Liberty

Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It’s Not a Democracy

Rick Weber Current Events, Economics, Law, Liberty

Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It’s Not a Democracy

A new scientific study from Princeton researchers… found that in fact, America is basically an oligarchy.

“Princeton” concludes?! “A new scientific study…”?! This is some sloppy journalism that you should immediately ignore. But it gets worse…

“Perhaps economic elites and interest group leaders enjoy greater policy expertise than the average citizen does,” Gilens and Page write. “Perhaps they know better which policies will benefit everyone, and perhaps they seek the common good, rather than selfish ends, when deciding which policies to support.

“But we tend to doubt it.”

That’s the close of the article; these “scientists” are about as unsophisticated as the journalist reporting it. They repeat the same old adages about inequality that don’t really mean much: The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting less richer, and (we wrongly assume) membership in these groups is stable over time. Their conclusion is basically “rich, powerful interests promote their own interests… if only the middle class was in charge to promote the public good instead of their own interests!”

And yet, I think there’s something worth reading here. I think the conclusion that the U.S. is an oligarchy is roughly correct. The importance of politically connected individuals and lobbying groups affects wealth creation and distribution. This is an example of where the Left and Right should agree with libertarians: centralization of political power is leading to wasteful rent seeking that weakens the economy (Right/libertarian) and the outcome is that politically powerful groups are given an unfair advantage (Left/libertarian).

We know that Democrats are libertarian on social issues (and this is one of them!) and Republicans are libertarian on economic issues (ditto), but we hit a snag. Each group tends to see the faults of the other party’s pet projects and miss the root causes. Republicans see Democrats centralizing power and weakening property rights and step in to save the victim: businesses. The result is pro-business policy recommendations that also centralize power. The Democrats see this and step in to save the victim: the little guy (poor people and consumers). The result is centralization of power that creates rent seeking opportunities for big business!

Boys’ Toys, Girls’ Toys

Jacques Delacroix Liberty ,

I spent the better part of last weekend wrestling with refrigerators. My blood is on the bannister to prove it. I won eventually, me and three strong, smart Mexican men. (Of course, I had asked to see their papers.)

My wife wanted to replace our old refrigerator with another old refrigerator. She had her way, naturally.

By Sunday evening the new old fridge was humming reassuringly. The next day, I opened its door to get something. “Stop it,” said my wife, “some refrigerators are for men and women, this one is only for women.”

Would I make this up? Do I even have the talent?

Short blurb on Murray Rothbard

Brandon Christensen History, Liberty ,

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) was an economist at UNLV and is considered to be one of the most important figures of the post-war libertarian movement. Rothbard earned his BA and PhD from Columbia (his dissertation on the banking panic of 1819 is still cited by economic historians), so it’s not like he was some hack with an unwarranted vendetta against the government. His contributions to a more libertarian world can be felt in numerous ways, from think tanks to economics graduate programs to the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. His daring foray into anarchy is, of course, his most important contribution to the scholarly world. However, I don’t see why this man has such a cult classic following within the libertarian movement. Could somebody explain this to me?

My best guess is that Rothbard’s strategy of appealing to the intelligent layman with well-disguised fallacies instead of discussing his research with the scholarly community has something to do with it, but this is only a guess.

His work just has “Cold War” written all over it. For instance, the first book of Rothbard’s that I cracked open, Conceived in Liberty Volume 1, read like a 1970s Marxist diatribe on economic development (by the way: see Dr Delacroix’s “The Export of Raw Materials and Economic Growth: A Cross-National Study” in the American Sociological Review for an excellent rebuttal of Marxist development theory). Again, I think part of this can be blamed on the time period he was writing in (mid-1970s), but even though it must have really sucked to be a scholar during the Cold War era there is really no good excuse for Rothbard’s present-day status as a saint within libertarian circles.

Not only has his scholarship become a stepping stone rather than a shrine (as all scholarship inevitably becomes), but the cult-like attitudes of some of his fans makes me cringe as a libertarian. At any rate, I’d really like to know why he has such a devoted following, and why his followers seem to think that their devotion to him is a good thing for the movement.

La Complainte du travailleur francais immigré en Californie.

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , , ,

Voici, ci-dessous, le texte complet de mes memoires en Francais. Mes memoires en Anglais,- 400 pages – vont paraitre bientot: I Used to Be French: an Immature Autobiography. ($17)

Du métro Botzaris aux rives du Pacifique, ça fait quand même une bonne trotte. Bien sûr, je n’ai pas fait le trajet à pied ni en vélo mais cela m’aura quand même pris un demi-siècle, pratiquement. Physiquement, j’y suis arrivé plus vite que cela, bien sûr. Mais après avoir initialement planté mes pieds dans le sable, pour vraiment m’installer, pour m’y retrouver bien à l’aise, il m’aura fallu un bout de temps.

Que je parte là-bas, ça devait arriver puisque je suis né dans le quartier de Paris qui s’appelle (qui s’appelait?) « Carrières d’Amérique ». J’y étais donc bien prédisposé; c’était plus ou moins le destin qui le voulait! Par deux fois ou plus, j’ai donc mouillé mon ancre « Made in the dix-neuvième arrondissement » en Californie, cette fausse île merveilleuse et imaginaire qu’inventait Herberay des Essarts au début du seizième siècle, (à moins que ce ne soit l’Espagnol Rodrigues de Montalvo).

En réalité, je triche un peu en évoquant mon installation aux « rives » du Pacifique. En fait j’ai bien un modeste voilier dans le port mais ma maison n’a pas la vue sur la mer. Elle est même située à plus d’un kilomètre de l’Océan Pacifique. Il s’en est fallu de peu pourtant, d’un petit million de dollars, à peine. J’aurais dû être plus hardi à réclamer des augmentations. Ou alors devenir chirurgien-cardiologue. (Mais je n’en avais ni la patience ni le talent ni le courage, enfin, rien!) Ou bien, faire carrière dans la police locale – celle du shériff – avec une excellente retraite à cinquante-cinq ans et un emploi à mi-temps pour finir de payer les traites. (Mais je n’y ai même pas songé; c’est trop bête!) De toutes façons, avec mon accent francais, aucune chance d’être élu shériff; je serais resté employé et donc subalterne, (« Sheriff’s Deputy » – Oui, Sheriff, c’est un poste électif.)

Quand j’étais ado, à Paris on nous disait, on dit toujours aux jeunes, je crois: « Passe d’abord ton bac ». Moi, j’ai eu de la chance en devenant deux fois de suite non-bachelier. Le première fois, j’avais même obtenu la mention « Très mal ». On m’avait tellement seriné que sans bac on n’arrivait à rien que je me suis tiré en douce, presque sans prévenir.

