Collective Soul, Live, and Blues Traveler

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:33:07 -0400

Will any DR readers be attending the Collective Soul/Live/Blues Traveler concert August 17th at Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Atlanta, Georgia? If so, leave a post in the comments; maybe we can meet up there.

P.S. Rush isn't the only Objectivist influenced band. Collective Soul took their name from The Fountainhead.

A More Distributed Form of Government

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:22:34 -0400

From Alexx Kay:

I begin to think that the framers didn't go nearly far enough in their design. A three-branch system is not sufficiently redundant. If one branch goes power-mad, the other two will reign it in. But a two-point failure leaves the third branch little ability to resist sweeping change and growth in government power. Worse, such a failure allows fundamental changes to the structure of government, which weaken that structure against further attacks.

So I don't want to see a smaller government -- I want a *bigger* one. But not bigger in the current manner. All the recent governmental growth has been in terms of pyramidal hierarchy, concentrating more power in the hands of fewer people. I want to see a more distributed form of government. Perhaps as many as ten branches, with a complex web of dependencies and oversight, so that even a multi-point failure (or deliberate structural attack) can be effectively resisted.

A Distributed Republic, indeed.

Market Anarchy Graffiti

Theophanes — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:42:17 -0400

This was my project for the week. The hardest parts were macgyvering a flashlight projecter to blow up the stencils and getting the ladders to not tip over on the uneven river bottom. I only had to do commit a little trespassing to get it done!

It replaces my old sign:

I know Micha will think it's an improvement.

Lying is an integral part of police work

Randall McElroy iii — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:30:40 -0400

Radley Balko points out another video of the New York Police Department assaulting people and then charging them with crimes, lying in their depositions. Not small discrepancies, understandable errors of recollection, but plain lies boldly contradicting the video footage. What the footage shows is cops assaulting people.

You can thank us "activist bikers" later for being in the vanguard of resistance to the police state. (Yes, I'm one of these types, though not in New York.) It's not often people expose the ugly center of police work.

One of my inner circle was once charged with a crime, and at the deposition that we attended we heard the officer testify under oath to things which we knew to be plainly false. We prodded the lawyer to object, and he said it wasn't even worth the time: police lie all the time, and they're going to be believed in court.

Well, that lying bastard was believed in court. I'm sure he was right back on the street, harassing people and lying about it later.

This happens all the time. This happens everywhere.

Balko vs. Hayne, and the good guy wins

Randall McElroy iii — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:45:21 -0400

Radley Balko is my freakin' hero. Just when I was beginning to lose hope that his continued coverage of Steven Hayne and his cronies in the Mississippi court and police system would actually get things changed around there, "this afternoon Mississippi barred embattled medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne from doing any more autopsies in the state."

The synopsis: Hayne is contracted by prosecutors all over Mississippi to deliver the results they want from autopsies, however medically implausible, and despite the fact that he is not medically qualified to do so in the first place under Mississippi state legislation. The implications of Radley Balko's journalism are staggering: a huge number of people involved in the system willingly collaborated with Hayne to send innocent people to jail. The magnitude of crime that's been perpetrated by the court system in Mississippi is hard to comprehend. And of course, Balko notes that the severing was not quite as stern as it should be.

But holy Christ, Balko was such a thorn in their side that they threw one of the main villains out!

Line of the year?

David Masten — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:56:48 -0400

Elon Musk talking with Wired about SpaceX after their third launch failed to make orbit:

Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.

In Defense Of Trolling

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:26:37 -0400

Yet another /b/-related post.

Mike Riggs of Reason reads the NYT coverage of /b/ culture with extreme earnestness. Which is surprising, given Hit&Run's usual dose of cynicism and humor. I have a feeling Nick Gillespie would have given /b/ a different verdict.

In the comments, Jennifer asks, "Why do you find trolling more enjoyable than honest debate?" Her earnest question deserves an earnest response.

Jennifer,

Because "honest debate" is inappropriate in certain situations. Sometimes humor is called for. Sometimes "honesty" is not the best policy.

This NYT article is unfortunate because it focuses on personalities at the expense of community. The beauty and genius of 4chan is what it produces, as a community of anonymous pranksters and misanthropes, and not the particular characteristics of the individuals who constitute it.

