Monthly Archives: April 2010

I post in regard to Comedy Central censoring South Park’s episode last night, and pulling the SuperBestFriends episode off of the South Park web-porthole. Every badass on this list (except Muslim members thereof) is ROTFL, again at the purportedly free world’s collective refusal to stand on the highest of grounds that is freedom of expression, the most natural and inalienable of birthrights  that only religion and government (can – and does – restrict. Fortunately, all is not lost. Freedom loving souls hacked the website that threatened Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park’s creators, and replaced it’s front page with the Mohammed Cartoons, and a picture of a man kissing a boy. FTW.

See it here, and may it ever remain.

Via loyal duelingbarstools reader Cheyne I find a TrendHunter article titled 23 Taxi Innovations. Some of the taxi-trends are pretty awesome, such as Karaoke Cabs (you sing inside – and yes that’s a killer cab name), while others are admirably entrepreneurial, such as flat-rate taxi plans ($65.00 per month, unlimited usage), Pink Taxis (attractive women driving pink cabs, which you’d think would be targeting the male 18-39 demographic, but is actually a female-only taxi service), and Horny Taxis (advertising the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) Tour by equipping cabs with longhorn bull horns). Other trends, however, are suspect, such as the rich and famous (Kate Moss) purchasing taxis as status symbols. Is nothing sacred anymore? Can’t the hardest of hard working entrepreneurs have anything to themselves? And I thought urbanites buying used cowboy jeans was lame. Well, it still is. That will never change. Speaking of lame trends, taxi-cab colored garbage bins is another lame taxi-trend. And it’s insulting.

Another suspect trend is driver-less, electronically controlled cabs. They don’t sound like a lot of fun. It would kill your buzz to hop in a cab, eager to drunkenly interrogate the cabbie, only to find there’s no driver for you. And depending on how much you’ve been drinking, a driver-less cab might really freak you out too. You get in, close the door, cab takes off, then you realize there’s no cab driver. You scream, but the doors are perma-locked. You beat at the windows, scream again, and frantically dial 911. Finally you get an answer, but it’s your ex-girlfriend. Because you dialed the wrong number. (Ha, you thought she got a new job.) Then she tells you she doesn’t care if you die. [Ed. tip: proceed to nearest bar.]

Then there’s a “Taxi Hailer Device,” presumably targeted at individuals who can’t whistle. Hey, I know people in Hawai’i who can’t swim, so go figure. The most dubious taxi trend of all, however, might be “Futuristic Taxis,” which based upon the picture, appear merely to offer more headroom. Apparently people are taller in the future. Someone tell FuturePundit. The article makes futuristic cabs sound pretty sexy, though, stating:

These cabs will feature new technologies that will totally change the design and functionality of the current taxis. Some of the features of the said prototypes are Hybrid Technology support that can cause virtually 0% emission, capability to go 200-mph with 1000-hp that is powered by hydrogen, and can accommodate motorized scooters, wheelchairs, baby strollers and walkers.

Great. When you’re sitting in traffic you can rest assured that if there wasn’t any traffic, and the speed limit wasn’t 55, your 1000 horsepower cab could go almost as fast as a NASCAR stock car, but be as flammable as a rocket. Better hope you don’t get t-boned at the next light. At least the future spares us the inconvenience of collapsing your stroller, walker, or wheelchair. But people still need strollers and walkers in the future, which means that article from the future I linked to a while ago was correct that a major unintended but predictable consequence of Obamacare was medical innovation drying up like the Rio Grande.

Thankfully “Cab Name Speculation” isn’t among the 23 taxi innovations and trends. So I still have the lock on that niche market. What? You’d like someone funnier to take the DuelingBarstools Cab [epic cab name alert] wheel? No. But you can take it around the block, if you claim a scalp in the DuelingBarstools’ Bounty-Cab-Hunt.

If health care, a complex commodities bundle, is a fundamental human right, it makes perfect sense to extend that logic to . . . tourism. Serially. Via Reason:

In the wacky, long-running, and possibly-doomed gameshow that is the European welfare state, everyone in the EU just moved one step closer toward winning a free vacation:

Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right and pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidised by the taxpayer.

Under the scheme, British pensioners could be given cut-price trips to Spain, while Greek teenagers could be taken around disused mills in Manchester to experience the cultural diversity of Europe.

The idea for the subsidised tours is the brainchild of Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, who was appointed by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.

I boldly predict that in order to sell products and services to subsidized tourists the EU will require hostels, hotels, restaurants, pubs, taxis, museums, national monuments, tour agencies, gift shops, airlines, etc. be “EU Subsidized-Tourist Certified.” Obtaining that certification will require companies and agencies to pay annual fees to the EU and comply with wholly unnecessary travel / health / safety / regulatory codes drawn up by a shiny-new EU agency. Unsurprisingly, large tourism corporations will ensure the EU’s tourism provider certification policies effectively stifle competition, which will result in higher prices for non-subsidized tourists and a diluted, homogenized travel experience for all – in spite of EU politicians’ populist rhetoric condemning the large hotel chains, mass-tour companies, and restaurant chains. Such an artificial rise in the cost of travel will spawn a black market in tourism. A black market in tourism services will require a special EU police task force to crack down on illegal tourism services. In order to pay for this task force the EU will levy an additional value added tax on a non-subsidized tourism, while prisons will fill with tourism provider-criminals. But no amount of money or regulation will quash this black market – demand for low cost travel is too strong. The EU’s logical choice will be to levy additional taxes on non-tourism related industries. As the cost of legal traveling rises, legal traveling will decline, and the EU’s tourism lobby will demand more tourism subsidies. And on and on it will go. Eventually the subsidized tourism class will demand a single payer travel system to ameliorate the travel inequity between the subsidized and non-subsidized classes.