Avant que je ne parte pour de bon, il y avait eu plusieurs aller-retour entre Botzaris et la contrée de mon choix, comme autant de rêves complexes et détaillés. Un jour, ayant raté le dernier métro, je suis parti à pied d’un bistrot des Halles pour rentrer chez mes parents, Avenue de la Porte Brunet, sur les boulevards dits « extérieurs », ceux « des Maréchaux ». Et puis, je ne sais pas trop comment, je me suis retrouvé à Sausalito en Californie. (C’est la petite ville charmante de Jack London, exactement de l’autre côté du pont dit du « Golden Gate ».) J’ étais assis au « No Name Bar », (au « Bar sans nom », comme son nom l’indique) à baratiner une blonde un peu grasse mais pas plus vulgaire que ça, somme toute. Un autre jour, j’ai quitté la cascade en béton armé des Buttes-Chaumont pour arriver, en fin de compte, au Grand Canyon, en Arizona. Tout près de là, j’avais acheté dans un Mont de Piété situé dans un réserve indienne un beau collier Navajo en argent et turquoise au motif dit de la « fleur de courge ». C’était un cadeau de mariage pour ma petite soeur, en France.

Par deux fois, pendant que je faisais mes études aux Etats-Unis, je suis vraiment allé rendre visite à mes parents à Paris. La première fois, faute de fonds, je l’avais fait en auto-stop. Je suis revenu ici, chez moi, en Californie, de la même façon. Bon, je suis bien obligé d’admettre que pour traverser l’Atlantique nord dans les deux sens je n’ai pas fait de bateau-stop. Je le regrette beaucoup. Quelle histoire cela ferait! J’aurais pu au moins essayer de faire la propreté sur un cargo pour payer mon passage. (Mon service dans la Marine Nationale, «la Royale », aurait suffit pour faire entendre au capitaine que je ne souffrais pas trop du mal de mer.) En fait, j’ai simplement acheté un billet bon marché sur un paquebot d’étudiants, une fois, New York – Le Havre, dans les deux sens. La traversée a été la fête à chaque fois. Le passager le plus âgé devait avoir environ vingt-cinq ans. Etre en croisière a un effet d’énervement sur les sens des jeunes filles, un peu comme Venise ; les jeunes filles reviennent souvent jeunes femmes des croisières en mer.

Le plus dur dans cette traversée n’a pas été le trajet Los Angeles-Chicago (la « Route 66 » de Nat King Cole ) comme on pourrait le penser. Le plus difficile, ça a été le tronçon Le Havre-Paris. C’est d’ailleurs une des raisons qui m’ont fait rester en Amérique pour de bon. Quand je poireautais au grand soleil de plomb, en plein été, dans le Midwest, les petites vieilles sortaient de chez elles portant un plateau de citronnade glacée à mon intention. En stop sur les routes de Normandie et d’Ile-de-France, les petites vieilles…rien. Que vous-dire? Et bien la vérité toute simple, tout simplement: En France, si on est inconnu, on est toujours un peu le Boche de quelqu’un.

Comme presque tous les immigrants, j’ai commencé par faire la plonge en Californie. C’est une expérience salutaire, égalitaire. A force de faire la plonge, plus tard mais assez vite, j’ai pu m’offrir le luxe de devenir plongeur (sous-marin) dans mes loisirs. J’ai même fait un petit livre la dessus avec un copain de plongée, américain de naissance lui, pas un livre sur la plonge, mais bien un livre sur la plongée. (Free Diving in California.)

Pendant un moment, pour gagner ma petite vie d’étudiant, j’ai même fait le guignol. Je ne veux pas dire que j’ai fait le con sur une estrade. Plutôt, j’ai appris aux enfants d’un centre de loisirs et de plein-air à fabriquer des marionnettes et puis à les mettre en scène. (Comme c’était un centre de loisirs juif, je me suis abstenu de mettre en scène la Nativité. Pas si bête!) A une autre époque, j’ai enseigné la natation à des bébés. C’est un attrape-couillon pour les mères super-compétitives de la classe moyenne, bien sûr. Il n’y a pas de bébés nageurs. C’est une question de développement musculaire. La plupart des bébés, si on les lâche dans la piscine, ils coulent à pic avec un grand sourire aux lèvres. C’est comme si ils se souvenaient de l’apesanteur dans le ventre maternel. Le grand sourire permet néanmoins de faire des photos impressionantes qu’on agrandit en affiches formidables, toutes truquées dans leur intention.

La deuxième fois que j’ai quitté la France en dehors des vacances universitaires, c’était pour de bon. J’ai laissé derrière moi, un très bon job (comme on dit en Franglais) dans la fonction publique, et aussi, la mort dans l’âme, le pâté de campagne. Mais, de l’autre côté, j’ai découvert le guacamole tout frais. On le fait en écrasant la chair bien mûre de l’avocat avec du jus de citron, plus des ingrédients secrets. Il y avait même des avocats qui pendaient au grand arbre d’un petite cour secrète de mon université. Je parle des fruits nommés à partir du Nahuatl, la langue des Aztèques cannibales. Les autres types d’avocat, ceux qui portent la robe noire, on les pend normalement à des potences.

Ici, en Amérique, il y avait des livres, des livres partout. On avait le droit de les toucher sans se faire engueuler par la préposée, même à la bibliothèque. Il y avait aussi des biblothèques partout d’ailleurs. Celles de la moindre petite ville contenaient plus de livres que, plus tard, la bibliothèque centrale du centre de Paris, au Centre Pompidou. Même dans les librairies on avait le droit d’ouvrir les livres, de les parcourir. En plus, on pouvait s’y asseoir confortablement pour boire du café tout en feuilletant les ouvrages qu’on n’avait même pas achetés, qu’on allait pas acheter du tout. Jamais vu, ça!

Tout seul aux Etats-Unis, au début, ça n’a quand même pas été facile tous les jours. Mais, il y avait les filles, des tas de filles, une avalanche de filles. J’ai même bien failli y laisser ma peau! Je ne veux pas dire que j’ai manqué mourir d’épuisement. Je veux dire que je risquais a tous moments de me faire trouer la peau par une balle bien placée. Enfin, je passe!

Pendant que tout le monde en France était « Marxiste » à ce moment-là, j’étais aux premières loges tandis qu’on transformait les vergers de pruniers (façon Béziers) en un immense parc industriel. Je veux dire le parc surnommé “Silicone Valley” qui a changé la vie pendant ma vie. En France, comme je l’ai dit, tout le monde s’affairait alors à devenir Marxiste ou à le paraître. Ceci bien longtemps après qu’il soit devenu impossible de prétendre ne pas être au courant des horreurs du Goulag ni de celles du « Grand bond en avant ». Ceci, alors que Fidel s’entêtait toujours et encore à mettre les homosexuels en prison, pour leur donner une bonne leçon.

