TOS has a gift shop!

Back in June, I blogged about the "Standard Bearer" subscription package offered by The Objective Standard and illustrated the post with an image of the handsome shirt being offered at the time as a give-away.

That drew a positive comment from one reader and made me wish that TOS had some kind of gift shop.

Well, now it does!

The initial selection includes the tee shirt I posted earlier and two others, one of them featuring a picture of the globe encircled by the words, "Exploit the Earth or die!" This same theme also occurs on the first TOS mug as shown on the right. (The other side is silk-screened with "The Objective Standard: A Journal of Culture and Politics" and "TheObjectiveStandard.com".)

Fire back with overwhelming intellectual force at the bumper sticker crowd -- by giving some publicity to your own views, getting the chance to expound on them in person should you draw a snide comment, and promoting a journal that espouses and defends the values of Western Civilization in the process. I love it!

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 232

The Case Against Libertarianism

In the process of answering a commenter , Amit Ghate has made the best plain-language and relatively short case against libertarianism I have ever seen.

[F]aced with an unsupported or improperly supported answer, no one in the sciences would say: "who cares, we have the same result, so why can't we all just get along and ignore the 'trivial' difference in how we arrived at it." Anyone with any regard for science guards the process and methods much more fervently than he guards any one particular result -- because only with the proper method can one arrive at truth and advance knowledge (including rooting out any innocent errors that one may make along the way). Without method -- or even worse, dismissing method, data, premises and logic as irrelevant -- one not only has no claim to the term "conclusion", but more importantly, one becomes the wholesale enemy of knowledge itself. And this is precisely the case with the libertarian movement....

The only "Objectivist twist" on all of this is that, in this day and age, only Objectivists seem to apply the principles generally accepted within the sciences to the humanities. That is, Objectivists holds philosophy to be a field of knowledge and as such maintain that it must arrive at its conclusions by a proper method. The essence of this method consists in abstracting concepts from their referents in reality, initially via sense perception, and then continuing with new identifications and wider abstractions and generalizations, all the while ensuring that the growing body of knowledge is logically verified and integrated. Acquiring knowledge is thus a painstaking and demanding task, but nothing less can result in truth or meaning.

This ties in quite well with a short comment I made recently regarding the problem of intellectual context for aphorisms and with a more lengthy discussion of my own regarding the snide comments libertarians often make about disputes within the Objectivist movement.

"Impediments" to the Libertarian Movement

As if to provide an example in support of Amit Ghate's point, Mark Hendrickson of FrontPage Magazine bemoans the divisiveness within the libertarian movement, citing the many incompatible philosophic beliefs (and conclusions) of its various adherents and asking, basically, "Why can't we all just get along?" in the process.

The fact that there is only one actual meaning of "liberty" and only one philosophic way of getting to it lends a certain surface credibility to Hendrickson's charges that more consistent libertarians are hurting the cause of freedom by arguing for greater ideological consistency. After all, when so many people are wrong in so many ways, those who want to wish away the need for objectivity in political thought have an easy time dismissing arguments as such as unimportant because of all the confusion they can point to.

This provides cover for one of the movement's greatest sins: confusing the virtue of political tolerance with the vice of epistemological tolerance (i.e., sloppiness). To insist on another person meaning the same thing before allying with him in a movement is a far cry from wishing to quash dissent through the apparatus of the government, and yet many libertarians draw analogies between the two all the time.

Pretending that ideas that would destroy freedom if put into practice are compatible with promoting liberty will not, as Hendrickson puts it, "quit allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the better." It will merely allow the incorrect to continue being the enemy of the good.

The libertarian movement, with its rejection of objectivity in the realm of political philosophy, is an impediment to liberty. It is too bad that its impotence in the political realm is not matched by a lack of influence on the public debate. Alas, it is easier to destroy than to build. The confusion they sow makes it far more difficult for those of us who actually do promote liberty (because we really know what it is) to gain and keep the enormous value that is political freedom.

Hilarious Video

Stop by Spark a Synapse and see an idiot who drives with a horn rather than a brain get what's coming to him.

-- CAV

Red Light Cameras See Green

Whether Big Brother is busy telling you what you may or may not eat, where (or whether) you are allowed to smoke, or whether you may continue driving your own car, it is mind boggling how much of our freedom is being taken away lately in the name of protecting us. Those of us who know better understand this to be an impossibility: To live lives proper to man, we must be free.

We also look upon the government officials who push such measures with the proper degree of suspicion. Being politicians, these are people who have power over others as a major, if not a primary motivation. Unfortunately, so many of our journalists are too lazy or complicit in such schemes and end up giving them something they do not deserve: the benefit of the doubt.

Even so, you can't fool all of the people all of the time, as Mark Twain once put it. Case in point: A couple of months ago, an official in Chicago belied the stated purpose of red light cameras when he proposed an ordinance to ban red light camera detectors in motor vehicles!

After getting wind that a Chicago company known for its radar detectors and GPS navigation systems was about to hit the market with a $449.95 red-light and speed camera detector, Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke vowed to remain one step ahead of the technology game.

He's drafting an ordinance for introduction at the July 19 City Council meeting that would ban camera detectors.

Ever since Chicago entered the Brave New World of traffic enforcement, City Hall has insisted that red-light cameras were about safety -- not money. That's even though red-light cameras now positioned at 39 accident-prone intersections generated 304,011 tickets and $17.9 million in 2006 alone.

On Thursday, Burke gave up the ghost. He acknowledged that red light cameras are, indeed, about raising money -- and that the proposed ban is about keeping the gravy train rolling.

"Of course it is. It's budgeted in our annual appropriation ordinance. That's why all of these cameras are being installed. You can't deny the reality. The reality is people blow through these intersections and they're going to be caught and they're going to be fined...It has become a big revenue source," Burke said.

"I don't think the goal is to allow the motorist to subvert the system we're spending so much money on....Why waste money on the cameras?" [bold added]

Leaving aside the question of whether such cameras should exist at all, Burke should have welcomed news of these potentially life-saving devices. Obviously, he did not.

As a government official, Edward Burke's proper role is to protect the individual rights and the lives of his constituents. Not to defend the government installing surveillance equipment in public places, but Burke's question, "Why waste money on the cameras?" sums up eloquently a disregard for both our rights and our lives that is all too common among politicians today -- and accepted without the least bit of indignation by most people.

And what about our journalists? This story is two months old and the only reason I know about it at all is because I happened to look at a blog I very rarely read hosted by an alternative paper. (And its focus was on the technology.) Oh yeah. When they're not busy cheerleading such "public welfare" measures, they're busy parroting such nonsense as, "This is not about revenue. This is about changing the behavior and public safety."

Well, if you count "getting the public used to being watched by the government" as "changing behavior", the above government official was honest one out of three times. Fine for a batting average in baseball, but not enough integrity for (proper) government work.

Burke's ordinance should have instantly made national news and the man should have been hounded out of office by now. Our culture is, alas, a far cry from the days when such mottoes as "Live free or die" were generally understood, and therefore regarded seriously.

-- CAV

Low Health Care Ranking Debunked

John Stossel takes a look under the hood of the WHO study that Michael Moore and so many others make so much of when they push for socialized medicine, and finds, in his words, "less than meets the eye".

So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.

Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.

When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

Unsurprisingly, the study also skewed its results through a criterion it called "fairness", which basically gave points for government interference in the medical sector -- a category in which our nation should strive mightily for last place.

