Liberty

The Oppression of American Labor

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

Over at the Real-World Economics blog, economist Edward Fullbrook presents a graph of labor’s demise in the United States as well as an article from Al-Jazeera English titled America in Denial that promotes Fullbrook’s new book.

Fullbrook brings it to the attention of work-weary Americans that they work far too many hours per year compared to other rich societies in the West (there are, of course, no rich societies outside of the West, but that’s a different blog for a different day).

Behold! The cold, hard facts informing American workers of their own oppression! Continue reading →

Practical Sex Advice For Dudes

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , ,

I am a frivolous man forced by the boringness of my intellectual betters to keep diving back into serious didactic conduct. I just spent a week and part of the weekend expostulating on serious ideological issues. I almost have a headache as a result. So, it’s time I pleased myself by doing what I do best. That’s giving sex advice to others, of course. This time, it’s to dudes. If you are female, you are required to stop reading here.

Guys, guys! Men who ask what women want are just not paying attention, they are slow-witted or, more likely, they are not using the abundant information around them. If you pick up women’s magazines at the barber, even if only to look at the titles and at the ads, if you keep an eye on women’s morning television shows at the gym, if you ask yourself who is buying all the cheap paperbacks with the lurid, salacious covers, you will soon find convergent answers to the question: What do women want? I am going to shortcut the study for you anyway. The answers below apply only to heterosexual women. (I tried to find out what lesbians want but they threatened to beat me up.)

First, as always, as from “forever,” almost all women want a man to their name. This astounding failure of thirty years of feminism is worth a whole scholarly essay on its own. I will do it some other time. I said “almost all” because I have come across a couple of women who learned from a bad marriage, or from a bad divorce, or more likely, from both, that their own man was more of a burden than they wanted to carry for occasional use. They are content to borrow one now and then, here and there.

Second, women want the man in their lives to declare sincerely how very, very sorry he is. It does not matter what he is sorry about, it’s the intensity of the emotion in the confession that matters. I urge you, brother-men, to not yield to this facile way to get points with your beloved. It’s habit forming; she will want more; there will be no end to it. And after a while, she will despise you for your weakness.

Third, all women want someone else’s breasts. Silly feminists will argue that this horrid patriarchal society has made women un-naturally chest-conscious. Nothing could be further from the truth. Breast envy is hard-wired. Cave women who lived in all-female herds and rarely saw a man used to sneak behind the bushes with a piece of torn mammoth pelt to fashion a Wonderbra of sorts. At any rate, the envy leads to surgery if it’s not checked in time. Don’t allow this barbarous practice; don’t show any tolerance of it, not even unconsciously. If you care at all for a woman, any woman, you don’t want her perfectly healthy flesh to be cut by a sharp knife and then delivered to an always hazardous healing process. Besides, I have seen on television that the results of breasts implant and breast modification are sometimes tragically grotesque. I mean uglier than any naturally shaped protuberances I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of ugly breasts in my life. I say so without meaning to brag.

Fourth, all women like earrings. They never have enough. Earrings are not dangerous, immoral, or generally threatening to a woman’s reputation. There are nearly no ugly earrings. Almost any woman’s face is lit up by earrings, even mediocre earrings. I have known this for years but almost at a subliminal level. For a long time, I was clueless about earrings, like many men. I thought buying earrings for a woman was an expensive and time-consuming endeavor also fraught with mis-steps. Not so long ago, I began experimenting by giving earrings frequently to a young woman to whom I am close. Specifically, I experimented with price. Amazingly soon, I discovered that there was not floor, no earrings so cheap that they would fail to put the woman in a good mood, at least for a while. I stopped the experiment at the rather shameful but astounding price of two dollars ($2). I stopped mostly because I had trouble finding cheaper earrings. Something else happened during the experiment: I became progressively and palpably better at choosing earrings. I am now so good at it I might just as well be gay.

Here is a good rule of thumb applying to just about everything: If you are sufficiently bad at something, you will improve quickly through practice. This goes for buying earrings the same as it goes for sex, the act.

