Category: Libertarian

Anecdote Against Anti-Capitalism

Remember stories like this through all the lies we’ll hear in the next few years about the trouble with capitalism and how it’s a tool of the rich.

The free-for-all is a boon to the millions of Americans who want to trade in their bulky analog sets. Thanks to the likes of Westinghouse, which undercut the prices of premier brands by 20% to 40%, LCDs are no longer a luxury item. Nearly one-third of the 30 million TVs sold in North America in 2006 had LCDs, and by yearend they’re expected to account for half of all TV sales. The average 27-in. LCD set now retails for less than $650, compared with $1,000 in early 2006, says iSuppli, while 40-in. models have plunged to about $1,600, down from $3,000 during the same period.
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For many in the industry, though, the competition is brutal. Prices for LCD sets are falling so rapidly that retailers who place orders too far in advance risk getting stuck with expensive inventory. Circuit City Stores Inc. (CC) cited plummeting prices in its Feb. 8 announcement that it will shutter nearly 70 outlets. The Asian companies that make the LCD panels that go into the TVs are getting slammed, too. Korea’s LG.Philips LCD Co. (LPL) attributed a $186 million loss in the fourth quarter to the 40% drop in display prices last year. With panel prices expected to fall 20% in 2007, the world’s dozen or so makers of displays are scrambling to sell at almost any price just to generate the cash to survive. “The cuts have stressed everybody in the supply chain,” says Paul Semenza, the vice-president for display research at iSuppli.

No doubt this type of example will fuel people like Sebastian Mallaby into pushing for a bigger safety net, propped up through higher taxes. That would be a bad lesson. Instead, notice how those who want an LCD television can now get more for less. Some who couldn’t afford such a TV last year will now be able to purchase one. This is progress, and it can apply to any field when unrestrained by nonsensical falsehoods. The flaw is never with capitalism, only with how it’s implemented or who does the implementing.

Violent attacks on liberty will be censored.

I haven’t seen the report mentioned in this story, but I don’t need to read it to know that any recommendation it makes is unconstitutional. The First Amendment says what it says, without exceptions for violence or protecting children from potential harm. This is classic government overreach permitted by populist ramblings.

Television networks are free to sprinkle their programs with shootings, slashings, torture and other gore because the government has no regulatory authority over violent programming. But a draft report being circulated at the Federal Communications Commission says Congress can change that, without violating the First Amendment.

Networks are free to sprinkle such things into their programs because we have a previously recognized right to free speech expression. Cable has even more freedom, yet it’s hard to argue that those networks are showing more than the broadcast networks. Any viewing of a commercial for 24 should be enough to counter such silly complaints. (Also important, we’re more upset about fake torture on television than real torture by our government? That’s majoritarianism at its most hypocritical.)

The long-overdue report suggests Congress could craft a law that would let the agency regulate violent programming much like it regulates sexual content and profanity _ by barring it from being aired during hours when children may be watching, for example.

Take one wrong idea and perpetuate it. This is what we’ve come to. Every decision made by every person should be filtered through whether or not it’s appropriate for children. We really are marching along to ever-more statism while the majority stands by and cheers.

I have a better idea: parents. Shocking, I know, but it seems to work when applied. It’s easier to pass time-consuming parenting decisions to someone else, I suppose. I don’t have kids, so maybe I’m missing the point. I thought it was to experience raising a child from dependence to independence. Is it really just a task designed to pass a child from one dependence to another? Maybe it’s a scam to have free labor for household chores.

Dan Isett, director of corporate and government affairs for the Parents Television Council, said the industry’s campaign to make parents the violence police is “purely designed to convince the Congress that they (programmers) are being responsible.”

The parental blocking technologies are insufficient due to a flawed television rating system, he said. As for the argument that cable is pressuring broadcasters to be edgier, Isett believes that’s nonsense.

Umm, if the ratings system is flawed, presumably letting inappropriate violent content senak into a lighter rating when parents might expect otherwise, parents should block shows with the offending rating. If that means you block everything but G-rated content on the Disney channel, so be it. That’s simple, and technology most certainly can handle that. Instead, the Parents Television Council wants government to do the job for parents. No effort needed. This would be bad enough if it applied to PTC members, but the PTC obviously wants all children shielded from what it deems inappropriate. Start with majoritarian nonsense and swirl in a batch of authoritarian goodness.

