(The Myth of) Gun Control as a Panacea

Amar Ali Current Events, Liberty

Just because this is my first post on this consortium, don’t feel shy to comment or rip in!

In light of the horrific tragedy in Connecticut, liberals (not to be confused with leftists[i] ) have decided to take this opportunity to push a political agenda. Inevitably, this leads to dubious arguments rushed to by emotionally moved people trying to justify drastic and sometimes extreme policy positions.

What better time and opportunity to deconstruct this myth and inject a broader perspective?

The most common and tired false rationalization is that guns kills, therefore, gun control, or banning guns would lead to less deaths. Coincidentally, on the same day as the Sandy Hook tragedy, 22 children in China were attacked by a man wielding a knife[ii]. Does this mean we must ban knives or have “Knife Control”? Most would respond no. In fact, it has been shown that more people have been killed with Hammers and Clubs[iii].

Of course the common retort is that guns are different, that they can be controlled and would lead to a decrease in crime. Problem with that theory is that criminals rarely follow the law. Does a person willing to commit an illegal homicide care whether their gun is legal? And in reality, it shows as crime has increased after bans in UK[iv], [v]  and Chicago[vi],[vii] and the after strict bans. Reports show that homicides in Chicago outpace that of Afghanistan[viii] and it is the only major US city to see increases in homicides.[ix]

Here gun opponents will eagerly jump up to point to Europe to demonstrate cases of “successful” gun control. Unfortunately Continue reading →

Abortion, the Conception of Life, and Liberty

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty , , ,

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. – Thomas Jefferson, 1816

My blog post on freedom and feminism prompted a number of short but informative dialogues in the comments section, and I thought it would be a good idea to draw some of these arguments out a little more and really delve into the implications of what it means to be free.

My original post was meant to serve as a general outline of the major rift within libertarianism (and, by implication, the American Right) today: the cultural one. I think that the rift between libertarians on cultural issues is actually much less serious than the one between libertarians and conservatives, and the comments section highlighted this important disagreement. Instead of a mutual mistrust based upon suspicion of authoritarian tendencies hiding in plain sight, libertarians actively fight conservatives when it comes to the struggle between liberty and power.

Two key arguments will be exploited on this blog for the sake of showing Ron Paul Republicans and other, newer members of the libertarian movement just how nakedly aggressive and barbaric anti-abortion laws really are. Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Gun control: change we don’t believe in
  2. A photo essay of Antarctica. I’m weird (news flash!) and I’ve always had an obsession with Antarctica
  3. On the ethics of voting. Grab a cup of coffee or tea
  4. Canada’s First Nations: Time we stopped meeting like this
  5. What is driving growth in government? This weekend’s must-read

Inside Insider Trading

Warren Gibson Economics, History, Liberty

Insider trading is something we hear a lot about these days. To most people, the practice smells of foul play, and federal law restricts it. But the inside story of insider trading is something very different, as we shall see. The alleged ill effects on shareholders in particular and on the economy in general are mostly illusory, and in fact insider trading produces benefits that are little understood.

If I may first indulge in a little personal history: I was once a corporate insider. Two friends and I started an engineering services firm in 1982, and we set it up as a corporation. The paperwork required to register the corporation was minimal, but the law allowed us to offer shares only to specially qualified individuals, in addition to ourselves and our employees. Actually this rule wasn’t binding on us. We didn’t want to be answerable to strangers so the only “outsiders” we sold to were a couple of relatives, whom we later bought out.

Most Silicon Valley firms like ours aim to “go public” at some point—that is, sell shares to the general public to raise additional capital and reward early investors. We had no such ambition. We did not want to jump through all the hoops required in an initial public offering, nor did we want the continuing hassle of running a public corporation. (Since that time hassles have been multiplied by Sarbanes-Oxley.) However, we might have benefited from something short of a full public offering, where we would have offered shares to a wider but still limited set of shareholders.

Yet SEC rules allow only a very restricted offering or a full public offering, and nothing in between.

What if we had gone public? The law would have restricted our ability to trade our own shares for reasons roughly as follows: Insider trading would violate our fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders. As managers of a public corporation we would have placed ourselves under a board of directors answerable to shareholders. Our job would be to watch out for shareholder interests, not subordinate them to our own private gain.

There is some truth in these arguments. Shareholders can never be totally sure that management is looking out for their interests. Corporate regulations and employment contracts can do a lot to minimize these “agency problems,” as they are called, but perfection is not possible. Purchasers of shares should be aware of the risks they take and act accordingly. But none of this justifies insider-trading restrictions. Continue reading →

Fresh Blood!

Brandon Christensen Current Events

We’ve got a couple of new changes coming your way: younger bloggers!

Stay tuned, and enjoy the ‘comments’ thread on my recent post in the meantime (don’t forget to have your say as well).

Libertarianism and Feminism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

I thought I’d throw in my two cents on the recent brouhaha between the two largest camps within the libertarian movement (the “paleos” and the “bleeding hearts”). Really quickly, the differences between the two camps are few and far between on matters of economics, but on matters of culture there is a wide chasm separating the two. The paleos are cultural conservatives and the bleeding hearts are not.