C’était aussi au moment où son copain Che Guevara (« le fusilleur») allait libérer les paysans boliviens. Ces petits propriétaires terriens avaient tellement envie de libération qu’ils l’ont livré à l’armée. On connait la suite. Il aurait dû me demander mon avis, Che. J’y étais, dans la même Bolivie rurale, juste un an avant lui. (J’y étais grâce à une bourse de la Fondation Ford, les salauds !) Je lui aurais dit, au Che: « N’y vas pas, Ducon ». Il s’était avéré que le Che n’avait pas lu Marx, ou mal lu. Il en est mort. C’est ce que j’appelle des études rigoureuses, sans laxisme.

Il y avait aussi cette vieille salope de Jean-Paul Sartre, bien sûr, qui ne voulait à aucun prix désesperer Renault-Billancourt. Plus haut sur l’échelle sociale, perchait l’imbittable escroc de grande volée Claude Lévi-Strauss qui avait réussi à intimider plusieurs générations d’intellectuels francophones, moins deux (le courageux Jean-Francois Revel et le noble et digne Raymond Aron). A mon sens, Lévi-Straus avait construit une grande carrière universitaire exemplaire sur la base d’un tout petit livre de voyage charmant que tout le monde avait lu « Tristes tropiques » et d’une série de gros ouvrages aussi impénétrables qu’improbables que personne n’avait lus. Je ne me souviens que vaguement de cet autre intellectuel parisien, un philosophe, “Marxiste” lui aussi, qui avait assassiné sa femme. (“Nobody is perfect!”)

Disgression technique: Je ne blâme pas Karl du tout pour la lamentable bêtise de l’intellectuariat parisien des années 60, 70, jusqu’à 80. Non seulement il savait écrire, lui, Karl ; mais il savait aussi lire. Il avait même lu “La Richesse des nations” d’Adam Smith, ce dont on ne saurait accuser ses disciples hexagonaux. D’ailleurs, il avait pris soin de mettre les choses au point de son vivant. “Je ne suis pas Marxiste”, avait-il affirmé avant de mourir. (Marx, pas Adam Smith, Adam avait passé l’arme à gauche bien avant.)

Moi, pendant tout ce temps-la, je progressais sans états d’âme. Au beau milieu de l’un des derniers vergers de Palo Alto, du mauvais côté de l’autoroute, à deux kilomètres de Stanford, il y avait un petite château. Je veux dire un château d’eau tout en bois, comme un énorme tonneau sur échasses. La vieille dame noire entreprenante à qui il appartenait l’avait transformé en studio rustique, avec cuisinette et douche, qu’elle louait. C’est là que j’avais tranquillement rédigé ma thèse. On y montait par un long escalier de meunier en bois. On y entendait de loin, de tout en haut, le clapotement des talons des filles qui grimpaient l’escalier en vitesse parcequ’elles avaient pris sur elles de venir soulager ma solitude.

On disait de la localité qu’elle avait l’un des taux de criminalité les plus élevés d’Amérique. Moi, je ne voyais de mon perchoir que des abricotiers en fleurs, puis en feuilles, et une tribu d’écureuils gris. J’étais trop pauvre pour valoir qu’on m’agresse, ou qu’on m’y cambriole, d’ailleurs. Les malfaiteurs locaux, tous noirs, n’étaient pas racistes; ils volaient les riches et les presque-riches sans distinction de couleur. De moi, ils devaient se dire: «Il est complètement timbré ce blanc-la, descendant de son baril en pantalon du surplus de l’armée éraillé, avec ses liasses de paperasses sous le bras. Même ses godasses ne valent rien, le con!»

C’était juste après que je sois rentré d’enseigner à Hawaï, dans une belle île où on ne me payait pratiquement pas. Mais la plongée sous-marine y était fabuleuse et le soir, on allait contempler l’éruption volcanique à deux pas au lieu de regarder la télévision. Un peu plus tard, j’ai eu un doctorat, un «piechdi», comme on dit, les doigts dans le nez, sans blague. Je suis quand même resté inadmissible en première année des universités françaises. Je n’invente rien! A propos, mon diplôme était en sociologie, qui n’a à peu près rien à voir avec la discipline française du même nom. (En Amérique, on a bien suivi le chemin tracé par le Français Durkheim, Emile, en France, pas tellement.)

Il y avait du soleil presque toute l’année en Californie. Ce n’est pas la faute des Francais, bien sûr, ni même du Parti Socialiste, ni des fonctionaires, si leur pays se trouve à la latitude de Terre-Neuve (de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, si vous préferez.) Mais cette septemtrionalité n’arrange pas l’humeur des ces méridonaux exilés que sont les Français. Sur moi, la brièveté de l’automne et de l’hiver californiens a fait l’effet des lumières de la rampe s’allumant d’un seul coup. Cela a transformé ma mentalité, la vision que je jette sur le monde, à jamais. La grande lumière m’a fait plus tolérant, plus entreprenant; elle m’a même rendu plus gentil, du moins, à la longue, du moins, dans une certaine mesure.

J’ai habité un moment à San Francisco-même. J’y faisais des affaires. Je faisais le conseil en commerce international. C’était juste après que mon livre (avec mon co-auteur, Eric Multhaup) ait gagné un gros prix francais. C’était un livre sur le quoi et le comment de faire des affaires aux Etats-Unis: « Les Clefs du labyrinthe. » San Francisco-ville, c’était gai jusque à ce que « gay » ait finir par signifier « triste » parce que tous les amis étaient en train de mourir du SIDA.

Je suis devenu prof finalement (dans plusieurs universités) parce-que j’étais curieux et paresseux à la fois. J’ai assez vite découvert ma vocation, ma mission d’enseignant. Elle consistait à faire admettre aux autres, aux jeunes comme aux moins jeunes, qu’ils étaient plus intelligents qu’ils ne le pensaient. Parfois, c’était à coups de pied au cul. Il faut ce qu’il faut! Je dis «aux moins jeunes» parceque, pendant longtemps, j’ai enseigné dans un programme de MBA où la moyenne d’âge des élèves était de vingt-huit ans. Cela se passait au beau milieu de Silicon Valley. Plusieurs des mes élèves sont devenus millionaires par la suite. Encore plus nombreux sont ceux qui ont simplement atteint une belle prosperité. Foutu capitalisme! Ça parait injuste! C’était moi qui donnait les notes, après tout!

J’ai passé quarante ans et plus dans les universités américaines, trente comme prof. J’y ai fait des travaux scientifiques tellement calés que je ne les comprend pas tous les jours moi-même. Et j’ai enseigné aux centaine, peut-être aux milliers, toujours les mêmes trucs, tellement peu de trucs que je pourrais presque vous les résumer ici. Pendant longtemps, j’ai assez aimé ce métier. Comme Socrate, je corrompais la jeunesse. De plus, on me payait pour le faire. On me payait aussi pour lire des livres. (C’est cela qui rendait difficile d’exiger des augmentations sur le ton indigné qui fait mouche avec les patrons.)