And Stossel's not done yet. He closes with this teaser: "Next week: the truth about the Commonwealth Fund study." Stay tuned.

-- CAV

Around the Web on 8-28-07

In the process of straightening out my blogroll last night, I uncovered enough interesting stuff to make a larger roundup than usual, so here goes....

Another Look at the "Fair Tax"

Sunday, I linked to a Wall Street Journal article that savaged the 2008 version of the Flat Tax, the "Fair Tax". Although my fundamental criticism of this tax is sound (i.e., that it is not based on principled opposition to the welfare state and will not result in a substantial shrinking of the welfare state), this article by proponent Neal Boortz indicates that the Journal may have been incorrect in some of its criticisms.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't enough demagoguery to go around:

Bartlett also joins other critics in another blatant falsehood about the FairTax. Here's a sentence from his column: "If a product costs $1 at retail, the FairTax adds 30%, for a total of $1.30. Since the 30-cent tax is 23% of $1.30, FairTax supporters say the rate is 23% rather than 30%." In another paragraph Bartlett also says "Imagine paying 30 percent to the federal government on top of the purchase price of your next house."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. If a product costs $1 at retail .... It costs $1, with the FairTax already included. This is so easy to understand, you almost get the idea that people are intentionally trying to confuse the facts here. That $1 item Bartlett is referring to costs $1 at retail today! But instead of including the FairTax in that price, all of the embedded taxes from every business and individual involved in bringing that item to the marketplace are included. You remove one, you add the other. And that bit about 30 percent to the federal government on top of the purchase price of your new home? Another lie. The embedded taxes are so high on the price of a new home today that when they are removed and the FairTax added, that home could be a percent or two cheaper! Come on, Bruce.

Boortz may or may not be right about his last point, but he is either remarkably obtuse at arithmetic or not being entirely straightforward about the percentage of a product's purchase price that would go to the feds under his proposal: His $1.00 price is for 77 cents' worth of product with a 23 cent tax. In other words, the percentage of taxation for this purchase is 23/77, or just shy of 30 percent.

Come on, Neal.

I have no dog in this fight. Each side is wrong and incompetent or dishonest.

Consumer Protection


Cox and Forkum illustrate the actual benefits of the government presumably being best able to protect consumers by running an entire economy.

Rather than companies scrambling to solve these problems to remain competitive, we have a government making comments hostile to the free flow of information. And corporations are supposed to be evil, eh?

An Inconvenient Theory of Government

It is a long read and it will make you sick to your stomach, but Nicole Gelinas of City Journal wrote a worthwhile article on the exorbitant costs of the "cap-and-trade" schemes that are seeing so much support from conservatives of late.

Keep in mind that half of America's power comes from coal. Coal is dirty, but it has been good for us economically. Building and running an old-fashioned coal-fired electricity plant is more than 35 percent cheaper, per kilowatt of power produced, than building and running a natural-gas-fired plant, which emits far less carbon dioxide, and nearly 20 percent cheaper than a nuclear plant, which emits no carbon dioxide, according to Tufts University economics professor Gilbert Metcalf. Coal also costs less than wind or solar -- by 40 percent and 70 percent, respectively -- even though they're subsidized by tax credits. [Translation: 70 percent is likely an underestimate. --ed] Nor do we need to worry about running out of coal or reeling from an international supply shock. We've got at least several hundred years' worth of the stuff right here in the U.S.

What's even worse than the middle of the article are its beginning and end. At the beginning, you hear a litany of people who should be opposed to environmentalist legislation, but who are folding like cheap lawn chairs.

At the end, you learn why, straight from the mouth of Gelinas herself: Conservatives increasingly do not understand that the purpose of the government is to protect individual rights.

If it's true that a consensus about global warming really exists, not just in press releases and on op-ed pages but in the back rooms of power, too, the politicians and the business leaders wouldn't be afraid to suggest such a tax. They would insist on it.

Really? Why not look to alternatives to taxation, including inaction on the premise that the changes will be slow enough to permit individuals to mitigate the effects for themselves.

The government should act only if individual rights are threatened by the actions of others.

Thomas on "Vanishing England"

This column on England's hastening disappearance is morbidly interesting enough already just for the facts it reports, but I found the following passage most revealing of all:

The problem for Britain and the United States isn't just the change in demographics. It is the reluctance of both countries to inculcate the beliefs, history and, yes, religious ideals, which made our nations so successful that others wanted to come and be a part of them. The difference between many of the current immigrants and those of the past is that the previous ones wanted to become fully American or fully British. The current ones, in too many cases, would destroy what makes our countries unique. And the "leaders" of Britain and America refuse to stop it. [bold added]

This comes after Thomas details how the welfare state has caused the problem: Would some of these immigrants even show up without the promise of the dole and free housing? Were education not run by an entrenched bureaucracy of multiculturalists, would it not be flexible enough to respond to demands for the inculcation of the Enlightenment heritage of Britain? And if the government were primarily concerned with protecting individual rights instead of group "sensitivity", would increasing lawlessness be a problem?

Thomas does not ask these questions, but he does inject a plug for religious instruction. He is blatantly wrong here. If England is doing anything Thomas wants, it is practicing the "virtue" of self-sacrifice to others too consistently to remain alive for long. Given that that is the central ethical tenet of Christianity, one wonders what Thomas is so upset about.

England must renounce self-sacrifice to survive, but it will be unable to do so by becoming religious.

School Prayer Challenged in Texas

I was happy to learn that the Americans United for Separation of Church and State is challenging a Texas school district's inexcusable attempt to smuggle school prayer into its graduation ceremonies under the guise of "democracy".

"Graduation ceremonies should welcome all students, regardless of their beliefs about religion," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Religion is personal, and decisions about it should never be the subject of a 'majority rules' vote."

The school district policy allows a yearly vote by seniors on whether to include prayer in graduation ceremonies. In 2007, three of the district's four high schools decided in favor of prayer. Americans United charges in its lawsuit that school officials organize, oversee and attempt to manipulate the votes on whether to include prayer at the ceremonies.

The difference between a democracy and a republic, for the information of Round Rock ISD, is that in a republic, the rights of the individual are protected from brute majority rule. Perhaps this lawsuit will also serve as a refresher course on American government for them.

The Future of American Literature

Toiler has an interesting post on this subject over at Acid-Free Paper. He comments on a professor's argument to the effect that technical writers represent the future.

And Adrian Hester weighs in as well.

Carol's Place

Joe Kellard writes about an old haunt of his at The American Individualist.

My best memories of the Long Island and city music scenes my friends and I followed back then was those early Zulu Groove shows at our adopted hangout.At each gig, Victor (guitar/keyboards/lead vocals), Rob (bass) and Tim (drums) packed the small venue with admiring and curious bar-goers hungry for good, original music. And between songs, the comedic Victor bantered with the crowd, unleashing his off-beat, sometimes dark humor, providing lots of laughs and great tunes as our posse of guys and gals drank the nights away.

That piece made me wish I had a similar place (an the time to enjoy it) here in Houston.

Individual Rights Do Exist

If you read nothing else from today's roundup, read Andrew Medworth's post on whether human rights actually exist, which he wrote in response to a column that claims that rights do not exist.

There are a number of dreadful philosophic errors at work here. It is impossible to mount a full defence of rights in the space of a blog post, but I shall try to give the essential aspects. The worst of the errors implicit in Bartholomew’s view is an epistemological one: it relates to the question of what it means for a concept or an idea, such as "rights", to "exist". Philosophers call this the "problem of universals", and it is one of the central issues in philosophy. [bold added]

This reminds me of a conversation I had awhile back with a former philosophy major who asserted that men do not have rights. I never learned exactly what he meant by that, but since I am likely to talk about this again with him some time, I will be better prepared to answer him should he be making this type of error.