For the record, I consider myself in the “bleeding heart” camp, even though I spent more than enough time in Santa Cruz doing the co-op thing and hanging out out with lazy, dishonest, stinking hippies.

The bleeding heart camp initiated the brouhaha with the following:

This morning Julie Borowski, who makes videos as “Token Libertarian Girl,” shared her answer to the question “Why aren’t there more female libertarians?” […]

Every single one of these things that she criticizes women for doing should be seen not as causes for shame, but as complex choices that smart, thoughtful women can and do make, without destroying their lives in the process.  In addition, Borowski is making arguments that conservatives hurl at women all the time. If we want to pull young women away from liberalism and toward libertarianism, repeating the very same intellectually patronizing conservative arguments that pushed women to liberalism in the first place doesn’t seem to be the way to go.

And a follow-up post had this tidbit to add: Continue reading →

The Long and Short of Short Selling

Warren Gibson Economics, Law, Liberty

Short selling is a little-understood, much-maligned tactic by which traders can profit from their belief that a company’s stock is overvalued.

Following the financial problems of the last two years, short selling has come under fire, with new or revived regulations proposed to curb the practice. It is unpatriotic, destructive, and destabilizing, say the critics. Such complaints are nothing new. President Hoover blamed short sellers for the continuing market declines of 1931 and 1932, threatening regulation or even outright prohibition. “Individuals who use the facilities of the [stock] Exchange for such purposes are not contributing to the recovery of the United States,” he grumbled.

Defenders say short sellers add liquidity to markets. When short sellers are present, buyers encounter a more liquid market because they face a larger pool of sellers than they would otherwise. More sellers—more liquidity—means more predictable prices and smoother price changes. Shorts can put a damper on runaway enthusiasm, and when they are right, they can hasten the demise of failed businesses.

The mechanics of short selling are simple. You borrow stock and sell it, hoping its market price will decline so you can repay your loan with stock that you buy cheaply. In the meantime, you are said to be “short” that stock, the opposite of the situation of someone who owns the shares and is “long.” For widely traded stocks, brokers can easily find shares to borrow, either from their own inventory or from customers who have agreed to make their shares available. For thinly traded stocks it may be difficult or impossible to find shares to borrow. The short seller must pay the lender the amount of any dividends that the stock pays while he is short. And most brokers require cash on deposit to cover the obligation to buy the stock later on. Continue reading →

Environmentalism and Property Rights

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , ,

The horrible air in Beijing has been making the news again, and for good reason. Check out these pictures for reasons why. The topic of environmentalism and its compatibility with liberty has been brought up before here at the consortium, but I’d like to briefly use this opportunity to point out something on property rights.

Conservatives and, lamentably, some libertarians often attribute environmental destruction to “the tragedy of the commons,” but this is short-sighted. Anthropologists have long pointed out that land and property held in common is actually governed quite well. Political scientists and economists have recently begun to come around to this point as well, with Elinor Ostrom (a political scientist by training) winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on how some societies govern the commons.

Common land and its use often requires an informal set of rules for maintaining a harmonious balance between man and land, and is also a characteristic feature of societies that we would variously label, rightly or wrongly, as stateless, pastoral, foraging, tribal, or my personal favorite: undeveloped. In other words, common land is often exploited by poor people who do not have the resources to institute a regime based largely on private property. With this in mind, just think: would you want to be the party that is found guilty for violating an agreed-upon set of rules for a specific area of land? Even if there were no formal state apparatus charged with enforcing a society’s rules? Not only would you have to face justice, but you’d also be held responsible for the possible suffering of many other people depending on the land, which could lead to other forms of punishment besides fines or violence; punishments that could affect the lives of your loved ones and your loved ones’ loved ones. Continue reading →

The Logic of Logic

Fred Foldvary Liberty

Logic means inference, consistency, and inevitability. By inference, one proposition implies another. For example, if California is within the United States, then being located in California implies being located in the United States. By consistency, if A = B and B = C, then A = C. By inevitable determinism, the constants of the universe must be what they are, and cannot be otherwise.

The word “logic” derives from the Greek “logos,” meaning “reason.” In dictionaries “logic” is often defined as “reason,” but then “reason” is defined as “logic,” which makes that definition circular and meaningless. Dictionaries also say that logic is about validity, but that too is circular. The meaning of logic cannot logically come from the implications of logic. Continue reading →

Don’t Forget

Brandon Christensen Books, Current Events, History

Michael Adamson’s new book, A Better Way to Build…, comes out on the 15th of this month. You can check out more of Dr. Adamson’s (bad ass) work in the ‘recommendations‘ section of the blog. He’s got stuff on Native American property rights (or lack thereof), US foreign policy, and the decline of Argentina just hanging out online waiting for curious minds to read and process.

