tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35295693379197843642024-03-13T04:21:00.715-07:00Sacred StewAs always, mental repunctuation of a clue is the key to its solution.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-2861915845341542012-12-27T20:20:00.002-07:002012-12-27T20:42:05.664-07:00Is left-liberalism without foundations? And why its appeal?Anonymous (but credible) 'blogger Philo asks the question: <a href="http://philoofalexandria.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/politics-without-foundations/">What are non-totalitarian leftism's intellectual foundations?</a> and comes up with the answer that there are none, at least not in the way that libertarianism and conservatism are founded on their respective corpora. Libertarians can claim (among others) Nozick, Richard Epstein, and both Friedmans; conservatives are still heavily influenced by Burke, Chesterton, and in Philo's view, Aristotle and Aquinas. Both groups draw heavily from Hayek. To whom do left-liberals look?<br />
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The first thinkers to come to mind are G.A. Cohen and John Rawls. Those familiar with the historical emergence of an American left-liberalism may say "John Dewey" but the thought that today's leftists are inspired by or draw from John Dewey is as mistaken as thinking the typical libertarian is a Nozickian because Nozick was the one libertarian included in your college philosophy course. Cohen is immediately out, because we're considering non-totalitarians. (Thus, also, we disregard Marcuse and Alinsky.) I've known one left-liberal who is really into utilitarianism, but only one; there isn't a movement of people thinking through things using the intellectual framework of Dworkin or Singer.<br />
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It's only a bit less wild to establish Rawls as a leftist Hayek. Via <i>The Nation</i> and similar outlets, totalitarians--Friere, Marcuse, Adorno, Cohen--are influential, even if that magazine's readers aren't the would-be Lenins its contributors often are. Rawls is the stuff of philosophy nerds. Regardless: Concerning Rawls, Philo is a bit too dismissive. His approach may be fatally flawed, but not so thin that it wasn't influential. It doesn't at all account for wealth being created, nor for progress, nor for humans not being cicadas entering this world all at once with the passing of each generation. In drawing conclusions from its "maximin principle"--which Philo rightly points out requires the maximization of the welfare of mental patients, which is not what Rawls did--it should lean heavily on the positive social sciences, but what instead came through were <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/03/john_rawls_on_e.html">Rawls's deeply bizarre prejudices</a>. Lomasky's "<a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=275198&jid=SOY&volumeId=22&issueId=01&aid=275196">Libertarianism at Twin Harvard</a>" is damning, not so much of the Rawlsian methodology, as of Rawls's conclusions--a Rawlsian Rawls with different prejudices may have arrived at a night watchman state (and a Nozickian Nozick with a different emphasis may have been a left-wing radical!) But this makes Rawls more instructive here, not less.<br />
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My conjecture: Left-liberalism appeals (even to educated people) despite having little intellectual foundation because it caters to common prejudices, of the sort held by Rawls. Psychologist <a href="http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/home.html">Jonathan Haidt</a> found that of the six dimensions of moral foundations of political belief he could identify, American left-liberals felt the most strongly (by far) about two: fairness and liberty. This explains why, like Rawls through Lomasky's eyes, they often sound like funhouse-mirror libertarians. Haidt and his collaborators measure naive judgements--prejudices--and not intellectual arguments. In this work, they found further that instinctual/prejudicial fairness to leftists is very different than fairness to libertarians or conservatives: to leftists, fairness is equality, not proportionality. (Why equality and fairness were not made separate dimensions is unclear.) Haidt does not explore sociobiology, but others who have speculate that the concern for material equality is atavistic. In a hunter-gatherer society, if people do not get equal shares, they were probably cheated in the division of spoils. Indeed, one often hears leftists talk of wealth as though it were spoils.<br />
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Left-liberals do not call for equal shares. They'll insist up and down that they're not reds and support capitalism, and they're sincere. They can't say where it will end, why they choose this intervention and not that, because their thought is without intellectual foundations. Rawls didn't call for equal shares, either. His methodological mistake and the flaw in egalitarians' moral instincts are the same. His famous hypothetical, in a sophisticated way, causes the question of governmental regulation of wealth or income to be treated as a division-of-spoils problem.<br />
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Why care about the question of intellectual foundations? It doesn't detract from the left-liberal position to point out that there are none, aside perhaps from the ghosts of totalitarianisms past. This doesn't in itself render them incorrect issue-by-issue. (There are other reasons for that.) It's important for non-leftists to keep in mind how very different they are from the rest of us. They are not having the same discussion or argument. They are not thinking of the serious questions in the same way. It is not just a difference of opinion. <br />
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To someone with different political tendencies, American left-liberals look like half-stepper, non-totalitarian cousins of European social democrats. Some are, and the Web--every man a comparative government researcher!--has given American lefties a more European feel. But even this is superficial. They may always say "well, in [European Country] they do [Caricature of a Policy] and [Usually Fallacious Appeal to Statistics], therefore we should do it too," but the endorsement comes from a lazy consequentialism, not any ethical conviction nor theory of economics nor theory of government. In my experience, they think themselves pragmatists--"I'm for What Works"--and spin themselves (and their intelocutors!) in circles when confronted with complications and more thorough analyses. Ask them why. Point out the moral and material tradeoffs, and ask why they balance things the way they do. <br />
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A similarly educated conservative or libertarian would be able to answer. I am not claiming that the average libertarian is a deep thinker like David Friedman or Richard Epstein. Both groups have their own peculiar prejudices--see Haidt's book <i>The Righteous Mind</i>--but for whatever reason, both seek out the wisdom of others in reconciling their perhaps internally conflicting moral instincts and formulating political-philosophical beliefs. Some stop at Ayn Rand, satisfied with false moral clarity. But the step beyond instincts to foundations is there. Why they make this step and lefties don't is, as far as I know, an unanswered question. Maybe it is because leftists are culturally dominant whereas libertarianism and conservatism are countercultural. Maybe it is because the left-liberal prejudices determine public policy positions whereas those of libertarians or conservatives leave more free variables. <br />