Medworth's answer is long, but worthwhile.

Not me!

In his final post at The Primacy of Awesome, Mike asks the same question I was wondering the other day when it seemed that all I saw at Randex was one item after another about some connection or other between some video game and Atlas Shrugged.

Gun-Related ... Bullets

I enjoyed many of these sayings about guns that Bo posted over at a geezer's corner, especially the first:

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not." -- Thomas Jefferson

One problem with aphorisms is that they lack context (e.g., #2 in the list), and so can be shoehorned into meanings not intended by the originator. But at least with many quotations, the body of thought of the author provides additional context.

With Jefferson, we know that he's talking about self-defense -- or at least those of us with decent educations do. It is sad to think that if we do not take up Jefferson's eternal fight for civilization, the meaning of much of what he said could be lost to the ages even if some of his words survive.

A Goldwater Event

Bill Brown went to one and blogged it.

[Goldwater's] son made an excellent point about the seeming contradiction between his conservatism and his late-in-life support of gays in the military, abortion, and the separation of church and state. He said that his father never changed his views, only the agenda changed. If they had been issues in the sixties, he would have came out just as he did. I desperately wanted to ask his son about Goldwater's statements against the religious right and his views on Ronald Reagan, but I never got the chance.

In some recent civil rights reading, I got the impression that Goldwater was considered somewhat racist. I will have to look into how much of this impression was due simply to his insistence on small government. Opposition to welfare is not the same thing as racism.

Betting on the Chargers

Dan Edge handicaps the upcoming NFL season.

Poll: Who's Your Favorite Columnist at The Onion?

I caught up with my favorite Onion columnists, Jim Anchower and Larry Groznic, a couple of weeks ago and thought it would be funny to conduct the following poll.

Who is your favorite regular columnist for the Onion?
	Smoove B
	Jackie Harvey
	Dept. Head Rawlings
	T. Herman Zweibel
	Larry Groznic
	Jim Anchower
	Jean Teasdale
	Gorzo the Mighty
	H. Ulysses Zweibel
Free polls from Pollhost.com

If you need a refresher, go here.

-- CAV

A Bit of Tidying

Finding nothing immediately compelling to write about tonight and remembering that I needed to do some blog template maintenance anyway, I decided to tackle the cumulatively formidable tasks of (1) adding the O-Listers to my blogroll, (2) removing links to inactive or nonexistent blogs, (3) changing links to blogs that have moved, and (4) reorganizing the blogroll.

In addition to the remaining O-Listers I know about, I have added three other blogs -- An American Expat in Southeast Asia; Observations on Life, the Universe, and Everything by Brad Eisenhauer; and Al-Kafir Akbar, by Tom Stelene.

Notable moves include Kapitalismus Magazin, which made the leap to Word Press; Tom Rowland, who had been blogging at The View from Here and can now be found at A Writer's Way; and the authors of The Primacy of Awesome, who will take up pen names when they resume their craft elsewhere.

For the first time, I have, as sentimental as I am, bitten the bullet and actually pruned my blogroll. The blogs I had listed as "Retirees" before, along with a few that have been either nonexistent or inactive for a long time, and one that just closed shop, are now listed here. (This list is reachable from the last entry of the blogroll as well.)

The reorganization eliminates my division of blogs into categories, which was becoming less and less useful the longer the list of "Fellow Travellers" got. The alphabetical division makes it far easier to locate other blogs you might wish to visit by visually dividing the list.

On balance, I am quite happy with the results. While I follow most blogs through a feed reader these days, I want my readers to be able to find value in the blogroll. Now that it's easier to browse for interesting links (and return to them later) -- and all the links point to actual, living blogs -- I think it fulfills that purpose again.

Finally, I no longer will be using the Blogrolling service to add new blogs. Back before Google improved Blogger to the point that editing the template became easy, the best way to add reciprocal links was to use Blogrolling. Now, it is actually easier just to add the new links directly to the template. I have decided to indicate my most recent additions with the word "new" before the link to the blog.

I had to do lots of moving. If I linked to you before and you've blogged in the past six months, you should still be on the list. If I dropped you, it was an accident that I can easily fix if you let me know.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 231

And one more thing ...

A commenter accidentally reminded me of an important point regarding the so-called "fair tax" this morning:

The best that could be said for a national sales tax (or, incidentally, for a flat tax) is that by making everybody aware of the enormous drag on the economy that the welfare state has become -- by making them pay the taxes -- we might finally see people willing to talk seriously about getting rid of welfare programs.

This benefit is removed by the progressivity of the proposed tax, which also starts a new welfare program in the form of its "pre-bates" -- except that now the government is sending checks to much of the middle class, too.

Simply taking a swipe at the IRS (as tempting as that is) or getting to "keep [one's] entire paycheck" -- only to have it stolen through taxation later rather than sooner -- is not a legitimate reason to change the tax code. Ultimately eliminating the welfare state and taxation is. Therefore, the key question to ask of any proposal to change the tax code is whether it is likely to further this cause. The "fair tax" does not do so.

The Bush Administration's Latest Deadly Evasion

Craig Biddle discusses the craven motivation behind the President's latest identification of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization:

There is a good reason why the New York City Police Department does not make official pronouncements to the effect that Mafia hitmen are murderers: Everyone knows that Mafia hitmen are murderers. There would be no point in making such a declaration—unless, of course, the NYPD wanted to hype the significance of the hitmen so as to avoid having to deal with the real problem: the Mafia.

That's a pretty good analogy to what's going on here.

Available in Stores, June 2009ish!

This spoof of a Microsoft zunePhone is priceless!

Note: This video seems very difficult to get to load, I'm guessing because it's being viewed a lot. If it doesn't show up here, follow this link and reload a few times. It's worth it.

(HT: Paul Hsieh)

"Salinity Change" in the Atlantic

Mike N discusses two reports that attribute changes in salinity in the Atlantic Ocean to global warming: One report says that salinity is increasing while the other claims it's decreasing!

This reminds me of a rather revealing "correction" I received during a recent conversation with a recycled socialist when I used the term "global warming". ("It's climate change.") This correction is quite revealing, and not just because it smacks of covering one's behind: No matter which direction the earth's average temperature goes, it will be declared bad because it was supposedly caused by man. Come to think of it, one could summarize the environmentalist movement as: The campaign to make sure that man has as close to zero effect on the environment as possible. Too bad that our distinctive mode of survival depends on us altering our environment!

Note also that implicitly, the Greens are admitting that their cause isn't really about the science. Unfortunately, most who oppose their agenda haven't caught on.

Taking One for the Team

Some time ago I noticed with interest (and then forgot to link to his blog) that Craig Ceeley is exploring the world of old-fashioned wet shaving. That sounded interesting, but his latest entry made me chuckle a little, I have to admit:

You'll read on the shaving boards about how mindlessly easy it is to shave with an Injector. That is not my experience at all, and I've come to see those comments as being from sociopathic liars guys shaving with 1960s-1970s era razors, which as far as I can tell offered a lot less blade exposure than the older ones, like mine, which appear to have considerably more bite. Anyway, no problem with this pass, either.