Yes, /b/ is a moral cesspool. But it is an equal opportunity cesspool. It's the difference between a stand up comic like Sarah Silverman who distributes her offensiveness widely, and one like Michael Richards, whose focus became personal and earnest, and ends up getting himself trolled by a heckler.

Sometimes pranks go too far. I certainly won't defend everything this community has done. But part of being a community made up of the anonymous is that you have to accept both the good and the bad produced by many disparate anonymous individuals. It's like the difference between being an apologist for capitalism and being an apologist for individual capitalists. One can recognize the value in the system itself while not necessarily approving of its most vocal representatives.

Like alcohol in meatspace, anonymity on the Internet lowers inhibitions for both good and ill. It leads to vicious, unconscionable pranks, but also very funny, very necessary ones.

I think there is much value to putting a name (and reputation) behind an argument, but there is also a place for anonymity. Explore 4chan and /b/ and see for yourself.

Knee Jerk Deontology

Dave — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:58:50 -0400

Spiritual entities were once said to determine what was right and what was wrong. This force was thought to be God. Atheists and rationalists rejected this saying that the mind is best equipped for this duty. In this view, what is right or wrong is best judged by the smart educated people because they are most capable of being rational. Thus we have philosophers of ethicists and people who cruise the internet who tell us what is right and wrong. If you don’t believe me, just look at how many posts deal with right and wrong.

Ordinary people get by on a blend of consequence and principle in which they feel principled themselves and expect others to be that way too but their own behavior is arrived at situationally by deciding what is best at the moment.

Since deciding what is principled is difficult, only the most qualified, and smartest people can decide in advance what is right and by looking back hundreds of years they can also determinine what the correct things that everyone in the past should have done. Many of these people, since they no longer go to church inhabit certain departments of certain big time colleges, as I understand it.

Yet if deontology requires such great intelligence, why is it that the anointed get so emotional when their principles are violated. Since brainpower and thus philosophical acumen are unequally divided, as readers here should know, why would one be more emotional about a deontological error than if someone forgot a phone number or muffed an arithmetic problem?

The answer comes from neuro-imaging and psychologic studies that seem to show that deontological decisions, despite being based on supposedly intellectual considerations, actually are knee jerk responses that take less mental work than utilitarian decisions. They are feelings individuals invest in. In this way deontology and ideology are similar. The thing that takes more mental work is when you have to weigh and balance the inevitable utilitarian trade offs, having to choose the better of two evils.

How much simpler life was when superstitious primitives only had to ask if God approved of their deeds. If a violation of His will occurred sacrifice or prayer would tend to make things right. No worrying about the morality of racism, patriarchy, homophobia, global warming, and saving the lives of panda cubs. Whereas you used to have to worry about being persecuted for failing to attend church, now you are labeled as immoral if you don’t recycle, or if you drive an SUV, smoke, discipline your children or go fishing. And you wonder why some people are conservatives.

RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...

Jonathan Wilde — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:55:33 -0400

..author of the most important book of the 20th century.

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that

Micha Ghertner — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:48:31 -0400

Large Hadron Collider nearly ready

Awesome pictures. The comment thread is pretty funny too. We are living in the future!

The strongest gang in the country

Randall McElroy iii — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:16:57 -0400

This story has been all over the bicycle-oriented parts of the blogosphere for days, but you'll notice it will fit on this blog as well. Note: of the two main characters in the video, guess which one was first charged with assaulting the other?

To serve and protect!

Disarming victims and the predictably bad consequences

Randall McElroy iii — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:52:21 -0400

The monopoly on the provision of law and order that the state assumes would be immoral and ineffective even if they were serious about doing it. Legally, they're not, though they are serious about stopping you from trying to do it yourself:

Can a woman facing danger of "separation assault" by a former partner depend on police protection? In one landmark California case, a woman separated from her husband and he retaliated with threats and violence. Over a period of one year, Ruth Bunnell had called the San Jose police at least twenty times to report that her estranged husband Mack had violently assaulted her and her two daughters. Mack had even been arrested once for an assault.

One day Mack called Ruth to say that he was coming to her house to kill her. Ruth called the police for immediate help. The police department "refused to come to her aid at that time, and asked that she call the department again when Mack Bunnell had arrived." Forty-five minutes later Mack arrived and stabbed Ruth to death. Responding to a neighbor's call, the police eventually came to Ruth's house...after she was dead.