Just imagine a centrally planned tapas selection.

Come one, come all, step right up, pay grab your camera, ready your cell phone, and enter DuelingBarstools’ BOUNTY (CAB) HUNT. Thats right, there’s a bounty on the following cabs (non-photoshopped picture required). By the way, the local firewater in Fiji is Bounty Rum. Me thinks Bounty Cab would be an excellent cab name. Now, on to DuelingBarstools’ Most Wanted Cab List:

• Dream Cab
• Camelot Cab
• Destroyer Cab
• Knight Rider Cab (3x points if it’s black)
• Tornado Cab (worth 4x points, as it’s only been spotted once and has Mexican plates)

You’ll earn Internet fame, I’ll award you for fun only fictional worth zero cents Internet points, and you’ll have the chance to pen the official cab name speculation / rant / info-dump for the scalps bounties you claim. Lock and load, people. By the way, if you’re packin’ bear mace heat, the Smith and Wesson Cab is the one for you. Hey, S W Cab is as close to Smith and Wesson as it’s gonna get.

Via loyal reader Marc I find the newest member of DuelingBarstools’ Magna Cum Blogroll: Kiva microloans. Read about Kiva below, consider the prosperity microloans produce in developing countries by equipping  individuals with capital to seize opportunity, and then lament (again) with me America’s spectacularly failed concept of  social justice, which provides neither capital nor opportunity, and rewards state-dependency rather than individual initiative.

Kiva’s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.

Kiva was born of the following beliefs:

• People are by nature generous, and will help others if given the opportunity to do so in a transparent, accountable way.
• The poor are highly motivated and can be very successful when given an opportunity.

• By connecting people we can create relationships beyond financial transactions, and build a global community expressing support and encouragement of one another.

Kiva promotes:

• Dignity:   Kiva encourages partnership relationships as opposed to benefactor relationships. Partnership relationships are characterized by mutual dignity and respect.
• Accountability:   Loans encourage more accountability than donations where repayment is not expected.
• Transparency:   The Kiva website is an open platform where communication can flow freely around the world.

I’m no fan of Mitt Romney.  I don’t trust a word out of his mouth, and simply don’t want another Ivy League lawyer / financier, big-government believin’, flip-flopping, unprincipled, professional politician in Washington. I’ll be beside myself if the libertarian-ish energy spreading through the independent / center-right population results in Romney becoming the GOP’s candidate in 2012. I’ll puke, but I won’t move to Canada. Anyway, here’s the Cato Institute giving Romney what he deserves for centrally planning Massachusetts’ health care into a cautionary tale (albeit one adored by health care rubes), making sorry attempts to distinguish Mass-Care from Obamacare, and overall trying to hoodwink the electorate into thinking he’s a conservative. He’s not. He’s a Republican, and while he’s preferable to Huckabee, he’s no Buckley – and he’s damn sure he’s no Gary Johnson.

Still slammed with work and study, but came across this excellent bit of snark at Reason:

Here we are nine or ten months into the Obama economic boom, and still the president whovowed to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs” (or actually, the most recent president to vow to focus on “job, jobs, jobs”) is unable to show any growth in employment.

What does President Obama have to do? Hespends hundreds of billions of dollars on makework projects. He orders companies to pay their interns. He begs banks to start lending again. He turns everything from government contracting to student loans into a jobs-creation battleground. And still the jobs just won’t come falling out of the sky.

It must be a conspiracy. But who are the villains? Insurance companies? Unscrupulous lenders? Republicans?

Maybe it’s small businesses. Last year Obama praised small business owners as the engine of job creation. But according to Constant Contact’s 2010 Small Business Attitudes & Outlook Survey, the ingrates have responded by not hiring anybody.

Although 70 percent of the 6,800 small businesses surveyed expect to grow over the next year, 61 percent say they do not plan to hire any new employees in that period.

What could cause such an unpatriotic attitude? Sure, 65 percent of small business owners say their costs of doing business have increased, and 45 percent say taxes have been the most significant portion of that increase. And cross-referencing Constant Contact’s figures with this month’s Index of Small Business Optimism from the National Federation of Independent Business, we find that small business owners are feeling unprecedented pessimism about their future prospects.

That kind of crappy attitude has no place in America. The solution is clear: The Department of Labor needs to order small businesses to start hiring people, at higher wages, with coverage for pre-existing conditions. And we should probably raise their taxes to make sure they get the message.

The King of Rants had a good one the other day regarding the young muslim girl who tragically died on while driving a go kart:

Several days ago in an absurdly senseless death; a young, twenty-four year-old Muslim woman from Australia was killed in a go-kart accident when her burqa became entangled in the kart’s wheels resulting in her gruesome strangulation. Her death was nauseating for the very tragicomedy of its circumstances. The media, however, immediately associated her death with the romantic denouement of Isadora Duncan, one of the early pioneers of modern dance, who had died in 1927 when her flamboyantly long scarf billowed into the axle of the Bugatti Type 35 she was riding in, proving, as Gertrude Stein would later remark, that affectations can be dangerous. For the thrill of living life to its delirious excesses, for the allure of pushing its boundaries to the extremes, and for the triumph of simply living – in a vibrantly idiosyncratic manner – your own life in your own way, there are no comparisons between the two tragedies.