Rewet, relather, and this time (third pass) it's the Injector across and against the grain. Now, I frequently use an Injector (usually this one) for some touch and cut in tough places at the end of a shave, but I avoid using it for an entire shave because these razors are very much lighter than the silo-head DEs many wetshavers love (the Merkur HD, for example, or my recommended Weishi or beloved Super Speeds). So much lighter, in fact, that they tend to bounce off my beard. Not fun when I'm shaving my neck. But I was careful and there was no problem.

Yikes! Thanks for throwing yourself onto that grenade, Craig!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edits.

The Oxymoronic "Fair Tax"

Back in 1996, I supported the candidacy of Steve Forbes, which centered around simplifying the income tax through a "flat tax". My rationale at the time was based partly on the notion that this simplification of the tax code would at least reduce the intrusiveness of the IRS and partly on the naive assumption that this would represent a first step by the Republicans towards reducing spending as well as taxes.

A decade later, I have been disabused of the notion that the Republicans really care about reducing the size of the welfare state. Nobody is talking about a flat tax anymore, but this might be due to the fact that, politicians being what they are, the bloom came off that rose when they realized that the idea was not popular enough to win an election. But at the same time, nobody is talking about spending cuts anymore, either.

The political debate has, thanks to the adoption of the welfare state by the Republicans, shifted away from rolling back the welfare state as have noted before. And yet, as I also noted, the Republicans continue to enjoy an undeserved reputation as defenders of economic freedom.

Furthermore, it remains easy to hate the IRS, so despite the electoral non-viability of the flat tax, some Republicans who want to run against the IRS have come up with a new gimmick: the "fair tax". Just the name should clue you in that the Republicans have no opposition on principle to taxation: What's "fair" about the government confiscating your money?

But this Wall Street Journal article shows that it's even worse than that. The idea is being sold with a mountain of lies, damn lies, and statistics. Worse still, it incorporates an element of wealth redistribution that would make any Democrat proud:

Rep. John Linder (R., Ga.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) have introduced legislation (H.R. 25/S. 1025) to implement the FairTax. They assert that a rate of 23% would be sufficient to replace federal individual and corporate income taxes as well as payroll and estate taxes. Mr. Linder's Web site claims that U.S. gross domestic product will rise 10.5% the first year after enactment, exports will grow by 26%, and real investment spending will increase an astonishing 76%.

In reality, the FairTax rate is not 23%. Messrs. Linder and Chambliss get this figure by calculating the tax as if it were already incorporated into the price of goods and services. (This is known as the tax-inclusive rate.) ...

The distinction is confusing, but think of it this way. If a product costs $1 at retail, the FairTax adds 30%, for a total of $1.30. Since the 30-cent tax is 23% of $1.30, FairTax supporters say the rate is 23% rather than 30%.

This is only the beginning of the deceptions in the FairTax. Under the Linder-Chambliss bill, the federal government would have to pay taxes to itself on all of its purchases of goods and services. Thus if the Defense Department buys a tank that now costs $1 million, the manufacturer would have to add the FairTax and send it to the Treasury Department. The tank would then cost the federal government $300,000 more than it does today, but its tax collection will also be $300,000 higher.

...

Since sales taxes are regressive--taking more in percentage terms from the incomes of the poor and middle class than the rich--some provision is needed to prevent a vast increase in taxation on the nonwealthy. The FairTax does this by sending monthly checks to every household based on income. [bold added]

Not to defend income redistribution in any way, but wouldn't Americans still have to file reports subject to audit to make sure people were not lying about their income in order to get these rebate checks? This wouldn't even really get rid of the IRS as far as I can tell.

Oh, and there's more:

A 2000 estimate by Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found the tax-inclusive rate would have to be 36% and the tax-exclusive rate would be 57%. In 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department calculated that a tax-exclusive rate of 34% would be needed just to replace the income tax, leaving the payroll tax in place. But if evasion [e.g., non-collection --ed] were high then the rate might have to rise to 49%. If the FairTax were only able to cover the limited sales tax base of a typical state, then a rate of 64% would be required (89% with high evasion).

As I noted, the public debate ceased being about reducing spending long ago: Just look at the emphasis of this article -- in a presumably pro-business publication -- on how impractical Linder and Chambliss's proposal is as federal income replacement! Granted, that is the focus, but the remarkable fact remains that it would take a 57% sales tax to replace the federal income tax. I can't believe something wasn't said about the need to cut spending!

The obscene amount of wealth our government seizes to finance the welfare state is, thanks to this debate, being made impossible not to notice. It will, however, be up to those of us who understand the nature of capitalism and who value our individual rights to interject that this is inexcusable and that Americans can and should change this by demanding, at least for a start, a reduction in size of the welfare state.

This is a chance -- no thanks to the "Fair tax' Republicans -- to bring the public debate on the welfare state back to where it belongs: on how to eliminate it.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 230

A Couple of Sci-Fi Classics

My good friend, Adrian Hester, wrote me recently with the following movie recommendations:

I recently acquired two of the classic SF films form the 50s, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Forbidden Planet (1956). Tonight I finally got around to watching Forbidden Planet. You know, it was quite good. There's a quip that's gone 'round about it, that it was the first episode of Star Trek. It really has that feel, except that the special effects and the story were both better--and, for that matter, Leslie Nielsen's acting was far better than William Shatner's.

The story really is like an episode of Star Trek, and having been a trekkie ages 6-13 I can think of at least three episodes similar to it and a number of turns of phrase and imagery running throughout the series. (Indeed, the original pilot movie for Star Trek with Pike in place of Kirk, cut up into the later episode "The Menagerie", was very much like Forbidden Planet in many respects.) And it had the usual ST denouement, taken over from so much earlier sci-fi, in which there are certain things mankind has not developed sufficiently to control, or perhaps never can develop sufficiently to control, but in this case it actually fit naturally into the set-up of the movie. Only the last line was really typical 50s "Man must not play God." It's not out of place to add that the story was inspired indirectly by Shakespeare's Tempest, and what's especially fun is that the silly subplot with the drink-loving cook actually ended up playing a decent role in the unfolding of the central plot. Of course, you've probably already seen it and are chuckling at my old hat, but if not, it's well worth a watch. (But now it's back to the special feaures on the second disc, which includes a documentary about 50s sci-fi flicks--very few qualify as SF, of course--with interesting interviews with Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, and Scott.) [minor edits]

Well. No, I wasn't chuckling! I've never seen either of these, so they're now in the Netflix queue.

How Not to Flaunt

Ian Hamet commented on something awhile back that also drives me nuts, "I don't care how many people use 'flaunt' to mean 'flout', the two are not the same."

I have long been annoyed by this sort of phenomenon, which I call "media English", borrowing from a literature professor from college. Somebody uses a word a few other ill-educated journalists have never heard of, but like the sound of -- but not enough to look up the word-- and -- um -- "run" with it. Pretty soon, it seems like it's all you ever hear.

Related are the assorted "verbal tics" I notice propagating through the workplace or even the culture from time to time. Back in grad school, a well-liked professor had a tendency to start every other sentence with "So ....".

So ... everyone else in his wing started doing it too. One of them was so bad about it during a graded lecture that I decided that my sole comment on it would be to state that, "Miss Umptysquat started seventy-four sentences with the word, 'So'". Based on the next lecture I heard from a student in that wing, I think the consensus must have been, "So .... what?"

And don't even get me started on "Thank you soooo much!" That sounded spontaneous and sincere for only the first thousand times I heard it. Hmmmm. "Mirror Neurons vs. Free Will" might be a charitable way to put this!