Native American Property Rights and European Contact

Brandon Christensen History, Law, Liberty , , , ,

Despite the claim to rights based on discovery, British colonists often acquired land by contract. For example, almost all of Massachusetts was acquired by purchase from local tribes. The primary exceptions there, Salem and Boston, were uninhabited areas, having been depopulated earlier by the diseases the colonists unwittingly brought with them. Although the British crown claimed the sole right to negotiate transfer of land rights from the Native Americans, many colonists thought otherwise and regularly made individual arrangements with various tribes to secure land.

This is from Europe Meets America, a heavy post in the Freeman.

Ron Paul’s Legacy

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , ,

Ron Paul will not get to speak at the GOP convention, but his legacy will hard to miss over the next decade of American politics. His son is now a Senator in Kentucky, and his Audit the Fed bills have lots of bi-partisan support (in the House anyway; Senators, for some strange reason, seem to like the Federal Reserve an awful lot).

His foreign policy, which initially attracted me to libertarian ideas, is the most important legacy, however. I can tell because the GOP loathes it so much that they won’t give Congressman Paul the time of day they know they need for his support.

From Foreign Policy: Continue reading →

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 4

Jacques Delacroix Economics, Liberty , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

Just another National Specialization

The massive asymmetry in films exports between the US and the rest of the world may be the result of any number of factors. The fact that foreign movies occasionally do well in the US market ( in recent years, “Life is Beautiful”, from Italy, “Amélie”, from France. The first, 1999, Pokemon cartoon from Japan grossed US$85.7 , million, according to WSJ 7/19/02:w11, and, as forecasted by same – “Read my Lips”, also from France, will do well) suggests that public preference, and possibly language barriers, are more likely to be issues than American distribution superiority, for example. Yet, language barriers may be less significant than one would guess. Luc Besson’s “Jeanne d’Arc” (“The Messenger”) released in 1999, purportedly produced in English to make it accessible to the polyglot EU markets and to the US market, registered 3.07 million admissions in the European Union in that year, against, 40 million for American-made “ Star Wars Episode 1”, 23 million for “Tarzan”, almost 21 million for “The Matrix” , and 7.4 million for “American Pie”. Even the obscure, American-made “Patch Adams” did better ( EAO 2001: 100). “The Messenger” flopped so badly in the American market that admissions and revenue figures are hard to find. For 1999 also, only one British production and two UK-US co-productions, all in English of course, figure among the top worldwide 50 admission getters. In Belgium where practically the whole population understands French , French-made movies obtain usually less than 10% market share, against an 80% share for American-made movies. (EAO 2001: 96). Finally, the foreign successes of Indian movies, almost all in languages understood hardly anywhere outside India and not everywhere in India, suggest again that language may be a small constraint. Continue reading →

Fascism and Socialism: What’s the Connection?

Brandon Christensen Liberty ,

A commentator on EconLog has a great, succinct comment in a thread produced by economist David Henderson’s post on fascism and communism. Long explains the difference between the two:

I think it has always been clear among most objective historians that there is little difference between fascism and communism. My take has always been that “fascism” was the word that leftists use to smear rightism as potentially dictatorial. Rightism *is* potentially dictatorial, but the end result is no different than dictatorial leftism.

That’s one reason among many that I like Mises’ terming fascism “socialism of the German pattern,” and communism “socialism of the Russian pattern.” It’s linguistically a little clunky, but still makes for a great terming of the concepts.

Jacques Delacroix has gone to great lengths to explain this concept as well here at NotesOnLiberty. For more on the similarities (and confusion) between fascism and communism, see Fascism Explained and How ’bout Communism?

Department of Huh?

Brandon Christensen Liberty ,

The dialectic between pragmatics and metapragmatics is the way in which

explicit metapragmatic registers instantiated in metapragmatic discourse encapsulate ideologies of language use and play an obvious role in the institutionalization of discursive mechanisms of society.

This is from Michael Silverstein, a linguistic anthropologist and somebody who I have to read for a degree requirement. Life could be worse, I guess…

Criticizing the Right

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty, Links, Politics , ,

There has been lots of attention on this blog geared towards the hypocrisy of the Left, and I think that it is justified, but all too often we have been giving the Right a pass. I think this has to do with the fact that the Left holds the presidency, but I still think it’s appropriate to remind readers that libertarianism is of neither the Left nor the Right. Philosopher Jason Kuznicki does just this in a brilliant post:

Scrutinize your own side too. Take a hard look at cushy “privatization” deals that really just funnel power and money directly into private corporations’ hands. As a certain liberal recently observed, the way to privatize a prison isn’t to give imprisonment power to a corporation. It’s to stop imprisoning so many people, then sell off the property. About which more below […]

But other restrictions exist. Many of them bite even harder.