Ruth's estate suid the city police for negligently failing to protect her. The California appeals court held that the City of San Jose was shielded from the negligence suit because of a state statute and because there was no "special relationship" between the police and Ruth—the police had not started to help her, and she had not relied on any promise that the police would help. Case dismissed.

...

The Supreme Court has held that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the federal civil rights laws rquire states to protect citizens from crime. As one federal appeals court observed, ordinary citizens have:

no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution ... does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.

When a woman relies solely upon a telephone and the expectation of immediate police help, she is placing her trust in a system that legally owes her nothing. That understood, it only makes sense for women and other potential victims to protect and defend themselves and their families from violent criminals.

from Richard W. Stevens, Hugo Teufel III, and Matthew Y. Biscan, "Disarming Women: Comparing 'Gun Control' to Self-Defense" in Liberty for Women

Jesus Fucking Christ

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:55:09 -0400

Anonymous is legion. Anonymous never forgives. And now, apparently, Anonymous has made it into the mainstream.

[Title image snipped and hidden below the fold at end of post]

On July 9th, Time Magazine's Lev Grossman did an exposé on 20 year old college student moot, the founder of 4chan. What is 4chan, you ask?

You may not realize it, but 4chan has probably touched your life. Possibly inappropriately. 4chan is unusual in several ways. It's extremely large and active; it gets 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month. Since moot started it in 2003, those visitors have put up 145 million posts. By some metrics, 4chan is the fourth largest bulletin board on the Net.

moot founded 4chan when he was 15 as a space where he and his friends could talk about manga and anime; it's based on a popular Japanese site called 2channel. Like 2channel, 4chan is an imageboard: you're supposed to post pictures—snapshots, found images, original artwork, altered or defaced photos—rather than words. 4chan is divided into 43 different boards, ranging from video games to origami to food to "random." The most popular board on 4chan, by far, is random.

There are few rules on 4chan. Child pornography is off limits, but not much else is. Unlike most boards, 4chan doesn't require posters to register, which means they can post anonymously, which leads to a lot of uninhibited behavior. If you're looking for obscenity, blasphemy, homophobia, misogyny and racial insults, you don't have to dig too deep. [...]

Like a lot of unsanitary places, 4chan is gloriously fertile. What grows there is memes—ideas and jokes and fads that spread across the Net. [...]

Coarse as it is, 4chan has no rival as a hothouse for memes; they're bred and refined, and then they can escape and run amuck through the culture at large. For better or for worse, this is what the counterculture looks like today: raw, sarcastic, bare of any social or political agenda but frequently funny as hell.

Then, this month's Maxim did a four page piece ([1][2][3][4]) on Anonymous' battle with Scientology, a more beautiful and appropriate gutter death match no greater than which can be conceived. It seems that terrorizing those who belittle your religion-cum-multi-level-marketing-cum-pyramid scheme with the threat of a defamation lawsuit doesn't work very well when your intended targets are anonymous.

And now, lo and behold, the paper of record has decided to grace /b/ with its coverage in an in depth 10 page magazine piece.

The Grey Lady rightly characterizes /b/tards - the denizens of /b/, 4chan's random and most trafficked board - as classic internet trolls, who exist for the sole purpose of ruining other people's days, provoking them through rude and offensive practical jokes, and savoring the sweet, sweet schadenfreude that inevitably insues.

But, surprisingly, 4chan also demonstrates that trolling is a form of creative destruction for culture. Its inherent cynicism is often taken to ridiculous extremes, but in the process this cynicism acts as a universal acid, forcing us to stop taking our collective sacred cows too seriously, or at least be willing to examine them with a bit more skepticism, if not full out adopting the cynical position.

Through the destruction - the endless molesting, raping, and lynching of sacred cows, comes the creation of new cultural memes, new forms of humor, call backs, and cultural touchstones, many of which originated in /b/, but spread to the rest of Internet, and beyond: lolcats, Rickrolling, Goatse, 2girls1cup, to name a few.

Humor is essentially a cleanser of culture, culling the stale shibboleths of the previous generation and replacing them anew. This has typically been the role of the court jester, the class clown, the professional stand up comedian, all of whom are typically given special dispensation to discuss those touchy subjects that we couldn't get away with talking about in other contexts.

Now, with the power of these Intertubes, anyone and everyone can participate in destructively creative humor and cultural production, anonymously.

