Thoughts on V

I saw V for Vendetta last night with two libertarian buddies and really enjoyed it. One of my friends observed that the film would have been better had it shown the state engaging in day-to-day tyranny against average citizens. At first, I agreed but after thinking about it I think that by showing the state engaged in acts of violence against a few selected targets, instead of against the population as a whole, the film presented a more accurate view of life in a totalitarian country. Most people in a totalitarian country do not experience the "knock in the middle of the night," because they learned from the examples of those who have have heard the knock what happens to anyone who gets on the state's bad side. When enough people disappear, those who remain will come to believe that the state's masters are truly all-powerful, capable of inflicting swift and harsh punishment if they step out of line for even an instant. Of course, many will also bow to the state because they believe that the state can protect them from all the bad things in the world. In either case, mass obedience rests not on the state's day-to-day acts of oppression but the belief that the state has unlimited power to protect and punish.

Anything that undermines the people's belief in the state's omnipresence weakens the people's acceptance of authoritarianism, and thus anything which causes the people to look at the state with less than awe must be suppressed. V for Vendetta makes this point by showing how the state regards humor at its expense as almost (equally?) as great a threat to its' rule as V's attacks. (I'd love to expand on the parallels between the revolutionaries and the satirists but I fear I've already given to much of the film away.)

I do think the film would have been improved had they shown us a bit more of the circumstances which lead to the loss of liberty and if the villains weren't so one-dimensional. It would have been a better story if the villains actually believed that their actions where in the best interest of the people, and maybe if the story showed how the people willingly gave up their liberty in search of security.

My friend also observed that the movie looked at totalitarian societies from a traditional left-wing view and thus failed to examine the link between property rights and liberties. In fact, the film at some points does imply that a thriving, legal, free-market still exists in the mist of state tyranny, which is a logical impossibility.

Cross-posted at LewRockwell.com.

Work to do on our vengeance issues?

Kevin Rollins’s blog Featured on the Free Liberal points us to a thread on Free Republic in which readers there took umbrage with Jonathan David Morris’s latest. Morris 's It's Time to Forget About September 11th was obviously an attempt to begin to heal from 9/11 rather than to be angry about it.

The vitriol at the Free Republic shows us a few things:

1) The word “liberal” is easily misunderstood by conservatives, who think it only means Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton. We at the Free Liberal don’t mean it that way, of course, we mean it in the more classical sense, i.e. maximum freedom, minimal government. It seems we have more educational work to do.

2) 9/11 still evokes a profound anger in many Americans. That’s, of course, understandable. The spectacular nature of 9/11 alone still sends chills up my spine, too. Still, the question is: What’s the healthy response? Do we soberly address and stop the perpetrators from repeating that sort of act? Or do we – in a fit of vengeance – attack nations we think might be peripherally involved in 9/11, wasting $400 billion and 2300 American lives along with many-times more from other nations? The US took the latter course, and, IMO, has made the situation far worse. We’ve compounded the tragedy with another.

I’m with Morris in this sense: Vengeance is never justified. Crazy people doing crazy things like 9/11 should absolutely be stopped. We should forget our pain and anger about 9/11 when considering the next steps to suppress the al Qaeda Network and Osama bin Laden. We should, in short, grow up.

-Robert Capozzi

The Free Liberal -- Expanding its Presence Nationwide

The people behind the Free Liberal are on the move. I have recently moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to run a state think tank known as the Rio Grande Foundation. Our primary mission is to create an economically prosperous New Mexico. More about the Foundation and what we are trying to do can be found here.

Also, Liz Moser, another Free Liberal Board of Directors member, recently moved to Arizona to work for the Alliance for School Choice. The Alliance is based in Phoenix, Arizona and is dedicated to improving the lives of children by giving their parents greater educational options.

Although I will certainly miss seeing my friends at the Free Liberal on a regular basis in Washington, the opportunities to improve the world are often far greater outside the Beltway.

-- Paul J. Gessing

Featured on the Free Liberal

Regular Free Liberal readers may have noticed that on the top of each article page on the Free Liberal there is now a bar that says, "Featured on The Free Liberal" followed by links to two Free Liberal stories. We just added this feature two weeks ago to point out to our readers what we think are some of the best and most important articles we've run during the previous week.

