My Random Diatribes (Michael Makovi's Random Thoughts)

Irena Sendler the Unknown Holocaust Hero (guest post)

2013-03-21T18:05:00.000+02:00

A guest post:

Irena Sendler the Unknown Holocaust Hero

Just when we think that there's nothing new to learn about the Holocaust, a new incident comes to light to give us a new perspective. This is particularly true regarding the story of Irena Sendler. Sendler was a non-Jewish woman who was responsible for saving over 2500 Jewish children, yet her story was almost lost to history.

Irena Sendler was a young social worker when the war broke out in Poland in 1939. She joined the "Zagota," the Polish underground which was committed to assisting Jews. When the Warsaw ghetto was established, Sendler succeeded in obtaining a pass that allowed her, as a social worker, access into the ghetto. Sendler quickly surmised that the Nazis intended to murder the Jews who were living in the ghetto. She took it upon herself to begin smuggling children out of the ghetto. Some of the children were orphans but others still had living parents and Sendler "talked the parents out of their children," as she later said, convincing the parents that the only opportunity that their children had for survival was to be placed with a gentile family for safekeeping.

Sendler and other Zagota volunteers smuggled the children out of the ghetto, sometimes through the Old Courthouse which sat on the ghetto's border but at other times through the sewer pipes which ran below the city or by hiding the children under tram seats or in workboxes. Once the children had been safely removed from the ghetto Sendler found families who agreed to foster the children for the duration of the war. This act, in itself, could bring a death sentence to all members of any family and finding such families was very difficult, but Sendler managed to find families for all of the children that she had smuggled out of the ghetto. Sendler carefully archived all of the children's real names and hid them, along with a record of the families with whom she had placed them for safekeeping, in jars which she buried in her yard. She hoped that she would be able to reunite the children with their families after the war but this was not possible for the vast majority of the children. At the very least though, she ensured that they could be reunited with their community.

IN 1943 Sendler was captured by the Nazis and interned in the Gestapo prison where she was tortured, but she never revealed where any of the children were. After Zagota obtained her release Sendler went into hiding till the end of the war. Sendler's acts are depicted in a moving project, Life in a Jar an initiative of the Lowell Milken Center, an organization created by a Jewish businessman which runs a number of Holocaust related projects.

"Critical theory" and "privilege"

2012-06-26T21:22:00.002+03:00

I just sent the following as an open letter, about the notion of "privilege" (e.g. "white privilege", "male privilege", etc.) in "critical theory". To quote my own summary from the conclusion:

So far, then, we have seen several problems with "privilege" rhetoric:
(1) It is tactically ill-conceived, in that it diverts attention away from blacks and women, and towards whites and men, thus helping to perpetuate abuse by concealing it.
(2) The very word "privilege" implies placement of blame.
(3) It illegitimately aggregates and relies on Marxism, thus ignoring that all value is subjective, all profit is psychic, and all individuals are unique. Furthermore, it thereby places blame even on those who were not party to the affair; for example, by speaking of "male privilege", a man in Mexico is somehow made responsible for what happens to women in Saudi Arabia, merely because he is a man.
(4) It treats rights as government-granted rather than government-protected, thus giving rise to the fallacy that human welfare is zero-sum, that all benefits must come at someone else's loss, and that disadvantaged parties cannot simply be elevated to the rank of the advantaged, but that the disadvantaged must *take* rights *away* from the advantaged, so that the advantaged loss as much as the disadvantaged gain. Instead of increasing the total sum of welfare, positive-sum, human welfare is treated as zero-sum.

Hello.

I wish, please, if it is possible, to engage you in a short discussion of the "critical theory" subject of "privilege". I only just came across this subject in a conversation yesterday with some friends, but they were unable to competently answer some of the objections and misgivings I had with the subject. Meanwhile, the subject is foreign to me as well, so I do not know where - if anywhere - my objections and misgivings have been dealt with. Perhaps you can help. What I would like to see, please, is either an answer to my objections, or to be pointed to appropriate literature which has already dealt with the issues I shall raise in a moment.

You may consider this an open letter, and distribute it as you see fit, as long as it is not edited in any way whatsoever.

There are a few issues, it seems to me, with the rhetoric of "privilege". Firstly, as a purely tactical move, it seems ill-conceived. If, for example, blacks or women are disadvantaged, what is the purpose of focusing on whites or males? This will only deflect attention away from where it is needed; instead of blacks and women receiving the attention they deserve, instead, whites and males will be accorded that attention. So the rhetoric of "privilege", by deflecting attention away from those who are disadvantaged, probably actually makes their situation worse.