Enjoy this most laughable claim in the article:

The issue is bipartisan. Martin, a Republican, gave a joint interview to The Associated Press with Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps.

Getting a proud censor like Commissioner Copps on board for more FCC regulations is about as compelling as stating that scientists believe our planet revolves around the sun. Duh. I’d rather hear from someone who believes the Constitution is still enough justification to restrain American government. That would involve principles rather than politics, though, so I don’t expect to hear it from anyone in office.

I don’t know how serious this is.

If you need to break the oppressive chain blocking you from using someone else’s property on your own terms, resourceful individuals are working to make sure you can have whatever you want. Behold the WiFi Liberator:

Wifi Liberator is an open-source toolkit for a laptop computer that enables its user to “liberate” pay-per-use wireless networks and create a free, open node that anyone can connect to for Internet access. The project is presented as a challenge to existing corporate or “locked” private wireless nodes to encourage the proliferation of free networks and connectivity across the planet. The project was inspired by the ongoing “battle” between providers broadcasting wireless signals in public spaces, in particular: corporate entities, wireless community groups, individual users, and proponents of open networks. Like my Wifi-Hog project, the Wifi-Liberator critically examines the tensions between providers trying to profit from the increasingly minimal costs associated with setting up a public network and casual users who simply want to see the Internet transform into another “public utility” and become as ubiquitous and free as the air we breath. The project targets pay-per-use wireless networks as often found in airports, other public terminals, hotels, global-chain coffee shops, and other public waiting points.

I’ve traditionally recognized such liberation as theft.

It’s irrelevant how minimal the costs associated with setting up a public network happens to be. Price and value include more than just expense. Bandwidth supply is not unlimited at any one point. For users who have a critical need, however legitimate, they can have the access they need if they’ll pay the price. Casual users need not pay or use the service if they don’t like the price. If it’s not profitable because enough people won’t pay to cover those minimal cost, the business will adjust or die. As long as there’s a profitable model, someone will find it. That is how (closer to) free access should and will arrive.

Via Boing Boing

Forgive me if I can’t find my outrage.

I will not be upset by this story:

Citing the controversy surrounding the Dakota Fanning film Hounddog, the leader of the state Senate Republicans says he wants the government to review scripts before cameras start rolling in North Carolina.

I’m serious when I say I will not be upset. The headline – “Republican Scripts need reviewing” – is designed to outrage. Look at the First Amendment violation! I can buy into that. Except, I can’t.

That system, said state Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would apply only to films seeking the state’s lucrative filmmaker incentive, which refunds as much as 15 percent of what productions spend in North Carolina from the state treasury.

“Why should North Carolina taxpayers pay for something they find objectionable?” said Berger, who is having proposed legislation drafted.

State Sen. Berger is correct. Why should North Carolina taxpayers pay for something they (might) find objectionable? I’d take him a step further, though, and ask why should North Carolina, or any taxpayer, pay for film production?

Berger pointed to South Carolina, which requires up-front applications from producers, who must attach a copy of their script.

Even so, said Jeff Monks, South Carolina’s film commissioner, the state does not assess the content of a proposed movie.

“Censorship is not part of our activity,” he said. The purpose of asking for the script is to see whether it conforms to the budget and schedule information producers are required to provide.

“We want to see if this film is doable and a good investment for the people of the state,” he said.

It’s not a legitimate government expense. Film producers will find cheap, quality locations without government help through competition. Movies are their investment. Taxpayer money spent to benefit producers is not an investment to the taxpayers. I’m sure North Carolina residents will not be sharing in the profits of Hounddog. This should be obvious.

With this story, the familiar refrain is always that he who pays gets to decide. This is true whether it’s customers buying vegan cookies instead of non-vegan cookies or a government buying film production instead of commissioning paintings. If you don’t want censorship, don’t take someone else’s money. The First Amendment protection against censorship only applies to your own dime.

(Source: Fark)

Pointing fingers will help, I’m sure.

I guess if I want to be in with the cool kids in the blogosphere, I need to talk about Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. The problem is, with a title like that, I don’t care. It says everything necessary to dismiss the book without further contemplation. I haven’t read it, nor will I. But Mr. D’Souza’s first column for Townhall.com warrants a comment.