This week we feature Michael Strong's "Getting Serious About Helping the Poor in the U.S." and Jonathan David Morris's It's Time to Forget About September 11th."

Michael Strong's piece does something very important -- it casts a public policy problem in truly human terms. Instead of reading about dry housing policy, we see it in terms of one woman's struggle for survival. It is important to remember that we are involved in the public sphere not to merely move cold statistics in the direction we favor, or to realize some abstract ideal for the abstraction's sake, but instead to help real people who are suffering.

The style reminds me of a speech that my friend Clarence Young made to the Buncombe County Commission when they were trying to ban RV's from trailer parks. Clarence happened to own a trailer park, and he told the commissioners a story which put the bureaucratic rule in human terms. A man had come to him and asked if he could park his RV in Clarence's lot. The man said he only had a few months to live, as he was dying of cancer, and wanted to be close to his ex-wife and daughter. Clarence had a policy of not allowing RVs and he thought that the man was lying, he was sure that he had AIDS, not cancer. But, he decided to let the man stay. Sure enough, later that year, he died. The newspaper obituary reported that he had died of AIDS. Clarence pointed out to the Commission, "This rule would have robbed me of one more chance to do a good thing for a fellow human being." Needless to say, the commissioners were pretty shaken up.

JDM's piece does something rather different. He takes what would seem to be an unsympathetic position of "forgetting September 11th" and shows how in one sense, it is the most American way of dealing with the horror. JDM doesn't argue that September 11th isn't tragic, but that we cannot continue to live in fear. He tells readers:

You can hoot and holler all you want about this concept. You can say I’m anti-American. You can even accuse me of spitting on the memories of all those who died. But you would miss the point of what I’m about to say here, because this has nothing to do with the heroes or victims, and nothing to do with politics.

But, some readers miss his point nonetheless. One need only to click over to the Free Republic to see how controversial such an idea can be in some circles. The responses become more and more ludicrous with people equating JDM with all sorts of nasty ideologies. They even post pictures of people jumping out of windows at the World Trade Center. When one Freeper points out to them that they are misreading his piece, "Actually the title is misleading. Read the whole article," another responds, "The title is his first sentence. They're his own words. Yeah, he's doing it for shock value. He asked for it, he's getting it."

JMC1969 writes, "I'll forget when all the scum sucking, America hating, terrorist loving assholes like this guy, are dead, rotting in their self made Hell. FU! and may God forgive your ignorance."

-- Kevin D. Rollins

The Other A Word

Norm Singleton’s post of Ron Paul’s view on abortion is greatly appreciated. My goodness is abortion one of the most challenging issues of our times. I am tepidly pro-choice, but when I read Dr. Paul’s view, part of me agrees. But, then, part of me doesn’t.

Is the fetus a life that should receive the full recognition of rights that a person does? Does the fact that the fetus is within another person’s body change the situation? Is abortion about “State tyranny,” or is it about the State not intervening in a decision by a woman and her doctor? Can this question be answered by science, or is it a moral and philosophical question?

I would be interested, though, in just how far pro-lifers would go? Say a woman did something to induce a miscarriage all on her own? No one else would be involved except the woman and the fetus. Would a pro-lifer have the State step in and stop the woman? Would a pro-lifer put the woman in prison and somehow stop her from engaging in the behavior that was intended to induce a miscarriage?

If the answer’s Yes, then this implies that the State has the power to quarantine pregnant women, on the theory her right to control her own body is superceded by the fetus’s right to be born. Pregnant women, then, cannot ingest drugs of their choosing, run marathons, or do anything that might injure the fetus. And how could any of this possibly be enforced?

Do we really want to codify certain behaviors for pregnant women that non-pregnant men and women have a right to do? At the moment, I say No, but this is one issue that I remain highly open-minded about.

-Robert Capozzi

Eugenics: Past, Future, and Present

The Christan Science Monitor reviews the history of support for eugenics in America and speculates whether recent advances in genetic technology could lead to a revival of support for eugenics. I would not be surprised if a future government promoted eugenics as a way of economizing on health care costs by eliminating those who will "drain vital health care resources" from the gene pool. Of course, our government does promote a form of eugenics under the name of "reproductive choice."