En fin de compte, ce qui m’a vraiment decidé à rester aux USA (comme on dit en Franglais), c’était la musique d’abord et puis, l’eau, ensuite. La musique, c’est assez évident. 90% de la gastronomie du monde entier a son origine en Chine ou en France. De la même façon indisputable, 90% de la musique, des chansons, viennent des Etats-Unis. C’est tellement vrai que rare est le film « Made in France » qui ne comporte pas au moins une chanson américaine. Les réalisateurs français se rendent bien compte qu’il n’y a plus de « cool » – comme on dit en Franglais – dans la chanson française depuis longtemps, depuis Brassens, au moins, depuis François Villon, le voyou-poète, peut-être.

Et l’eau maintenant. Dans toute mon enfance, dans toute ma jeunesse en France, et au cours de mes nombreux séjours dans mon pays d’origine, je ne suis jamais arrivé à ce qu’on me donne plus de deux glaçons dans mon verre de boisson fraîche (jamais, never, nunca, nimmer!) Pas à n’importe quel prix, dans n’importe quel établissement, aussi cher soit-il, à n’importe quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit. « Faut pas exagérer » pensent les garçons de café tellement fort qu’on les entend presque prononcer les paroles. Et aussi : « On n’a pas toujours ce qu’on veut ». Presque partout, en Amérique, on place un verre rempli de glaçons à côté de vous automatiquement dès que vous vous asseyez, même si vous n’en voulez pas (sauf sécheresse exceptionnelle).

Par ailleurs, il y a la cause des douches chaudes, vraiment chaudes, à durée indeterminée. On en rencontre en France, de temps en temps, j’en conviens, chez des particuliers et même dans certains hôtels plus ou moins mal gérés ou, par négligence, on ne règle pas le thermostat vers le bas. Pourtant, c’est toujours un peu la lotterie. La chasse à la douche chaude doit épicer la vie des Français, je me dis, sinon, ils auraient résolu le problème depuis longtemps. Ce n’est pas le savoir-faire plombier qui leur manque, en tous cas; ils ont quand même inventé le bidet.

Je suis persuadé que la vie, c’est la vie de tous les jours, que c’est le quotidien qui compte. Alors, mon idée simplifiée du bonheur, c’est de déguster, sans me presser, une boisson froide dans un verre rempli de glaçons assis bien à l’aise sur une chaise en bois, tout nu sous une douche brûlante. Un rêve à peu près irréalisable en France, je crois bien! Demandez-vous donc pourquoi. (Je ne vais pas vous le dire car je n’ai pas besoin d’ennemis supplémentaires, même loin de chez moi.)*

En vertu du même principe de ce que la vie, c’est la vie quotidienne, je tiens le compte des têtes de con rencontrées sans les chercher. Voici la définition scientifique d’une tête de con: C’est quelqu’un qui est désagréable avec moi sans me connaître assez bien pour avoir des raisons de l’être. Je crois bien que j’en rencontre plus en France en quinze jours qu’aux Etats-Unis en quinze mois. Les gens sont simplement beaucoup plus gentils, en moyenne, dans ce pays-ci qu’en France. (Même si on y tue plus qu’en France. On ne peut pas tout avoir, comme pensent les garçons de café.)

Je sais bien que la France est pleine de jolies villes pimpantes. En Amérique, par contre, la plupart des villes sont d’apparence quelconque et il y a souvent des détritus dans les caniveaux. Ça fait un peu Tiers-Monde, à dire vrai. Cela m’irrite, bien sûr. Et puis, je me rappelle que beaucoup de ces jolies villes françaises ferment trois heures avant le coucher du soleil en été. Ici, nos villes ont de l’animation. Les ville françaises, elles, ont des animatrices. Pas du tout pareil!

Malgré les apparences et malgré la distance, il y a beaucoup de continuité entre mon passé et mon présent, entre mon ancienne vie et celle d’aujourd’hui. Par exemple, à chaque fois que je gare ma voiture près de la Plage du Port à Santa Cruz, Californie, deux mouettes se relaient pour chier dessus en altitude. Je donnerais presque ma main à couper que ce sont les mêmes qui chiaient sur mon bus Volkswaggen quand j’étais hippie, brièvement, en 1967, au Portrieux (dans les Côtes d’Armor, autrefois mieux nommées: “Côtes du Nord” à cause de la température de l’eau de mer). Mais, je me raisonne. Ce n’est pas possible, ce doit être leurs petites-cousines.

«La France vous manque-t’elle, cher ami», on me demande à tout bout de champs? Oui l’île Saint-Louis me manque un peu, et aussi les côteaux de Bourgogne. Mais comme je n’avais été ni invité à l’une ni propriétaire dans les autres, ce n’est pas grave.

Ici, la banque et moi possèdons une jolie maison de style victorien sise exactement entre la mer et les sequoias. Mes grands-pères étaient encore gamins quand elle a été construite. Il y a dans ma cour arrière un pommier, un cerisier, un figuier, et deux citronniers, plus un prunier, qui donnent tous. (Heureusement, pour le prunier; il y a beaucoup de mecs de mon âge qui ont du mal à aller. Moi, ça va toujours pour aller mais on ne sait jamais. Un de ces jours je vais aller dans la direction où on ne va plus si facilement.) Le tout n’est déjà pas mal. A propos de rien: La police a capturé un puma derrière l’officine de mon dentiste il y a seulement un mois. Ici, on a su construire les villes à la campagne. (A propos, on a envoyé le puma, un jeune, un ado, en colonie de vacances dans la Sierra Nevada en lui interdisant de revenir.)**

Non, ce qui me manque vraiment parce que c’est introuvable et même inconcevable dans ce pays-ci, c’est la tête de veau sauce ravigotte. J’ai bien pensé à me la préparer moi-même en suivant une recette sur l’Internet (cette belle invention francaise. Ah, non, je me trompe, c’était le Minitel!) Ou alors, je pourrais essayer d’en trouver la recette classique dans mon exemplaire écorné de «La Cusine familiale et pratique» de Pellaprat (édition 1974).

J’aurais sûrement mis mon plan à exécution depuis longtemps si je vivais dans le Midwest où les gens sont plus conventionnels et plus proches de la terre. (J’en suis sûr, j’y ai habité quatre ans, en Indiana pour être précis.) En parlant d’éxecution, chez moi, à Santa Cruz, Californie, on est très écolo-sensible. Je saurais préparer une sauce ravigotte mais couper la tête du veau dans mon arrière-cour ne parait pas pratique, vu d’ici. La voisine de gauche, la garce qui a eu trois maris tués sous elle, appelerait les flics.*** Et je n’ai pas envie de devenir la préférée de la branche locale de Mafia mexicaine en prison, même pas pour une seule nuit!