As I returned home to the United States, I wondered: are these students right? I don’t think American culture as a whole is guilty of the charge of moral depravity. But there is a segment of our culture that is perverse and pornographic, and perhaps this part of American culture is the one that foreigners see. Wrongly, they identify one face of America with the whole of America. When they protest what they see as the glamorization of pornography and vice, however, it’s hard to deny that they have a point.

“They hate us for our freedoms” is a tired slogan, but it takes an especially perverse anti-liberty sentiment to add on “they’re right to hate us for that freedom.” It’s absurd and should be shunned from the public sphere of ideas by everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone hates assaulting the Constitution. (There’s a nuance involving freedom in quotes, but that makes no sense because we’re talking about consensual choices.)

I think Mr. D’Souza’s mistake becomes clear here:

Groups like the ACLU have taken the approach that pornography rights, like the rights of accused criminals, are best protected at their outermost extreme. This means is that the more foul the obscenity, the harder liberals must fight to allow it. By protecting expression at its farthest reach, these activists believe they are fully securing the free speech rights of the rest of us.

There is no flaw in what Mr. D’Souza attacks. All rights must be protected at their extremes. Whatever limitations the majority desires still leaves the minority grasping to retain what inherently belongs to everyone. The right to not do something must include the corresponding right to do that something. No one will fight publishing “the bunny is grey.” But when the bunny starts attacking the chickens in the coop with a machete and blood and feathers are flying all over the page, someone must defend it when the moralists come charging to society’s rescue.

Mr. D’Souza believes that whatever is an outlier, especially if it’s repugnant to most, must therefore be unworthy of protection. Unfortunately, there are principles of rights and liberty that are more vision-impaired than Mr. D’Souza’s belief that his 20/20 analysis is enough.

Despicability is no excuse for revenge and savagery.

Better late than never? Charles Krauthammer’s column from last week on the execution of Saddam Hussein is an example:

Of the 6 billion people on this Earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed but tortured and mutilated — doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the preeminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Krauthammer makes excellent points about all of it, the execution, the Iraqi government, and our mistakes. But this is not the meat of his essay for me. This is:

True, Hussein’s hanging was just and, in principle, nonsectarian. But the next hanging might not be. Breaking precedent completely undermines the death penalty provision, opening the way to future revenge and otherwise lawless hangings.

Let me rewrite that in terms that, unless he’s changed his tune, I doubt Mr. Krauthammer would agree with. Consider:

True, the enemy combatant’s torture was just and, in principle, nonsectarian. But the next torture might not be. Breaking precedent completely undermines the Geneva Conventions, opening the way to future revenge and otherwise lawless torture.

How is Mr. Krauthammer’s statement logical and mine illogical? They’re the same because justice and the rule of law should be supreme. Whether or not someone deserves a specific punishment is sometimes open for debate. But breaking precedent is a terrible idea, given the clear line of increasing abuses that result. History has taught us this, which is why we’ve fought hard to eliminate these from our system of justice, both civil and military. We must not surrender the moral ground we’ve recovered from the foul grip of convenience.

The decision to hastily execute, or to torture, is wrong, regardless of who is being executed or tortured.

A Vision of a Future America

Smokers receive little sympathy for their habit and its consequences. Some of that is warranted, as I’ve told both of my brothers who smoke. It’s a stupid habit that’s known to cause serious health problems. Who in their right mind would start today, knowing what we know. But there are no apparent bounds to human stupidity, so smoking survives¹. That informs the public debate, but should not dictate it. It does, though, an it will increase if we move to a single-payer health care system. Are we immune to liberty-despising lunacy like this?

Smokers who refuse to give up the habit should be denied some types of surgery, a respiratory expert says.

Matthew Peters said denying smokers joint replacement surgery, breast reconstructions and some other types of elective surgery was justified because the operations were more risky and costly when performed on smokers.

“In healthcare systems with finite resources, preferring non-smokers over smokers for a limited number of procedures will deliver greater clinical benefit to individuals and the community,” Associate Professor Peters said in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal.

“To fail to implement such a clinical judgment would be to sacrifice sensible clinical judgment for the sake of a non-discriminatory principle.”

To be fair, in the context of a silly idea, it has its logic. But the rules must be convoluted to get there.