Those libertarians who support "abortion rights," as well as those free liberals who think that acceptance of abortion has a place in the society we wish to build, should consider what Ron Paul has to say on the subject:

"A libertarian's support for abortion is not merely a minor misapplication of principle, as if one held an incorrect belief about the Austrian theory of the business cycle. The issue of abortion is fundamental, and therefore an incorrect view of the issue strikes at the very foundations of all beliefs.

Libertarians believe, along with the Founding Fathers, that every individual has inalienable rights, among which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Neither the State, nor any other person, can violate those rights without committing an injustice. But, just as important as the power claimed by the State to decide what rights we have, is the power to decide which of us has rights.

Today, we are seeing a piecemeal destruction of individual freedom. And in abortion, the statists have found a most effective method of obliterating freedom: obliterating the individual. Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the "right" of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the "property rights" of slave masters in their slaves. Moreover, by this method the State achieves a goal common to all totalitarian regimes: it sets us against each other, so that our energies are spent in the struggle between State-created classes, rather than in freeing all individuals from the State. Unlike Nazi Germany, which forcibly sent millions to the gas chambers (as well as forcing abortion and sterilization upon many more), the new regime has enlisted the assistance of millions of people to act as its agents in carrying out a program of mass murder.

We must promote a consistent vision of liberty because freedom is whole and cannot be alienated, although it can be abridged by the unjust action of the State or those who are powerful enough to obtain their own demands. Our lives, also, are a whole from the beginning at fertilization until death. To deny any part of liberty, or to deny liberty to any particular class of individuals, diminishes the freedom of all. For libertarians to support such an abridgement of the right to live free is unconscionable."

Slightly different version posted at LewRockwell.com

Nukes Changed Everything

Thanks to Norm Singleton for his blog "Problems with geoanarchism?"

To me, there's a "problem" with any form of "anarchism" that I've never seen addressed by various theorists of no State. The problem is nuclear weapons, as well as other weapons of mass destruction. It's a wonderful experiment to wonder just how far we can go to minimize coercion and maximize liberty, but if it's unimaginable that the State would entirely whither away, I fail to see the point of spending many brain cells on the concept.

Nukes and WMD provide a few would-be statists with an economy of scale that 19th and early 20th century philosophers did not envisage. Just look at the situation in Iran right now: The Iranians know that members of the nuclear club are never invaded, and certainly never overrun. The State is pretty much guaranteed, even if it shifts its form like the old Soviet Union.

As long as these weapons exist, someone will control them, and someone will use them to control others, by explicit threat, if necessary. The prospects for worldwide disarmament seem remote, at best.

So, we have the State. Deal with it.

-Robert Capozzi

Problems with geoanarchism?

P.M. Lawrence sends along these thoughts regarding Fred Foldvary's piece on geoanarchism::

"One problem area, the biggest, is the idea that people could effectively secede as individuals if they didn't like what was on offer in a geoanarchist community. This wouldn't be true if - like landlords - all communities were pretty much the same and had taken up all resources. It would be a hollow mockery like pointing unhappy bank customers to the availability of other banks; in a country like Australia they are all much of a muchness. The problem of states would re-emerge in a different form, with the communities working like ground cover plants to make a network externality preventing any shift in the system of uniform geoanarchist communities. The only way there could be true choice is if there were other communities around that were anarchist without the "geo-".

The second problem area is that it is false that using different revenue bases than land tax would make people pay twice, once for the revenue base and once for increased rent arising from the associated services. For one thing, any such rise would of itself indicate that the group had acted to thrust costs onto individuals indirectly; they would not have individually wanted those services if they disagreed with the cost, so it reflects a failure to connect - a creation of something that governs.

But we can see more than this. The assertion would only be true if by some chance the community were a meaningless cover, allowing absentee landlords to laugh all the way to the bank. Most likely, even with a landlord and tenant split, at least the landlords would be part of the community that was not caught in this bind. But before denouncing even that as a mockery, consider that - done properly, say with a distributist approach - there would not be that split. People would not be paying rent but rather owning their own homes and resources. Geoanarchism, or even anything with that much of a Georgist base, presumes an enduring problem with landlordism and gives up on it, preferring palliative care.

Yet clearly the most that would be needed is a decent way for the younger generation to become owners in their turn, without building any concentrations of land resources. The only practicality of a Georgist solution is to deal with a transition, but it risks seducing people into abandoning a principle of non-intervention. The most I would concede against principle is to work within existing tax bases to reduce them, rather than ever raising any part or introducing a new one. At least that way, like Orpheus, we would be leaving without ever looking back.