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The outcome is the same: The left-liberal thinks himself a pragmatist because he is solving, <i>ad hoc</i>, a problem of his own creation: How can I make people free, equal, and better off? Perhaps the best attack plan involves making the problem with this problem nakedly evident whenever possible. There is little moral clarity in a world of tradeoffs.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-49186998690276437672011-01-07T15:11:00.004-07:002011-01-07T15:23:21.811-07:00High teenage unemployment? There's a four-word solution.<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/07/news/economy/unemployment_racial_gap/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin">CNN Money</a> reports high unemployment--approaching 25%--among teenagers.<br /><br />The four-word solution: Eliminate the minimum wage.<br /><br />There is no economic rationale--zero--for the minimum wage. It exists simply to satisfy those who think it somehow indecent to pay someone below a certain amount--when I entered the workforce, $4.25, but now it's much higher--per hour. But it doesn't merely raise the $5/hour worker's wages, because it doesn't magically increase productivity. Surely, those who keep their positions have higher wages. But as a prohibition on selling one's labor below the minimum, it has been documented to keep low-skilled and low-experience people out of the workforce.<br /><br />In Arizona, back when voters raised the minimum wage above the Federal rate, it was <a href="http://goldwaterstate.blogspot.com/2007/02/arizonans-discovering-that-so-called.html">documented to cause increased unemployment among teenagers and the retarded</a>.<br /><br />"But would you want to work for below the minimum wage?," advocates of it ask. No, I wouldn't. But of course one wants a high wage. That want cannot be satisfied by fiat; the Left is simply lying when it pretends that there are no tradeoffs. There is no such thing as a "decent" or a "living" wage, only a fair wage, and a fair wage is that which is arrived at by mutual consent. Those who support a high minimum wage--who oppose lowering the minimum wage-- oppose giving people the opportunity to enter or re-enter the workforce and put themselves on the path to a dignified, self-sufficient living.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-21283601361217195122010-12-22T16:38:00.004-07:002010-12-22T17:55:00.125-07:00Must liberals believe in fairy-tales? Dan Klein seems to think so.This month's Cato Unbound, centered on Daniel Klein's essay "<a href="http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/12/06/daniel-b-klein/against-overlordship/">Against Overlordship</a>", is rather painful to read. The participants began by talking past one another, but that aside, the content verges on the ridiculous.<br /><br /><hr><br /><br />I could spend a post on social-democrat Matthias Matthijs's seeming naiveté and descent into vulgarity. He writes of compulsory health-insurance in the abstract without any regard for what happened on the ground. <br /><br />To Matthijs, "social democrats do not believe that you can be truly free – that is, capable of making rational and truly independent choices — without basic health considerations taken out of the picture. Social democrats are the true believers in liberty, real liberty, not the rather thin or limited kind most libertarians advocate. The social democratic concept of liberty is not encumbered by things we cannot control, like pre-existing health conditions or the financial resources of our parents." Forget that this would mean that social democrats do not make a distinction between <i>liberty</i> and <i>capability</i>, but the alternative is unclear. Is Matthijs (or Matthijs's hypothetical social democrat) proposing that humans cease being human and become disease-free? Is "liberty" contingent on being a new disease-free species? We all know that socialized medicine doesn't take away people's pre-existing health conditions, nor does it remove health considerations from the other choices we make in life. For Matthijs to claim otherwise is simply stupid.<br /><br />It is as though Dworkin never wrote about "Justice in the Distribution of Health Care". Even to a leftist like Dworkin--and one who abuses vail of ignorance arguments--it was evident that the demand for health care, especially at the end of life, is infinite, and a socialized system must balance demand for this good against demand for others. Social democracy, then, does not remove health concerns so that people are somehow more free. It merely moves the choices about balancing away from the individual and towards his supposed betters. Why should the individual _not_ have to take into account his desire for future health care when making educational, business, or other decisions? How is that individual more free if that decision is instead put in the hands of others? That is how social democracy (a form of socialism) works. It is not a magical "abundance button". The individual will get sick, and will not receive infinite treatment. End of story.<br /><br />Beyond that, Matthijs, even when asked about concretes, fails to acknowledge what Obama and the Democrats did. It is not just a forced purchase of insurance. Obama and the Democrats banned actuarially fair insurance pricing and required "insurance" to be issued for certainties. The bill passed earlier this year did not merely require that actuarially fair insurance policies (with or without riders) be issued to people with pre-existing conditions. It required that risk not play any role whatsoever in determination of the cost of an insurance policy. Perhaps this is what Matthijs (or his hypothetical social democrat) had in mind above. The individual need not worry about the costs of his actions: the "insurance" rates--and "insurance" is only a euphemism now--will be the same.<br /><br /><hr><br />But it is lead essayist Dan Klein who is the most frustrating, and the most vulgar. Hang out around dilettante libertarians enough and you'll hear someone say (usually in different words) that the state being sovereign, the law being *gasp* changeable, or there being any law whatsoever means you don't "really own" your property, that the state or someone else owns it. This is Klein's position, too.<br /><br /><blockquote>The left may continue: “There are no natural property rights. Property is a set of permissions, a bundle of rights, determined by the government and delegated to you by the government. When a rearrangement of the bundles would be good, that’s what the government should do. ‘Your’ property rights are simply whatever permissions result from the process.” <br /><br />Let’s enter into that way of thinking, follow through on it, and surface its presuppositions. <br /><br />Although they may not be fully conscious of it, progressives and social democrats are saying that everything is owned by the state. Or, perhaps, that the substructure upon which topsoil, buildings, and other things sit is owned by the state. Either way, simply by being in the United States, you voluntarily agree to all government rules. </blockquote><br /><br />Does Klein not understand that ownership is not and never has been the same thing as sovereignty? If he is correct about ownership than nobody except despots have ever owned anything. <br /><br />It gets worse. Later in the essay he writes positively about natural rights, including a natural right to property. How much more stupid can an educated man get, than to presume that property rights--influenced strongly by the English common law--are somehow "natural", or at least a natural substrate to which government has made un-natural modifications. Not only is the history of property in our legal tradition fairly well documented--that something is <i>old</i> does not mean that it is <i>natural</i>--Elinor Ostrom and many others have also made careers studying how different socities meet their respective needs with different property rights. Why Klein's ideal is "natural" but the property rights systems of e.g. American Indians, Inuit, Somalis, and many others is by implication not "natural" is left a mystery.