Depuis longtemps immigré, j’éprouve une constante angoisse: D’un côté, la tête de veau ravigotte, et la tête de con, les paupiettes, la blanquette, le foie gras. (Ce dernier est franchement hors-la-loi en Californie, contrairement à la cannabis, par exemple.) De l’autre côté, un potentiel sans limites de créativité parmi des gens aimables, et des livres en abondance. Comme je vous le disais plus haut, on ne peut pas tout avoir.

Bon, alors, je m’arrête. Je voulais seulement vous donner une idée de mes souffrances existentielles de travailleur immigré. Et puis, il faut bien préciser avant de vous quitter que je n’étais pas parti m’installer à l’autre bout du monde grâce aux sous de Papa. (Il n’en avait pas de sous, Papa; je suis fils de flic.) Non, j’ai fait tout ça avec seulement ma bite et mon couteau (mon canif, quoi).

Pour finir, un mot de La Bruyère (dans « Les Caractères » : 80-IV):
«Ceux qui nuisent à la réputation ou à la fortune des autres plutôt que de perdre un bon mot méritent une peine infâmante.»

Ça, c’est moi tout craché (comme disait ma mère, Yvette).

*  « The Watershed » Liberty Unbound June 2010 24-5.
** Ce n’est pas la première fois, et de loin, qu’un puma (un cougar) se promène par chez moi. Voir mon l’histoire vraie, le conte, sur ce mon blog : « Les Pumas de Bécon-les-Bruyères. » factsmatter.wordpress.com
*** Voir le conte : « C’est presque pareil partout. » sur mon blog.

© Jacques Delacroix 2013

Bientôt, d’une manière ou d’une autre, mes mémoires (quatre cent pages) vont paraître en Anglais. Suivez mon progrès et partagezle  sur mon blog: factsmatter.wordpress.com

War criminal Watch: Condoleezza Rice now on dropbox’s board of directors.

Adam Magoon Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday the company that specializes in remote file sharing announced that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now on their board of directors.  This is troubling news for a number of reasons.  The first, more pedantic reason, is simply that she played no small role in the deaths of several hundred thousand people throughout the middle east as well as the unnecessary deaths of thousands of US soldiers.  More practically though she was a member of the presidency that pushed the PATRIOT Act and is now working intimately with a company that has access to millions of personal files.

For those of you who do not know the dropbox software essentially allows you to put files in a folder on your PC where they are synced to the “cloud”.  You, or anyone else, are then free to download those files from anywhere in the world as long as you know the link to said file.   It is a handy way to transfer files that may be too large for an E-Mail attachment or that you simply do not trust google having access to.  From this point forward I would question the security of any file transferred with dropbox.

Oh and by the way. Snowden documents from last year state “that it is planning to add Dropbox as a PRISM provider.”  

PRISM, of course, being an NSA program “which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats,”   

How many more “coincidences” that just happen to violate rights, privacy, security and safety are we going to sweep under the rug?

Australia may ban [more] boycotts…

Adam Magoon Economics, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

Australia has been in the news quite often in the last year for its new Prime Minister’s controversial legislation that protest groups say put vast areas of Australian nature in threat of destruction.  Environmental issues are one of the more complex issues facing libertarians today.  The vast entanglement of property rights can make explaining those issues to non-libertarians quickly and clearly quite difficult.  Luckily for me the Australian government is currently attempting to assault a far more basic set of rights.  The right to organize, the right to persuade, and the right to spend your money and time how you wish.  We are, as the title implies discussing the right to organize a boycott of a product or products.

The Australian secretary of agriculture Richard Colbeck wants to “remove an exemption for environmental groups from the consumer law ban on so-called “secondary boycotts”.  These secondary boycotts are also illegal in the UK and the United States.  For clarification a secondary action “is industrial action by a trade union in support of a strike initiated by workers in another, separate enterprise”.  

Libertarians often find themselves on the wrong side of both environmental and union actions but it is important to remember that liberty also means the freedom to refuse to purchase a product for any reason you can imagine; whether it is because the company that makes the product is partaking in actions you disagree with or because their logo is yellow.

Even though libertarians disagree with the end goals of the hard-line environmentalist movements (namely government control of industry) we cannot forget to support situations like this on principle and also to remember that environmental issues are essentially property rights issues and thus core to libertarian ethics.

The Knowledge P…

Rick Weber Liberty

The Knowledge Problem

Comprehensive planning, the classic doctrine of planning advocates, seeks to achieve economic coordination without relying on the contention of separate decisionmakers with one another; it thereby deprives itself of access to one of the most important sources of knowledge exhibited by these kinds of orders. Just as in biological competition, there is the “information bearer” function of DNA, so in the society of Tradition, this function is further served by such developments as language and culturally acquired techniques and habits. In the society of Market, profit and loss signals are added to this array. In the society of Planning, there is no new information bearer and those of the Market are discarded. It is this lack that gives the knowledge problem argument its force.

From National Economic Planning: What is Left? by Don Lavoie

School Choice for Lunch

Fred Foldvary Liberty ,

School is not just for learning any more. Schools now provide breakfast and lunch for students. In the past, students and their parents had the option to either eat lunch at the school cafeteria or else bring their home-made lunch to school. But now, some schools are banning home-made meals. For example, Chicago’s Little Village Academy ruled that children had to eat only a school-provided lunch.

As reported by AOL News on 11 April 2011, Susan Rubin, a nutritionist and founder of the Better School Food program, stated that the lunches offered by the schools’ food providers are not necessarily more nutritious than those made at home.

“It’s rare that I see a school, especially a public school, that actually serves food that’s good,” she told AOL News. “It makes me sick that kids are eating this processed crap.”

A Chicago Tribune newspaper reporter spoke to students and parents who opposed the ban. They told the reporter that some children don’t like the cafeteria food, and much of it gets thrown away.

According to Medical Daily (16 Nov. 2013), a preschool in Richmond, Virginia also banned homemade lunches. The school blamed the Federal Programs Preschool rules on lunches from home, which state that students may bring lunches from home only if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with a note from a physician.

Such bans have been reported at other schools. The “Healthy Home Economist” reported that a preschooler at the West Hoke Elementary School in North Carolina had to eat a cafeteria lunch containing pink slime chicken nuggets when the school decided that the turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice her mother packed was not nutritious enough.

About 32 million American children eat breakfast and lunch at school under the National School Lunch Program. Of these, 21 million students participate in free or reduced-price meals. Children in poor families that cannot afford to feed their children adequately may well need to be helped, but that does not provide any reason to ban nutritious homemade meals.