That of course begs the question of what should be done instead, to provide a revenue base. One, it is no criticism of a critic to ask him to fix a problem before he has the right to point it out (although, as it happens, I can fix it - read on). Two, it presumes too much in a collectivist direction, rather than letting the atomist/individualist approaches have a go first; it makes a presumption in favour of collectivism. Maybe nothing should be done instead, for most things. Three, there is no reason why a community should not, itself, have a pool of revenue generating resources - apart from the very issue of whether there should be ground covering collectivities putting us all at risk anyway. This, after all, is how mediaeval religious foundations used to work, even the commanderies of military orders working at the edges of Christendom. But even they could be oppressive.

I could go into detail on this approach, but it would be going into a new although related topic, and as it happens it would amount to reinventing checks and balances for something quasi-governmental. Far better to adapt Henry Ford's advice for car components and not put it in in the first first place because 'that way it can't break and it can'tn fall off'."

But we can see more than this. The assertion would only be true if by some chance the community were a meaningless cover, allowing absentee landlords to laugh all the way to the bank. Most likely, even with a landlord and tenant split, at least the landlords would be part of the community that was not caught in this bind. But before denouncing even that as a mockery, consider that - done properly, say with a distributist approach - there would not be that split. People would not be paying rent but rather owning their own homes and resources. Geoanarchism, or even anything with that much of a Georgist base, presumes an enduring problem with landlordism and gives up on it, preferring palliative care.

Yet clearly the most that would be needed is a decent way for the younger generation to become owners in their turn, without building any concentrations of land resources. The only practicality of a Georgist solution is to deal with a transition, but it risks seducing people into abandoning a principle of non-intervention. The most I would concede against principle is to work within existing tax bases to reduce them, rather than ever raising any part or introducing a new one. At least that way, like Orpheus, we would be leaving without ever looking back.

That of course begs the question of what should be done instead, to provide a revenue base. One, it is no criticism of a critic to ask him to fix a problem before he has the right to point it out (although, as it happens, I can fix it - read on). Two, it presumes too much in a collectivist direction, rather than letting the atomist/individualist approaches have a go first; it makes a presumption in favour of collectivism. Maybe nothing should be done instead, for most things. Three, there is no reason why a community should not, itself, have a pool of revenue generating resources - apart from the very issue of whether there should be ground covering collectivities putting us all at risk anyway. This, after all, is how mediaeval religious foundations used to work, even the commanderies of military orders working at the edges of Christendom. But even they could be oppressive.

I could go into detail on this approach, but it would be going into a new although related topic, and as it happens it would amount to reinventing checks and balances for something quasi-governmental. Far better to adapt Henry Ford's advice for car components and not put it in in the first first place because 'that way it can't break and it can'tn fall off'."

Is the left ready to embrace the gold standard?

Probably not, but Nicholas Von Hoffman, writing in The Nation, shows a better grasp of current monetary policy, and how that policy harms ordinary Americans and enables the growth of the state, then you'll find in the Greenspan-Bernanke worshiping "conservative" press. Some samples:

At the moment what is happening is not good. Compared to what things cost last year, the general price level has gone up. To use one of those wild nature similes, inflation may not be rising as fast as a bat out of hell, but it is gaining altitude fast enough to wreak havoc with your nest egg.

From 2005 to 2006 the dollar in your purse lost 4 percent of its purchasing power. So unless you got a 4 percent raise to compensate, you are working for less than you were a year ago.

A 4 percent rate may not sound like much, but thanks to the "miracle of compound interest," it can postpone your retirement or keep you on the job till you drop dead. It makes the difference between going to a four-year college or a two-year community institution or even no college at all. It can play hob with your health savings account. In ten years a 4 percent inflation rate will wipe out almost half the value of your savings.

There is a big plus side to inflation if you are in debt. Suppose that you overpaid for your house: In ten years, the value of your mortgage will have been cut in half. What holds for private debt holds for public debt, too. Should inflation stay at the present rate or go higher, the gigantic deficits incurred by George Bush will not, after all, have to be paid off by our grandchildren as they keep warning us will happen. The deficits will disappear in a flood tide of cheap money.

