawed but it works well for us retail customers.

I get free checking, a handy web site, and ATMs all over the place. When my credit card was hacked recently, they replaced it promptly and took my claims about false charges at face value. My average credit card balance last year was nearly $4,000 and I paid zero interest. That’s because I pay it off at the last possible date, which is 25 days after billing. I pay an $18 annual fee but got $300 in cash rebates last year. I never pay late fees or penalties of any kind.

I do not have a savings account with Wells Fargo because those accounts are a joke. Their most popular savings account yields (drum roll) 0.01%. Not one percent, but one hundredth of one percent. For every thousand dollars I might keep in a savings account, I would get ten cents in annual interest, taxable. I do, however, hold shares of Wells Fargo preferred stock which pay 6.8% current yield (for you experts, a somewhat lower yield to call). The shares appreciated about 70% since I bought them at the bottom of the Great Recession.

So I am a money loser for Wells Fargo. They earn merchant fees from my credit card use and that’s about it. They count on their average customer’s ignorance and lack of financial discipline to generate fee income and to carry high-interest balances on their credit cards. Dear reader, if that describes you, don’t despair. You can get out in front of the wave and let the banks work for you, not the other way around. It just takes a little knowledge and some discipline. Most important: if you can’t pay cash for a purchase (or use a credit card paid off before interest kicks in), you can’t afford it! That includes cars. Save up your money and buy a junker. Mortgages are OK for home purchases because of tax breaks, but even there, start with a healthy down payment.

Here endeth today’s sermon. Go in peace and freedom!

From the Comments: Islam and Islamism

Brandon Christensen Comments, Culture, Current Events, Religion , , , , ,

Matthew riffs off of my recent post on imperialism:

I am far too lazy at present to read the links you embedded in this article, so I will shoulder the lazy man’s burden, and provide some simple anecdotes.

A very common reaction is to blame Islam itself for the problems Islamists cause in the West, and in their own countries. I have never opened the Koran, and I have only cursorily read the statements of Islamist groups such as Hamas. I cannot honestly speak to whether Islam is at fault in toto, because I know too little about Islam’s tenets to deduce a causal relationship between Islamist extremism and the creed they espouse. What I have been noticing, however, in my brief travels in the Islamic world (I am currently in Meknes, Morocco) is the difference in practice between what I will call “media Muslims” (the straw men the media set up as representative of all Muslims) and the real, flesh and blood Muslims you meet in your every day encounters. I have met pious Muslims, who pray five times a day, and have had theological discussions over the differences between Judaism and Islam. I have not hidden my Judaism, as many Jews do out of fear for their lives – misplaced oftentimes, I would say – and have had no problems. I have met young Muslims who eat pork and drink alcohol and don’t give a jot about Allah or Muhammad. I have tried to flirt with Muslim girls and failed, probably because my only Berber words are “yaaah” (yes) and “oho” (no).

There is a very large pressure in culture and in the media to reduce everything to social forces. We must fear “Islam,” and “Communism,” and “Terror,” without considering that all of these social forces are composed of many individuals, with different ideals, and different means of pursuing them. Islam is, like everything else, a pluralistic social movement. There is Wahhabism on one end, and cultural Islam on the other, and many people fall in between. So, I do not think Islam can be blamed for the West’s problems with Muslims. A particular strain of Islam, adhered to by a particular type of individual, is one factor. Western meddling and overt racism is another.

The rest of the ‘comments’ thread is, of course, well worth the read too. I am not much of a bragger but, as I’ve repeated on here many times, the ‘comments’ threads at NOL are some of the best on the web. I look forward to Matthew’s posts teasing out what it means to be Western.

Also, Matthew, with Moroccan girls you have to feign ignorance and let them believe that they are doing the hunting and that you are the prey. (Let us know how it goes, of course.)

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. France must avoid repeating American errors
  2. The internationalism of the American Civil War; shockingly incomplete (almost dishonestly so), but a good starting point
  3. The false piety of the Hebdo hoodlums
  4. Sri Lanka’s surprise political transition
  5. From Martin Anderson to Charlie Hebdo and back

Charlie Hebdo: Todos, nadie, uno.