Secondly, the focus on those who are not disadvantaged, seems peculiarly calculated to place blame upon them. After all, if women or blacks are being disadvantaged, why focus attention on a man or on a white, who wasn't even involved, who didn't even do anything, if not to place blame on him? The natural human reaction of someone, upon being told he has "privilege", is to reply with indignation. Furthermore, why speak of his "privilege" instead of her oppression and abuse and disadvantage, if not to place blame upon him? The goal seems not to help her, but to hurt him. Let me illustrate with a hypothetical situation:

I am sitting on my porch, in my rocking chair, suckling honeysuckle. Suddenly, some people come up over the hill, and start hooting and hollering at me, "Don't you know you have male privilege! Women are raped all the time, and you, as a male, benefit from this! You have privilege because women are raped, and you are a man!" How do I respond to this? Naturally, I retort, "How dare you! How dare you suggest that I personally benefit from women being raped! I would never wish such an unspeakable evil upon anyone! How dare you suggest something so vile about me, that I benefit from rape!" But if, instead, those same people had come to me, and said, "Hey, over that hill, some women are being raped. You must help us!", how would I have responded? With, "Oh, that's horrible! Let me get my shotgun!" In the first scenario, by speaking of my "privilege" of being a male who is not raped, you seem to suggest that I am blameworthy, that it is my fault, and that I have done something wrong. But if instead you speak of the women who are being abused, then not only is the focus being put where it is required to be (see my first objection, about tactics), but no blame is being implied, either.

So I am not at all clear why we need this rhetoric of "privilege". At best, it unintentionally but ruinously deflects attention from where it ought to be; at worst, it is conspiratorial. Why do we need this terminology? We can already speak of how women are abused; why do we need to talk about how men are "privileged"? What does this add? A man can already recognize that women are abused, and he can already work to combat this. All that is lacking is a confession of guilt on his part, and therefore, it stands to reason that "privilege" *is* guilt. That is, he has already given everything he can, short of a confession. He is then asked to "check his privilege". Therefore, to "check his privilege" *is* to admit guilt. Or, to quote my friend Kyle B., in response to someone's assertion that an admission of inequality is tantamount to a "check of privilege": "No, it [viz. admitting that inequality exists]'[i]s admitting that inequality exists. You don't need another word for it, like 'privilege', unless you intend it to mean something beyond the mere existence of inequality, something about *me*. That you leave that part out on one hand, then attempt to smuggle it in later is flat out dishonest. My only real question now, is: do you know this and are lying to us, or are you lying to yourself?" When I said that we already have the categories of "oppression", "abuse", etc., and do not need the additional one of "privilege", Kyle responded, "Michael, all those categories are about the victims and the oppressors, not about you. They need that extra cetagory to make it about you, because they cannot drag you down into the collective identity without a way to get their hooks in you." In other words, "privilege" is needed in order to drag uninvolved third parties into the conflict, in addition to the victims and oppressors who are already there, so that blame can be placed on the uninvolved parties as well.

After all, "privileges" are typically used to denote advantages which have been obtained by political lobbying. (This is contrary to Peggy McIntosh's claim that the word "privilege" has a positive connotation. On the contrary, the connotation of the word is decidedly negative.) For example, if I am a drug company and I succeed in getting Obama to ban cheaper, foreign drugs in return for my funding his reelection campaign (just to take one example from recent news), then I have obtained a "privilege". Thus, privileges typically indicate advantages secured via government-cartelization and cronyism; e.g., monopoly privileges, such as those granted to the East India Company, giving it a monopoly on tea. So to say that men have "male privilege" implies that they personally lobbied the government to secure their advantages. It implies that the men are part of a cartel that has deliberately fostered and secured their own privileges. In short, the word "privilege" has a connotation of ill-gotten spoils, of unjustly gotten gains at someone else's expense, implying guilt. Furthermore, as I said, why else would one speak of the men at all, except to place blame? If women are being raped, then why would one speak of the men who are privileged in not being raped, unless one meant to say that these men have deliberately contrived a culture of rape for their own benefit? If one does not seek to blame the men, then one should not speak of them at all, but one should speak only of the women. After all, if the men are not to blame, then they are not even part of the entire affair, and they do not merit any discussion. The only people who merit discussion are those who are parties to the transaction: the raped women and the men who rape them. The men who do not rape anyone, they are not parties to anything, and they do not deserve any mention. If they are, however, mentioned, then this implies the placement of blame, because there is no other possible reason to mention them other than to blame them. "Privilege" *must* be blame, because there is nothing else it could possibly be, because everything else already has a term for it.

For example, one of my friends told me that I have "male privilege" because women cannot drive a car in Saudi Arabia. I responded that I have never been to Saudi Arabia, and that I do not personally benefit from women's inability to drive there, and that I never did anything to foster their disadvantage. Therefore, I said, I am not a party to the entire affair. If one wishes to speak of the evil of Saudi women being denied the ability to drive, fantastic, this is a worthy discussion, but do not dare speak of my "privilege". I do not benefit at all from their inability; their loss is *not* my gain, and to speak of my "privilege" implies that I have gained at their expense, and that I somehow approve of or even actively support their disadvantage for the sake of my own advantage. To quote Kyle, "[H]ow does 'A mistreats B' have any relevance to saying anything about C? I don't get a job because women are oppressed, I get a job because I'm qualified. Some women *don't* get jobs they are qualified for because they are oppressed, or at least *dis*privileged. Life is not a zero sum game. Other's losses are not my gains." And when Kyle was asked to "check his privilege", he responded, "I don't. I acknowledge that there are things women can't do that human beings should be able to do, because they are women. It says *nothing* about me." He added, about Saudi women, "[I]f I disappeared, or disguised myself as a woman, she would still not be driving the car. My maleness has *nothing* to do with her oppression." When Kyle was told that he is in the "right side" of privilege, he responded, "I'm not on either 'end' of it, *I'm not part of it*."