<br /><br />In light of history, comparative studies, and even the sort of theoretical work done by Cato Unbound participant David Friedman, the "natural rights" approach is intellectually untenable. Indeed it is so ridiculous, involves so much begging the question, that it is shameful. <i>There is no alternative</i> to viewing property rights as transferable bundles of rights whose nature depends on law and social custom. This is simply the result of serious study of what property rights are and have been. Yet Klein, in his stridence, insists that we should see property rights as "natural". It is though he is saying to libertarians that it would be better if we acted as though we were either stupid or ignorant or both, that false advocacy of nonsense on stilts is necessary and that embracing the modern understanding of property (as e.g. Richard Epstein has done) means somehow that we will magically stop owning things and surrender our liberty.<br /><br />Klein's objection to the "bundle of rights" approach seems to be that property rights can change if the law changes. Why does Klein not argue that the law should never change? This is a corner into which many "libertarians" of the Randist or Rothbardist (or "non-initiation of force") variety--the sort who think that there are closed systems that give all the answers--paint themselves. If you ever want to see one squirm, pin him down on this question: given what he argues, then should the law and thus property rights never change? Bring up interesting hypotheticals and historical problems. If Coasean bargaining is the excuse, pin him down on transaction costs, endowment effects, and other non-satisfaction of the premises of the Coase Theorem. Watch the lols ensue.<br /><br /><hr><br />Before Will Wilkinson was purged from Cato, this vulgar nonsense would never have made it into <i>Cato Unbound</i>. What is certainly of no use to the cause of liberty is for Dan Klein to insist on a position best left to teenaged Rothbardites and get schooled by a social democrat. His essay makes it appear as though liberalism (libertarianism) depends on belief in fairy tales like natural property rights. That is not so.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-61492715348655732422010-07-12T10:20:00.002-07:002010-07-12T10:27:25.587-07:00Is this an opening against "May Issue" CCW?Via <a href="http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2010/07/federal_judge_r.php">Dave Hardy</a>, news that a U.S. District Court judge <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100709/NEWS10/7090348/Judge-rips-sheriff-for-rejecting-gun-permit">is requiring that an Iowa sheriff take a basic course on the U.S. Constitution</a> after denying a local activist a CCW permit because his views are unpopular.<br /><br />This is a paradigm case, one in which the issues are very clear. But the problems Paul Dorr encountered are those of nearly everyone who is denied a CCW permit in a "may issue" state: a sheriff gets to decide, arbitrarily, based on extra-legal factors, whether you, too, can join the privileged few and discreetly carry a firearm. One can hope that legislators and judges in New York and California have taken note of the Dorr case.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-2483925459542290902010-06-28T03:00:00.002-07:002010-06-28T03:03:20.242-07:00Hours before McDonald: Will Chicago Democrats obey the law?Chances are that the Supreme Court will apply the 2nd Amendment to the states (via the 14th) and overturn Chicago's handgun ban. Will Daley and the Democratic Party obey the law or will separate enforcement actions be needed? Remember: this is the party and administration that carried out the "terrorist bombing" of Meigs Field in defiance of the Feds, not over some Constitutional dispute or in support of human rights, but rather, to build a park.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-60400996178364194752010-06-21T15:57:00.005-07:002010-06-21T17:55:26.895-07:00Shouldn't the press stop calling the Brady Center for its opinion?Read a national-interest news story on firearms law and chances are high that the reporter solicited and quoted the opinion of the "Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence" (formerly Handgun Control, Inc). In the early '90s, when they got the Brady Bill passed and signed into law and <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s103-1878&tab=summary">stood prepared to destroy American firearms culture and support for RKBA altogether</a> by defining each part of a firearm as a "firearm" and restricting private ownership to 20 such "firearms", or even in 2000, when the group raised over $1.6MM to attempt to influence that year's elections, this made some sense. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dE_hPItkEtw/TCADG0V7IrI/AAAAAAAAACI/prXAoXMCoHA/s1600/brady.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 188px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dE_hPItkEtw/TCADG0V7IrI/AAAAAAAAACI/prXAoXMCoHA/s200/brady.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485387761801962162" /></a>Nowadays, it's not too much of a stretch to claim that the Brady Campaign has effectively zero support. To date in the 2010 fiscal year, the Brady Campaign (PAC) has <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2010&strID=C00113449">raised only $2,500</a>, putting them in the ballpark of e.g. a typical Prohibition Party presidential campaign or Libertarian Party candidate for anarcho-capitalist dogcatcher.<br /><br />To be fair, the "Brady Center"--the side of the operation that isn't a PAC or a lobby group, brought in nearly <a href="http://www.bbb.org/charity-reviews/national/law-and-public-interest/brady-center-to-prevent-gun-violence-in-washington-dc-1136">$3 MM in 2008, according to the Better Business Bureau</a>. For a "national" organization, that's pathetic. The ACLU Foundation (the non-lobbying side of that operation), to provide a point of contrast, brought in over $66 MM in 2007 and the National Parks Conservation Association raised $61 MM. Things have gotten so bad for the Brady Bunch that they're having a "fire sale" of sorts, <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-30265-Detroit-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2010m6d11-More-bad-news-for-the-antigun-crowd-as-the-Brady-Campaign-sells-its-member-list-to-raise-cash">selling a mailing list they previously told members they'd keep private</a>.<br /><br />The Brady Center's political Brady Campaign has withered away to nothing, and the "educational" Center itself was in 2008 operating on what, for a national organization of its visibility and former prestige, was a shoestring budget. (If the trend in Campaign fundraising correlates to that of the Center, one expects that this year the Center will see far less than $3 MM.) It isn't unfair to say that <i>support for</i> the Brady Campaign is nonexistent and that the Center isn't far behind; only a single donor was willing to pay the Campaign to do what it does, and the Center is able to raise but a minuscule sum.<br /><br />Phoning Paul Helmke for a quote when writing a firearms-law news article is like giving equal time to a third-party paper candidate when covering local politics or phoning a conspiracist, unscientific crank when writing a piece on climate change. It's false balance. That a group that has faded to nonexistence gets equal time is a sign of bias against RKBA in the press if there ever was one. The Brady Campaign and Brady Center are no longer newsworthy and should not be treated as such.<br /><br />Hat tip to Alan Korwin for the $2500 number--it took a bit of searching to find the source.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-55556228826486941932010-06-17T16:28:00.003-07:002010-06-17T16:37:13.580-07:00Capitalism and Freedom in 2010.Over on Epinions, my review of <a href="http://www.epinions.com/content_513218743940">Capitalism and Freedom</a> is up. There's a bit too much chapter-by-chapter commentary, making it a more tedious read than it should be, but there's so much confusion about what's in this book that it's worth it.