Food tyranny is not confined to the USA. Canada has a national Food Guide, and if a student’s homemade lunch does not follow it, the parent is fined. For example, the Manitoba Government’s Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations require a child’s lunch to be “balanced.” A mother who packed a lunch was slapped with a $10 fine. Her meal was unbalanced because she did not include crackers.

Nutrition is a controversial subject. Some people think cow milk is healthy, while others disagree. Some think that moderate amounts of sugar do not harm, while others think that any artificial sugar is bad. Some believe that meat provides good nutrition, while others believe it is healthier to be vegetarians or vegans. The experts disagree among themselves. Also, of course, children have individual tastes and dietary needs. Government policy forces most of the children to consume the same meal or a narrow range of choices. Much of the food then gets thrown out.

Any decision about school lunches in government-run schools is inevitably political. The federal government is now in charge of what children eat, and policy is influenced by the special interests which finance political campaigns and lobby for legislation.

Thus, the U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidizes poultry production, and then provides schools with free chicken. Many schools do not cook the chicken themselves; they send the chicken to food processors that turn the meat into chicken nuggets and sell them back to the schools. Rather than cook pizza themselves, many schools buy pizzas from food sellers. Schools get potatoes from the government and send them to food makers that sell them back to the school as French Fries.

The cafeteria management companies save money by not having to hire cooks, and they often receive rebates from the food processors. The schools pay the full price for the processed food, which includes rebates that are not disclosed. Since homemade food competes with cafeteria food, it is in the financial interest of the big food producers and cafeteria management firms to stop competition from home production.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has declared that such sending of food out to be processed results in food high in saturated fat and salt. A 2008 study, “Impact of Federal Commodity Programs on School Meal Nutrition,” by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, concluded that what starts as healthy food gets processed into products whose nutritional value is the same as junk food. The study found that California school districts used more than 82 percent of their food commodity funds to buy meat and cheese, spending only 13 percent on fruits and vegetables.

One problem with homemade lunches is that some parents give their children junk food. In that case, the school lunch would be better. But some parents provide a superior lunch, so a ban prevents both better and worse lunches. A sensible approach is to hire a nutritionist who would inform and council parents about better food choices. Few parents seek to deliberately harm their child with unhealthy food. For better nutrition, persuasion is a better policy than force.

Quer menos jornalistas assassinados?

claudio Liberty , ,

Hoje um blogueiro (jornalista) publicou uma estatística aterradora para os brasileiros: o número de jornalistas assassinados no Brasil, em 2014, é comparável ao número de mortes no Iraque.

Infelizmente, ele não explora a notícia em detalhes. Bem, para ajudar no debate, ofereço algumas observações sobre a liberdade de imprensa, a liberdade econômica e outras coisinhas. Aqui.

Let’s leave the fairy tales behind

Edwin van de Haar Current Events, Liberty

Freedom-loving people are almost always nice and genial. I count them among my best friends, and in fact, I think of myself as one. Some of them have sharp intellects, publish great stuff, are brilliant discussants and all of them are prepared to take on the left-leaning, social liberal (for American readers: liberal) majority anytime. They never tire of pointing at the mistaken views of others. Yet at the same time, most libertarians (for sake of brevity I shall not go into the possible subdivisions and other definitional options when using this term) fail to recognize their own weird ideas about international relations. To quote Murray Rothbard: ‘thinking about international affairs is a weak point of libertarians’.

While I am not particularly impressed by Rothbard’s own ideas on international relations, he did make a valid point here. When searching for a particular quaint idea among libertarians, what comes up first is the idea that trade fosters peace. There are variations and the related idea that democracies allegedly do not fight each other will be left aside [which is hardly more convincing though, when closely scrutinizing the methodology and data used in this type of research], the basic idea is that international trade relations promote a peaceful world. There are several main mechanisms behind this. First, at the level of the individual, increasing numbers of international contacts lead to more international friendship and understanding, and consequently a diminishing wish to fight the trading partners . Second, businessmen and other citizens benefitting from trade (e.g. everybody) will act as domestic pressure groups, if need be forcing their leaders to refrain from international military action. Third, economic ties between countries mean these countries become interdependent. War between them would destroy this economic entanglement, therefore it is not the interest of leaders of states to initiate or maintain such destructive conflicts. The overall conclusion is: the more trade, the more peaceful the world becomes.

This is a fairy tale. Even though most libertarians do not go as far as to claim that trade has the capacity to eradicate all international conflict, it is nonsensical to claim that it fosters peace in any consistent way. A few objections. At the individual level, trade does not change human nature. While the rationality needed to preserve peace (acknowledging that war making is sometimes perfectly rational from an individual stance) may dominate the emotions once in a while, it cannot do so perpetually. Let alone in all people, everywhere at the globe. At the collective level, history shows that ‘citizen coalitions for peace’ hardly ever make a difference. Public opinion is often war prone, as for example free trade star Richard Cobden, who strongly argued trade would make public opinion more peaceful, painfully found out during the previous Crimea crisis in the 1850’s. At the political level economic interests are just one factor among many others (geopolitical, religious, domestic, personal, et cetera) when considering international military action. So perhaps sometimes a vital economic interest is too important to risk a war, yet at other times it does not count for much. Take the current Crimea crisis, where President Putin clearly prioritized the strategic objective of ensured naval capacity and access in the Black Sea above possible detrimental effects of economic sanctions.

There are also a number of other counter-arguments against the ‘trade-leads-to peace-hypothesis’. As for example David Hume and Adam Smith acknowledged and emphasized, trade also has the side-effect of promoting conflict. After all free trade make people and countries wealthier. Often this leads to increased defense expenditure, which may then lead to international belligerence, because previously poor states can for example make (renewed) territorial claims. Currently, China is a good example of this. Also, there is the completely neglected question of the nature and volume of trade. Does any amount of trade have peaceful effects, or is there some minimum? Also, does it matter what is traded? Does trade in oil and gas have more or less peaceful effects, compared to say textiles or fruit? Just to claim that ‘trade’ has peace enhancing effects is again unconvincing.  

It is perhaps relatively harmless to foster fairy tale ideas in the study, at universities or to write them down in books and blogs. Yet in my mind these kind of ideas seriously hamper the appeal of libertarianism to other people. In a globalized world, people expect the ideas that guide their political behavior to have serious ideas about world politics. As is the case in for example economics or philosophy, libertarian ideas need to offer serious alternatives to make a difference and have the capacity to convince others. The idea that trade fosters peace is not a serious contribution to international relations discourse. It is high time the liberty loving people leave their fairy tale ideas on international affairs behind.