Therefore, we see two further fallacies that are committed in this "privilege" rhetoric: firstly, we have illegitimate aggregation. I am coming from the perspective of economics, which is the the study of every individual, unique, autonomous human being acting according to his own personal, individual, subjective value scales. According to economics, then, aggregation is illegitimate whenever disparate human beings are grouped together when their characteristics do not warrant this. (To quote a certain rapper, "That simple equation: too much aggregation / Ignores human action / And motivation.") Secondly, according to economics, all value is purely subjective and all profit is purely psychic. Therefore, if you have two men, one a rapist and the other not, you cannot - according to economics - group them together, because their value scales are entirely unalike. One man psychically profits from rape, while the other man is either indifferent or even suffers a psychic loss (pain) every time he hears of a case of rape in the news. To group these two men together as members of the same group is, from an economic perspective, illogical and irrational. These two men are not only engaged in different concrete behaviors, but their subjective value scales are entirely unalike, as well. It is impossible to speak of the man who abhors rape and is disgusted by it, as benefiting from rape and as securing some "privilege", when, according to his own value scale, rape incurs for him a psychic loss, not a psychic profit.

A friend of a friend of mine's, Brett M., gave a trenchant criticism of this aggregation: "You know, I grew up at the end of dirt roads at the end of dirt roads in Appalachia -- using an outhouse, only one (cold) running water tap in the house and infested with worms. I have a really hard time accepting the notion that by virtue of my sex or race I somehow was born more privileged than President Barack Obama's daughters who have never known a hungry day in their lives."

Thus, "privilege" rhetoric actually seems based upon fallacious Marxist class-interest and polylogism, i.e. the belief that all humans are inexorably and fatalistically shaped by their (alleged) interests. Since someone is a male, it is assumed that he must benefit from rape. Obviously, of course, this is tantamount to blaming him for rape. Whereas an economist would look at every individual human being as a universe unto himself, and ask whether this particular person takes actions to support rape or not, and whether he psychically profits from rape or not, by contrast, the rhetoric of "privileges" seems to illegitimately aggregate disparate individuals into arbitrary groups (e.g. "males") and then assume, as per Marxism, that they *must* support or oppose this or that by virtue of their inborn natures.

It is actually quite similar to Christian Original Sin. Men are told that by virtue of an accident of their birth, they are irredeemably tainted. No matter how much a man opposes rape and even fights to wipe it off the face of the earth, he is told that he supports rape, that he benefits from rape, and that he is "privileged" by rape. No matter what he does, he is guilty of abetting rapists and he is an accomplice in their crime, being that he benefits therefrom. He may as well be told that he is literally a member of a cartel that deliberately secured explicit privileges from the government. When I made this Original Sin argument, my friend Jacques V. added that at least Christian Original Sin was democratic, in that everyone was equally a sinner. With "privilege" rhetoric, white males alone are part of the pariah class that is tainted irredeemably with sin. The only solution is to confess one's sins, to admit that one is "privileged", that he personally enjoys it and benefits from it when women are raped, and that he is personally to blame whenever women are raped. Then, and only then, by confession of his sins, is his soul cleansed. Heads, women win; tails, men lose.

Kyle also noted that the whole "privilege" terminology actually elevates the advantaged and give them inordinately undeserved attention. He said, about a hypothetical woman being stabbed, "And is she any worse off if I didn't walk by her that day, and didn't know about it? Am I just as guilty if I feel good about my life that day? Sorry, the world doesn't revolve around me." In other words, a woman suffers somewhere, whether or not a man elsewhere in the world knows about her, or feels bad about her. The world does not revolve around this man. To speak of his "privilege", implies that somehow, he is always relevant to her, that everything that ever happens to her, somehow involves him too. It grants far too much to the man. The world does not revolve around him. This is not quantum mechanics; if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, it *does* make a sound, and to suggest otherwise demeans the woman. The woman's suffering does not depend for its existence on the man's cognizance. The woman has a dignity of her own, and she does not require the man, and it is horribly misogynist to suggest otherwise, akin to saying that black slaves needed their white slavemasters and could not have subsisted without them.