With that in mind, here’s what Isadora Duncan would have done if she was born into a traditional muslim household.

Hat tip to GoodShit for the find.

I’m pleased to introduce the newest admission to DuelingBarstools’ Magna Cum Blogroll, the Hyacinth Girl, whom the DialecticalPlaya, King of Rants, describes as “captivating in her phrasing, nuanced in her prose, and a grammatical wizard with her syntax. In short, she’s an exceptional writer.” That’s high praise, people. Hyacinth Girl recently thought out loud about social justice, which made me recall a series of barstool conversations on the same topic that I shared with several friends a while ago. For the purposes of this post, I’m combining them into a single conversation (that will likely devolve into just me writing).

John posited an interesting question: “How can you be a Darwinist and believe in social justice?” That’s a compelling premise, as the concept of survival of the fittest is squarely at odds with, for example, providing “free” medical care to the elderly. Pila probed the question further, however, asserting that some measure of social justice may in fact be consistent with Darwinism, depending on what type of evolutionary creature you consider homo sapiens to be. For instance, solitary predators such as great white sharks probably do not share their catch with fellow great white sharks. By contrast, wolves run in packs, and collectively provide for the young and old – to the extent doing so is efficient for the pack. [Ed. note: for the record, John contends that humans are hairless apes with car keys, and are "not as smart as we think we are, but clever enough to get to the moon."]

I’m no expert on the matter, but human’s are more like wolves than great white sharks. As such, providing for our young, infirmed, and elderly – to the extent doing so is societally efficient – is in our best interests. The pertinent questions, then, are: what is social justice; how to provide social justice; and to what extent do we provide social justice. A well known Chinese proverb is instructive here: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
To build on that proverb, we should teach the poor to fish, not only so they can eat for a lifetime, but so they can generate income by selling their catch – the fruits of their labor. We should further provide the poor with fishing equipment and ample opportunity to fish. Yet, in the US of A, we provide the poor with enough fish to eat three squares a day, but not enough to sell. Nor do we provide adequate fishing education to the poor, or fishing equipment. And we categorically deny the poor the opportunity to sell what they catch (selling fish requires a commercial fishing license, which is beyond the reach of someone lacking the money to eat). Here’s the master doing a far, far better job than me explaining the matter, noting especially why relying on government to play the role of the wolf pack is a dereliction of our self-interested duty:

Unfortunately time is not on my side at the moment, but I came across this article via Reason. Up From Serfdom – this is basically how I see things.

In his article “Up from Slavery,” David Boaz points out that in my article “Liberal Delusions about Freedom” I failed to except American slavery from my reference to the freedom enjoyed by early Americans.

His point is valid and well taken. In the past, I have always made a point of mentioning that tragic exception when discussing the history of American freedom. (See, for example, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

This time, however, I made a mistake and neglected to include the slavery exception in my article and then failed to catch the omission before the article went to press for The Future of Freedom Foundation’s journal, Freedom Daily.

Boaz raises another point that needs addressing: He attempts to diminish the significance of what our American forebears achieved.

It is true that the principles of liberty on which our ancestors founded the U.S. government were not applied to everyone, especially slaves; and there were, of course, other exceptions and infringements on freedom, such as tariffs and denying women the right to vote.

But should those exceptions and infringements prevent us from appreciating and honoring the fact that our ancestors brought into existence the freest, most prosperous, and most charitable society in history?

I don’t think so. I believe that it is impossible to overstate the significance of what our American ancestors accomplished in terms of a free society.

Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS. No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. Few systems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federal minimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based on gold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA. No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions. No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex.

As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.

Boaz entitled his article “Up from Slavery,” which raises the question: How do we libertarians living today free ourselves from the serfdom of the welfare/warfare/regulatory state under which we live? That is, how do we build on the magnificent, albeit far from perfect, achievement of our ancestors?

That, of course, raises the important issue of methodology.

I have long maintained that the key to our success lies in strict adherence to libertarian principles. Nothing worse can befall a good cause than for its supporters to compromise its principles.

Thus, ever since our inception some 20 years ago, The Future of Freedom Foundation has focused not on proposals designed to reform, modify, improve, or reduce the welfare state, regulatory state, and warfare state but instead on raising people’s vision to a much higher level, one that focuses on the libertarian principles of a free society and a constitutional republic—e.g., the separation of economy and the state, of health care and the state, and of education and the state; the right to keep and bear arms; the protection of civil liberties; and the restoration of a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Notwithstanding slavery and other violations of liberty, our American ancestors brought into existence the freest society in history. The question is: How do we restore the lost liberties, especially economic liberty, that characterized their society while retaining and building upon the positive strides that have been made since then, such as in the area of civil rights, so that all aspects of liberty are enjoyed by everyone? By hewing to our principles, libertarians have the opportunity to use what our ancestors accomplished as a foundation for leading the world to the highest reaches of freedom ever seen by man.

Boaz responds to the above article.

Whoa Nellie, it’s gonna be a barnburner. Today we set our speculatory gaze east. Not to east county San Diego, but east east, to the land of the rising sun, where loyal DuelingBarstools reader J.Love recently ventured specifically to photograph Japanese taxi cabs for this week’s cab roundup.