To Mr. Peters, greater clinical benefit to individuals results from denying procedures to smokers. I’m quite certain that the smokers will not derive greater clinical benefit. What Mr. Peters really means is the community. There is no individual in single-payer health care, just a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis where the parameters are set by an outside party. Perhaps the smoker values hip replacement surgery enough to pay for it himself, where the non-smoker will only have it done because it’s paid for by the government. There are only two people who can make that decision, and the bureaucrat isn’t one of them.

In a private market, the smoker would pay the added insurance expense for his habit, and would weigh the risk decision with his physician. All people are not alike, so it’s feasible that smoker X will have a different risk than smoker Y. Again, who is better qualified to make that individual decision, based on relevant facts, the doctor or the bureaucrat?

“Therefore, so long as everything is done to help patients stop smoking, it is both responsible and ethical to implement a policy that those unwilling or unable to stop should have low priority for, or be excluded from, certain elective surgical procedures,” he said.

I have no interest in seeing this in America. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I’m a vegan. According to the standards of a bureaucrat, I probably come out alright, unless a bureaucrat deems insufficient milk intake a danger to bone health, for example. Then, like everyone else in America who isn’t perfect, I’m screwed. Should I be sent for dairy re-education to make sure my bones don’t become brittle? Extreme, yes. Impossible, no. “So long as everything is done to help patients stop …” and “those unwilling or unable to stop” are the clues.

I’ve determined the possible effects of my health choices. I understand what I could face and I’ve compensated as well as I can. And I’m willing to pay for the consequences, both in health and dollars if I’m wrong. That individual calculation gets pushed aside in the world of single-payer health care. Liberty demands that we not embrace that nonsense, but economics and quality of care dictate the same. Pick your preference. Unless you hate both, the choice is easy.

Source: Bodyhack

¹ I’m not talking recreational smoking, although that’s dangerous. I’m talking about addiction. When smoking begins to cause serious health problems and the smoker can’t quit, that’s the where stupidity can lead. Or should I say excess stupidity. And yes, as the rest of this entry will show, people are entitled to what is in my opinion excess stupidity to harm themselves.

How do we protect government from itself?

This is a few weeks old, but I’m just seeing it now. Accidental vacations have a way of encouraging information delinquency. Anyway, the underlying concepts won’t age, so here it is:

Trans fats are largely synthetic fats widely used in fried foods and baked goods. There is substantial medical evidence that they are significant contributors to heart disease (perhaps increasing the incidence of heart disease by as much as 6 percent) because they both raise the cholesterol that is bad for you (LDL) and lower the cholesterol that helps to protect your arteries against the effects of the bad cholesterol (HDL). About half of New York City’s 20,000 restaurants use trans fats in their cooking; and roughly a third of the caloric intake of New Yorkers comes from restaurant meals.

That’s from Richard Posner, at The Becker-Posner Blog. It’s a fair enough assessment of trans fats and why health officials think it’s bad. There is no harm in information, right? But how do those facts justify a complete ban on the ingredient in all New York City restaurant meals?

What is missing in this analysis is a cost that, ironically, a great Chicago economist, George Stigler, did more than any other economist to make a part of mainstream economic analysis: the cost of information. It might seem, however, that the cost of informing consumers about trans fats would be trivial–a restaurant would tell its customers whether or not it used trans fats, if that is what they’re interested in, and if it lied it would invite class action suits for fraud. But there is a crucial difference between the cost of disseminating information and the cost of absorbing it.

When I first read through this, I’d intended to discuss “the cost of absorbing it” in this context. But that would be less interesting than this, from later in the paragraph:

Actually the danger would be impossible to explain to diners, because it would depend on the diner’s average daily consumption of trans fats, which neither the diner nor the restaurant knows.

Want to take any guesses about who else doesn’t know the diner’s average daily consumption of trans fats? The government, of course, although it’s less far-fetched to believe that the government wants to know. Rather than the invasive, suspect process needed to keep an accurate, or even approximate, tally, it’s easier to just ban everything. That way, the government knows how much trans fat diners will consume in restaurants.

The acceptance of paternalism continues:

In such a situation, even those of us who distrust government regulation of the economy should be open to the possibility that the ban on trans fats would produce a net improvement in the welfare of New Yorkers by satisfying a preference that most of them would have if the cost of absorbing information about the good in question were not prohibitive.