Furthermore, the entire enterprise is afflicted with a fallacious notion that government grants rights, and because of this, a universe where "privileges" rhetoric succeeded would resemble the world of Harrison Bergeron. (I am indebted to Kyle for this comparison.) Let me explain: the truth is that all humans inalienable possess certain rights. Government cannot grant rights, but at most, it can only protect preexisting rights. For example, women have the inalienable, immemorial right to drive a car. In Saudi Arabia, this right of women is frustrated, while this same right of men is protected. Therefore, women lose, but men do not gain. Men remain at the point of origin, (0,0), while women lose, being pushed back to (-1,-1). The solution is obvious: not to blame men for "privilege", but only to eliminate the abuses of women, and return them to the point of origin. But according to "privileges" rhetoric, rights are something granted, ex nihilo, by government, from itself, from its own. Therefore, there is only a finite number of rights to give, and everyone's gain is someone else's loss. If men can drive, they must have taken this from women. There is only a finite amount of "right to drive", and if men have this right, they stole it from women. Therefore, we must take this right away from men, and give it to women, until such time as compensation shall be made. At that point, the right to drive will be split in half, with men given half and women given half. For example, suppose that it has been 50 years that women have been unable to drive. To solve this problem, men must be denied the right to drive for 50 years, with women granted that right, so that at the end of another 50 years, the two will be equal. At that point, the right to drive can be split in half and apportioned equally among men and women. Therefore, the whole notion of "privilege", relying as it does on the fallacious notion that government grants rights, creates the myth that males must have taken their advantages from women, and that these advantages must be taken from men and given to women. If women have been raped, then the solution is for men to be raped too. Thus, because of a mistaken notion of the source of rights, we end in the universe of Harrison Bergeron. (On the other hand, compensation may not be the goal; to quote Kyle, in response to my argument about compensation, "Michael, you're missing a vitally important point here. It's not compensating the loss that counts, its that you sacrifice your gain as an expression of your guilt. The material value is irrelevant.") Notice that this also incites conflict between men and women, because the men are told they must lose their right to drive so that women can gain it. The result, of course, is that the men and women fight with each other, while meanwhile, the government, the source of the abuses and oppressions, looks down happily, beholding that both of its serfs are fighting against each other, rather than against it. I shall return to this theme later, and discuss whether "privilege" rhetoricians are deliberately conspiratorial, in cahoots with the powers-that-be, or whether they are only useful idiots.

Under this system of government-granted rights in lieu of government protected-rights, instead of men being viewed at (0,0) and women at (-1,-1), men are viewed at (+1,+1) and women at (0,0). That is, rather than say that men, with their ability to drive, are at the point of origin, and women, with that right denied, have moved negatively, instead, women, without the ability, are at the point of origin, and men, with the right, have moved positively. That is, instead of viewing rights as natural and immemorial, and protesting denials of those rights as unnatural, instead, lack of rights is viewed as natural and immemorial, and rights are seen as something given, not as something taken away. The result is that when a man is simply living his ordinary life, operating at the point of origin, (0,0), he is fallaciously treated as if he were at (+1,+1). The result is a basic mathematical fallacy, and I quote Kyle: ‎"'Privilege' is like trying to multiply or divide by zero. You're taking an absence - of oppression, or of being downtrodden, or not being treated unfairly - and turning it into a something, then plugging it into formulas and expecting a meaningful result." Because the mere absence of oppression of men - i.e. zero - being treated as something - i..e as a positive number - one attempts to perform mathematical operations which can be performed on positive and negative numbers but not on zero. Kyle referred to the "reification of zero" of Ayn Rand, which I had never heard of.

But the truth is, as I said, a (hypothetical, individual) man in Saudi Arabia did nothing at all to deny women the ability to drive; that was the act of the government, not of himself. He never wanted women to be abused, and in fact, he fights every day against this abuse. But what he refuses to do is to admit guilt, to admit that he played any role in abusing women. And the loss of women was definitely not his gain; in fact, according to his own subjective value scale, it causes pain to him whenever women cannot drive, and so their loss is his loss as well, from an economic perspective. According to any typical notion of morality, this man is upstanding: he rejects injustice against women, and he actively opposes it. But from the perspective of "privileges rhetoric", he is a sinner solely by virtue of being a man, and he is a partner in crime to the whole abuse of women, and no matter how much he protests that he is not one of the men who originally established the sexist abuse, he is told that merely because he is a male, he is part of the same group he abhors and detests, namely the men who established the system against his own personal wishes. Because of Marxist notions of fatalistic interest, the man is told that no matter what he believes, no matter how much he protests that he abhors sexism, that he is actually as sexist as the men who actually established the system. The only solution is for him to confess his guilt, his sin.

Then, he can pay compensation to women, by losing as many rights as they lost, until everyone is equally impoverished, and we are all equals in suffering. It treats human welfare as a zero-sum game; instead of elevating women until women are equal to men, it seeks to degrade men until they are as degraded as women. Instead of increasing the total sum of human welfare for all, as a positive-sum game, it treats welfare as a zero-sum game, in which anyone's gain is another's loss. If men are at (0,0) and women are at (-1,-1,), the solution is obviously to just stop taking from women, so that they naturally rise back to (0,0). But if men are wrongly perceived as being at (+1,+1), and women at (0,0), then the apparent solution will be to take (+0.5,+0.5) from men and give to women, so that both are at (+0.5,+0.5), but this actually ends them up at (-0.5,-0.5): you took (+0.5,+0.5) from the (0,0) men and gave it to the (-1,-1) women, thinking you were taking (+0.5,+0.5) from the (+1,+1) men and giving it to the (0,0) women. Because of a mistaken notion of what the point of origin is and who has moved positively or negatively therefrom, the proper solution of ceasing to take from women and leaving men alone is eschewed, and instead, men are robbed to reward women, with the result that everyone occupies a negative position with respect to the point of origin, while the "privilege" rhetoricians will wrongly believe that everyone occupies a positive position. Everyone will be slaves, but they will be equal in their slavery, and the "privilege" rhetoricians celebrate this as a victory. Thus, the mistaken notion of government-granted rights perpetuates and legitimizes class-warfare, by discouraging cooperation and instead encouraging competition and envy. Instead of having men and women work together for mutual benefit, it tells them that men and women are engaged in eternal class-warfare, and that no one can win unless the other loses. The men and women fight each other, and the oppressive power looks down happily, beholding its victims warring amongst themselves.