/inb4 Post Tits or GTFO

Edit: OP here, HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS.

Catallarchy: Moving stuff that could potentially be construed as gay porn below the fold so you don't get fired since 2003. read more »

Quote Of The Day

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:40:26 -0400

From a comment thread discussing the Fannie and Freddie bailout:

When Microsoft sends a SWAT team to my house for running Linux, I will give your arguments some credence. Bill Gates in his whole life has never committed the amount [of] casual brutality a small city vice squad gets through in one month.

Don't you mean Fair Trade?

Jonathan Wilde — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:22:57 -0400

Steve Sailer makes the following argument:

Reagan instituted tariffs on Japanese cars.
Today, most Japanese cars are made in the US by Americans.
Thus, those tariffs were good policy.

The poverty of the argument lies in not imagining what the alternative world might look like had the tariffs not been instituted. The implication is that Americans would not be making Japanese cars on American soil[1]. And what if they didn't? Would that be a bad thing?

The same argument has been used by opponents of trade for hundreds of years. They imagine that because Americans who today make cars, in that alternative universe of no tariffs, would not be making cars, that they would have no jobs at all.

But are cars the only thing people want to buy? Do they want to buy other things? How strong is people's desire for things? A wise man once said that human wants are unlimited. I can't prove that's true, but everything I know about human nature tells me he's probably right.

Let me imagine a possible alternate universe in which those tariffs aren't instituted:

Japanese make Japanese cars on Japanese soil because it's cheaper. This is presumably why they didn't make them in the US before the tariffs (according to Sailer's argument, anyway. See footnote.)
Americans thus have cheaper cars to buy. Americans' standard of living is raised.
Those Americans who in our universe make Japanese cars on American soil instead make other things that people want in the alternate universe.

If Americans don't produce item X, that is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it could be a very good thing. And it'd be a very bad thing to use tariffs to keep Americans producing X. Isn't it a good thing that a quarter of Americans aren't farmers today like they were a hundred years ago? Basic stuff.

This pattern has been the evolution and growth of all economies: inefficient production seeks out more efficient places, countries don't keep on producing the same stuff year-in-year-out, and on net, everyone benefits over the long run.

He ends with:

It's hard to say exactly why the dogma of free trade has triumphed so completely, but status striving can't be ruled out. Economists are terribly proud that Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage is both significant and not trivial, so showing that you understand has become a major status marker.

Comparative Advantage theory should have starring role in the sequel to Stuff White People Like.

How I wish the "dogma" of free trade had triumphed completely! Very few people are supporters of free trade. It's really only supported by economists and a few of us wacky libertarians. And the White People from Stuff White People Like? The ones that support free healthcare and hate multi-national corporations? More likely, they're expounding on evils of free trade while drinking their fair trade coffee at the local Starbucks.

1. Even that's debatable: how expensive is to build cars in Missouri and sell them in Missouri vs building them in Japan and shipping them to Missouri?

Novakked

Scott Scheule — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:56:33 -0400

Am I the only one alarmed by the fact that Bob Novak is driving? It's not because he hit a person--I mean, come on, who hasn't? Gunning for pedestrians is how lobbyists keep busy when Congress is out of session.

No, I'm worried about this:

Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a homeless man with his Corvette in Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.

A bicyclist had to tell Novak that there was a a man splayed on his windshield. This is different from not seeing a ticket snagged under a wiper. We know from the story that this particular bumper-battered bum wasn't huddled in the fetal position on Novak's hood--no, he was splayed, like a big old kite. Did Novak think the homeless man splattered in front of him was a prodigious mosquito? Did he switch on the wipers?

One more reason I'm moving to New York, where careful urban planning keeps the traffic too thick to reach dangerous speeds.

Summers Vindicated; Feminists Spinning

Brandon Berg — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:22:47 -0400

From Jeff Fecke, the new guy at Alas, a bit of feminist triumphalism regarding a study finding no significant difference in math performance between boys and girls:

So, people, do you remember Larry Summers? Poor, poor Larry Summers, who was attacked mercilessly by those humorless feminists, just because he said women weren’t as good as men at math? He’s been held up by the gender essentialist set as a martyr to the cause of political correctness, convicted in what professional concern-troll William Saletan called a “pseudo-feminist show trial” for daring to give voice to the truth: that women are simply inferior to men when it comes to math. Though they do, I’m told, excel at baking.