There are tidbits of possible solutions sprinkled throughout the entry. Instead of less troublesome tactics such as mandatory labeling and government marketing against trans fats, Judge Posner finds government prohibition amenable. Unreal. The cost is less prohibitive in either of my hypothetical solutions, although they’re still far from libertarian dreams. Judge Posner’s conclusion is incompatible with liberty.

Hat tip: Hit & Run

Forced at gunpoint to wield a gun. What’s to fear?

I always have been, and always will be, against the military draft. Start with a process that makes demands on only 50% of the population (hey, wait a minute). Then throw in forced servitude for no other crime than being born the correct unlucky sex. Finally, give control over that process to politicians/central planners. It results in a fine constitutional mess of injustice and economic inefficiency. It’s all quite anti-liberty. Thus, it remains in the government arsenal.

In light of recent events the length of time since it last occurred, Selective Service is interested in a dry run of the system. It’s unlikely to happen until 2009, according to the article. Even now I’d be in the tail end of those eligible, so my number would not likely come up for consideration. By 2009, I’ll be pushing the outer range limit even more. All said, I’m not particularly worried for myself. However, I’m qualified to address this anyway:

The Selective Service “readiness exercise” would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective Service director for operations and chief information officer.

“We’re kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf” until needed, Campbell said. “Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, ‘Turn the machine on’ … we’re still on the shelf.”

We don’t fear the machine itself, but that machine, at the discretion of elected dolts, becomes a weapon designed to send men to fight a war. It has the ability to make life hell for a lot of people, unless we choose to consider involuntary servitude something other than hell. I’m not willing to embrace another definition, which means I can think of “some reason”.

Happy Birthday, Bill of Rights?

Umm, okay:

The most positive trend of 2006 (surely there had to be one) was described in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month by Jeff Zaslow in a piece titled, “Comedy Comes Clean.” Notwithstanding the fact that the movie “Borat” was a “scatological sensation,” Mr. Zaslow described stand-up comedy’s new turn toward humor passed through a sieve of normal decency. My favorite, from comedian Michael Jr.: “Someone asked me if I’m pro-gay. I’m not pro-gay or amateur gay. I didn’t even know they had a league.”

Wow, isn’t that wonderful? I’m skeptical about the claim that comedy has suddenly turned to normal decency, whatever that is. But if it has, fine. What I’m fascinated by is the apparent push for this through the self-correcting nature of the (comedy) market. If this can happen, and it does as economics explains with all sub-markets of the overall market, what justification exists for allowing the Congress to continue violating the Constitution through the FCC?

The author, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, goes on to place the blame, or at least causation, for the new trend at the feet of Eddie Murphy. The argument makes little sense, but it’s mostly irrelevant to the topic. Some comedians use the f-word. Some don’t. This is not news. Instead, the essay seems to serve little purpose other than to allow the author to close with this:

Can we blame this verbal morass on the Supreme Court? Maybe. Back in 1973, in Papish, the court ruled on a college that tried to ban a student newspaper showing a cop raping the Statue of Liberty. The college had a rule that students should observe “generally accepted standards of conduct.” It lost, 6-3.

Chief Justice Warren Burger’s long-forgotten dissent is relevant to a society today that vulgarizes simple conversation while euphemizing or banning its darker thoughts. Justice Burger defended the right of students to criticize their school or government “in vigorous, or even harsh, terms.” But he called the student publication “obscene and infantile.” A university, he suggested, is ” an institution where individuals learn to express themselves in acceptable, civil terms. We provide that environment to the end that students may learn the self-restraint necessary to the functioning of a civilized society and understand the need for those external restraints to which we must all submit if group existence is to be tolerable.”

“Tolerable.” That’s an interesting, old-fashioned word. It’s not quite the same as “tolerant,” is it? As t-words go, I think I prefer “tolerable” to the current alternatives.

I can think of a word to describe Chief Justice Burger’s dissent, but it isn’t tolerable. External restraints? When coming from the government, for no other reason than to make group existence “tolerable”, whatever that means, external restraint should be seen as a clear violation of the First Amendment. You’re not wise enough to be trusted with freedom. We must restrain you, lest you wreak havoc on society. Silly gobbledygook. And execrable.

Consume your clean comedy if it makes you happy, but you do not have a legitimate right to prevent me from enjoying “unclean” comedy.