Federico Sosa Valle Current Events , , , ,

La primera reacción pública frente al atentando a los integrantes de la redacción de la publicación satírica Charlie Hebdo fue acudir a la identificación con la víctima: “Je suis Charlie Hebdo”. En menos de 48 hs. se comenzaron a escuchar los primeros distanciamientos: no todos querían identificarse con Charlie Hebdo, ya que eran pocos los que adherían por entero a su línea editorial. En estos casos, lo más delicado reside en las razones para expresar una u otra posición.

La identificación de la comunidad con la víctima de un atentado es un requisito que hace a la legitimación de la persecución penal contra quienes hayan perpetrado el atentado. En este sentido, es correcto decir “yo soy Charlie Hebdo”, ya que esto implica afirmar que la víctima del atentado pertenece a nuestra comunidad y es la comunidad la que ha sido agredida en la persona de la víctima. Si el estado –en este caso el Estado Francés- se encuentra legitimado para iniciar la persecución penal de tal atentado es porque el agredido se encuentra dentro de la comunidad protegida por aquél. Por otra parte, dado el cariz político del crimen, si le da el rango de cuestión de estado es porque es la autoridad del mismo la que ha sido desafiada: alguien distinto al propio estado se está atribuyendo la autoridad para decidir qué tratamiento público debe dársele a las opiniones molestas. Recién aquí es cuando entra a jugar el tema de la libertad de expresión.

La libertad de expresión en tanto que garantía individual solamente es relevante cuando lo que se expresa es una opinión con la que disentimos: La opinión de “otro”, en el sentido de completamente ajeno a uno mismo, un “otro” que expresa lo que no queremos escuchar. Cuando nadie discutía la proveniencia divina de la autoridad de los reyes, el cuestionamiento público a los mismos constituía una profanación de una repugnancia semejante a la que hoy sufre un feligrés cuando debe soportar una afrenta a su religión. Los reyes entendían que, -expresándolo en el lenguaje de hoy- en esos casos no se había hecho un ejercicio “responsable” de la libertad de expresión o que la misma “no estaba para eso”.

Por el contrario: que la libertad de expresión sea efectivamente una garantía depende de que quien exprese una opinión sumamente ofensiva contra un tercero o contra la autoridad no pueda ser legalmente perseguido por el estado por haberla emitido (por supuesto, estamos hablando de “opiniones”, no de “enunciación pública de planes” contra un tercero o la autoridad). La libertad de expresión protege aquello que dice “el otro”, aquello que no queremos escuchar. En este sentido, para poder predicar de un sistema jurídico que éste respeta la libertad de expresión, “Charlie Hebdo” tiene que ser otro, enteramente distinto a nosotros, y no ser molestado por el estado a causa de sus opiniones aún pese a aquéllo.

Ahora bien, cuando un grupo armado atenta contra un ciudadano porque se considera agraviado por las opiniones vertidas por éste no está atentando contra la libertad de expresión directamente, si no contra la vida de sus víctimas y contra la soberanía del estado que reconoce la libertad de expresión de sus ciudadanos (es decir, atenta contra la libertad de expresión sólo mediatamente). A los efectos de la vida de las víctimas del atentado “todos somos Charlie Hebdo”. En cuanto a la relación del estado que reconoce la libertad de expresión de sus ciudadanos “no todos son Charlie Hebdo” y es cuando “uno solo lo es” cuando más se pone a prueba el respeto de la libertad de expresión por parte del estado. Este respeto tiene dos aspectos: frente a los ciudadanos se manifiesta como una obligación de abstención frente a las opiniones expresadas; frente a quienes desafían mediante la violencia física tal sistema de valores, en la persecución legal y política de los mismos. Nótese que no resulta necesario que “todos seamos Charlie Hebdo” para que el estado garantice la libertad de expresión en este doble aspecto (abstención frente al ciudadano e intervención frente al agresor). Es más, solamente podemos decir con seguridad que garantiza la libertad de expresión cuando Charlie Hebdo es enteramente el otro.