3,278 Americans Are Serving Life Sentences for Nonviolent Crimes, Report Says

Adam Magoon Law, Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,

“Around 79 percent of the nonviolent life sentences without parole are drug-related, according to the ACLU, and around 20 percent are for property crimes. The remaining 1 percent are for traffic and other infractions in Alabama and Florida”

This seems like as good an opportunity as any to talk about libertarian law.  First of all, to the libertarian, there is no such thing as non-violent or “victimless” crime.  There can be no “crime against the state” or “crime against society” since there would be no state and “society” is an abstract concept that cannot be a victim.  Crime can only occur when there is a clear perpetrator and a clear victim.

This is the logic used to deduce that there can be no punishment for consuming or selling drugs for example.

Second, libertarian punishment is confined to the concept of “proportionality”.  Proportionality is described by Murray Rothbard as:

“…the criminal, or invader, loses his own right to the extent that he has deprived another man of his. If a man deprives another man of some of his self-ownership or its extension in physical property, to that extent does he lose his own rights.  From this principle immediately derives the proportionality theory of punishment-best summed up in the old adage: “let the punishment fit the crime.””

Walter Block famously expanded on this concept with his “Two Teeth for a Tooth” rule saying:

“In encapsulated form, it calls for two teeth for a tooth, plus costs of capture and a
premium for scaring. How does this work?

Suppose I steal a TV set from you. Surely, the first thing that should occur when I am captured is that I be forced to return to you my ill-gotten gains.

So, based on the first of two “teeth,” I must return this appliance to you.

But this is hardly enough. Merely returning the TV to you its rightful owner is certainly no punishment to me the criminal.

All I have been forced to do is not give up my
own TV to you, but to return yours to you.

Thus enters the second tooth: what I did (tried to do) to you should instead be done to me. I took your TV set;
therefore, as punishment, you should be able to get mine (or some monetary equivalent). This is the second tooth.2″

The claim is often made that a libertarian society would be less just for the poor and disadvantaged but take this list of crimes that caused human beings to be sent to prison for the rest of their lives and compare it to the logical corresponding punishment called for by the proportionality rule and tell me which is more just.

“Among the most obscure offenses – mostly from Louisiana and Mississippi – documented in the report as the impetus for life sentences:

  • Possessing stolen wrenches
  • Siphoning gasoline from a truck
  • Shoplifting a computer from WalMart
  • Shoplifting three belts from a department store
  • Shoplifting digital cameras from WalMart
  • Shoplifting two jerseys from an athletics store
  • Breaking into a parked car and stealing a bag containing a woman’s lunch
  • Stealing a 16-year-old car’s radio
  • Drunkenly threatening a police officer while handcuffed in a patrol car”

A very illuminating comment over on Reddit.com

Adam Magoon Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

User “Three_Letter_Agency” put the current NSA issue in very clear focus today with the following:

We know the NSA and their UK buddy GHCQ can:

  • Collect the domestic meta-data of both parties in a phone-call. Source[1]
  • Set up fake internet cafes to steal data. Source[2]
  • Has intercepted the phone calls of at least 35 world leaders, including allies such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Source[3]
  • Can tap into the underwater fiber-optic cables that carry a majority of the world’s internet traffic. Source[4]
  • Tracks communications within media institutions such as Al Jazeera. Source[5]
  • Has ‘bugged’ the United Nations headquarters. Source[6]
  • Has set up a financial database to track international banking and credit card transactions. Source[7]
  • Collects and stores over 200 million domestic and foreign text messages each day. Source[8]
  • Collects and has real-time access to browsing history, email, and social media activity. To gain access, an analyst simply needs to fill out an on-screen form with a broad justification for the search that is not reviewed by any court or NSA personnel. Source[9]

“I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”. – Edward Snowden

  • Creates maps of the social networks of United States citizens. Source[10]
  • Has access to smartphone app data. Source[11]
  • Uses spies in embassies to collect data, often by setting up ‘listening stations’ on the roofs of buildings.Source[12]
  • Uses fake LinkedIn profiles and other doctored web pages to secretly install surveillance software in unwitting companies and individuals. Source[13]
  • Tracks reservations at upscale hotels. Source[14]
  • Has intercepted the talking-points of world leaders before meetings with Barack Obama. Source[15]
  • Can crack encryption codes on cellphones. Source[16]
  • Has implanted software on over 100,000 computers worldwide allowing them to hack data without internet connection, using radio waves. Source[17]
  • Has access to computers through fake wireless connections. Source[18]
  • Monitors communications in online games such as World of Warcraft. Source[19]
  • Intercepts shipping deliveries and install back-door devices allowing access. Source[20]
  • Has direct access to the data centers of Google, Yahoo and other major companies. Source[21]
  • Covertly and overtly infiltrate United States and foreign IT industries to weaken or gain access to encryption, often by collaborating with software companies and internet service providers themselves. They are also, according to an internal document, “responsible for identifying, recruiting and running covert agents in the global telecommunications industry.” Source[22]
  • The use of “honey traps”, luring targets into compromising positions using sex. Source[23]
  • The sharing of raw intelligence data with Israel. Only official U.S. communications are affected, and there are no legal limits on the use of the data from Israel. Source[24]
  • Spies on porn habits of activists to discredit them. Source[25]

Possibly the most shocking revelation was made on February 24, 2014. Internal documents show that the security state is attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with “extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction.” The documents revealed a top-secret unit known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Unit, or JTRIG. Two of the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in an effort to discredit a target, and to use social sciences such as psychology to manipulate online discourse and activism in order to generate a desirable outcome. The unit posts false information on the internet and falsely attributes it to someone else, pretend to be a ‘victim’ of a target they want to discredit, and posts negative information on various forums. In some instances, to discredit a target, JTRIG sends out ‘false flag’ emails to family and friends.

A revealing slide from the JTRIG presentation.[26]  

Read the whole JTRIG presentation by Greenwald, just do it. Here[27]

Now, consider the words of former NSA employee turned whistleblower Russ Tice:

“Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial.

But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials.

They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups.

So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this… And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on.

Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the president of the United States now.” Russ Tice, NSA Whistleblower

Chilling.

Towards a Free-Market Global Climate Treaty

Fred Foldvary Current Events, Economics, Liberty ,

An article in the 19 March 2014 “NewScientist” featured Catherine Brahic’s interview of Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is leading a project to create a Global Climate Treaty in December 2015. A draft agreement is scheduled to be delivered to all country governments in May 2015.

A previous U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 failed to achieve an agreement. Christiana Figueres points out that while in 2009 there was doubt that countries would adopt policies to curb emissions, more than 60 countries now have climate legislation that apply to 90 percent of global emissions. There has been more investment in renewable energy. But this progress is much less than what is needed to reduce air pollution to a sustainable optimal level.

A major technological obstacle to the use of renewable energy is the expense of storing electricity in batteries in order to have a steady supply of power on grids. Another technology that is needed for emission reduction is carbon capture and storage.