Let me refer to Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and her "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies", simply because I happened to have read those essays. McIntosh's words seem to reinforce my interpretation; to wit:

"My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor" --- McIntosh takes it for granted that she *is* blameworthy. She herself is an oppressor, even though she has never personally done anything to harm anyone. Just by virtue of being white, she is guilty. Her skin color itself makes her a sinner. But myself, I would rather side with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., that we be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. She says, "I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will." Oh, what a tragedy! Well, then, upon whom does one's own moral state depend? The moral wills of other people whom I have never even met? That is absurd. Somehow, because some man in Saudi Arabia oppresses women, *I* am guilty by association. Somehow, my genitalia are conduits of spiritual impurity, or perhaps my genitalia are in quantum entanglement with the genitalia of all other men on earth and with my own soul?

"I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged." --- It is not enough for men to recognize that women are disadvantaged. Men must admit that they took something from women, that they are the guilty possessors of ill-gotten spoils. A man can work all his life to combat injustice against women, but until he confesses his own personal guilt, he is a sinner. It does not matter what you do (Judaism), but only what you are (Christianity). But at least Christianity was democratic in placing blame.

"They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s." --- Indeed, these men are willing to work to improve the total sum of human welfare for all, but they refuse to treat it as a zero-sum game, or to reduce us all to the lowest-common denominator, as in Harrison Bergeron. Therefore, they are guilty. No wonder, then, that "even the most thoughtful and fair-minded of the men I know well tend to reflect, or fall back on, conservative assumptions about the inevitability of present gender relations and distributions of power, calling on precedent or sociobiology and psychobiology to demonstrate that male domination is natural and follows inevitably from evolutionary pressures. Others resort to arguments from "experience" or religion or social responsibility or wishing and dreaming." After all, if you treat welfare as zero-sum, and demand that men lose in order that women gain, instead of letting both gain, then of course men will object!

"which men gain from women’s disadvantages." --- Again, the subjectivity of all individual value scales, as per economics, is replaced with Marxist class-interest. Men are told what their interests are, and they are forbidden to protest that no, their value scales are different. If a man claims he abhors rape and is pained in his heart whenever a woman is raped, he is told that no, he personally derives benefit from women being raped. Rather than being asked what his value scale is, he is dictated to and told what his value scale is. And the man who sits in Australia or Canada or Brazil, he is told that he personally benefits from the fact that women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive, just because he is a man. It does not matter that he has never been to Saudi Arabia, nor does it matter that the loss of a woman's is *not* his gain, that he gains nothing from their inability to drive. In fact, it might be that his heart is pained by the fact that Saudi women cannot drive. No, he is told that just because is a man, he personally benefits from every injustice every committed to any woman on earth, even if he was not a party to the affair, even if he was personally pained by the affair. No, as a male, he is irredeemably guilty.

"As we in Women's Studies work reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power" --- So if Saudi women cannot drive, the solution is for us not to extend the protection of that immemorial right to women, but rather, for men to give up their ability to drive, so that men and women are equally impoverished. Rather than empower women and allow them to drive, we must deprive men of that ability, as per Harrison Bergeron.

McIntosh is also guilty of gross aggregation and Marxist class-interest theory, ignoring personal, individual, subjective utility and value scales: "I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented." So what? Why does this matter? Why does she assume that a white person benefits from seeing white people in the media? I myself am Jewish, for example, but I do not benefit when Jews are prominent. Some obnoxious people claim, for example, that I personally somehow benefit from the presence of Jewish justices in the Supreme Court. No, a thousand times, no! Just because they are Jewish does not mean they represent me, not at all! In fact, if anyone represents me on the Supreme Court, it is probably Clarence Thomas - I do not agree with everything he says, not by a long shot, but of all the people on that court, he is the closest to me, despite the fact that I am not black and he is not Jewish. My interests are not determined solely by the fact that I am of the Jewish people (race and religion combined). I find it offensive and repugnant and racist when people claim that somehow, a Jewish justice necessarily represents me in any way, and yet McIntosh seems guilty of this sort of bigotry. We see more aggregation from McIntosh when she says, "I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion." In what way are "colored" people the world's majority? I do not believe that half the world's population lives in Africa. Apparently, she includes anyone who is merely not white, and thereby, she can say that colored people are the world's majority. But that means she is lumping together Africans, Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, you name it, all into one group called "colored" or "not white", and treating this group opposite the group of whites. How dare she?! How dare she treat Japanese people and Egyptian people as identical, just because they are both non-white?!