This was all very horrible for poor Larry, except for the fact that he was absolutely, categorically wrong. As most of the feminist meanies already knew, women aren’t inferior to men in ability to learn math, science, or anything else. And now we have the data to prove it.

This is very wrong. First off, Fecke's characterization of Summers' argument is almost libelous in its inaccuracy. Summers gave three hypotheses for the underrepresentation of women in math and science, in what he believed was descending order of importance:

1. Women are, on average, less willing or able (e.g., because of the demands of motherhood) to make the commitment of time and energy needed to succeed in highly competitive careers.

2. Although men and women are roughly equally intelligent on average, the male intelligence distribution has higher variance, so men are overrepresented at both tails of the distribution, which is where academics come from*.

3. Differential socialization.

Nowhere did Summers say anything about women being inferior to men, either in general or in terms of math ability. A study finding that boys and girls perform on average equally well on a test of basic math skills is perfectly consistent with everything Summers said.

A couple of commenters pointed out this error, but were quick to assert their feminist bona fides by saying that Summers was wrong about the variation too--that men aren't really overrepresented at the tails of the intelligence distribution. This is wrong. They are, and the study in question backs this up, even though the press release explicitly says otherwise:

Some critics argue, however, that even when average performance is equal, gender discrepancies may still exist at the highest levels of mathematical ability. So the team searched for those, as well. For example, they compared the variability in boys' and girls' math scores, the idea being that if more boys fell into the top scoring percentiles than girls, the variance in their scores would be greater. Again, the effort uncovered little difference, as did a comparison of how well boys and girls did on questions requiring complex problem solving.

I guess it depends on how you define "little." According to this supplement (PDF), the study did find that at the 99th percentile, white boys outnumbered white girls 2 to 1:

For whites, there are 1.45 times as many boys as girls above the 95%ile in grade 11, and twice as many boys as girls above the 99%ile.

Interestingly, this pattern did not hold among Asian Americans:

For Asian Americans, however, at the 99%ile, the gender ratio is 0.91, meaning that more girls than boys scored above the 99%ile.

Also, if you look at table S2 in the supplement, you'll see a fairly large negative effect size for maleness specific to blacks and American Indians--that is, they scored on average 8-9% lower than their female counterparts.

See also the table on page 9 of this document (PDF) from the College Board. In 2004, boys were 2.2 times as likely as girls to score 750+ on the math section (97.8th percentile). The study mentioned above comments on the fact that the average SAT score is higher for boys than for girls and chalks it up to sampling bias (more girls than boys take the SAT), but there's no mention of the sex imbalance in the 700+ range.

To point out what should be obvious, the fact that males outnumber females at the tails of the math ability distribution doesn't mean that we have to tell girls who are good at math that they can't become physicists or mathematicians or software engineers**. It just means that we can't take underrepresentation of women in these fields as a priori evidence of systematic discrimination.

See also Bob Hayes, who should quit slacking off and get back to blogging.

*No comment on which disciplines draw from which tails.

**I'm all for more women in my workplace, albeit for distinctly non-feminist reasons.

Dictatorship is not all bad

Patri Friedman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:02:36 -0400

I only ever got to hear my grandfather speak publicly once, at the CMC Athaneum in Claremont, during college. One of the things he talked about was the odd lack of linkage between political and economic freedom, which was a bit of a puzzle to someone who is in favor of both. The freest economies of the twentieth century, he pointed out, were places like Hong Kong and Singapore that had no political freedom.

One of the points I've been trying to make since the beginning of the Iraq invasion is that benevolent despots are not all bad, and depending on the population, democracy can be worse. Specifically, Saddam Hussein, although a power-hungry dictator who happily murdered his political opponents, was not in any way a Muslim fundamentalist. Quite the opposite, in fact, and his Iraq was (compared to other countries in the region) a pretty good place for education, women's rights, gay rights, etc. Today's Iraq, on the other hand, is much more dominated by religious interests.

This interview w/ Jared Polis provides some evidence for my point:

NL: What did you take back from your trip to Iraq?

JP: It was really interesting and very educational for me. I spent several days in Baghdad and several days in Amman, Jordan. In addition to meeting with many different Iraqis and members of our military off-duty and NGO relief workers, I also got the opportunity to talk to several gay and lesbian Iraqis, too, who have a particular plight.