Belgian ... Pale Ale?!?!

Looking for other things, I noticed this interesting review and list of suggestions for an overshadowed and often-overlooked Belgian style of beer: pale ale.

If you want something with flavor and complexity -- something inspiring -- that is light and refreshing as well, you have to be discerning, especially as many American microbrewers are favoring bigger, more alcoholic styles that may be delicious and complex, but are decidedly not chug-worthy.

India pale ale is a case in point. Not content with a sturdy ale awash in refreshing bitterness, many brewers are making their I.P.A.’s stronger and stronger, with a hop bitterness so aggressive it will knock anybody out of her hammock. These beers can be fascinating in the proper context, but it’s August, man! Cool me off, but don’t bowl me over.

Coincidentally, yesterday was my day to shop for beer. I didn't buy this one (and it's not a pale ale), but I loved the piano-key nimbus around the head of Thelonius Monk on the bottle of North Coast's Brother Thelonius I saw on display.

And on the subject of tasty beers that are also good in hot weather, let this ale drinker startle his friends by suggesting a lager: Full Sail's Session Premium Lager. Don't let the low ratings at the link dissuade you: It is common among beer snobs to speak ill of lagers at every opportunity. (I'm not exactly claiming to be a connoisseur here, but I've been through that phase myself....)

A lager is not an ale. As a lager, I find Session quite good. Heck. As a beer it is quite good. All but one of the people I have introduced to this at parties and poker games have agreed with me.

I do find it slightly puzzling, though, that the Full Sail brewery chose to package this beer in bottles and labels so similar to the much more famous -- but inferior -- Red Stripe.

Privatizing Money

GB offers a succinct discussion of easy credit and its relationship to the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy over at his blog.

"Helicopter Ben" is the nickname Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly got for a comment he once made regarding how the government should aggressively use monetary policy to prevent a recession. Emphasizing that the key point is to inflate quickly to avert a crisis, he said the government could simply drop money from a helicopter to stimulate the economy.

GB also suggests how we bring our economic policy back down to earth -- without crashing like a helicopter in the process.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Changed "It is common among beer snobs to slam lagers ..." to "It is common among beer snobs to speak ill of lagers ...". One thing they won't do is get close enough to a lager to slam it down!

GTD Six Weeks Later

I've mentioned a couple of times my plan to implement the time management techniques David Allen describes in his book, Getting Things Done, which I first learned about through Scott Powell's blog, Powell History Recommends. I got started on that in the beginning of July. So, how goes it? I would have to say pretty well, to the extent that I have implemented the techniques.

The Benefits so Far

Allen's initial "mind sweep", the phase in which he recommends going through your entire life, hunting for "open loops" (things that need to get done, of whatever complexity or time requirement), he recommends doing during a span of two or more uninterrupted days. As I have learned the hard way -- because I simply have not had two consecutive free days in Houston to do this -- he makes this recommendation for some very good reasons.

The idea is to go through whatever files you have, noting each action item on its own sheet of paper, and placing it in an "In Box". You will then walk through your home and work place, looking for things that need to get done and likewise recording them. Both of these things will doubtless trigger memories of still other things (on top of anything you might have spontaneously recalled), as well as suggest new projects. You record these, too. You find a piece of mail you forgot about? To the In Box. You get the idea.

I'd summarize the above process as briefly looking at your entire life as an In Box. You then process the whole bloody thing, handling everything you can that can be accomplished quickly, throwing out things that really don't matter, filing reference material, recording things with definite dates or deadlines in a calendar, and placing the other items on various lists to be reviewed weekly in the case of projects and at longer intervals in the case of things that might be nice to do.

Part of the point of doing it all at once is to gain the mental satisfaction of "clearing the decks" as Allen puts it -- of seeing what having a high level of control over your whole life feels like so you start out strong and remain motivated to stay on top of the game. A corollary to this is, plainly, that you have the system in place.

In my case, I did the home phase just before setting off to Telluride, my "writing phase" at Telluride since that's all on the computer anyway, and my work phase on a very long Friday evening after my return. This took care of everything except for email, which I'll get to momentarily.

I have always been good about keeping my eye on the big picture, but very absent-minded with a tendency to get annoyed easily with small things or things I do not really feel like doing because they seemed like they'd take me away from my work. If I am aware I need to get something done, I get it done, and if I have lead time, I almost always come up with some clever way to incorporate it into what I want to do anyway, and so often, to barely notice it. This system allows me to use this cleverness to my advantage on a consistent basis!

This area of my life -- the little and annoying things -- has been the place with the most noticeable improvement so far. For example, I bought a labeler and got a rebate coupon with it. Pre-GTD, I probably would have laid all that rebate junk in my overflowing In Box at home, and either sent it off the very next day -- or forgotten about it until months later when I had to look for something else entirely. ("All that hassle over twenty dollars I probably won't get anyway?") Instead, I got around to it the next week and received ten dollars of the rebate last week, not to mention avoiding its contribution to clutter at home and the eventual annoyance at myself with finding it when it was too late to send off.

After having gotten by, somehow, for almost forty years without having ever learned what a "tickler file" is, I now use one religiously. If I hear about an interesting lecture I may or may not be able to attend in the next month, I don't simply make a mental note, forget about it, and then, if I'm lucky, schlep away to see it when I notice my colleagues leaving for it. Now, I file the flyer or announcement printout (and any directions) in the tickler file folder for some time a few days before the event. By that time, I can make an informed decision about whether to toss the announcement or to add the lecture to my calendar.

Today, a friend made a couple of interesting movie recommendations over email. To my "to do" list went a note to reserve the movies on Netflix and -- rather than forgetting about them over the course of a busy day and not seeing them any time soon, they'll be in the mail and heading my way tomorrow.

My wife, who is away and needs me to conduct some of her business while she is gone, has noticed a huge improvement on my part. She asks me once to do something and it gets done. Strangely enough, I have noticed fewer peck marks on my forehead in the mornings lately, too. (Hen-pecking can and does occur long-distance!) Yes, this system has even improved marital bliss in the Van Horn household!

In short, "small" things have a far higher probability of getting done now, and "big" things I'm not wild about get done with a lot less hassle.

If there is a drawback, it is this: The habit of writing things down when you think of them makes you prone to forget them even more easily if you don't actually write them down for some reason! But that just means that discipline is a very important aspect of this system.

The Last "Blobs of Undoability"

As I mentioned earlier, email remains the biggest final frontier, along with a couple of filing decisions I need to make. The email first.

I maintain several email accounts as myself and as "Gus Van Horn". My ultimate goal is to consolidate to one master and one backup account for each. It may sound strange, but the "Gus Van Horn" accounts are more important since I conduct so little of my day-to-day real work through email. My plan is clear: Consolidate the least important "real me" accounts, make sure things run smoothly, and then complete the consolidation. Afterwards, I can consolidate the writing-related accounts, of which there are fewer, and which are already well-organized.

The main holdup has been the account which is in the worst shape, and the blame lies squarely with Microsoft. My employer uses Outlook and does not permit automatic forwarding of email. My (very bureaucratic) employer also sends somewhere between five and fifteen "news" type emails a day. Also, as I am almost never logged on to Windows, I have to use Outlook's woefully inadequate web interface to manage that account. In other words, I have hundreds of emails to sort and would be forced by the lousy interface to click each individual message I want to delete.