Consider immigrants. In particular, if our free market is so great, why do you work so hard to exclude immigrants from it? Is the immigrant laborer less a moral self-fashioner than the Wall Street banker? I wouldn’t say so. He’s clearly at least as motivated. If the immigrant wants to make a life in America — why not let him?

Mr. Ryan recently proclaimed that the United States is the only nation founded on an idea. It’s a common conservative theme, and even if it’s not 100% accurate, I’m certainly sympathetic to it. But we are founded on an idea if and only if our borders remain open to all who share that idea. The moment we start checking for purity of blood, we become a tribalist nation-state just like so many others. Not founded on an idea, but on accidents of birth—and in fact standing squarely against the idea that all people should be the authors of their own lives.

You can read the rest here.

Again, I suspect that much of the vitriol aimed at the Left on this blog (mostly by myself and Dr. Delacroix and something that probably has to do with our previous, sovereign associations with that side of the aisle) is due to the fact that it currently occupies the White House, but it’s nice to remind readers that the Right is very hypocritical as well.

For more on immigration, see Hermanos* and Immigrants: A Story Pregnant with Deep Meaning.

For more on “privatization”, see Who Stole Our Trillions? and An Ominous Expansion of Eminent Domain.

For more criticism of the Right, see Ugly Conservative Sacred Cows and Blissful Ignorance….

A View from Inside China

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , ,

Below is what I think is an interesting document. It’s an email from a former MBA student. He is a Singapore Chinese who spends a lot of time doing business inside China, in Mandarin. He is an intelligent and well-educated man. I know him to have a conservative temperament overall but he is also a keen observer and an independent thinker. Some of his statements are disturbing to me. I post this document on my blog for its intrinsic interest, not as an endorsement. I note with interest that he has not asked me to delete his name in spite of his denunciations of Singapore’s treatment of its dissidents. I withhold it nevertheless. He can add it subsequently if he wishes.

I have been hearing lots about evil China and their evil products (mostly from Taiwan opposition party folks, Chen Sui Bian and his gang).

There have been lots of negative press about manufacturers in China and how bad they are. Thing is the blame needs to be shared. I sourced in China as well and I what I have seen appalled me. Not that the manufacturers are out to get the buyers, but more so, the buyers are working so hard to get the manufacturers. The incident about Mattel, for example, I feel it was an error on Mattel’s part not to confirm that lead-free paint was going to be used. They probably assumed it.

And they probably pushed the price down so hard that the manufacturers had to cut corners to make any sort of financial sense. And when excrement hits the fan, they sad the manufacturers were to blame. And what about Walmart? Most manufacturers I know, many of whom are my friends, are refusing to sell to Walmart. Walmart are so harsh on pricing that they would specifically ask for the lower (if not lowest) quality goods. They would put such a large order, so huge that they would take over the entire manufacturing capability of a factory. If the factory is dumb enough to let them be the biggest and majority customer, they will be in for a fix. Walmart to hit prices down low and threaten to move elsewhere. The factory would have no choice but to budge because, if Walmart left, they would go out of business. So corners are cut, and Walmart knows about these cuts. All they care about is price and in the end, the customer suffers. It is not just the savings are “rolling back” to the customers, but the poor quality of the products are going back to the customer as well. By the way, Walmart usually price their goods anywhere from five to twenty times that of the cost they procured it at.

My view on communism is very different from the average person in the “free world”. This is the “new” communism in China. My opinion is that things actually get done here and quick too. In the time that Oakland took to rebuild the Cypress Highway that connects 880 to the Bay Bridge after the earthquake, Shanghai has constructed more than 10 times of that distance in highways, most of them elevated, a complete subway system, 3 large bridges and 3 underwater tunnels, a full industrial park (cao he jing) a full financial center in Pudong, A new airport, and a new half of the city in Pudong literally done up. This is just within the limits of Shanghai city, excluding all the work done for the interstates. What can I say?