The reason is that a dollar borrowed now, if paid back after fifteen years, will be worth about 40 cents. Because employers understand how compound interest shrinks the buying power of a dollar so quickly, you have to hold a gun to their heads to get them to agree to cost-of-living increases. The same knowledge prompts Republicans to do all in their power to decouple Social Security payments from their annual cost of living adjustment.

From time immemorial, inflation is how governments have wiggled out of repaying what they owe. Back in the days when all money was copper, silver or gold, its purchasing power was lessened by minting coins with less precious metal in them. Next came printing more dollar bills. Nowadays debasing the currency is accomplished by a few computer keystrokes.

Economists and finance big shots will sometimes talk about "an acceptable level of inflation." They do not discuss who decides what that level might be. Since inflation, depending on how bad it is, always attacks savings, frustrates financial and personal planning, causes sky-high interest rates, lowered investment, unemployment, recession and, if it's bad enough and goes on long enough, chaos, panic, despair and social disintegration, how can it ever be acceptable?

It was as predictable as spring following winter that the Bush deficits would be followed by the Bush inflation to pay for them. It's his appointees on the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department you may blame. No beasts, no storms, no earthquakes or any other act of nature. When you see your money evaporating in front of your eyes, don't call the weather bureau. Call the politicians.

Cross-posted at LewRockwell.com.

The Marginal Benefit of Health Care

I went to the doctor last week. I spent $100 and waited an hour for the doctor to see me -- he was late. I patiently read my economics book while in the waiting room, so at least the time wasn't wasted. But, my money, I'm not sure.

He told me that I have a sick nose. Thanks doc, I knew that. That's why I'm here. I wonder if he tells amputees, "you have a sick arm." Or the blind, "you have a vision problem." I was instructed to take allergy pills, wash my nose every three hours, and to keep the temperature down at night as that dries out the nose. "If you don't feel better, come back and see me in 10 days."

I followed the advice. I don't feel any better.

So, the logic goes... if the medical professional gives you incorrect advice, you should return and pay MORE money? In economics we stop consuming where marginal benefit equals marginal cost. My costs have already exceeded my benefits. I have no incentive to go back to the doctor. It would be like buying another lottery ticket in the hope that my bad luck couldn't continue forever. Maybe if I give him another try he'll nail the diagnosis.

What if there is a tumor eating my brain? 10 days of waiting can't help that out. I have four choices: 1.) Do nothing in hopes that time will heal me. 2.) Pay more money to someone who has already failed. 3.) Pay money to another person whose qualifications I'm unable to judge. 4.) Put my faith in alternative medicine, voodoo, or Christian Science.

Cross-posted to my personal blog.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Sure to be Unpopular

Rick Sincere reports on the progress of a bill in the Virginia legislature which would outlaw an activity offensive to both the left and the right.

The legislation is aimed at stifling the latest practice of the Reverend Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, in which he and his flock protest the funerals of U.S. soldiers, sailors, and airmen who have been killed in the service of their country. He asserts that the deaths of these brave men and women is appropriate payback for a country that tolerates homosexuality.

Sincere notes that when Phelps was only going after gay-funerals, conservatives didn't have much to say.

Now that he's taking his message to the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, they're all shocked and disgusted. I have to wonder where the shock and disgust were when Phelps' targets were "only" gay men and lesbians.

Phelps' carefully chosen slogan is, "God Hates the USA."

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Partisan Talk Show Hosts

On his blog, David Friedman notices that most talk show hosts bow to the pressure to be overly-partisan.

The experience is not encouraging. Most of the content, left and right, amounts to "our side is wise and virtuous, hooray, their side is stupid and evil, boo."

This behavior is antithetical to the idea of transpartisanship which deprecates th use of tribalistic chest thumping and childish name-calling. Transpartisans strip out the sloganeering and absolutist "us or them" rhetoric to seek understanding and truth, and to synergize the interests of both sides. To the degree that politically active individuals are unable to distinguish between rhetoric and coherent argument, we will see increased frustration on all sides of the spectrum.

Partisan attacks confuse those making them about their real goals, as the "soundbite" consumes their principles. Such attacks make the target of the attacks get a false impression of the values of the attacker. By fostering an environment of political warfare, we get further and further from achieving the outcomes which both sides would prefer.

-- Kevin D. Rollins