En resumen, la persecución jurídica, en el plano del derecho penal, del atentado se activa con la agresión sobre la vida de las víctimas del mismo. En tanto la persecución política –en el marco de un estado de derecho, se entiende- se pone en movimiento con el desafío a la autoridad pública que implicó el uso de la violencia física con la finalidad de imponer la abrogación de la libertad de expresión. Que seamos o no seamos Charlie Hebdo depende de cuál de los dos aspectos estemos considerando: para el primero es necesario que lo seamos todos, para lo segundo alcanza con que lo sea uno solo.

@fgmsv

Previamente publicado en http://ihumeblog.blogspot.com.ar/  de @IHUMEorg

The burden of imperialism, the virtues of immigration, and the importance of data

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , , , , , , , , ,

One thing I have noticed about the terrorist attacks in Paris is the relatively little that imperialism is brought up. The Muslims of France hail from parts of the world that were once a part of the official French empire. This empire is still a force in much of its old official boundaries. The British and the Dutch also have problems with Muslims that were once a part of an official empire. The Germans and the Turks are a different case, as the Ottoman and German empires had more of a deal between themselves in regards to cheap labor than the cases of Western Europe, but the relationship is still not one of immigration – not in the sense that is perceived by Americans, Canadians, and Australians.

I wonder how much of the tension between natives and immigrants is due to the imperial relationship of the sides involved. I would wager quite a bit. I also have to wonder about the role of land in all of this. Land, of course, is the ugly cousin of labor and capital, two of the three factors of production utilized by economics (there is a fourth sometimes cited, entrepreneurship, but I am not yet convinced that this belongs and neither are many economists).

Immigration is different than what the former imperial states of Western Europe are dealing with. I know the similarities are seemingly the same, but they are not. I would be happy to flesh this out more in the ‘comments’ threads if anyone takes issue with it.

Here is the abstract from an excellent article in Social Forces on the futility of deriving any conclusions about a society based on simple perceptions:

We investigate the thesis widely credited to Max Weber that Protestantism contributed to the rise of industrial capitalism by estimating the associations between the percentage of Protestants and the development of industrial capitalism in European countries in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Development is measured using five sets of variables, including measures of wealth and savings, the founding date of the principal stock exchange, extension of the railroads network, distribution of the male labor force in agriculture and in industry, and infant mortality. On the basis of this evidence, there is little empirical support for what we call the “Common Interpretation” of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic, namely the idea that the strength of Protestantism in a country was associated with the early development of industrial capitalism. The origin of the Common Interpretation and its popular success are probably derived largely from selected anecdotal evidence fortified, through retrospective imputation, by the perceived well-being of contemporary Protestant countries.

The article is titled “The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe” and it can be read here (pdf). As you read through analyses of the terrorist attacks in Paris, be sure to keep this in the back of your mind.

By the way, the piece is co-authored by Jacques, who has failed to adhere to his own standards when it comes to discussing Islam.

Does size matter?

Edwin van de Haar Current Events, Liberty , , ,

No matter how one sees the ideal liberal world, there will always be differences in size between the sovereign entities on the globe. Even in an anarcho-capitalist world there will be different sizes of the communities that people voluntarily form, although they will of course lack sovereignty in any external legal meaning we now associate with the term. So the question is: does size matter in international relations?

There are many answers to this, and I will be unable to provide them all here (or elsewhere, for that matter). There are instances where size, measured in number of inhabitants of a particular state, does not matter at all. Trade is probably the most important one. After all, it is not countries that trade but people, and if the trade is free, the nationality or location of the traders is of no importance whatsoever. This more or less still applies to the completely distorted trade situation we now regard as normal, with states continually interfering through all kinds of tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers. The real exceptions are cases where political action forbids trade, such as with the several economic boycotts between Russia and the West at present.

Size does not matter in other important segments of international relations either. In cultural exchange, there is no general correlation between size of country and quality of cultural expressions. Of course in the mainstream Western arts (sculpture, paintings, opera, symphony orchestras, etc.), it helps if a country has reached a certain level of wealth, but this is independent of size. Also, talented artists will normally be recruited from all over the world, or be able to sell their (indigenous) works globally. The same applies to sports. If one corrects for population size, many medals at the Olympics, or other championships, are won by athletes from small or middle-size countries.