<br /><br />Have a look at the dopey remark and ensuing exchange in the comments section. People who blame Friedman or Chicago School economics for Chile's early 1980s recession are ridiculous: since when did Chicago Schoolers advocate fixed exchange rates and government favortism of industries, in this case, copper. Moreover, it's about time--just as is the case with global warming denialists--that we start calling lies lies and liars liars. Anyone who believes that Friedman was "sent" to Chile, that Friedman advised the Pinochet government in any meaningful sense of the word, or that Pinochet was a Chicago School "True Believer" and that this motivated repression needs to be shamed, as none of these statements have any basis in fact. They were lies when student radicals made them up in the 1970s and they remain lies today. More than 30 years later, there's no excuse for believing them, especially with Wikipedia and dozens of articles setting the facts straight immediately available.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-82499755924555440282010-06-02T15:30:00.002-07:002010-06-02T15:36:11.593-07:00Query about "Austrian Economics": ("Bleg".)From the perspective of modern economic science, as opposed to a provincial "Austrian" perspective, what, if any, were the lasting contributions of Ludwig von Mises?B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-76120371722081850972010-04-17T03:39:00.003-07:002010-04-17T03:42:26.678-07:00Insight on the "Tea Party" phenomenon.<a href="http://www.desertlamp.com/?p=6077">From Vishal Ganeshan</a>:<blockquote>Among Tea Party respondents, the President enjoys a 88% job disapproval rating. Further, 84% of respondents simply have an unfavorable opinion of him. That their overwhelmingly negative opinion of the President is largely divorced from his actual policies is disturbing, but it also brings to light one of the reasons for the GOP’s refusal to cooperate with the President and the Dems on any issue...the recipe for success is saying “no” to the President, regardless of the policy implications.</blockquote>The whole article is worth reading.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-88703553859175541362010-04-01T00:36:00.003-07:002010-04-01T00:42:30.504-07:00Dumbing down of America, sartorial editionWhile searching for wedding attire, originally deciding on morning dress (before the ceremony was moved to later in the day) I discovered that not a few companies call the morning coat/cutaway coat "Tuxedo Tails", and that they also call the "white tie" tailcoat "Tuxedo Tails".<br /><br />Moreover, on a somewhat related note, the Homburg hat is sold on the Internet as the "Gangster" or "Godfather" hat. Given how the fedora was named, that almost makes sense. <br /><br />Jacques Barzun considered the turning away from more prescribed forms of dress a symptom of a broader culture of "emancipation". What does one call "Tuxedo Tails" and "Godfather hat"? That doesn't seem to be the word for it.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-52105906753804631712010-01-27T23:58:00.003-07:002010-01-28T00:01:19.130-07:00A little abuse of the language:From a <a href="http://restoration.scancafe.com/photoscanner.php">website about scanners</a>:<blockquote>What do you want to scan?<br />Only photos: If you only want to scan photos, go for a flat bed scanner that does not provide features for transparent media such as slides and negatives. This will put you in the sub $200 range.<br /><br />Photos and negatives/slides: Flat bed scanners that have the capability to scan transparent media (slides/negatives) are more expensive since they usually have two detectors (top and bottom). We recommend the EPSON 4490 or the EPSON 4990 for photos, but we recommend the Nikon 5000 ED and Nikon 9000 ED for slide scanning and negative scanning.</blockquote><br /><br />"Photo" is not a synonym for print. I had to read that first sentence three times to make sense of it.<br /><br />There used to be badges to put on websites to signal that one supports free speech, etc. (I think there still are.) We should have a badge saying "I will not participate in the further dumbing-down of America" for websites that refuse to butcher usage in ways like the above.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-47498383186266531772010-01-27T02:00:00.005-07:002010-01-27T02:07:14.079-07:00We don't want them to know the word for what they saw Mommy doing to Daddy...they might tell everyone.Via Tyler Cowen: a<strike>n Arkansas</strike> California elementary school <a href="http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_W_dictionary23.466f8d4.html">removes Webster's Collegiate Dictionary</a> from its library after students do what students have done with dictionaries since time immemorial: look up dirty words.<br /><br />Read the news piece. Some parents think the school should replace the dictionary with one with more "age-appropriate" words!B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-21330984410655703262009-12-02T18:07:00.002-07:002009-12-02T18:10:48.847-07:00Hack or leak?--information emerges about ClimategateVisit <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/cru-hack-more-context/">this thread</a> and scroll down to number 13. Gavin Schmidt--a fairly reliable source on the matter--says that his information is that the files were not leaked but taken by a black-hat hack of the backup mailserver.<br /><br />In other words, not a leak, let alone the "whistleblower" fairytale that emerged in the denialosphere.<br /><br />Hmm...if anyone did that to Morano, Michaels, and Macintyre, we'd probably learn who was responsible. Not that I advocate black-hat hacking or anything!B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-7068448413561834792009-11-25T14:19:00.002-07:002009-11-25T14:27:52.633-07:00Is California limiting speeding through "social engineering"?Driving I-5 from LA to the Highway 152 exit for Pacheco Pass/Silicon Valley in the early hours of the morning, I noticed that the near-broke State of California has installed shiny new "radar enforced" signs in the zones that previously were aircraft-only.<br /><br />The aircraft signs, to some of us, said "If you don't see an airplane, drive a safe, reasonable speed of your choice." I didn't see a single Highway Patrol on my route, but was more reluctant to go more than 9 over than usual. (After going 100 miles without seeing a patrol car, I ceased letting it stop me.)<br /><br />Was this the point of installing the signs?B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-33358290732180886432009-11-24T02:58:00.008-07:002009-11-24T05:42:16.913-07:00Evil, stupid, or neither?From his yurt near Ulan Bator, the anonyblogger known as "CLS", who largely posts what could be called "human interest" libertarianism on the <a href="http://freestudents.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Classically Liberal</a> 'blog, put up a post today about a tactic he calls "<a href="http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/11/left-right-intimidation-and-superiority.html" rel="nofollow">argument from intimidation</a>," an idea he openly borrows from Ayn Rand.<br /><br />CLS claims that this is a major and perhaps the primary political argument of today. Rather than try to summarize, I quote it below. From Rand:<br /><br /><blockquote>There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure . . . [It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: “Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X’s argument is false.” . . . The falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily and offered as proof of his immorality.</blockquote><br /><br />and from CLS:<br /><br /><blockquote>What concerns me is that the Argument from Intimidation is often accompanied by the most dangerous political view around: that those who are the object of one's ridicule must be either stupid or immoral. This sort of black/white fundamentalism, in any field, is implies that all dissent is fundamentally immoral, of at best, the sign of a inferior mind at work. Consider the ramifications of that perspective for a moment.