First up, Blue Cab.  I’m pretty sure this is the Japanese equivalent of “Yellow Cab,” which is to say the most boring, blase cab around.

Next, Fukuoka Kotsu Taxi. J-Love took this picture in Fukuoka. Kotsu apparently translates into knack or skill. Knack Cab, Skill[ed] cab, both good names. It lets you know know that Fukuoka Kotsu Taxi is particularly skilled at transportation services. Love the red racing stripe, too.

This is a dooozy, with at least three, maybe four, “o’s”. Gaiko Taxi My online translator failed to deduce what Gaiko is, but who cares. Look at how awesome Gaiko Taxi is. Bright colors, stripes, a rabbit decal – this cab screams “pick me.” According to J.Love, “Gaiko taxi is part of the Nagasaki garage of Lucky Group taxis.” That’s insider information, people. I wish, so much, that San Diego would permit its cabs to distinguish themselves from one another as creatively as Gaiko Taxi.

Last, but certainly not least, King Taxi. Look at the unique cab-light on top, the forward mounted side view mirrors, the subdued yet classy white paint job, all of which serve to highlight the fact that King is a tremendous taxi name. Who doesn’t want to ride in King Taxi? I wonder if this is part of a “garage” of taxis with monarchy related names, such as Queen, Prince, Princess, Jester. By the way, the first country in “modern” times to appoint an official court Jester is . . . wait for it . . . Tonga. Really. Google “Jester Tonga Wiki.”

Tonga was the first royal court to appoint a court jester in modern times, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, the King of Tonga, appointing JD Bogdanoff to the role in 1999. He was later embroiled in a financial scandal.

First, apologies for the last few days’ lack of content. My final semester of law school is nearly over, final exams are upon me, and M-Wife and I had to move apartments yesterday. I did, however, find this article by John Stossel, which may be the best thing I’ve read in a long, long time. Show it to your friends. Now, here’s Stossel’s awesomeness.

I used to be a Kennedy-style “liberal.” Then I wised up. Now I’m a libertarian.

But what does that mean?

When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.

We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they’re for limited government, but they’re pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support “nation-building.”

And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government — they say — to make life kinder for people.

By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone — in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don’t hurt anybody else.

Ironically, that used to be called “liberal,” which has the same root as “liberty.” Several hundred years ago, liberalism was a reaction against the stifling rules imposed by aristocracy and established religion.

I wish I could call myself “liberal” now. But the word has been turned on its head. It now means health police, high taxes, speech codes and so forth.

So I can’t call myself a “liberal.” I’m stuck with “libertarian.” If you have a better word, please let me know.

When I first explained libertarianism to my wife, she said: “That’s cruel! What about the poor and the weak? Let them starve?”

I recently asked some prominent libertarians that question, including Jeffrey Miron, who teaches economics at Harvard.

“It might in some cases be a little cruel,” Miron said. “But it means you’re not taking from people who’ve worked hard to earn their income (in order) to give it to people who have not worked hard.”

But isn’t it wrong for people to suffer in a rich country?

“The number of people who will suffer is likely to be very small. Private charity … will provide support for the vast majority who would be poor in the absence of some kind of support. When government does it, it creates an air of entitlement that leads to more demand for redistribution, till everyone becomes a ward of the state.”

Besides, says Wendy McElroy, the founder of ifeminists.com, “government aid doesn’t enrich the poor. Government makes them dependent. And the biggest hindrance to the poor … right now is the government. Government should get out of the way. It should allow people to open cottage industries without making them jump through hoops and licenses and taxing them to death. It should open up public lands and do a 20th-century equivalent of 40 acres and a mule. It should get out of the way of people and let them achieve and rise.”

David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, took the discussion to a deeper level.

“Instead of asking, ‘What should we do about people who are poor in a rich country?’ The first question is, ‘Why is this a rich country?’ …

“Five hundred years ago, there weren’t rich countries in the world. There are rich countries now because part of the world is following basically libertarian rules: private property, free markets, individualism.”

Boaz makes an important distinction between equality and absolute living standards.

“The most important way that people get out of poverty is economic growth that free markets allow. The second-most important way — maybe it’s the first — is family. There are lots of income transfers within families. Third would be self-help and mutual-aid organizations. This was very big before the rise of the welfare state.”

This is an important but unappreciated point: Before the New Deal, people of modest means banded together to help themselves. These organizations were crowded out when government co-opted their insurance functions, which included inexpensive medical care.

Boaz indicts the welfare state for the untold harm it’s done in the name of the poor.

“What we find is a system that traps people into dependency. … You should be asking advocates of that system, ‘Why don’t you care about the poor?’”

I agree. It appears that when government sets out to solve a problem, not only does it violate our freedom, it also accomplishes the opposite of what it set out to do.

See, e.g., Obamacare; Bailouts; Stimulus; Patriot Act.

More excellent work here by Michael Totten, this time an interview with a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that is chock-full of invaluable information, perspective, and recommendations for the West.  Most striking of all, perhaps, is his recommendation as to what the West should do about Iran.

MJT: Let’s say President Barack Obama invites you to the White House and says, “Reza, I need your advice. What should I do?” What would you tell him?