Under the administration of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was one of the more tolerant Arab countries. It's a relatively low bar, but certainly gays and lesbians weren't openly hunted or killed. It was much like it was in Jordan today, where there is a somewhat thriving underground gay and lesbian community that was officially tolerated. But now, really, every gay and lesbian that could flee Iraq has fled Iraq. Anybody who's known, or even suspected, to be gay or lesbian is hunted down and frequently killed by some of the fundamentalist militias there. Most Iraqi gays and lesbians have fled to Jordan. There are a few remaining in Iraq, and a few safehouses do exist, but that only really reemphasized the need, including in this country, to include gender identity protections, because the first to be hunted down in Iraq are those who defy the gender stereotypes--men who are effeminate, or women who are masculine or otherwise suspected of being gay or lesbian.

It's a very real human rights issue that hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves.

I'm not saying that the democratization of Iraq was a net negative for its citizens (although that may be the case, when you count the costs of war damage). But when you tot up the costs and benefits, you need to include things like this - areas where freedom has, ironically, been reduced by democracy.

Democracy reducing freedom is very counterintuitive to most of us, I think. We've been brainwashed from birth to believe that democracy is the greatest safeguard of human rights, and dictatorships are purely horrible things that ban all free expression. But that viewpoint is naive - some demoses are worse than some dictators in some ways - perhaps even overall.

First Reason to Like One of Them

Brian Macker — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:03:09 -0400

Well I've found my first reason for liking a presidential candidate this year. Not that I'm trying very hard, being a rational voter. McCain is against bailing out Fannie Mae.

Up to this point I had disliked him due to McCain-Feingold and at least he is not tied to racism like Barack "Trinity Church" Obama , or Ron "Newsletter" Paul was.

I hadn't like Paul for other reasons. His blame terrorism on America stance was a one issue killer for me. The world is more complex than "We'll stay out of everyone's business and they'll be nice".

I still don't have a candidate I like enough to vote for and I don't hate any candidate enough to "vote for the other guy" at this point so it looks like I won't be voting at all. I do think Obama is going to make a mess of the economy but I think that of all the candidates.

This Fannie Mae stance was only a minor sign that McCain gets the economics, but Bush had such "minor signs" before he was elected and he proceeded to screw up the economy more than it already was. He was into bailouts, tariffs and keeping Alan Greenspan around to inflate the currency, for example.

We are in real deep economic trouble and most people don't recognize it. Whoever is president is going to inherit a mess. I wonder how it's going to play out. If it's Obama he might get sainted like FDR did for making things worse. I don't think McCain will get that benefit. Even if he does exactly right things I think he will be blamed for the troubles and may not make a second term.

Note that I think doing exactly the right things is going to make lots of people unhappy, including me. Financially I'm betting they'll do the wrong things because it's the politically expedient thing to do. In fact, I might vote for Obama to increase my odds of being right. Inflation, here she comes.

[Update: When I began writing this post I was thinking about the winning candidates of the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties. I don't particularly like Bob Barr. Yes, it was hyperbole to say "First reason to like one of them". No it doesn't neccesarily apply to Ron Paul, or in fact any of the candidates. In general I was trying to express how jaded I feel about the candidates. Sorry if that lead to any misunderstandings.]

The Problem with Pragmatism

Brandon Berg — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:01:18 -0400

Recycling a comment I made on this post by Bobvis:

The problem with pragmatism is that it's just not practical. Ideal pragmatism is great--freed from ideological constraints, you can just do what works!--but ideal pragmatism isn't an option.

What we actually get is real-world pragmatism: People's beliefs about what policies produce the best results are driven more by ideology and cognitive bias than by actual evidence. And those are just the people who at least make a good-faith (if weak) attempt at intellectual honesty. Those with vested interests in certain policies may deliberately present evidence skewed in favor of their side. In short, we get something not entirely dissimilar to the system we have now.

The weakness of a principled approach--that it leaves no room for discretion--is also its strength, since discretion is as likely to be used for ill as for good. More likely, I'd say. An electorate with a knee-jerk anti-government reflex is likely to produce better policy than one laboring under the illusion that it's enlightened and pragmatic.

The best approach, I think, is to give liberty the benefit of the doubt in all cases, much as we do for criminal defendants. Only intervene where there's a strong consensus that it's absolutely necessary. For example, if I were writing a constitution, I would require a 4/5 majority in the legislature to pass a new law, and require only a simple majority, or perhaps a 2/5 minority, to void an existing law.