My deus ex machina should arrive within a week to save my wrists and my sanity as I finally end this annoying hold-up: After I install some new hardware, I will run Windows (for a different purpose altogether) on my work PC over VMWare, enabling me to "dump" Outlook onto that PC. In one fell swoop, my Outlook Inbox will be empty and I will have my old email in a form that I can ship off to a real computer that has tools that don't get in the way of managing simple email files. (The interface of my free myway email account isn't that hot, and it runs circles around Outlook's web interface. Is "check all" too much to ask for?)

My financial files at home were well-organized before GTD and I have not changed them. This system mostly works for me, so I'll revisit whether to change it after a few months of using the GTD filing system for other things.

One thing that I know the GTD method cannot file is scientific papers. I have never been happy with the way I have filed these and would love to hear from any academics out there who think they have a satisfactory way of tracking references. Since I'm beginning a new project anyway, I've started experimenting with Connotea. It seems promising, but I need to develop more familiarity with it before I will be sure.

My "Low-Tech" Implementation of GTD

I may have mentioned that I have wanted to hold off on making any major expenditures on hardware or software until I have used this system for a time and determined whether I really need, say, a PDA, or some kind of organizing software and, if so, what kinds. I also realized that there's no escaping paper anyway.

So I carry around a small cloth file folder with "In", "Out", "Today", "File", "Review", and "Shred" sections. A small legal pad, a printout of my week's calendar -- which I maintain with the nifty when utility -- and a printout of my project lists resides in "Today". Each week, I go through the legal pad, the calendar, and the lists, and change them accordingly as I tie up any loose ends I might have missed. This has worked surprisingly well for me so far.

Save for the email, I guess I'd be a "green belt" by now.

-- CAV

Statutory Obsolescence

I was recently reminded of a phrase that caught my ear nearly twenty years ago. The phrase came from a conversation I had with the father of a college classmate. If I recall correctly, he had worked in manufacturing around the time that the Big Three American automakers were getting creamed by the Japanese.

He placed a big chunk of the blame for this problem squarely on the American companies, claiming that they gypped the consumer by deliberately planning new models in such a way as to render older cars "obsolete", including through the use of shabby components they knew would have a short useful life. He called it "planned obsolescence".

While I think the story behind the trouble American car companies were having back then is a little more complicated than he made it sound, I would not put such practices past businessmen in certain industries, given the unfortunate pervasiveness of pragmatism within our culture.

Be that as it may, that phrase has caused me to come up with a succinct new phrase, "statutory obsolescence" to describe phenomena like this:

Yesterday, my old, but perfectly road-worthy car failed a state emissions test. I'll decide today whether it will be worth repairing it so it can pass or whether I should risk a ticket until I get a newer car.

This car is perfectly good and, since it permits us to avoid making car payments, it is saving us lots of money. Unfortunately, since most Americans think it is okay for the state to infringe upon property rights as long as it is for "the common good" -- and since current fashion stirs up the passions of a poorly educated public to panic about global warming -- the apparatus of the state is being used to micromanage personal decisions such as the one I face about when I should buy a newer car.

Recently, I learned that the state is not only violating the property rights of car owners like myself in the process, but those of others. The state of Texas -- "red" and therefore supposedly a bastion for economic freedom -- is now stealing money from some of its citizens in order to pander to the irrationality of some and to quiet down or placate others like myself:

Houston-area drivers willing to trade in their pollution-belching clunkers for newer, environmentally friendly vehicles will soon be eligible for a $3,000 incentive from the state of Texas.

A new state law, intended to encourage drivers to retire old vehicles that pump out more smoky exhaust than newer models, will kick in around the end of the year. It applies to vehicles at least 10 years old in Texas counties that have failed to meet national air quality standards -- including Harris County -- for buyers with incomes of less than $62,000 annually for a family of four.

"Those 10-year-old cars, compared to today's standards, they are filthy," said state Sen. Kip Averitt [a Republican -- ed], who sponsored the legislation. "You take 40,000 or 50,000 cars off the road like that, and we know it will make a significant difference."

Let's say Texas finances the statutory obsolescence of 45,000 vehicles at $3,000 each. That's $135 million dollars stolen from its rightful owners and diverted from more productive uses to unnecessary car purchases. If half of the state population of 20 million is in the labor force, each one of them has just been forced to cough up about 13 bucks apiece towards Al Gore's pet cause of forcing people to act on global warming whether or not they agree that they need to.

As Republican Kip Averitt might put it, "Those centuries-old concepts of freedom and individual rights are troublesome. You nickel and dime your constituents 40,000 or 50,000 times like this and we know it will make a significant difference." Hint: "Different" does not always equal "improved".

Once again, we are slowly being made used to less and less of one life necessity, freedom, in the name of allegedly securing another -- clean air, this time.

My car is not obsolete, and neither is the concept of individual rights. And yet today's leaders of both parties are attempting to deprive me of both my car -- and everyone's individual rights in the process.

-- CAV

Idiot Bumper Stickers, Part 4

Ah! The stress-lowering benefits of blogging!

It's been about a year and a half since the last time I was annoyed enough about a bumper sticker to blog about one!

And this time, it's not so much annoyance as incredulity. As is so often the case when a car owner's ability to inflict his opinions on others is a substitute for an actual sense of self-worth, the below bumper sticker appeared with about six others on the back of a jalopy.

Cumulatively, the half-dozen or so stickers screamed of preening moral relativism and bigoted pseudotolerance, and rendered their companion, the Pacifica radio station sticker, doubly redundant. (After all, if one is so benighted as to not have already tuned to it, let alone to have to ask which station it is, he will need more than being told! Such stickers are shibboleths only.)

But I digress. The other stickers, suffice it to say, clearly indicated that even though one may be capable of arranging words in such a way as to express a profound truth as they are arranged below, one may well, like a parrot, not have a grasp, however slippery, upon that truth.


Quite true. Terrorism is a symptom. But of what disease? I am sure that the person who was driving in front of me would say something like "poverty", or "oppression by the racist West", or anything besides the disease the terrorists themselves have forthrightly admitted suffering for decades: The motivation to govern in accordance with the alleged orders of their imaginary friend.

Whether or not our anti-war activist honestly believes that the secular West is ultimately at fault for the atrocities so many religious people feel so pious about committing is unimportant. What is important is that he chides us for wanting to fight back, taking advantage of our President's failure to name our adversary in the process, and presumably counting on multiculturalism to make us too afraid of being thought of as bigoted to name the actual disease. His animus against the West is such that his enemy's enemy is his friend, so he is happy to help the West's enemy in any way he can.

Of course, many leftists, needing more guidance than blind nihilism can provide, eventually do seek it in the form of that most anti-Western faith, Islam, making it all but certain that one day, we shall see, side by side on the back of someone's car, the riddle presented by the first bumper sticker and its ... solution ... by the one at the right, with all the irony lost on its unkempt owner!

The final irony is, of course, that so many terrorists believe -- despite the long history of sectarian violence that is the history of Islam -- that if we were all Moslem, peace would reign. This is patently absurd. Faith kills -- first because it causes men to reject crucial evidence about all manner of important things and second, because it preempts rational persuasion, resulting in men dealing with each other like brutes.

If Islam is "the solution", it is "the final solution".

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 229

Thank God for New Hampshire

I don't know what I found more ridiculous about this bit of GOP primary news: The question this moron asked or the fact that it apparently succeeded in upsetting Rudy Giuliani.

Katherine Prudhomme-O'Brien says she was just curious about the apparent lack of support for their father's candidacy by Giuliani's son and daughter from a previous marriage, but that query and Giuliani's dismissive reply have been the buzz of the political world all weekend.