Reza Kahlili: I would tell him that he needs to do the following, and this is just my opinion, obviously.  Immediately, the Western countries should cut off all shipping lines and air lines, and deport all Iranians who work in offices connected to the Iranian government. They’re Quds Force members. They’re intelligence guys. Deport them. And stop sending refined oil to Iran. They rely on that. Corner the country and give them a deadline. And if the Iranian government doesn’t give up its program, take it out. Do not allow this country to become nuclear armed. Sanctions are not going to work. In the worst case scenario, if there is a military confrontation, do not invade the country. Do not destroy the country. Take the Revolutionary Guards out. If you take the Revolutionary Guards out, this government can’t last 24 hours. * * *

Reza Kahlili: We know all their bases. We know all their officers. We know all their buildings. If they move in convoys, take them out. And that will be the end of this government.

MJT: [Long silence.]

Reza Kahlili: It needs a lot of courage and understanding of what we’re facing right now. All this talk of sanctions and ultimatums is not going to change anything.

MJT: The administration does not want to hear this. Nobody wants to hear this. And I have a hard time imagining anything like it happening.

Reza Kahlili: Yes. But the advantage of this government not being in the Middle East will be huge. It will weaken Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Venezuela [laughs], and bring benefits to many parts of the world. It will weaken China and Russia and their foreign policies. It would be huge. If we are able to achieve this, not only would it be fantastic for the people of Iran, it would benefit the whole world. You’ve read my book. You know where my heart is.

MJT: Yes.

Reza Kahlili: I’m in pain because of my people. I’m in pain because of what I’ve seen. I’m in pain because the West doesn’t get it. I didn’t have to come out, Michael. I was living under the radar. Nobody even knew I existed. I’m putting myself out there to get this message across, to sound an alarm, and hoping that somebody will listen.

Also interesting is what Kahlili believes the Iranian people’s response to such an action will be (they will only support the government if foreign forces invade and occupy – air strikes alone against nuclear facilities and Revolutionary guard bases will not prompt Iranians to back the current regime), the differences between Iranians and Arabs’ respective perception of Jews and Israel, and the influence of the Iranian lobby in Washington D.C.

Here’s some ammunition for your next barstool duel regarding the merits of an 18th Century Constitution in the 21st Century.  The lede:

From the city of Exeter, great moments in community outreach: “police were under fire today after admitting they had been sneaking into people’s homes through open doors and windows and gathering up their valuables into ’swag’ bags.” The idea was to prod careless owners into improving their security efforts, but “not all residents were happy and a criminal lawyer suggested that the police may have been guilty of trespass.” [The Guardian] Earlier, and nearly as outrageous: Sept. 2 (cops in London borough “remove valuables from unlocked cars to teach the owners about safety”).

So, in short, British cops apparently have no qualms with entering British subjects’ home and seizing their property. According to a British criminal lawyer a trespassing charge is the only legal remedy. Perhaps you’re thinking it sounds like burglary, not mere trespassing. Likely not. Common law burglary requires larcenious intent, and it appears the british cops intended not to permanently deprive the British subjects in question of their property (rather, just to teach them a lesson). Plus, burglary has to occur in the nighttime.

By contrast, the 4th Amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

In America the British cops’ actions would be a slam dunk unlawful search and seizure under the 4th Amendment, which guarantees American citizens the natural right to be free of such in our homes. Now, I’m often a critic of the way federal courts have interpreted the 4th Amendment, or rather how the Courts have contrived numerous exceptions to its protections. By the way, what’s most galling about judicial exceptions to the 4th Amendment is that courts created many of them in response to uphold police actions concerning the spectacularly failed war on drugs. But I digress.

A barstool duel on the matter with a fairly illiberal liberal individual might go something like this.  He/she might ask why you take umbrage at the idea that a government actor can enter your home unannounced to teach you a valuable lesson. That will segue into a much, much broader discussion of the State’s role in society. And he/she probably needs that discussion much more than you need to expound on the merits of the 4th Amendment. First, assert that individual liberty includes the right not to have nanny-state government actors fuck with you in your home. That’s pretty reasonable, f-word aside, and very few people will disagree with you. Even if he/she broadly agrees with you, he/she will counter that there’s a public interest in teaching people to lock their homes, as doing so presumably will deter thefts. Now, assert that few, if any, public interests trumps the individual’s privacy interest or his/her interest in being secure in his/her home/castle. As a matter of principal, it is the individual, not the State, who is inherently responsible for his/her home, effects, and person. For instance, not even the State’s strong interest in cheaply and efficiently housing soldiers trumps the individual’s right not to be forced to house soldiers in his home. By contrast, if the State, not the individual, is inherently responsible for the individual then there is no reason why police can’t visit your bathroom unannounced while you’re defecating to ensure you’re not using too much toilet paper, or brushing your teeth, or whatever. He’ll/she’ll say that’s absurd. Ask her to spot the principal difference between cops teaching you an in-home lesson about theft and an in-home lesson about ass-wiping. The only difference is that one personally offends him/her, and one doesn’t. Granted, this is kindergarten level dueling. But it is your charge to utterly dispel the ugly notion, everywhere you find it, that the state is inherently noble and ultimately responsible for the individual.

Via Instapundit I find Stating the Obvious, which in five sentences fleshes out a point I made earlier this week reminding individuals who crave government influence in the marketplace that “if the 20th century taught us anything it is that concentrating power in the State and centrally planning economies is an EPIC FAIL:”

[S]tatism slows productivity growth, and in the end productivity growth is more important than anything else (GDP is just population x productivity). You’re about ten times better off being in the lowest quartile of the rich, unequal United States than a median forcibly equalized Cuban or North Korean, and the poorest U.S. state has a higher PPP GDP per capita than most of the Western European social democracies.