The size of an economy does matter. Richer countries (in terms of gross domestic product per head) are able to direct more resources to influence international relations. Not only through military expenditures, but also through resources deployed for diplomacy, international negotiations, ‘soft power’, or otherwise. Yet a rich country does not need to be big country, neither in land mass, or in number of inhabitants. And poor countries can still influence international affairs, take for example North Korea.

Still, there are greater and lesser powers in international politics. There is not one distinguishing feature, but most of them combine a large number of inhabitants, a fairly large land mass, either a developed economy which allows for significant military expenditure or the assignment of extraordinary share of GDP to the military. Even then there are real great powers (US, China, Russia at present), middle sized powers (UK, France, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa) and countries punching under their international political weight (India, Germany, Japan, Egypt, the Philippines, perhaps Turkey). This division is never stable, as the past decades have shown, where only the US has been a consistent top dog. Even small countries can exert significant international political influence, as Singapore shows, although the sheer lack of size will always ensure they can rank higher than the middle category .

So the answer is clear: size hardly matters at all. All countries can become more, or less important, regardless of geography, inhabitants, or economic circumstances. Different policies may cause countries to rise or fall on the “international relations influence league.” Of course, liberals will aim at dynamics caused by liberty increasing policies. That is the perpetual opportunity for liberals across the globe.

Gun Rights, the Black Panthers, and ‘the South’ in the United States

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , , ,

From a report by Aaron Lake Smith in Vice:

The Dallas New Black Panthers have been carrying guns for years. In an effort to ratchet up their organizing efforts, they formed the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, uniting five local black and brown paramilitary organizations under a single banner. “We accept all oppressed people of color with weapons,” Darren X, who is 48, tells me in a deep, authoritative baritone. “The complete agenda involves going into our communities and educating our people on federal, state, and local gun laws. We want to stop fratricide, genocide—all the ‘cides.”

Interesting, and brings up the question: will the NRA support their right to bear arms, or will they revert to their early 20th century stance and begin supporting gun control again? Also in the article is a bit of history:

The seeds of what was to become the Black Panther Party lie in the 1940s, when black veterans returned to the South after fighting in World War II and found themselves dehumanized by segregation.

I’ve often wondered about this. The desegregation of the South and the achievements of the Civil Rights movement were perhaps the greatest human accomplishments to come out of World War 2 and the Cold War, and this has startling implications for libertarians who advocate for a hardline non-interventionist foreign policy. Libertarians in the US point out that worldwide empire is bad, even a liberal empire, but without it I don’t see a Civil Rights movement happening (which in turn means nobody in the developing world has a model to look up to).

After Germany and Japan surrendered Washington was forced to cede political rights to blacks because of the hypocrisy that pro-rights marches highlighted to the world. The US was engaged in a propaganda war with the USSR, and the segregation of blacks and whites in the US was very bad press. Without the Cold War, blacks would probably have remained official second-class in the US (and the world). Libertarians should be proud of the Civil Rights movement, even if the legislation passed didn’t conform perfectly with individual rights (i.e. affirmative action instead of reparations, or nothing but individual rights!) and even if blacks got their individual rights through legislation rather than law.

Smith’s reporting in other places is less than convincing, though:

Shootings of civilians by police officers reached a 20-year peak in 2013, even as the incidence of violent crime in America went down overall.

I believe that the shooting of “civilians” by police officers is a violent crime, but unless I am missing something Vice simply treats the data as if shootings by police officers are different from shootings by people who are not police officers. Nothing will change as long as this kind of mindset is prevalent in the US. I understand that police officers have a job to do, and that their job makes them different from people who do other jobs (say, a doctor or a lawyer), but it does not place them above the law.

Also, a more disturbing implication of this would be that a more violent police force decreases crime. This is not discussed by libertarians or left-liberals. I don’t like it, but it cannot be ruled out as a possibility just yet. I hope somebody will debunk my notion in the ‘comments’.