</blockquote><br /><br />It is an interesting line of thought, for sure--and almost <a href="http://hanson.gmu.edu">Hansonian</a> in a backwards way--but it's also something that could easily be invoked too often and out of proper domain of applicability to stifle discussion, dodge criticism, or de-legitimize ridicule. There's a time to be logical and meet another as an equal and there's a time to say "pull your head out of your ass" or "don't bother with that guy's take on 'photons' as he admits to not knowing any quantum mechanics." (That is, by the way, based on a real example.) I cannot say whether or not CLS agrees, but I'm fairly certain the would-be philosopher (or, pace John Hospers, the Continental-style "philosopher"/critical theorist) who divided other thinkers into "mystics of muscle" and "mystics of mind" and was known for browbeating people about their supposed irrationality would agree.<br /><br />The real danger here is invocation of the term by people who are being either fatuous or wicked. Picture the new wanker tactic: the retort to "X is immoral" becomes "yeah you're just arguing from intimidation." Invocation of "argument from intimidation" can be every bit as much an avoidance tactic as the real thing.<br /><hr><br />I suspect--there are a few cute hints dropped through the post--that I'm the inspiration for CLS taking up this topic, even though he veers away from my personal habits and towards broader relevance in the final portion. In particular, I've browbeat CLS a bit--perhaps in language that's a bit too strong, but readers of Goldwater State and this 'blog know I don't dress things up--lately about modesty, respect for truth, and intellectual due diligence. I also made a statement someplace quasi-private about not being able to tell whether or not the leaked CRU e-mails, like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_for_Geoclimatic_Studies">Geoclimatic Studies hoax</a>, are a test of honesty or IQ or both, which (also privately) seemed to have irked our yurt-dwelling 1970s-era libertarian. (I'm reminded a bit of the account of Emperor Julian writing a play because his beard was mocked...)<br /><br />If this isn't the case, then I'm being presumptuous. But if it is the case: What CLS doesn't get--and what separates my behavior and that of the many others (see comments on e.g. <a href="http://www.realclimate.org">RealClimate</a>) who see this the way I do from Ayn Rand's "argument from intimidation"--is that we are considering not the conclusion but how it appears the object of our scorn got there.<br /><br />The Geoclimatic Studies hoax is perhaps the paradigm case. We had a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.318.5853.1045c">fake paper</a> in a fake journal, written by nonexistent authors from nonexistent academic departments (albeit at real universities) full of obvious nonsense, including mathematical formulae that were difficult to distinguish from random typesetting of symbols. This fake paper happened to claim that global warming had been completely misattributed and was consequently echoed by hundreds of websites (including Reason Magazine's "Hit and Run" in what must surely be the publication's all-time low) and even a few radio shows.<br /><br />"Stupid and a bit evil" is a more likely descriptor of the hoax's victims than outright evil. Outright evil would be to know that the paper was nonsense but to promote it anyway, for purposes other than exposing the credulous nature of the self-labeled "skeptics". (Whether or not that, too, is evil is a matter for another time.) "Stupid" is to miss that the hoax article was nonsense. Those pseudo-equations were a dead giveaway. The small evil on top of that is to pass the paper on and make a strong claim for it when one doesn't understand. "I don't understand this, but the part that's in plain English supports my pre-determined position, so I will promote it as though it is true" almost epitomizes intellectual dishonesty. "I don't get it" should be a stop sign, not a green light.<br /><br />I'll admit presently that I have difficulty sympathizing with "I don't get it" as I suspect others experience it. I can't picture how some common mistakes are made. I understand why students often come into introductory physics believing half-consciously in impetus theories of motion. To discern why impetus theories are wrong from everyday experience--or to apply inertial theories to everyday experience--is a tremendously subtle matter. But why someone would even want a classical theory of the photon, or how someone could <a href="http://stochasticgain.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-couldnt-make-that-up-if-i-tried.html">confuse global warming and ozone depletion</a> is a mystery to me. There are plenty of things in this world I don't understand (from a certain perspective, most things!) and I avoid voicing--I try to avoid holding!--strong opinions on such matters. If I think I understand and I actually don't, I'd appreciate someone telling me, and if I'm arrogant about it, unlike CLS, I'd actually welcome a (metaphorical) brick to the head like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat">Ignatz Mouse would throw at the oblivious Krazy Kat</a>. The most awkward aspect of my lack of sympathy is an inability to understand what it is like to be incapable of understanding or to not know how to bring myself to understand. Skills and arts are one thing, but science, social science, or ability to comprehend philosophers' arguments is another. There are few things I think I would not be able to bring myself to understand were I to care enough--and I know in most instances where I'd start. But I get the feeling that to many, real papers are as nonsensical as the Geoclimatic Studies article. Perhaps in the context of a liberal "democratic" society it is not reasonable to expect someone who thinks he can't understand something or just plain will never be able to understand something to keep his opinion to himself. That's a question I don't purport to answer.<br /><br />A second paradigm case is that of Ian Plimer, author of <i>Heaven and Earth</i>, which famously claims that volcanic emission of CO2 dwarfs that of human activity. This time around, "not stupid just evil" comes to mind. Given what Plimer does for a living, and the quality of his previous output, one has a hard time thinking it likely that he confused "million" and "billion". Moreover, given that he wrote an extensively footnoted book, it's hard to believe that he didn't know where to look to find information on relative contributions nor to learn the several different ways in which we know his claim is not so. It's more likely that he made the assertion without having researched it at all--something that,being an academic, he would know is wrong! The real problem with Plimer, however, is that even when corrected, he continued in his position, without explanation. To make a mistake is one thing, but to leave it to stand without acknowledgement shows a simple disregard for truth itself.<br /><br />Plimer's behavior--neither explain nor acknowledge nor apologize for one's mistakes--is fairly typical among climate contrarians, and if I had to choose the reason they're ordinarily regarded as evil, that would be it. As noted earlier, the reason is behavior and not the position. <br /><br />Perhaps the second is the behavior known as "denialism". There are a few honest contrarians out there, but many will use bad argument just as well as good if it will convince another that the scientific mainstream is wrong. Ross McKitrick, for example, tried to pretend that the lack of abstract existence proofs for solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation had implications against the scientific consensus. That level of sophistication is not needed: so seemingly random and bizarre are the bad arguments that one gets the impression that the average contrarian 'blogger or commentator will point to a baked potato as evidence against AGW if he thinks it will convince someone, especially if he heard someone else do so as well. To a denialist, no argument is bad enough and as soon as an argument seems OK it's ready to send out. An intellectually honest person doesn't stop when he arrives at a result he wants--he's self-critical: <i>skeptical</i>.