Comparing it to Singapore with a “democratically” elected government, China enjoys more freedom. Now, I say this as a person living in China, not as a politician. I see demonstrations from time to time in Shanghai and recently, the Shanghai government has been listening.

Talks happen, and situations get changed. It is true that China has seen more restricted times in the past but Hu and his current government is set to change that. The situation in Singapore is much more different where the law is often used to suppress opposition and dissidents.

See http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/.

People in Singapore mostly just take it in and forget about it, choosing to think about car payments, house payments and if their favorite British soccer team is going to win.

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts. Of course, there are things that gets to me in China and Singapore as well, and also many things I like about the USA. These are some ramblings I have. Feel free to put them on your blog if you want to. I really miss talks with you outside Kenna Hall while you are bumming cigarettes off me. ;)

P.S. I haven’t seen the Palin article on your blog. I will look it up. Every time I see her picture or video anywhere, I always get the impression of a deer in the headlights.

P.S.S. I have been out of touch with a lot of things. I really disapprove of Obama in 1) his work on 90% tax on the AIG bonuses (which I think is stupid and unconstitutional) and 2) him sending more troops into middle east.

A. L.

McCloskey Review = Leftist Rhetoric in Tatters

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, History, Liberty, Links , , , ,

Deirdre McCloskey has an excellent review of a new book focusing on the immorality of capitalism. An excerpt:

The poor have benefited the most from capitalism. The sheer, first-act, unanalyzed equality that Sandel advocates would have killed the modern world and kept us in the appalling poverty of the human condition down to 1800. In fact in some countries it did, such as India after 1947, under Gandhi-plus-London-School-of-Economics egalitarianism, the “License Raj” and “the Hindu rate of growth,” as the Indians themselves bitterly described their communitarian economy. When I talk to friends who think like Sandel I worry that their dispositions will kill, quite unintentionally, the only chance for the world’s poor to achieve the scope for a full human life.

[…]

Sandel worries properly that the market can crowd out the sacred. A corporate market in, say, instruction in elementary classrooms can crowd out unbiased teaching about capitalism. Yet Sandel does not tell his own classroom that state schools can crowd out unbiased teaching about, say, the environment.

Do read the whole thing. McCloskey is an expert writer and a prestigious scholar, so be sure to grab a cup of coffee before you settle in. (h/t Jason Brennan)

Tea Party in the People’s Green Republic of Santa Cruz

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , ,

On April 15th, my wife and I went to a tea party to protest the Obama-Pelosi spending and its probably consequences. (For those of you who read me from overseas: April 15th is the last day Americans may pay their federal income tax without a late penalty. They also pay taxes to their state, to their municipalities, and others.) Nothing extraordinary about our attendance; millions of Americans did the same. However, for us it was in Santa Cruz, California.

Santa Cruz is a perfect 1970s political throwback, except that today’s Greens warn against global warming instead of global glaciation. We even have flower children here. I believe at least 90% of residents of the country of Santa Cruz voted for Obama. If someone showed me it was 98%, I would not be surprised. Santa Cruz is the kind of town were strangers would address you at the coffee-shop with anti-Bush remarks without hesitation. It did not cross anybody’s mind that you might actually have voted for Bush (twice, in my case).

Well yesterday, at the height of the gathering, there were about 140 people demonstrating in front of the post office. That’s a fairly small number as compared to the tens of thousands some media showed at the Alamo in Texas, for example. Also, the time of the protest was ill-chosen. It began at 2, when most people are at work. The most impressive observation about this anti-spending demonstration was the density of approving  car horn honking it generated. I have never heard so much honking in the past ten years in the area. It seems to me each of the pro-fascist, anti-anti terrorist demonstrations produced much less honking in spite of the town’s leftists near-consensus.  At the Santa Cruz tea party, 9 out of 10 signs were crudely hand-made, not evidence of top-bottom organizing surely. I think some people in the middle are switching sides because they are appalled by the first 80 days of Obama-Pelosi.  Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Liberty, Links , , , , , , ,

The Images of Progressive Citizenship. Haunting.

Paul Ryan it is.

The 5 worst Olympic mascots.