One last fascinating tidbit from the article is the difference between the old leaders of the Black Panthers (one who claimed that the Koch Brothers are behind everything, thus showing – to me, anyway – that hippies and Black Panthers have more Baby Boomer similarities with each other than they’d like to admit) and the new leaders (“all power to all people,” including gun rights). Racism is so interesting to me in the American context because of the demographic perceptions amongst other reasons). My parents and grandparents have very different types of racist assumptions than I do, but I’m getting way too far ahead of myself. More on American racism later, or just take me to task in the ‘comments’ section!

(h/t Chris Blattman)

What’s up with Oil and the Saudis?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics , , , , , , ,

In case you haven’t noticed, the price of oil has dropped dramatically and has not rebounded as yet. As I write, the price of the most common form of crude oil is under $54 per barrel, about half of what it was in mid-2014. What’s going on?

Several factors contributed to the fall. One was increased U.S. production, much of it shale oil. Also, U.S. consumption has not been rising apace with GDP in part because of higher fuel efficiency. Demand in Europe and Japan is muted due to low growth or recession.

Those things did not happen suddenly, however, so the drop would appear to be overdone. Large producers, who have a lot of pricing power, would normally cut production in this circumstance. (Pricing power means a change in their production has a noticeable effect on the world price.) The Saudis have considerable pricing power and their production decisions are controlled by their government. Why have they not cut production? I believe they are engaging in predatory pricing.

Predatory pricing is illegal in the U.S. and elsewhere, under anti-trust law. Predatory pricing occurs when a supplier cuts his prices for the purpose of bankrupting a competitor, or at least driving the competitor out of the market. The predator is willing to suffer losses or reduced profits temporarily, while holding the prices low. Once the competitor is gone, the predator’s pricing power will have increased enough that he can raise prices a lot and make up for losses suffered during the period of predation. Predatory pricing is definitely possible in free markets but is very risky for several reasons: (1) the predator can’t be sure how long it will take to ruin his competitor, (2) he can’t be sure how long he can maintain low prices without sustaining ruinous losses or perhaps face a shareholder rebellion, (3) it’s possible the competitor, or someone who has bought his assets in bankruptcy, will come back to life and start competing as before. For these reasons (and others, such as the difficulty facing regulators who are supposed to distinguish predatory motives from “innocent” business strategy), I believe there is no reason to outlaw predatory pricing.

The situation is a little different in the international oil market because the Saudis and many other major players are government controlled. They are not constrained (much) by the market forces outlined above. They are not accountable to shareholders and are only vaguely responsible to the population of Saudi Arabia. They have substantial latitude to pursue political motives even if their profits suffer.  And anti-trust law does not operate across national borders.

What might the Saudis want to accomplish politically? They hate Russia and Iran, both of which rely heavily on oil exports. They don’t hate the U.S., at least not openly, but they surely wouldn’t mind sticking it to U.S. and Canadian shale oil producers. Those producers are largely market-driven and thus have limited ability to withstand predatory pricing. The Saudis could indeed drive smaller firms out of the market, and also less profitable operations of larger firms.

That might not be such a bad thing. There has been a huge land rush into shale oil and fracking. In any such boom, whether in energy, mining, or computers, many small firms fall by the wayside. If the Saudis ruin some marginal firms or projects, that’s not such a bad thing.

We little guys are sitting pretty. We’re paying a lot less for gasoline. If we hold shares of the major oil firms we’re probably OK, as their share prices have held up and their dividends look solid. The same is true of the pipeline operators. Only if we hold shares of marginal energy firms or oilfield service companies are we in any trouble.

So – go for it, Saudis! Stick it to the evil governments of Russia and Iran and help us clean out some of our marginal energy operations.

2014 in Review

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Links , , , , ,

2014 was a good year for NOL. I hope it was just as good for you and yours.

I particularly enjoyed Dr Stocker’s ‘Liberty Canon’ series and cannot wait to see what he comes up with for 2015. I could not decide if I liked “…Tacitus on Barbarian Liberty” or “…Icelandic Sagas of the Middle Ages” more, so they are tied for first place. DONE! I also enjoyed his posts on Michel Foucault and Francesco Guicciardini.