Eastern Europe and Asia are still recovering from their wasted 50 years chasing coercive equality at the expense of growth. China’s rise to relevance was powered by free market reforms that produced growth. The Arab socialist dictatorships haven’t done much better than the communists.

In short, relatively free economies are more prosperous – which is fundamentally good for societies, see above – than relatively planned economies. Yet, if political party affiliation is any indication, an overwhelming majority of the illiterati intelligentsia in American universities is antipathetic to free economic systems, preferring instead some measure (and many cases, a great measure) of government intervention and/or planning in the marketplace. For instance, law professor-turned-Obama-Czar Cass Sunstein so strongly believes in government that he would prefer government skepticism be centrally planned. In any event, assume for the purposes of this post that a majority of “intellectuals” categorically reject the premise of free markets in favor of government intervention and planning, that we may discuss why they do so.

In this video F.A. Hayek charitably offers the following to explain the broad source of American intelligentsia’s hostility towards free markets:

Intellectuals in most instances have a deeply ingrained intellectual attitude which forces them to disapprove of something which seems to them unintelligible and to prefer something which is visibly directed to a good purpose.

Essentially Hayek is saying that intellectuals “disapprove” of free markets because they are unable to grasp, analyze, compute, or measure the entirety of the economy, or even a single marketplace. Relying on a seemingly incomprehensible system simply doesn’t jive with the scientific method, and therefore intellectuals categorically reject free markets in favor of government measures “visibly directed to a good purpose.” In short, since intellectuals cannot understand free markets in their desired fashion they prefer government measures they believe they understand, Parmenides Fallacy (not to mention unintended consequences) be damned. Hayek would have enjoyed South Park’s Margaritaville episode, which mocks, in part, the idea that simply because the economy is a vitally important, but tangibly elusive entity, common fiscal sense should give way to (ultimately) central planning, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I come to a different conclusion, however, than Hayek regarding intellectual hostility to free markets.  Hayek’s explanation forgets that there are many tangible entities and ideas intellectuals fail to completely understand, yet do not categorically reject (and, indeed, accept as Gospel). For instance, the big bang.

It is not a lack of understanding of, or a lack of capacity to understand, every microcosm of free markets that drives a large portion of intellectuals to categorically reject them in favor of central planning. Let me repeat: intellectuals’ antipathy towards free markets does not derive from the inability to completely understand free markets. Rather, it stems from the fact that the success of free markets does not require intellectuals’ input, approval, or understanding. Nor does understanding free markets require intellectuals’ purportedly heightened level of intelligence.

Ockham’s Razor, alone, explains why a particular free marketplace (such as the relatively unencumbered laser eye surgery market) is more successful than similar but restricted marketplaces. That free markets succeed without intellectual analysis, approval, and input fundamentally galls, or bores, them. And intellectuals hate that. By contrast, nuclear fission requires an academic, precise understanding of physics that, truly, only scientists, themselves intellectuals, can attain. There’s more, however, to the complex that precludes what appears to be a majority of intellectuals from proponing the economic obvious.

Intellectuals particularly enjoy having (a) something to write about, (b) a domestic field or industry to influence, and (c) a lower caste to juxtapose their (assumed) superior intellect. As such, believing in the big bang theory is intellectually perfect. There is a lot to write about the big bang, and doing so will directly influence a number of academic fields and industries. And perhaps most importantly, at least a third of the United States denies the big bang theory in favor of creationism, which permits intellectuals to snob NASCAR fans, broadly speaking.

By contrast, believing in free market economics does almost nothing for intellectuals. Sure there’s lots to write about free markets, and your research might influence any number of individuals (and perhaps centrally planned nation states. But a large proportion of Americans, including hordes of creationists non-intellectuals, already understand, at least in practice, that free markets produce more economic prosperity and opportunity than planned or regulated markets. As a result, believing in the efficacy of free markets puts intellectuals in the same ark boat as the untouchable caste they normally distinguish themselves from. Since no true Scotsman intellectual would stand for that, intellectuals categorically reject the efficacy of free markets.

After all, the real intellectual challenge lies in swimming upstream. And there’s no upstream swim like that against a current of historical precedent (see above, again) and established economic facts. As such, intellectuals rise to the challenge of convincing their students the rest of us that a centrally planned socialist-democracy is economically preferable to the individual liberty and robust economic prosperity free markets produce. Intellectuals adore the irony that beating back history and economic fact requires their allegedly heightened cognitive abilities. Put more bluntly, cogently reaching such dumb economic conclusions requires tremendous intellectual capacity.

Now, there are compelling moral and philosophical arguments for a great measure of social justice. Yet, intellectuals do not frame discussion of social justice as how to best, economically speaking, go about achieving social justice. The intellectual war drum beats only for more government. There is precious little intellectual debate as to whether a better system than public schools exists, in spite of the fact that private, charter, and home-schools consistently outperform the public system (while public schools appear to serve their employees better than their students). Nor do intellectuals contemplate providing national access to health through system more akin to Shriners Hospitals than the Veterans Administration. The debate is over. There is a consensus. And it is more government.

Intellectuals crave government intervention in the marketplace because its presence provides a forum for intellectuals’ otherwise unnecessary economic theories, gives intellectuals control of other individuals and industries, and distinguishes their caste from the untouchables they now control. This is the root of intellectuals’ hostility to free markets, and corresponding love affair with centrally planned economies.