Dr. Adamson is a historian by trade, and we’re lucky to have him on board here at the consortium. Also, check out his demolishing of the rationales used by the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq (the second time around).

Sardines: A Sordid Story

Fred Foldvary Current Events, Law, Politics , , ,

Sardines are delicious and healthy to eat, but much of the consumption of these fish is for feeding to animals, and this is destroying the wildlife of the seas. We are possibly witnessing the fulfilling of the prophetic verse in Revelation 8:9, “one third of the living creatures which were in the sea died” (World English Bible).

Already several fish ecologies, such as the fish by the coast of Namibia, have collapsed. Sardines and anchovies are in some places the main prey of the predators up the food chain, including birds, seals, dolphins, and whales.

Much of the sardine catch is ground up and fed to farmed fish and factory-farmed chickens and pigs. World-wide, 14 million tons of wild fish, such as sardines and anchovies, are fed to mass-produced food animals. About 75 percent of the fishmeal and oil fed to carnivorous farmed fish come from the harvest of small, open-ocean fish such as anchovies, herring, and sardines. When you eat a farmed salmon, you indirectly eat sardines and the other fish feed. Continue reading →

RIP James Buchanan

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics

Nobel laureate and classical liberal economist James Buchanan has died at the grand old age of 93. I have been slowly working my way through his book The Calculus of Consent for a while now, and his other works are on my “to do” list once I graduate in June. He was one of the co-founders of public choice theory, a rather common sense approach to economics that has long been derided by authoritarians on the Left.

EconLib has a succinct biography of him here.

This short piece by Buchanan in the Independent Review has influenced my own way of approaching writing and arguing.

I’ll post more thoughts from around the web as they appear throughout the day.

Liberty has lost a true champion today.

Government’s War on Sharing

Fred Foldvary Current Events, Economics

There is a fuzzy border between trading and sharing. Suppose Adam gathers apples and Eve gathers oranges. The each want some of the other, so they can either trade some of the fruits, or they can share them. The result is the same: they each eat some of both.

Sharing implies that one gives the other some of the goods, and the other gives some to you, but reciprocal sharing is about the same as trading, perhaps though with a psychological difference.

Now comes the income tax to turn the beautiful act of sharing into a taxable commercial transaction. To the government, barter is just as much income as selling for cash. If you trade an apple for an orange, it has the same economic effect as selling the apple for cash, and then using the cash to buy the orange from your trading partner. The person trading his apple is subject to the same tax as the one selling for cash.  Continue reading →

I Bid $100,000,000,000,000,000

Warren Gibson Liberty

The debt ceiling was technically reached on Dec. 31 and the Treasury is now engaged in shell games that will keep the lights on until about March 1.  After that, the consequences could be pretty messy, as explained here.  The Treasury will not have the cash needed to pay current bills and will have to stiff somebody — Social Security recipients, federal employees, suppliers or who knows.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some smart people are trying to think of ways to get money from the Fed, which has a monopoly on money creation, to the Treasury while sidestepping the Debt Ceiling.

If the Republicans try to use the debt ceiling as leverage to get the spending cuts they say they want (not defense cuts of course), they will lose.  Obama will cross his arms, there will be chaos for a few days, and then the Republicans will cave and the president will win.  Another tactic is needed.  Here’s my modest suggestion to the Republicans: raise the debt limit to $100 quadrillion ($100,000,000,000,000,000).  For one thing, it’s time we learned a new “illion.”  I know, it wasn’t long ago that we learned to say “trillion” but we might as well get quadrillions teed up and ready to go.  More seriously, this move would focus on the Obama spending orgy and the explosion of debt that could follow.  Default on the debt or hyperinflation would not just be financial upheavals but could rend the very fabric of society.  This is where the Republicans should focus, not on the debt ceiling.

Soft Fascism?

Jacques Delacroix Law, Liberty, Politics , ,

I am trying hard to avoid joining the current hysteria but I can’t help reading signals flashing right in my face.

The President is going to address grammar-school, and middle-school, and high-school students. That might be OK though I don’t see why or what for. He is not a king but our hired servant. What’s not OK is that the federal Department of Education is sending teachers everywhere follow-up packets of suggested topics for post-speech classroom discussion, some with the word “inspiration.”

That’s a classical, conventional totalitarian strategy. A liberal commentator who struck me, that time, has   argued that it’s not because the teachers don’t have to follow the suggestions. I am sorry but I am sure 80% and up of teachers, at all grade levels, are Obama devotees. They probably constitute the core of the silly, adoring Obama constituency. They will follow the suggestions. They can be counted on to establish the foundations  of  an Obama cult of personality.

I have been holding casual, short conversations with a young man I like around the coffee- shop. (He is very likable in general; I think everyone likes him.)  He is a student of philosophy at one of the University of  California campuses. I like him for this; it takes bravery to major in Philosophy rather than in, say, Accounting. He is an Obama supporter, of course, but a thoughtful one.  He represents the best of what there is to like in political liberalism, including  a striving for rationality and generous  impulses. Continue reading →