Also enjoyable was Dr Delacroix’s book I Used to Be French: an Immature Autobiography. I hope to have a review out shortly.

My most enjoyable moments here at NOL were simply reading what others wrote, both as posts and in the ‘comments’ threads. We’ve got a unique composition here at NOL and it provides for some thought-provoking, entertaining reads (if I do say so myself!). Call me a loser if you like, but I get very excited when my phone tells me I have an email and I check my email and there is a post at NOL just waiting for me to read. I only hope that everybody will have enough time to blog waaaaay more often in 2015.

Speaking of ‘comments’ threads and blogging, I am also glad I came across the Policy of Truth group blog, run by philosopher Irfan Khawaja. I actually came across the PoT consortium because I was looking for someone to add a little oomph to NOL and I thought Khawaja had what it took (my method for hunting down potential bloggers and pestering them into becoming Notewriters will remain a family secret, but there is both a science and an art to it). Alas, when I began my search I found PoT and found it to be alive and well (you can tell the health of a blog by its ‘comments’ threads). True story bro.

Thanks to all our Guest Notewriters as well. Be sure to check out their projects and give ’em some NOL hell when you get the chance. Hank’s new consortium, The Libertarian Liquidationist, is especially coming along nicely.

The Most Embarrassing Factions of the US-Cuba detente

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , , ,

I can only list, in order of magnitude, three: 1) Republican hawks, 2) condescending Leftists, and 3) anti-Americans abroad.

In some ways none of this is surprising. All three of these factions hate each other, mostly because they are the least libertarian factions in the world (familiarity breeds contempt, it is often said).

Republican hawks are first on my list because they are the most dangerous. This is a deeply reactionary faction that does not care one iota about the national interest. It is a vulgar mob that has no need for nuance or depth. One of the state of Florida’s Senators, Marco Rubio, exemplifies this isolationist faction. This is demagoguery at its finest. It also goes a long way toward explaining why I will never, ever be a Republican, despite the honest efforts of courageous statesmen like Ron and Rand Paul.

Condescending Leftists are second because of their reactions to the beginnings of the end of a vicious, self-defeating embargo: Decrying the fact that Starbucks and McDonald’s will soon be forcing poor, naive Cubans into becoming customers with actual choices in an actual marketplace. According to the worldview of these Leftists: the lives of Cubans have been better than those of Westerners because of its simplicity (this simplicity was brought about, of course, by the heavy-handed tactics of the Castro dictatorship, but somehow this always fails to make the final cut of the condescending Leftist’s narrative). Capitalism will put an end to the simple lives of the Cuban people, and this is a bad thing for both the world and the Cubans themselves.

Embarrassing and disgusting.

The last faction on my list, anti-Americans abroad, have taken the Obama administration’s decision to reach out to Cuba as an excuse to lie to domestic factions everywhere. They have seized upon the fact that the US sometimes pursues bad policies, and have turned it into a soapbox preaching session for all of the gullible schoolboys and girls in the world who instinctively hate the world’s liberal hegemon. What is lost (or, more likely, ignored) in these preachers’ message is the fact that the US is changing its bad policy. The same cannot be said for the tired tropes wielded by aging anti-Americans in the name of some variant of socialist (whether national or international) revolution.

Some notes in the margins:

  • Cuba will not become free or (or) democratic overnight.
  • It will not become wealthy overnight, either. In fact, there is bound to be a whole lot of cronyism in the near future, as Castro’s butchers and henchmen gobble up much of the wealth that will inevitably flood Cuba’s markets. Remittances will likely increase as well, which means that the cronysim of Castro’s henchmen will be offset by the influx of cash from the US. This, in turn, means that the Castro dictatorship is likely to be around for a lot longer than anticipated.

Peggy Noonan’s piece in the Wall Street Journal is well-worth reading. Observe:

A closing note: I always thought, life often being unfair, that Fidel Castro would die the death of a happy monster, old, in bed, a cigar jutting out from the pillows, a brandy on the bedside table. My dream the past few years was that this tranquil end would be disturbed by this scene: American tourists jumping up and down outside his window, snapping pictures on their smartphones. American tourists flooding the island, befriending his people, doing business with them, showing in their attitude and through a million conversations which system is, actually, preferable. Castro sees them through the window. He grits his teeth so hard the cigar snaps off. Money and sentiment defeat his life’s work. He leaves the world knowing that in history’s great game, he lost.