"I asked him how he'd expect the American people to give him loyal fellowship if he was having a hard time getting it from his own family."

Giuliani's response: "There are complexities in every family in America. The best thing I can say is kind of leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone."

Keller: What did you think of his answer?

Katherine: I thought it was a little defensive. I guess he's still not ready to talk about the whole thing because it's very uncomfortable for him. [bold added]

This has got to be one of the most inane questions I have ever heard get this amount of attention. So what if a candidate doesn't see support from his family? I defy anyone to make a believable claim that if he ran for office, he'd have the unified support of his family. This could be, as this woman wants to imply, because of a bad relationship (which may or may not be in some part the candidate's fault) or it could be (gasp!) because people within the same family often have different opinions about politics. There are people in my own family I wouldn't support for office and I am sure many of them wouldn't support me. Big deal.

Anyone who thinks that families march in lockstep on political matters is either a liar or the droning idiot everybody tunes out during the holidays. And after hearing the full interview, my vote is for "droning idiot".

Oh yeah. I almost forgot the punchline: The great advantage of the New Hampshire primary -- and its boon to America according to this crackpot -- is that it allows people to ask questions like this of the candidates.

My sarcasm aside, this last strikes me as -- next to hurting Giuliani any way it can -- the way the Left might hope to gain from playing up this otherwise completely unremarkable episode. Namely, by making a big deal out of this encounter between an "ordinary person" and a candidate, the table is set to dismiss (with the help of how conservatives will react) the next pertinent question asked of a Democrat by an ordinary person. Furthermore, the value of freedom of speech, which the Left routinely attacks these days, is made to appear to be less than it is.

Neoconservative Foreign Policy: An Autopsy

I finally got around to reading the last issue of The Objective Standard on a flight Sunday and have to say that this article by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein is a must-read.

Why is the Weekly Standard practically celebrating the slaughter of thousands of Americans? Because the slaughter created "the potential of Americans to join in common purpose -- the potential that is the definition of a nation." Even if a "long, expensive, and arduous war" were necessary to defeat the enemy that struck on 9/11 -- and we will argue that it is not -- it is profoundly un-American and morally obscene to treat such a war as a positive turn of events because it generates a collective purpose or "horizon." Observe the scorn with which this editorial treats the normal lives of individuals in a free nation. Pursuing our careers and creative projects, making money, participating in rewarding hobbies, enjoying the company of friends, raising beloved children -- these are desecrated as "trivial concerns" and "parts in the casual comedy of everyday existence." The editorial makes clear that its signers think the exalted thing in life is "the potential of Americans to join in common purpose" -- not the potential of individual Americans to lead their own lives and pursue their own happiness. This is the language of those who believe that each American is merely a cog in some grand collective machine, to be directed or discarded as the goal of "national greatness" dictates. [bold added]

Anyone who thinks the guy I blogged recently who wants another set of Islamic atrocities to visit our nation is some sort of anomaly would do well to read this article.

Google's Paucity of Storage Space

Darren Cauthon discusses a happy result of competition in the free market:

I just read an article that pointed out that out of the four big email providers, Google's Gmail now offers the least amount of storage. This is interesting because just a few years ago when most providers were offering between only 2 MB to 10 MB, Gmail jumped on the scene by offering 1 GB of storage. That made the storage for other email services look pretty pathetic, so they had to step up their game. Now that Microsoft has announced that they’re bumping their storage up to 5 GBs, now Google is the one that's behind everybody else. [links dropped]

And if you want to contemplate what the lesson he takes looks like when applied to medicine, stop by Reason Pharm.

-- CAV

With "Successes" Like These....

So I'm fresh off a being almost completely out of touch for several days and out of my normal blogging rhythm. Naturally, I head straight to the big boys so I can get caught up with the important stuff.

An item at Instapundit catches my eye: "FIGHTING GOLIATH: An eminent domain success story." Has another state has passed legislation to curb the effects of the Kelo decision? Or has, perhaps, a new court ruling posed a serious challenge to some fundamental aspect of eminent domain? Or has the Blogfather unearthed some entertaining bit of poetic justice in which a victim of eminent domain somewhere actually came out ahead in some unforeseen way?

The answer is: "None of the above."

Not that I am unhappy to see the couple in this story win their well-deserved court victory, but the following hardly qualifies as an "eminent domain success story":

Every once in a great while, government, as a land-grabbing Goliath, gets thumped by the most diminutive David, especially when the former fails to follow its own policies.

That may cost Philadelphia $497,230 in damages, plus the plaintiffs' legal fees.

It began when Ed and Debbie Munoz, in pursuit of the American dream, put up their New Jersey home and borrowed $1 million to buy a grocery and garden center in Juniata Park.

Afterward the couple learned -- secondhand through customers -- that their business was in the footprint of a planned housing development.

For more than two years, the Munozes sought answers from the city but said they received none. In 2004, with declining sales -- allegedly because of government's imminent land grab -- and Ed Munoz's declining health, the couple declared bankruptcy. The city picked up the property at a sheriff's sale.

The Munozes went to court.

City officials said it wasn't clear through 2004 whether the Munozes' lot would be needed. Yet an April 2003 letter from the developer asked the city's Redevelopment Authority to acquire the property.

Even the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reportedly warned city officials in 2005 that Philadelphia violated federal relocation law.

Needless to say, Philadelphia will appeal.

But let's say that this case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court and that this decision is upheld. This decision in no way challenges the premise that the government can exercise eminent domain. It just demands that the government be up-front about doing so. The Munozes, as far as I can tell, were lied to, and are simply getting what they "should have gotten" as "compensation" for selling their property ... against their will.

And so the next time a couple goes "all in" on a business that gets in the way of something Philadelphia wants, its officials will just have to be a little more careful before they violate that couple's property rights and potentially derail their dream for good.

Lest I seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill, it is worth remembering that a man who expressed dismay about the Kelo decision and who wrote a book called An Army of Davids -- about the "empowerment" of "ordinary people" -- is calling this "an eminent domain success story".

This brings up the question: What, exactly, does Reynolds mean by "empowerment", anyway? Consider again the following criticism I offered about An Army of Davids and how it relates to this court case:

Here's another counterexample to the notion that technology -- unaided by an improvement in a society's intellectual climate -- can effect meaningful social change. Reynolds notes that Philippine President Joseph Estrada was brought down by a text-messaging flash mob. He fails to mention that this flash mob gathered in exactly the same place the old-fashioned mob that overthrew Ferdinand Marcos 15 years before had gathered. I dare say that unless the people of the Philippines make fundamental cultural and political changes, some other corrupt president will probably have to be overthrown later on. What difference does it make that a president can be overthrown if he never gets replaced by anything better?

The relation is best summed up by the following pair of questions: (1) Is an isolated success of a people against a dictatorial regime -- or its development of a culture that would not tolerate tyranny -- "empowering"? (2) Is the fact that Americans can still sue for a "fair" price in an eminent domain case "empowering" -- or would an end to eminent domain altogether (which would eliminate the need for such lawsuits) be far more so?

To answer those questions, we have to ask questions like: "What can make a culture resistant to tyranny?" and "How is a law that prevents the government from forcing some unlimited number of people from selling their property better than some unlimited number of people potentially winning court cases against the government for doing so?" (Which isn't even what happened here, but, for the sake of argument....)