McIntosh reveals more aggregation when she says, "In my class and place, I did not see myself as racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth." But the fact is, only individual humans act. It may be convenient at times to deal with the abstraction of "society", the same way that biologists deal in shorthand with molecules rather than calculating everything in terms of subatomic particles. But the same way that in truth, the reaction of caffeine on the brain is really just the reaction of some subatomic particles with other subatomic particles, so too, everything that ever happens in society is really just the interaction of individual human beings. There is no such actually existing thing as a "system"; in society, on people exist. Therefore, to say that she saw racism only in the acts of individuals and not in systems, betrays the fallacy of methodological holism. To deal in "systems" may be at times convenient, but one must remember this is an unrealistic abstraction useful only for convenient approximations, akin to treating 51/100 and 49/99 as equal to 1/2 when doing mathematics in one's head without a calculator. She says, "Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems." But if so, then ending these problems is impossible, because ultimately, the only real thing in society is actual, living, breathing human beings, every single one of them unique, each of them performing individual, independent actions. This is why a Jew, upon seeing a crowd of people, says the blessing, "Barukh atah hashem, elokeinu melekh ha-olam, hakham ha-razim", "Blessed are you Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, Knower of secrets." Because every single human being in a crowd has totally unique thoughts, unlike those of anyone else. In Sanhedrin 4:5, the Mishnah observes that when a human king mints a coin from a single mold, every coin comes out the same, but when G-d mints a human being from the single mold of Adam and Eve, every person comes out completely different.

So far, then, we have seen several problems with "privilege" rhetoric:
(1) It is tactically ill-conceived, in that it diverts attention away from blacks and women, and towards whites and men, thus helping to perpetuate abuse by concealing it.
(2) The very word "privilege" implies placement of blame.
(3) It illegitimately aggregates and relies on Marxism, thus ignoring that all value is subjective, all profit is psychic, and all individuals are unique. Furthermore, it thereby places blame even on those who were not party to the affair; for example, by speaking of "male privilege", a man in Mexico is somehow made responsible for what happens to women in Saudi Arabia, merely because he is a man.
(4) It treats rights as government-granted rather than government-protected, thus giving rise to the fallacy that human welfare is zero-sum, that all benefits must come at someone else's loss, and that disadvantaged parties cannot simply be elevated to the rank of the advantaged, but that the disadvantaged must *take* rights *away* from the advantaged, so that the advantaged loss as much as the disadvantaged gain. Instead of increasing the total sum of welfare, positive-sum, human welfare is treated as zero-sum.

So far, then, what we have seen is that "privilege" rhetoric is counter-productive and full of fallacies. But this does not necessarily imply that "privilege" rhetoricists actually intend all this. It may simply be that there are unintentional consequences and implications of their thought which they never foresaw. They may be the regime's useful idiots.

On the other hand, I can imagine that there is actually a deliberate conspiracy at work here. I gave my friend - the one who was relying on "critical theory" in an argument with me and introduced me to this theory in the first place - the following example: suppose we have two slaves, a man and a woman, both working beneath one slavemaster. The male slave begins working to overthrow their master and to free them both, but the female slave protests, "No, you have male privilege! The slavemaster prefers you, a male slave, to me, a female slave. You must admit your privilege!" This move by her is obviously counterproductive, because she would be better off joining with him and working with him to overthrow their master, rather than inciting against him, he who is after all working for her freedom from slavery too. It is so obvious that her act is counterproductive, that I would suspect her of conspiracy: in fact, she and the slavemaster are in cahoots, and she is inciting against the male slave with rhetoric of "male privilege" precisely because she wishes to remain in slavery and support the slavemaster, and therefore, she makes a false and spurious claim "male privilege" against the male slave fighting for her freedom, in order to weaken him and strengthen the slavemaster. Therefore, I am suspicious that rhetoric of "male privilege" or "white privilege" is actually a conspiracy, meant to strengthen the hegemonic powers by deflecting attention away from the hegemonic power (the slavemaster) and towards the one attempting to overthrow that power (the male slave fighting against the slavemaster). If so, then rhetoric of "privilege" is actually a "superstructure", meant to conceal abuse and thereby legitimize and perpetuate it. Those who speak of "privilege" may be, I suspect, be in conspiracy with the powers-that-be. When I told Kyle this, he responded, "That's no accident. Maybe among your friends, it's innocent, but the people that push this idea from above know exactly what they are doing (and your friends here got the idea from somewhere). Solving problems undermines the leverage of those who benefit from the existence of them." In other words, according to Kyle, the authors of the "privilege" doctrine do not want social problems to be solved; they want the problems to be perpetuated, because they profit off them (for example, bureaucratic administrators of welfare programs benefit from poverty, because once poverty is solved, they lose their cushy jobs). Therefore, claims Kyle, the "privilege" doctrine is meant to perpetuate conflict and oppression, in order to ensure the reliability of the future income-stream of the authors of that doctrine. I earlier quoted the rapper, that "That simple equation: too much aggregation / Ignores human action / And motivation." But he crucially continues, "And yet it [viz. aggregation] continues as a justification / For bailouts and payoffs / By pols with machinations / To provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch." The female slave is the slavemaster's whore, and she does not want slavery to end, and so she invokes "male privilege" against the male slave fighting for her freedom. She is erecting a superstructure to justify and/or conceal oppression, and using "male privilege" to deflect attention away from slavery.

On the other hand, as I said, the "privilege" rhetoricists may be honest and ingenuous, and not in conspiracy. They may simply be using ill-conceived rhetoric that undermines their own effort. To quote my friend Kyle B., when I suggested that "privilege" rhetoricists may be honest: "They might, but they've swallowed a pitcher-full of koolaid premises that will be used to support something far beyond that, and when they protest about it later it will be too late."