Yeeehaw.  This week, as last, the high-resolution cab pictures are courtesy of indefatigable cab-huntress Kat Miner, who photographs color wherever she finds it.

Now, I’ve I’m sure you’ve been wondering about Stas Cab for some time.  Stas is a common name in Ukraine and Poland, typically short for Stanislav. For instance, Stas is the first name of this interesting computer whiz, web developer, and author. A little known Stas fact is that 19th century Belgian analytical chemist Jean Servais Stas (August 21, 1813 – December 13, 1891) did the modern age a number of favors, including (a) establishing the atomic weight of carbon by weighing a sample of the pure material, burning it in pure oxygen, and then weighing the carbon dioxide produced, (b) determining the atomic weights of the elements more accurately than had ever been done before (using an atomic mass of 16 for oxygen as his standard), and (c) disproving the hypothesis of the English physicist William Prout that all atomic weights must be integral multiples of that of hydrogen. Stas’ careful, accurate atomic weight measurements helped lay the foundation for the periodic system of elements of Dmitri Mendeleev and other physicists not named Stas. Stas would be a great name if you worked at the State Department in the Office of the Science & Technology Adviser, which adopted STAS as its acronym, as did the the Prince Edward Island Science and Technology Awareness Site (STAS). STAS is also the name of a French Canadian mining company that produces 10% of the world’s primary aluminum. So, when you ride in Stas Cab, you can be pretty sure the driver’s name is Stas (but ask him if his name is Stanislav).

Ah. The Ark Cab. Now that’s a good one. Perhaps the driver is from Turkey. If so, he is surely from a town near Mt. Ararat (where the book of Genesis says Noah’s Ark lies). In that case, it’d be pretty awesome if Ark Cab was painted with a mural a mountain range and receding flood waters, replace his cab-light with one shaped as an Ark lodged in a mountain, and epoxy a parade of animals (two by two) “walking” out of the ark down the roof, back windshield, and trunk. How awesome would that be? [Ed. note: get on it, photoshop experts.] Maybe Ark Cab’s driver considers his cab a type of Ark, a place of refuge in a deluge. If so, however, it’d be funnier if Ark Cab was in a rainier place than San Diego, such as Seattle. Hopefully the Ark Cab company will continue to grow, because it’d be great to see a fleet of Ark-themed cabs, such as Noah Cab, Ham Cab, Shem Cab, Japeth Cab, Torrent Cab, etc..

This is a doooooozy. Maimegdom Cab? The only thing crazier than a cab named Maimegdom is that Google only has one yes one result for “Maimegdom,” and that result is Kat’s Flickr page of San Diego Cabs. [Ed. note: BING has zero results.] Maimegdom sounds like Armageddon, which only the boldest of travelers would be willing to ride in. Mike Alpha India Mike Echo Golf Delta Oscar Mike? Nah. I’m stumped. Help me out by tracking down Maimegom cab and asking the driver about the origin of its name.

Last but not least is Nordic Cab. Nordic cab’s driver is tricky – he wants you to ask if he’s from Norway so he can inform you that “Nordic” refers to Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (all of which use a Nordic Cross flag) and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Svalbard and Åland. Then he’ll make you guess. Here’s a hint: he’s not from Finland. If he was, he’d tell you, because Finns are proud people who fought the Soviets for nearly ten years after WWII. [Side note: the best coffee I've ever had was in Helsinki, Finland, at Cafe Tarzeh.] Come to think of it, though, Nordic Cab is about the most boring cab name a Scandinavian who doesn’t want to specify what part of northern Europe he hails from could name a cab.  Think of the Nordic possibilities: Swede Cab (Swede-Dude Cab), Norse Cab, Odin Cab, Thor Cab, Plunder Cab, Ice Cab, Great Dane Cab, Finn Cab, Viking Cab, and the GREATEST OF ALL CAB NAMES: Techno Viking Cab, which would have a DVD screen playing the following video on a loop:

Over the last week I rounded up (see here too) the various categories of health care rubes, which I defined as “those who support the bill for fiscal, moral, and philosophical, reasons that cold, hard facts show the bill utterly fails to provide.”  Today I found two articles providing very different macro-explanations of why rubes (in health care as well as other areas) are suckered into supporting patently fraudulent legislation.

Humor first – the Cartoon / South Park explanation:

The cartoons South Park and The Care Bears can teach us an important lesson about economics and politics.  And in so doing, they also caution us about why we need to take such topics more seriously than cartoons do.

In a classic episode of South Park the boys have to write a paper about corporations.  They end up encountering a group of underpants gnomes who have a detailed business plan:

1.  Collect Underpants

2.  ?

3.  Profit

The health care bill is like the “Underpants Gnomes” episode of South Park.  Enthusiasts for the bill have the following model in mind:

1.  Pass Health Care Bill

2.  ?

3.  Health Care for All

So we have passed the bill.  Its supporters need to ask the question that informs Thomas Sowell’s Applied Economics: “And then what?”  Talking solely about the goals of institutional changes is likely to lead us to error.  We have to talk about what those changes do to social processes. Government intervention removes decision-making power from individuals acting through voluntary channels and gives that power to moral and intellectual surrogates acting through involuntary channels.

Effective economic and political institutions are ones that provide both the incentives for people to pursue their own good by serving others and the knowledge of which actions will do so.  In the world of the underpants gnomes, and the world of health care reform, such questions are not asked.  Results are expected to magically appear from good intentions.