For a culture to resist tyranny, it has to understand what, on principle is bad about tyranny as well as the various forms of government that can lead to tyranny. A people with such a culture will rarely, if ever have to shake off tyranny because its people will not easily allow it to develop. And the time economy of outlawing eminent domain is obvious.

In both cases, the need to demonstrate or to spend time in court would be obviated by a public with a better understanding (and consistent political application) of the concept of individual rights. Or, as Ayn Rand put this point about the real-life power of abstract principles so well in her essay, "Philosophy: Who Needs It":

Abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes -- and ... without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. the difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed. [In: Philosophy: Who Needs It, pb. p. 5; bold added]

But the Filipino people do not reject the idea that the government should violate the rights of some to "serve" others -- and so they remain under corrupt rulers. And we Americans have not worked to eliminate eminent domain -- and so we will keep hearing about court fights like these. And since so many of our pundits disdain principles, we'll keep hearing such fights being called "success stories" as we slide closer to tyranny ourselves. And we'll take gadgets and chump change as "empowerment" rather than the real thing -- the vast, untapped power of the minds of a nation with a rational culture.

Unless, that is, we insist on a return to a principled political debate and work for a wider understanding of the nature of individual rights within our culture.

-- CAV

Freedom vs PPPs

Via Randex is a lengthy, but very worthwhile article by Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center which takes up a theme described by its title ("The Principles of Freedom vs. Public/Private Partnerships") that I have also explored lately.

As the Associated Press reported July 15, 2006, "On a single day in June (2006) an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.6 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99 year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road for 50 years."

In fact, that Spanish-American partnership in Texas and its lease with the Texas Department of Transportation to build and run the Trans Texas Corridor contains a "no-compete" clause which prohibits anyone, including the Texas government from building new highways or expanding exiting ones which might run in competition with the TCC.

That is not free enterprise. And it's not protecting the second principle of freedom - private property.

The most valuable aspects of this article are (1) that it provides numerous examples of how such "partnerships" introduce government into our lives in clear violation of our individual rights and (2) that it shows just how widespread the misconception is in the public debate that such partnerships somehow represent capitalism.

Its greatest weakness is that it leaves the impression that its "three principles of freedom" are fundamental when they are not. As a result, the article is not as clear as it could be about how wrong and dangerous to individuals these partnerships are. Namely, it does not morally attack the notion of the public/private partnership.

Having said that, I was still very impressed and have linked to both the American Policy Center and the Capitalism Magazine archive of Tom DeWeese's columns on the page accessible from "Some Links" in the upper right of the sidebar.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 228

From Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves....

David Veksler points to a Wall Street Journal blog by Robert Frank that asks whether being born into money is necessarily an advantage, echoing an old American saying I believe I first heard in a lecture by Leonard Peikoff, "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."

What if growing up rich actually has disadvantages? And what if rich kids' penchant for spending -- and their lack of experience at earning -- catches up with them, and that unlimited ATM machine winds up empty? (Not to feel sorry for these people, just to point out a reality.)

...

Eventually, I argue, their money will run out. And much of the inherited wealth in America will flow back to people who actually earn it.... [bold added]

Frank has a crucial point, but, the last three sentences of the above and this, from his recent column on the same subject, make me think he would do very well apply it more widely, starting with himself:

When I got to the Skills Retreat, I thought it would confirm my worst fears about growing inequality. Here was a camp designed specifically to help rich kids get richer (or at least, keep them from getting poorer). It was yet another way for the children of wealth to get a leg up on members of the middle class, who can't afford financial education camps and won't have big inheritances to carry them through life.

Yes. Possessing wealth requires certain skills, but if these skills need to be learned, they also cannot be exercised without freedom. Given that the predominant ideas of a people will affect the type of government that they have, I find it alarming that a writer on finance seems to believe that wealth is some sort of static quantity that "the rich" are hoarding to the detriment of everyone else and sounds so sympathetic to the notion that we ought to "do something" about income inequality.

It is worth noting that Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute recently examined and found wanting the whole idea that income inequality is bad:

It is often implied that the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else--that if some get big slices of pie, the rest get only crumbs. But the exact opposite is true. Since wealth (including pie) is created, there is no limit to how much can exist--and the wealth of others cannot inhibit us from creating and enjoying our own. Further, the wealth creation of the richest Americans makes us far more productive and well-off.

With intellectuals like Robert Frank fanning fear of an outcome inherent to capitalism, the very system that made America wealthy, it would seem that the same fate that befalls families that fail to teach their children survival skills can befall the world's richest nation.

The fact that the maintenance of "income inequality" across generations requires knowledge about how one earns and protects money is nothing to be smug about. It's something to learn as much as possible from.

Book Burning without the Carbon Footprint

Andrew Dalton has unearthed the Left's version of book burning -- "guerrilla bookshelving" -- and correctly notes that it is a confession of anti-intellectualism:

These sorts of guerrilla tactics represent the elevation of raw, disruptive action over the battle of ideas -- a legacy of the 1960s New Left. They are fundamentally an anti-intellectual phenomenon, even if their purpose in this case happens to be the defense of science against faith.

He also notes that the practice of reshelving books violates the property rights of the store owner.

Reisman on the Credit Crunch

My executive summary, upon hearing that the fed was loosening credit over the weekend was,

Great! The government has caused a financial crisis by making it too easy to borrow money, and now it's going to solve it by ... making it too easy to borrow money.

Economist George Reisman provides all the gory details -- but ends with an interesting possible way out. (HT: Myrhaf)

An American-Made Leash

Diana Hsieh notes that an American company is helping a totalitarian regime keep track of people and how this can easily harm American freedom:

[H]ow long before Tom Tancredo and company impose such measures on American citizens and legal residents in order to prevent illegal aliens from access to the "goods" of American life--not just government benefits, but also honestly-sought jobs, schooling, medical care, consumer goods, and the like?

This will be done first as an "anti-terrorism" measure since so many Republicans "know"that an American garrison state is better than a defeated and prostrate Ummah.

-- CAV

Mmm-Mmm-Maine!

Home of the Lobster Roll!

Well, I'm back from a few days with my wife's family on the scenic coast of Maine. As with Chicago and Telluride, you just don't go to such a place without taking a few snapshots. As usual, click for more detail.

Since I mentioned lobster rolls the other day, I figured I might as well start off by showing one of those....


And yes, I do enjoy Moxie, America's oldest soft drink, for which I developed a taste while stationed in Connecticut during my Navy days.

Although Maine is one of Moxie's more important markets, having a taste for it may yet be idiosyncratic -- or at least it is openly regarded as odd by those with less-refined palettes. The first time I ordered it, I told the guy behind the counter how glad I was to be able to order Moxie again, how I'd liked it back in my Navy days, yada, yada, yada....

His reply was to say, "Oh, you're one of those."

That made me laugh.

I have often remarked that Maine reminds me of my home state of Mississippi. Its interior is often a dead ringer, being very rural, with small towns, weathered barns, little white churches, and even the occasional yard car. This resemblance ends in many respects along its coast, which is where these pictures come from.

Here's one from along the seashore.


The day we arrived, a bald eagle was perched atop one of the more denuded trees to the right. That shot, however, was too blurry (and really from too far away) to be worth posting.

Here's a sailboat I spotted in the same general area.


This view of a lobster-fishing town is beautiful.


Point-and-click from a grocery store lot! Within feet from where I snapped it was the below stack of lobster traps.


And I'll close with this howler:


This sign was posted in the water closet of the place I bought that lobster roll shown in the first shot!

And now, back to the grindstone....

-- CAV