<br /><hr><br />Which brings me back to my beef with "CLS". Recently, <a href="http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/11/thriving-on-dissent-or-demanding.html" rel="nofollow">in reference to the stolen private CRU e-mails</a>, CLS tried to parlay the ordinary process of recommending referees when one submits a journal article into an active effort to corrupt the review process. Moreover he twisted correspondence between scientists concerning the <a href="http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm">Climate Research scandal</a> into having evil motivation. Scientists standing up for integrity in the peer review process are, to CLS, scientists trying to suppress dissent--a church or religion! That they were protesting the publication of a paper that made claims in its conclusions that could not be drawn from its body is ignored.<br /><br />It's possible that CLS didn't know the context of these e-mails. In that case, he should have waited, or perhaps just searched using Google as explanations were up by then. But denialists stop and broadcast when convenient, not when appropriate. In this case it was with no regard for the seriousness of the accusation being made. "Forget that reputations could be harmed unfairly, I'm going to stop here and spread my opinion because this is a convenient place to stop." And like Plimer, CLS didn't acknowledge his mistake even after it was pointed out by at least two different people. The lack of acknowledgement makes it seem less like a sincere (if not honest) mistake than like willful disregard for the truth.<br /><br />Is it "argument from intimidation" to mention this? I don't think so. Is it "argument from intimidation" to recommend the following to CLS and similar characters?: Pull your head out of your ass--it's your behavior, not your position, that draws our ire.<br /><br />Which is a pity, really, as he's not ordinarily an evil guy. Neither are the folks at Reason who promoted the Geoclimatic Studies paper. There's something about this issue that brings out the worst in many people.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-62064856599901095972009-11-16T16:53:00.002-07:002009-11-16T21:07:03.669-07:00Silly web-writer tricks.Having been a <a href="http://www.dmoz.org">DMOZ</a> editor for over ten years, I've seen plenty of silly schemes webmasters put together in attempts to increase traffic. Mirror sites, "informative" webpages that are pitches for online pet shops (etc), and the like, submitted thinking that someone editing the Open Directory would be stupid enough to take them for "real" webpages, list them, and boost the search engine page rank for whatever listing counts for these days.<br /><br />Web writers are picking up some of the same habits. Today I rejected for inclusion something apparently put together by Examiner.com's "Raleigh Libertarian Examiner": a "'blog" consisting of nothing except the first couple of hundred words of each of his Examiner articles, followed by a link to the page.<br /><br />Maybe it'll fool Google, but it's obvious to a human.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-29505151572704784572009-10-13T18:33:00.003-07:002009-10-23T01:14:13.969-07:00A series of tubes, leading to Lake WobegonAccording to a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125470172872063071.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">recent article</a> in the Wall Street Journal, on a five-star scale, the average rating given by a reviewer on the World Wide Web is 4.3. Despite the Web's reputation for rudeness and hostility, the average rating given to goods and services is above average.<br /><br />Thinking to my experiences as an <a href="http://www.epinions.com/user-bkalafut">Epinions.com contributor</a> and <a href="http://chefmoz.org/cgi-bin/profile.cgi?editor=bkalafut">ChefMoz editor</a>, 4.3 sounds about right. If people like something, they tend to give it maximum or near maximum rating.<br /><br />That there's a filtering step keeping most truly lousy products out of the hands of Web reviewers would seem at first to explain this, but it isn't compelling. Yes, consumers--unlike newspaper and magazine writers--tend only to review products they buy, and that they have thus already researched, but this should drive expectations <i>down</i>, certainly not up. Consider that the filtering-by-research means that the average product a savvy customer sees is better than the average product being sold. If we knock all of the one-star products out, the scale we're left with centers on 3.5 stars. If we expect product ratings to follow a Gaussian ("normal") distribution up to the limits posed by the discretization and boundaries, this will bias slightly to the left of 3.5, but the point still stands. Filtering can't explain pervasive overrating.<br /><br />The U.S. school grading custom, in which scores between 70 and 80 points out of 100 are supposed to be the average, may have something to do with it. Products may start out in people's minds with 5-star ratings, with stars being knocked off for lousiness. That's quite a different thought process than considering 3 stars as average, 2 stars as below average, one star as lousy, etc. Perhaps, as is speculated at the end of the WSJ, the ability to be meaningfully negative--or just to shed Lake Wobegon Syndrome--may come with experience; willingness to give five-star ratings to mediocre goods and services could be simple naivety.<br /><br />Before adjusting a few Epinions ratings (downward, very slightly), I computed my average rating: 3.18 on a scale from 1-5. That's above 3, probably statistically significantly so, but not by much, and I've been reviewing "great stuff" lately. That the number is close to 3 is reassuring. Then again, when clicking the Haloscan stars on 'blogs, I'm so consistently a downrater that I didn't need much reassurance at all.<br /><br />If you don't mean to say that something is great--not good, not "great!" like "pizza tonight?--Great!, I want anchovies...", but better than good, one of the best in its area, a real standout, please don't give it five stars.<br /><br /><br /><br />HT: <a href="http://www.epinions.com/user-mrkstvns">Mark Stevens</a>B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-82171100459992802802009-09-21T23:16:00.002-07:002009-09-22T00:07:25.356-07:00Good cult, bad cult.Cults, or "New Religious Movements", are as American as baseball, blues, and apple pie, going back almost to our legally tolerant Republic's founding. A slew of prominent ones come to mind: weird messianic offshoots of Christianity like Oneida or the Shakers, oddball sci-fi groups like the Scientologists or Heaven's Gate, Mormonism and Christian Science that became more or less mainstream, and several, like Trascendentalism and Ayn Randist "Objectivism", the practitioners of which insist aren't even religions. I suspect that there's something about American culture that encourages formation of cults as an expression of religiosity--and even if belonging to one is still weird, I'm confident many readers know someone who is a member of one. <br /><br />This seems mostly like harmless fun. Consider Arizona's <a href="http://goldwaterstate.blogspot.com/2009/09/church-of-cognizance-case-can.html">Church of Cognizance</a>, which I first heard of due to a recent state Supreme Court decision. It seems to be a group set up so that members have an excuse for smoking cannabis. Maybe the belief is sincere and maybe it isn't--if it was a mere scheme it was clearly poorly thought out given the results in court. I have to remember to forget my Catholic upbringing and not to intellectualize it. "Pot is the key to enlightenment, and the Avesta rocks because it says so too, here and here and here..." is probably closer to the story than "let's find a religious scripture that maybe supports our smoking, so we have a better case." Cults mostly take weird people and give them a framework for their weirdness. I know a person who thinks lizard men are part of a conspiracy to dominate the government. He's also very much into neo-Vedanta.