Austrian themes, data, and sports economics. By co-blogger Stephen Shmanske

Celebrating Chevron’s Profits

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

Recently there was a bad fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA, as you probably know.  The refinery will be offline for an unknown period, probably months.  Upon reading this, and knowing that the CA government prohibits “imports” of gasoline from other states, I knew the retail price would jump.  I made a mental note to fill up my Thunderbird next morning.  Too late – regular had jumped from $3.85 to $4.01.  This morning it was $4.06, and $4.13 by afternoon.

My reaction?  I’m delighted that the market is doing its job of balancing supply, which has suddenly dropped, with demand.  But predictably, ignorant fools have jumped on this situation, as in this letter in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Please ask Chevron to explain why the cost of gasoline will go up because of an accident at their plant.

Don’t they have insurance to cover the loss of their equipment? Is Chevron going to recoup the lost income (deducted from the billions of dollars in profit that they make every year) from us?

If the accident was determined to be due to Chevron’s negligence, are they going to compensate all of their neighbors “inconvenienced” by this?

But most of all, please ask all the other oil companies why their costs are going up because of a fire at a Chevron refinery.

If the other companies are not suffering a financial loss from this devastating environmental disaster in the Bay Area, why are prices expected to rise at Exxon-Mobil, Royal Shell Dutch, BP (Arco, lest anyone forget) and any other company I might be too angry to remember at this moment?

I might have to hold my breath until you find out the answers to these questions or until the air clears, whichever comes first. I’ll let you guess which one that will be.

Chevron probably doesn’t carry insurance because they are big enough to be self-insured, and the risks may be too large and uncertain for an insurance company to estimate.  But insurance is irrelevant to retail pricing.  The basic problem is the all too common myth on which this letter is based: that cost determines price.  The myth is that suppliers add up their costs and then tack on as much profit as they think they can get away with.  As anyone who has studied economics should know, supply and demand jointly determine price in a competitive market such as gasoline.  Set your price too high and you lose customers and your profit declines.  Set it too low and your margin declines, and you may sell out your supplies.  The sweet spot varies constantly with shifting supply and, to a lesser extent, shifting demand.

Of course, profits benefit Chevron’s shareholders.  But they are vastly more valuable to Chevron’s customers because they are the driving force (putting aside government interference) that tells Chevron what kind of products we want, where they are offered, how they are delivered, etc.

Of course, government interference is substantial and shouldn’t be set aside.  Politicians worried about rising gas prices could help out by lifting the prohibition on imports.

Hurray for profits!

What’s Peer Review and Why it Matters

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

WELCOME MBA STUDENTS. IF YOU NEED A BREAK, IF YOU FEEL LIKE SCHOOL AND WORK ARE GETTING TO YOU, TAKE A WALK THROUGH MY BLOG. YOU WILL BE AMAZED,  PLEASED AND SHOCKED. WELCOME.

JD

Global warming update: In its 2007 report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that 40% of the Amazonian rain forest could be gone in a short time because of climate change. The source cited is not peer-reviewed. Its authors are a public policy analyst, that is, an advocate, and a journalist at the Guardian of London. Neither is a scientist. The main thing is that they did not even try to get their piece published in a real, scholarly, and therefore peer–reviewed journal.

Reliance on sources that are not peer-reviewed is forbidden by the UN Panel’s own rules. The fact that the IGPCC violated its own rules does not imply an evil intent but carelessness or zealots’ quasi religious enthusiasm. (I keep telling you that climate change is a religion.) I ask myself: How long would I continue to patronize a car mechanic who told this level of untruths?

The story was in the Telegraph, a UK left-wing newspaper, on January 25th. This came up after the 300+ mistake I talked about before, about the time it will take for Himalayas glaciers to melt down. (It’s 300 years longer than announced by the Panel, according to the correction given by the Panel itself!)

You can find everything including linked to references in the “ Watt’s Up With That” site. Continue reading →

More on Chick-fil-A

Warren Gibson Liberty , , , , , , ,

Here’s a commentator in the New York Times who echoes my views on the Chick-fil-A matter, and in a more gracious manner:

… a society that truly believes in individual freedom will respect Mr. Cathy’s right to his views. Those who disagree with him are free to boycott Chick-fil-A in protest. But if our elected officials run Chick-fil-A out of town, they are effectively voting for all of us, regardless of our respective beliefs, and eliminating our individual freedoms.

The writer is Steve Salbu, dean of the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  And he happens to be a gay man.  Here is the link.  Not sure if it’s gated.