Open the doors, let America flood the zone and snap those pictures. “Fidel! Look this way!” Snap. Flash. Gone.

Six Months A Slave (The Drugs Don’t Work, They Just Make You Worse)

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , ,

Check out Irfan’s story over at Policy of Truth about six months of addiction to some kind of sleeping pill (I’m a mushrooms and weed man myself, so I know little about pills):

I lay there awhile, let the vertigo wash over me a bit, then popped another 12.5 mg CR Ambien, settling soon enough into another four refreshing hours of non-REM sleep. By 2 am, I was wide awake, reading Jorge Luis Borges (on insomnia), and waiting for the sun to come back up so that I could start yet another vertiginous and sleep deprived day teaching ethics, critical thinking, and aesthetics to students who seemed not to notice that anything was amiss. (Conveniently, I had managed to collapse after class had ended. None of my students saw the collapse happen; I lay on the ground an hour before I was discovered by the instructor who needed to use the classroom after me.)

Read the whole thing. It’s very entertaining.

PS: My title is a reference to a song by The Verve. Don’t ask.

Hayek on Human Rights Day

Rick Weber Current Events , , , , ,

It turns out it’s Human Rights Day today! I came across a call on Twitter: “Don’t fight for your rights. Fight for equal rights.” This reminded me of an argument from Hayek: “If we knew how freedom would be used, the case for it would largely disappear…. the importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility… The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.”

This thought entered my brain when I was in a Constitution of Liberty reading group back in San Jose and has been percolating ever since. It has profound implications for how we think of freedom as a concept, and especially for how we should think about the sorts of liberties we want to support. I think the second part is obvious: even if I don’t need the freedom to own a business (for example), I’m far better off in a world where immigrants are allowed to start businesses like eBay. The same is true for more controversial liberties… we simply don’t know who ought to have the rights necessary to transform the world, and we don’t know what those rights are. So we should be prepared to err on the side of giving “too many” people “too many” liberties.

The first part (the implications for how we think of freedom as a concept) is a bit trickier. Hayek is arguing that the rights we all have aren’t terribly important. That is, it’s the marginal rights that matter. We all have the right to life. It’s important, but it’s not going anywhere anyways. If we want to improve the future, we need to keep an eye to things within our control; we could revoke the right to life (you know what I mean… that other thing is a whole different can of worms and you should write your own blog post about it…), but that’s not even on the table. What we need to be concerned with is those rights that we could conceivably lose because they don’t seem that important.

For example: women should be allowed to sign contracts, own property, and start businesses. We all know that to be the case based on our sense of fairness. But Hayek bolsters that argument: we should want that set of rights to be held by as many people as possible regardless of sex and possibly even regardless of species (District 9 and Planet of the Apes are two movies that would be very different if we attached rights to sentience rather than humanity). We don’t want rights to only go to people we care about, we want them to go to people who can use those rights to make the world better.

Staten Island and Cleveland: Different from Ferguson

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

Having argued in a recent piece that the problem with Ferguson was collectivism, as manifest in the notion of collective guilt, I feel obliged to speak out on recent incidents in Cleveland and Staten Island. None of us (presumably) were there so we need to be cautious, but what we see from those unfortunate places strongly suggests police misconduct.

I am a native of Cleveland and it comes as no surprise to me that the police force there is a troubled one. For many years there has been a divide between the central city and suburbs and despite a few encouraging exceptions, things have gone steadily downhill in the central city. The problems are similar to Detroit’s but on a smaller scale. The best Cleveland Police officers would surely aspire to leave the Cleveland PD for one of the suburban forces at the first opportunity. It doesn’t surprise me that the Justice Department claims there has been systematic excessive use of force by the Cleveland police.

I have only been to Staten Island once and cannot add anything to what is generally known. That the unfortunate victim was selling untaxed cigarettes, of all things only adds to the outrage.

The non-violent demonstrators in both cities are right this time.