<br /><br />"Mostly" is the key. Clara Rose Thornton, a Vermont freelance journalist (and former Chicago South Sider) recently went to live with a group called the Twelve Tribes to learn organic farming and <a href="http://www.commonsnews.org/test3/story.php?articleno=663&page=1">reported that the group maintains that servitude is good and proper for people of African descent.</a>. The whole article is one of the better examples of independent journalism I've seen in a long time--not the non-analytic, flaky, affectedly-breezy stuff usually found in alt-weeklies--and is worth a read from front to back.<br /><br />Freedom of religion is an interesting thing in a free society. Adults converts will believe what they want to believe and it takes nothing short of psychosurgery to get them to stop. Nothing we can do about it. But teaching children things that go against the very foundations of liberty--such as that some are to be subordinate to others due to the location of their ancestors' homeland--presents a conundrum. The children get no choice in the matter, yet teaching religion to children has always been considered part of the adult's freedom of religion. <br /><br />I'd like to think it doesn't matter because groups like the Tribes are small, but larger religious groups for a long time promoted the subordination of women and some reasonably socially acceptable ones would have God hating homosexuals and somehow it therefore being OK for Man to abuse them, too. And there's a continuum from harmless beliefs--God loves you and you will even get to live with him because his son, who is God too, was a Jewish man executed by the Romans, or we must all go to Mecca and walk around a big rock within our lifetime if we can, or "Mu...and at that moment grasshopper attained enlightenment--to mostly harmless beliefs--you are one of the Chosen People, or conquer the infidels and tax them if they don't convert, or smoke all the weed you like--to harmful ones like the blessing of Châmites is to be servile.<br /><br />Maybe we've struck the right balance, but when I consider how many people think that scientists must be wrong about global warming <a href="http://wvgazette.com/News/200909070222">because God would never let that happen</a> I have my doubts.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-14300641091110428342009-09-09T18:31:00.001-07:002009-09-09T18:34:04.775-07:00A little something about the "trigger"......that should have posted a few hours before I did.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2158125/if_obama_offers_it_freemarketeers_should.html?cat=75">If Obama Offers It, Free-Marketeers Should Welcome the "Trigger" to the Health Care Reform Discussion</a>B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-44917710842873764562009-09-04T00:43:00.005-07:002009-09-04T01:32:22.269-07:00Empty-head syndrome and Facebook memes.Stupid is as stupid does, but what's obnoxious is intelligent people, people one knows to be capable of analytic, critical thought, being willfully stupid, or at least glib, their head emptying out unpredictably when certain topics come up. Given the current public discussion of health care and health insurance reform, it's an everyday occurrence. This isn't the "why are these people ignorant of free market reform proposals to the point where they think people who oppose their scheme support the status quo" gripe. This is worse.<br /><br />Circulating on Facebook today as a veritable "Internet Meme" is what seems to be a sort of credo in unum deum for supporters of a broadly leftist agenda for health care reform. (Let's get something straight right now: Virtually nobody is "anti-reform"; most opponents of the "public option" plan support fixing the market.) As follows:<blockquote>No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.</blockquote><br /><br />This sounds nice, but let's think about it for a moment.<br /><ol><li>"No one should die because they cannot afford health care" ("one...they" is grating to the eyes, but that's not the trouble.) The trouble is that this is unattainable unless we go down really nasty paths. There are a few ways to interpret this statement. <br /><br />One is as an expression of dissatisfaction with living in a world of finite abundance. Our grandparents are older than molecular biology. Things are getting better and less expensive, but we would always wish them to be better still. This doesn't have any policy implications for health care reform aside from preventing government from thwarting progress by breaking the mechanisms which drive it. It's more of a pro-market than an anti-market sentiment.<br /><br />The other way to interpret it is as a call for market abolitionism. I'm not saying that the people posting this this are old-time socialists. It's more slouching toward market abolitionism. Everyone should be entitled to all lifesaving treatments. There should be no way of obtaining lifesaving treatment by paying, because that means that some will go without lifesaving treatment because they cannot pay. <i>This entails a ban on paying for new and better care</i>. Rationing, in other words. <br /><br />And don't be so glib to say "but insurance companies ration already." They don't. An insurance company cannot forbid one from paying for treatment. (I support very drastic insurance reform, which would have us shopping around for policies with less uncertainty in what is covered, but that's neither here nor there. I say it because some jerk will say something stupid, nasty, and bizarre if I do not. Times are strange and ideology clouds minds!) <br /><br />If you do not support a ban on paying for care, you should not have posted this statement.<br /><br /><li>"No one should go broke because they get sick." "Fewer people should go broke because they get sick" is something I could sign on to. Get rid of every silly mandate that makes it difficult to purchase cheap health insurance. Mandatory purchase of insurance is something I'm ambivalent about. On the one hand, if someone chooses to not purchase something and assume risk himself, that should be taken seriously. On the other hand, Americans are not going to let people go without basic treatment even if they chose to not hedge against risk, so mandatory purchase may be better than free riders.<br /><br />But here's something to consider: What if I get sick and I choose to go broke to purchase the newest, best treatment? Should I be forbid from doing that? Should the State step in and subsidize my choice, transferring from others to me to support a luxury?<br /></ol><br /><br />The lesson? Think hard before making statements about "no one". More often than not they are far too strong and have you committed to things you probably don't support.<br /><br />My posted response:<blockquote>No one should die because redistributionism prevented development of care that could have saved his life. Nobody should go without treatment due to rationing intended to prevent bankruptcy of a government monopsony. Nobody should go bankrupt becaus...e the government prevented purchase of affordable insurance. If you understand this--even if you disagree--you are approaching health care reform intelligently.</blockquote><br /><br />Not as catchy, but at least one other person picked up on it.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-19696537751113400772009-08-25T16:26:00.002-07:002009-08-25T16:29:10.443-07:00Lying about open carry: if the small lie doesn't work, switch to a big one.First there was talk of an "assault rifle", now the popular press is making claims that people have been <a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=brandishing+guns+%22town+hall%22">brandishing</a> firearms at the so-called "town hall" meetings concerning health care reform?<br /><br />What next? Will the word "discharging" be used for carrying? "He discharged his assault rifle into the crowd"?<br /><br />There is plenty of footage of most of this open carry, and there have been hundreds of witnesses. So far, neither film nor witness reports show that anyone at these events has brandished a weapon.