Another relevant South Park episode is I’m a Little Bit Country, from season seven, which makes fun of the fact that Americans as a whole will go to war while actively protesting the war on the other so as to have our cake and eat it too.

In short, a lot of people focus their energy and attention on the goal of “health care for everybody” without really thinking hard about the steps between passage of the bill and what they want to happen.  Applied economics, according to Sowell, is the art of “thinking past stage one,” and our refusal to do that will cost us trillions of dollars. The previous administration failed to think past Stage One when it started writing checks for wars of questionable merit and for bailouts of financial firms.  The current administration has continued the trend with health care reform.

The Care Bears are kind of like the underpants gnomes in that they too think good intentions are enough.  They fight evil with what is called “The Care Bear Stare.”  Wikipedia explains:

The Care Bears’ ultimate weapon is the “Care Bear Stare,” in which the collected Bears stand together and radiate light from their respective tummy symbols. These combine to form a ray of love and good cheer which could bring care and joy into the target’s heart.

This describes the shallowness of a lot of public-policy debates.  Rather than focusing on the processes by which social decisions are made, people debate the merits of proposed legislation based on their intended outcomes, and this frames opposition to well-meaning legislation as follows: People who want the legislation are kind and good; people who don’t want it are either evil or corrupt or they just don’t want to share.  One need only examine the rhetoric coming from the pro-ObamaCare side in the final congressional debates to see this in action.

It’s apparent to me now that the Care Bears were avid readers of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

Reality is more subtle.  Good intentions are neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure that we get the outcome we want.  Careful consideration of the actual economic institutions that “reform” creates and how they will affect the incentives and knowledge facing individuals and firms is the only way to get past Stage One.  Judging legislation by its intentions and not engaging in real social scientific analysis is the equivalent of using the Care Bear Stare.  And when trillions of dollars, most of it coming from the future wealth of our children, is on the line, it is the height of irresponsibility.

We predict that future economics textbooks will look back on the disaster that emerges from the so-called “health care reform” as a classic example of the law of unintended consequences and, we hope, of the difference between decision-making in politics and decision-making in markets.    We should not be surprised to find out that when we approach serious social issues with the mindset of cartoon characters that our economy quickly begins to resemble a cartoon.  In this case, we fear we that in spending trillions on intentions, we have become like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff and hanging in midair until he realizes the situation he’s created for himself, at which point he comes crashing down.

The second explanation is more academic in nature.  Excerpt below, article via Von Mises:

The aggregate economy involves so many interrelations, permutations, combinations, interpolations, extrapolations, and other “ations” of inputs and outputs and wants and desires that arriving at a meaningful measure of an entire system or a general level of anything is as likely as Hollywood accurately depicting an entrepreneur.

Nevertheless, that irritating fact fails to deter the prescribing economists from prescribing. Perhaps it is hubris that overrides their intellectual sense of the possible. Peter Klein suggests as much in his November 2006 Mises Daily posting, “Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism,” when he refers to Dwight Lee’s cogent observation on the academic propensity to pry and provoke. Says Lee,

Like every other group, academics like to exert influence and feel important. Few scholars in the social sciences and humanities are content just to observe, describe, and explain society; most want to improve society and are naive enough to believe that they could do so if only they had sufficient influence. The existence of a huge government offers academics the real possibility of living out their reformist fantasies.

The government is huge, to be sure, and alluring. Klein also reveals, in the same posting, a couple enlightening numbers on economists and their relationship with government:

The US federal government employs at least 3,000 economists — about 15% of all members of the American Economic Association. The Federal Reserve System itself employs several hundred. There are also advisory posts, affiliations with important government agencies, memberships of federally appointed commissions, and other career-enhancing activities.

Bureaucrats don’t employ so many economists and number manipulators just to inform and explain; that would be purely descriptive, and there’s no glory in that. No, bureaucrats want action, and they want the numbers (bogus or otherwise) and theories (bogus or otherwise) to support whatever prescription they believe will cure whatever they believe ails us.

Finally, I wrote a few days ago about who isn’t a health care rube:

At this point, you’re basically not a healthcare rube if you support the bill because you understand it is an intentional, manipulative leap left towards a centrally planned economy and the establishment of government’s authority to manage every area of our lives. To your dismay, however, you’re not a tough, Machiavellian sonofabitch either.  You’re a moron because if the 20th century taught us anything it is that concentrating power in the State and centrally planning economies is an EPIC FAIL.

The aptly titled article, The Fallacy of Central Planning, cogently explains why. Excerpt below:

The dangers of planning, which planners often ignore, because they seem academic or overcomplicated, are ethical as well as logical. The chief ethical problem involved in planning is that which Berdyaev has termed the dehumanization of man.[2]

The sober truth is that, in central planning, men are pawns. As planning becomes more central and more nearly complete, there is a strong tendency to forget that the ultimate units of any society are persons and that the order exists for their sakes. Unless this is kept in the consciousness of planners, the entire situation becomes impersonal; individual decisions on the part of the people really count for nothing.

A development in this direction seems to be intrinsic to an ever-growing bureaucracy. It is almost impossible, for example, to have any large-scale planning without some illustration of Parkinson’s law. Bureaucratic control always has a tendency to increase, with the consequent loss of initiative on the part of the people. The danger comes subtly and appears even in the most beneficent of enterprises.