Unfortunately this interview did not delve into the economics of climate policy. Economists are in wide agreement that the most effective policy to reduce widespread pollution is full-cost pricing, to make the polluters pay the social cost of the damage. The charge is passed on to the buyers of the products, who buy less. The firm either installs methods of reducing the emissions or else pays the fee and reduces pollution by producing less of the product.

A pollution charge or tax is more efficient than command-and-control restrictions, because the tax lets the polluter respond according to its particular costs. In contrast, when government dictates particular methods such as gasoline additives and engine technologies, these may not be the most effective means, and the mandates and restrictions may not encourage innovations.

There is much talk about carbon taxes, but carbon exists in both the inputs and outputs. A tax on the gasoline input does not create an incentive to capture the carbon and other emission outputs, and the tax imposes an excess burden on cars that have already reduced their pollution. A tax on the emission output does induce technology to capture the carbon, and avoids the excess burden.

The executive secretary talked about carbon neutrality, such that each factory, building, city, and vehicle has very low or zero carbon outputs. But the most effective policy is not to regulate and micro-manage, but to set an overall goal and an emission charge per ton of pollutant, and then let each person, enterprise, and facility adjust according to its own costs and benefits. If the cost of carbon neutrality is greater than the social benefit, then such neutrality is bad for the environment, because it wastes resources.

Unfortunately, governments are moving towards regulations rather than pollution taxes. The government of Australia is seeking to replace the carbon tax, enacted by a coalition of the Green and Labor parties in 2012, with a subsidy to industry and an emission permit trading scheme. On 20 March 2014 the Australian Senate voted against repealing the carbon tax, but the prime minister continues to seek repeal on July 1.

While emission permit exchanges are more efficient than regulations, the increase in the price of permits is a gain only to the permit holders, and the price of the permits may be different from the social cost of the pollution. A pollution fine, charge, or tax, however it’s called, enables the government to enact a “green tax shift” to replace market-hampering taxes on income, sales, and value added, with payment for emissions that not only reduce pollution, but also prevent what would otherwise be a subsidy to polluters by not having them pay the full social costs.

Economists and their journalist followers should be in the forefront of promoting a green tax shift as the best policy both for the environment and the economy. Even the skeptics of global warming should embrace the green tax shift, as pollution is harmful trespass regardless of climate change, and the shift promotes greater economic freedom along with productivity.

If the 2015 Global Climate Treaty is based on pollution levies, it will succeed. If instead the Treaty calls for “command and control,” it will doom the planet to yet another failure of central planning, and the result will be both a worsening global economy and a backlash against the tyranny of regulation strangulation.

More regions contemplating independence?

Adam Magoon Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , , , ,

The historically great city-state of Venice is contemplating independence from Italy. “Over two million residents,” nearly half of the total population, “of the Veneto region took part in the week-long survey, with 89 percent voting in favour of independence from Italy.” The  Indipendenza Veneta party believes that the centralized Italian government is unable “to stamp out corruption, protect its citizens from a damaging recession and plug waste in the poorer south.” Venice joins Catalonia and, for better or worse, Crimea this year in considering breaking away from it’s central government. Catalonia’s request for an independence referendum denied by the Spanish prime minister while we all know how long Crimean independence lasted.  All is not lost however.

These types of referendum must be celebrated by libertarians throughout the world. The further decentralization of governments is a goal that can directly lead to a freer, more libertarian society and will serve as a siphon weakening governments worldwide. To quote, as I do so often, the great Murray Rothbard:

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?”

Why not indeed.

Ideology and the Alliance for Progress: Charting the Boundaries of the Welfare State

Kyle Dix Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

This Fall I took a course on the history of the Welfare State at Penn. I also used to work “in the system,” teaching English and job skills to Spanish-speaking TANF recipients at an NPO in North Philadelphia, so it was a nice complement to that experience. Overall the course was great given the volatility of the subject and the difficulty of understanding an abstraction like “welfare.”  I thought the course fell short in contextualizing the welfare state within the broader scope of government, so I wrote a paper about how the welfare state and foreign aid interacted in Kennedy’s policy and rhetoric.

The perils of globalization and modernization have largely been attributed to “neoliberalism” and neoliberal American global hegemony, which I think has some merit. The American welfare state has historically been such a strange beast that it’s really difficult to point fingers–few nations have seen a clash between principles of general welfare/security and personal liberty on the scale of the USA. Yet today it seems that “foreign development” (generally taking place under neoconservative, globalist institutions) and “domestic” or “community development” (generally taking place from the American “left”) are at odds with one another. The consensus on foreign aid at best rests on our duty to help the global have-nots and at worst is a less-risky way to build global security in the post-911 world. But both of these reflect a Bismarckian idea of State building to me… So is there a historical link?

My paper looks for answers in JFK and his Alliance for Progress. This project was a foreign analogue of the New Frontier that got Kennedy elected and seemed to be the future of the American Welfare State until his untimely assassination. Due to resistance at home, the Alliance for Progress was much further along than any New Frontier domestic reforms, despite complementary rhetoric and Kennedy’s constant comparison of the two. The Alliance provided millions in aid to Latin America in the name of developing economy and–as many historians neglect to mention–society. It died out by the mid-70s (largely due to neoliberal push-back and underfunding, or so the story goes) but what was the ideological basis of the reform? What did Kennedy want out of the millions he was lobbying to send abroad?

Overall, the Alliance was multifaceted: It sought to strengthen perceptions of America, grow international political ties, and generally create a buffer against the Cold War Communist threat. But these aspects were presented as international extensions of domestic policy by both outward rhetoric and by internal Congressional and diplomatic correspondence. Agrarian reform (ie, away from communal landholding, especially in Mexico), income redistribution, and a more just hemispherical society were also included as benchmarks.

The program eventually aimed to directly map Tennessee Valley Authority river basin development on top of Colombian valleys, hoping to make a Tupelo or Knoxville out of Cali or Buenaventura. The founder of the TVA, David Lilienthal, won a contract to develop Colombia under the Alliance for Progress after abortive plans to similarly shape the Mekong Delta and the Nile. And while big business was the engine running the machine, rubber met road with promises of social reform, workforce development, and increased social equality for the poor, uncivilized masses susceptible to Communist dogma.

While globalization’s detractors cry capitalist overreach, authoritarian power grab, or something in between, proponents of foreign aid still need to explain why hunger, malaria, and TB are so prevalent given global wealth–and be honest about the beginnings of these international institutions. I can’t make prescriptive calls to action, but I can say that the foundation of the current international aid regime was laid by the example of domestic welfare state-building, by ideals of a strong state guiding a “free” market to achieve affirmative social outcomes

If you want to read the paper: Here’s a full (18 pp. with references) and 10-page version.