Batman As Agorist Hero?

Micha Ghertner — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:45:37 -0400

I'm flying to Chicago this morning to attend an IHS seminar on Liberty, Communication & Change, starring friend-of-the-blog lecturer Glen Whitman. I will probably not have much Internet access for the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch The Dark Night while I'm there in the city of windbag politicians. So I'm putting this idea out there for any of you to riff on, since I may not have time to write about it until I get back.

What should libertarians think about vigilantism? Is vigilantism incompatible with a liberal order and the rule of law? Or are vigilante crime fighters such as Batman agorist heroes?

Robert Nozick takes the anti-Batman position, arguing that it is legitimate for Gotham police to monopolize the law enforcement market and punish any costumed crusaders who attempt to compete with it, on the grounds that vigilantism is too risky, and that it can be legitimately prohibited, so long as the potential vigilantes are compensated for their loss of freedom.

Randy Barnett takes the pro-Batman position, arguing that:

For practical and moral reasons, procedural fairness and knowledge by enforcers of the guilt of their suspects are moral goals to be striven for. Our efforts to achieve them, however, cannot violate the rights of any individual. To punish a victim for taking restitution from his actual aggressor just because he wasn't sure it really was his aggressor is a violation of that victim's right of self-defense and, therefore, a violation of our moral side-constraint. The right of self-defense, then, dictates that procedural fairness and epistemic certainty are goals, not constraints.

- Randy Barnett, "Wither Anarchy? Has Robert Nozick Justified The State?" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1. pp 15-21 Pergamon Press, 1977

What say you, dear reader?

Edit: While I'm asking what libertarians should think about Batman, it's worth mentioning that Batman is a Misesian.

The Dark Knight

Randall McElroy iii — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:06:41 -0400

...is amazing. Heath Ledger steals the show, and would even if he weren't dead. I just wanted to be on record saying this.

Preemptive Redistribution

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:08:12 -0400

Maybe I'm missing something here, but there seems to be a disconnect between two consecutive Fly Bottle posts. First, Will argues:

The argument on offer here is an argument for preemptive redistribution. We have to redistribute so that injustice doesn’t occur. But this kind of argument, like arguments for preemptive war, face a high bar. You need to be pretty convincing that in the absence of preemptive action, something bad will occur. I think egalitarians almost never get over that bar.

But then he follows up in the very next post with:

I also like mandatory retirement accounts for paternalistic reasons that are also sort of libertarian. Means-tested benefits for old people is a better idea than our stupid current system, but would encourage too little retirement savings. Why? Old people are so politically powerful that these benefits will be too high to make saving rational. So forcing people to transfer their own money to their future selves prevents them from later forcing others to transfer them money when old.

How is this not also a case of preemptive redistribution? We forcibly transfer money from people's past selves to their future selves so that they don't later predate on other people's past selves. But how is "old people stealing from young people using their superior political power" any different than "rich people stealing from poor people using their superior political power"? Is it that old people are more of a monolithic voting bloc than rich people?

While that may be true, surely many more government transfers -- trade barriers, restrictions on labor mobility, publicly financed institutions of higher education, professional licensing, intellectual property privileges, etc. -- are a transfer from the relatively poor to the relatively rich, compared to the number of government transfers from the relatively young to the relatively old. Hell, the costs of restrictions on labor mobility alone arguably swamp Medicare and Social Security combined, and those who most suffer from those restrictions do not have the ability to vote them down, since they are not U.S. citizens.

Incidentally, it always amuses me when people suggest that the solution to government capture by the wealthy is government capture by the poor, as if playing what has always been a losing man's game is going to one day, miraculously, turn into a winner. The only way to win a losing game is to stop playing.

Are You Down With UPPP?

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:45:21 -0400

So I just had a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty three weeks ago to deal with my sleep apnea, with an interesting result:

I can no longer correctly pronounce my own name.

While I generally introduce myself to non-Hebrew speakers as "my-kah", like the mineral, my name is actually pronounced "mee-cha", with a guttural "ch", like in the German "Bach" or Scottish "Loch." Without a uvula, I can no longer make this sound.

On the bright side, at least I have a new cocktail party icebreaker.

One Way To Solve The Immigration "Problem"

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:09:50 -0400