Ultimately, then, my question is: do you have any responses to my objections, or can you recommend any good literature which deals with the issues I have raised? In other words, what I am ultimately hoping to see is a "critical theorist" either responding to my objections, or pointing me to some literature which does.

Thank you, and sincerely,
Michael Makovi
I am a BA student in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but I am transferring to the BA program in economics at Loyola University, New Orleans.

P. S. I will say, however, that I found a one of McIntosh's statements to be insightful. She says, "Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me
now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist." Indeed, to quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe (http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html), "Nor is it an advantage of democracy that free entry into every state position exists (whereas under monarchy entry is restricted by the king's discretion). To the contrary, only competition in the production of goods is a good thing. Competition in the production of bads is not good; in fact, it is sheer evil." Hoppe continues (http://mises.org/daily/2265 & http://mises.org/daily/5270), "The liberal answer was by opening participation and entry into government on equal terms to everyone via democracy. Anyone — not just a hereditary class of nobles — was permitted to become a government official and exercise every government function. However, this democratic equality before the law is something entirely different from and incompatible with the idea of one universal law, equally applicable to everyone, everywhere, and at all times. In fact, the former objectionable schism and inequality of the higher law of kings versus the subordinate law of ordinary subjects is fully preserved under democracy in the separation of public versus private law and the supremacy of the former over the latter. Under democracy, everyone is equal insofar as entry into government is open to all on equal terms. In a democracy no personal privileges or privileged persons exist. However, functional privileges and privileged functions exist. As long as they act in an official capacity, public officials are governed and protected by public law and thereby occupy a privileged position vis-à-vis persons acting under the mere authority of private law, most fundamentally in being permitted to support their own activities by taxes imposed on private law subjects. Privilege and legal discrimination will not disappear. To the contrary. Rather than being restricted to princes and nobles, privilege, protectionism, and legal discrimination will be available to all and can be exercised by everyone." McIntosh continues, "It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturate in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already." Hoppe adds (in "Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis", in Requiem for a Marx, ed. Yuri N. Maltsev, p. 65), "As an exploitative firm, the state must at all times be interested in a low degree of class consciousnessness among the ruled. ... Furthermore, the redistribution of state power itself through democratizing the state constitution and opening up every ruling position to everyone and granting everyone the right to participate in the determination of stae personnel and policy is a means for reducing the resistance against exploitation as such. ... [T]he state is indeed, as Marxists see it, the great center of ideological propaganda and mystification. ... All of this is part of the ideological superstructure of designed to legitimize an underlying basis of economic exploitation."

Torgerson: GOP Convention 'Overrun by Ron Paul Libertarians'

2012-04-16T23:11:00.002+03:00

Lynne Torgerson, Republican candidate for U.S. Congress, of the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota, posted the statement below, on her campaign blog (http://torgersonforcongress.blogspot.com/2012/04/republican-5th-congressional-district.html#comment-form), and it was reposted elsewhere (http://stlouispark.patch.com/articles/torgerson-republican-convention-that-endorsed-fields-overrun-by-libertarians). I reproduce her statement in full:

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, I attended the Republican 5th Congressional District Endorsing Convention.

There was a stage at the front of the room. Approximately 6 people were seated on the stage. Every person seated was a Ron Paul Libertarian. The Convention was overrun by Ron Paul Libertarians. More than 2/3 of the delegates were Ron Paul Libertarians. When I mentioned that we were at a Republican Convention, they laughed out loud.

They began the Convention. There was no opening prayer. Not even a mention of it.

There was also no Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag.

Then, a man up front stood up and requested that we recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But alas, upon looking around, there was not a flag to be seen.

Then, a clown came forward, dressed in garb, with a very large hat, that somewhat resembled a flag. In Wikipedia, wearing a flag is a form of flag desecration. Wikipedia states the following:

It is increasingly common to see clothing with the image of the flags forming a substantial part of the piece. Views vary as to whether some of this is an act of disrespect.

Such actions may be undertaken for a variety of reasons:

- As a protest against a country's foreign policy.
- To distance oneself from the foreign or domestic policies of one's home country.
- As a protest at the very laws prohibiting the actions in question.
- As a protest against nationalism.
- As a protest against the government in power in the country, or against the country's form of government.
- A symbolic insult to the people of that country.

So it appears that this person was wearing the US flag in order to desecrate our flag.

The clown in the flag suit then went up front and stood on the stage. We were then led in the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Stunning. To me this seemed a further desecration of the US flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. I refused to participate.

Later, a vote was taken as to whether any endorsement of any Congressional candidate was going to take place. A decision was made to do so.