<br /><br />An assault rifle is by definition a switchable full automatic. And to brandish one must by definition take the weapon into hand. That's not disputable; these are the common meanings of the terms and to use them any other way is to report falsehoods, that is, to lie. End of story.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-53878874085031247782009-08-14T18:46:00.003-07:002009-08-14T19:23:24.782-07:00The most ridiculous health care protest yet.Proponents of the Obama Administration's plan for crowd-out of private health insurance, the "public option", and wacky positions even farther to the left (single-payer, Europe-style price controls with a market veneer, etc.) are now calling for a boycott of Whole Foods. Phoenix "Liberal Examiner" Marlene Phillips has the best <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-2154-Phoenix-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m8d14-Whole-Foods-CEO-talks-health-care-customers-talk-boycott">Web article on of the subject</a>.<br /><br />Apparently, they're upset about Whole Foods CEO and co-founder John Mackey's recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html">Wall Street Journal guest opinion</a> calling for market-based reforms and private generosity instead of the Democrats' crowd-out plan. (Mackey <a href="http://www2.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2009/08/14/health-care-reform-full-article/">has remarked on the public response</a>, too.)<br /><br />That Mackey is and has been for a long time what could be called a "libertarian"--of what variety, I don't know--is old news. See, for instance, his <a href="http://www.reason.com/news/show/32239.html">exchange</a> with Milton Friedman (in which T.J. Rodgers also participated by foaming at the mouth about Mackey's "collectivism" like your average Libertarian Party meeting nutcase). Note that the exchange is about the social responsibility of business, and that Mackey's position is probably close to that of the boycott proponents.<br /><br />I suspect that the lefties proposing a boycott feel somehow betrayed, expecting Whole Foods higher-ups to believe the same as they do about politics. The vulgar leftist thinks that his politics are the necessary consequence of his values. If these characters took the time to learn the "whys" of Mackey's position it would do them well. A person with humane values who understands economics tends toward economic liberalism, that is to say, toward support of free markets. That concern for others that has some of the leftists supporting greater government intervention has people like myself and Mackey instead calling for less.<br /><br />If you would like to just try to make the world better for people, don't learn economics, and don't be surprised if someone like me calls you on confusing righteous intentions with right action. If you would like to learn how to actually help people, learn economics. Figuring out why Mackey supports what he does--a little bit of Google is all it will take--is a good way to start.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-87377988016458963232009-08-12T15:20:00.002-07:002009-08-12T15:23:33.827-07:00Top article on Google News for a hot keyword.This is a good feeling! Search Google News for flag@whitehouse.gov and my <a href="http://www.nolanchart.com/article6727.html">Nolan Chart.com article</a> is at the top. For some reason they're giving the wrong author name, but who cares?<br /><br />A summary: I recommend reporting all "fishy" left-wing claims about health care or health care reform to flag@whitehouse.gov and suggest a few to watch for. Follow the above link to read the whole thing.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-46120319767960212582009-08-11T15:23:00.005-07:002009-08-11T17:04:19.295-07:00Yglesias presents an intelligent libertarianism. There's a problem:...In response to a remark by <a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/08/what-is-progressivism-1.html">Tyler Cowen</a>, left-"progressive" 'blogger Matthew Yglesias presents an <a href="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/what-is-libertarianism.php">intelligent libertarianism</a>.<br /><br />It is an intelligent libertarianism, albeit a somewhat loopy one, that has libertarianism as an esoteric doctrine so as to benefit from gains from widespread belief in capitalist meritocracy. It also shows Yglesias to be either much more of a pessimist or much less versed in basic econ. than I suspected.<br /><br />The trouble is, although it is an intelligent libertarianism, it's not a libertarianism in which any libertarian I can think of believes. Cowen's take on "progressivism", on the other hand, was an idealization of the real "progressive".<br /><br />Most of the really vocal and obnoxious libertarians (e.g. the Lew Rockwell crowd) do not believe in an intelligent libertarianism, but those whose libertarianism is intelligent believe something quite different than Yglesias's sketch. They <i>do</i> believe that growth makes most concerns about the justice of the current distribution misguided. (Considering the sum of wealth to be static is perhaps the unifying error of left-wing thinkers from Rawls forward.) But they also believe that people can or ought to be able to get ahead by doing well for others--that laws and regulations ought to be ordered to bring this about--not that people merely derive benefit from believing this. Think, for example, of Mises's remark that profit is obtained by doing in the marketplace what others want.<br /><br />There is, of course, more to any intelligent libertarianism (e.g. Richard Epstein's, Will Wilkinson's) than this, but it's fairly common.<br /><br />A remark at the beginning of his post is independently worth considering:<blockquote>It’s initially tempting to respond to that by listing the intelligent points that I’ve heard made by libertarians, and then explain how a sound progressive politics conducts by incorporating those critiques and moving forward to a higher synthesis.</blockquote><br /><br />This is also how a sound libertarianism is constructed. We're seeing this happen: the libertarianisms of Will Wilkinson, Tyler Cowen, Richard Epstein, and Brian Holtz (and myself) are all heavily influenced, in different ways, by the left-liberal and left-"progressive" critiques of old libertarianism. This is a major source of conflict in the movement--the old folks don't really know what to make of it. To them modern libertarianism is "watered down"--the young folks really believe exactly as they do but "compromise and conceal" it. To modern libertarians, however, the libertarianism of Dave Nolan or Jacob Hornberger is a degenerate folk-libertarianism full of ignored subtleties and cognitive dissonances. (Don't ask me in what camp to place the aretaic theories of Rasmussen and Den Uyl; I don't know.)B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3529569337919784364.post-79012041222975045692009-07-20T11:59:00.001-07:002009-07-21T00:19:39.373-07:00We will go back to the moon.I've been extremely busy in the last few weeks, but, strangely, Man's long-term future has occupied many of my idle thoughts--in other words, it's been on my mind--and not because the 20th anniversary of the moon landing has been in the news, either.<br /><br />We'll go back to the moon as a matter of course. Getting off of Earth and establishing colonies elsewhere is, in the long view, a matter of simple survival. Sol is heating up--and we can move the Earth to compensate, and this is not the cause of short-scale global warming--and will eventually go dim.<br /><br />But we have to think of it this way: We're a mere sixteen generations, give or take, from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica">dawn of quantitative science</a>, and only a couple more from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia">nearly universal rule by warlords</a>. Our practical macroscopic theory of electricity and magnetism had its final piece put into place around 1905 and quantum mechanics as we know it is only about eighty years old. We've come a long, long way in a very short time. We're in no rush.B. Kalafuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15678386134174713187noreply@blogger.com0