There were going to be 3 candidates allowed to speak. I was told a couple of days before the Convention by Adam Weigold, Chair, that I would be allowed an unlimited amount of time to speak. The first candidate allowed to speak, Chris Fields, a Libertarian, was allowed an unlimited amount of time. I was then asked by Chris Sinn, a Libertarian, how long my speech would take. I had prepared a 30 minute speech. I told Chris the length of time I expected my speech to take. They knew that I was going to criticize the Libertarian platform, and expose that Chris Fields is actually a Libertarian, and expose his positions, etc. Chris Fields has been trying to pass himself off as a moderate Republican, and has avoided taking any positions in public or on his website. Juliette Jordahl, a Libertarian, then quickly brought a motion to limit my speech to 10 minutes. It passed. I am currently reading a book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of the first things the Nazis did was to outlaw speech criticizing the Nazis. I have been contacted by Libertarian Adam Weigold telling me not to expose Chris Fields, etc. I told Adam that he was infringing upon my liberty - freedom of political speech. One would think that the Libertarians would encourage critical thinking, freedom of speech, and expression of political speech.

Thus, instantaneously, I had to cut out 2/3 of my speech. During my presentation, as mentioned above, they laughed out loud when I mentioned that we were at a Republican Convention. The mention that the Constitution did not protect homosexual behavior brought jeers. I also mentioned that Chris Fields has said that Saddam Hussein got a bad deal, that he applauds Keith Ellison's representation of Muslims, that he thinks our cherished US Constitution is not perfect, that he supports gay rights legislation, and that he would not protect Life with legislation. When I then mentioned that Chris Fields had been advocating, to our Republican college youth, the legalization of pot smoking, this brought loud, lengthy cheering and clapping, and then the announcement that my time was up. I mentioned that President and General George Washington did not advocate pot smoking and that if he did, we probably would not have won the American Revolutionary War.

This is what is going on in your Republican Party folks.

Please note that Libertarians, who actually have PROGRESSIVE positions:

- want to eliminate the TSA

- want to eliminate the Patriot Act

- are anti-war

- are pro gay rights

- don't want to protect Life with legislation

- have a pro Muslim agenda

- are generally anti-Christian

- don't want to support Israel

- don't want to prevent a nuclear Iran

- want to legalize illegal drugs

- want to legalize prostitution

Adam Weigold, a staunch Ron Paul Libertarian supporter, re-ran for Chair of the 5th Congressional District. He ran un-opposed. I do not understand why no Republican ran against him.

Mark Johnson, a Libertarian, SD 60 Chair, ran for Deputy Chair, and was elected. Red Bartholomew, a long time Republican ran against him. The vote was 100 to 40, in favor of Libertarian/Progressive Mark Johnson. Please note that Mark Johnson participated in Occupy Wall Street, at the Hennepin County Government Center.

Jacquelyn America proudly mentioned more than once that she has been working with the Somali community.

I recently read an article in Mother Jones. It reported that the Libertarians did a study and concluded that given its form of government, that the State of New Hampshire would be the easiest State in the Union to take over. Then, 14,000 Libertarians moved to New Hampshire. It appears that a similar strategy is being employed in Minneapolis, and the State of Minnesota.

This is your Republican Party folks. Do nothing at your peril.

I responded on her blog (pending moderator approval):

This is fantastic! I will not waste your time reiterating the libertarian position, as I am sure you already know it, but I will say this:

As an Orthodox Jew living in Jerusalem, I support Ron Paul. The Republicans in Congress support "aid" to Israel the same way that Democrats support Lyndon Johnson's "aid" to the poor. In other words, American aid to Israel is every bit as damaging to Israel as government aid is to the poor. I often like to say that we here in Israel expelled the British from Israel, and we'll expel America too. But it may be that a Ron Paul presidency - please God - will spare us the trouble, and he'll do our work for us, ending the imperialistic American domination of Israel for us.

The fact is, American "aid" to Israel is as helpful as white slaveholder "aid" to black slaves was. (After all, didn't the slaveholders provide food and shelter and clothing to the slaves?) Not to mention that this "aid" to Israel is provided only by robbing honest and unfortunate American taxpayers. Israel is merely American's pawn, a Cold War-style proxy to serve America's Middle Eastern interests, not to mention a money-launderer for the military-industrial complex (all "aid" to Israel must be spent on American military equipment). Well, guess what? Israel is not happy being America's prostitute, and we'll soon be fighting back against our pimp - that is, unless Ron Paul beats that pimp for us.

See my own "Ron Paul and Israel" (http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/ron-paul-and-israel/), published by Tom Woods, an excerpt of a letter I wrote to Walter Block in response to his "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community in Behalf of Ron Paul" (http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html). There my letter, as excerpted, cites several articles showing that a cessation of American aid to Israel would be beneficial to Israel, and that right-wing Zionists in Israel have not been quiet about exposing this fact. (As I note there, one lecturer at the right-wing Zionistic yeshiva (rabbinical seminary) where I learned, openly endorsed Ron Paul as the Zionist choice for president.) Since I wrote my letter, an additional piece of evidence for me has come out, namely Ron Paul's response to the Republican Jewish Coalition, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGsETE1-ZoI. There, Ron Paul says that Zionism calls for Israeli independence from America, and he is absolutely right.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it. You say you are a "pro-Israel Christian", which I assume means you are actually an anti-Israel imperialist who seeks to dominate Israel. Well, if Ron Paul does not win, then someday soon, a video like this will be coming out, only instead of being about an offensive foreign Chinese presence in Texas, it will be about an odious American foreign presence in Israel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKfuS6gfxPY. The days of Republican imperialism in Israel are numbered.

Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, and Purim

2012-03-12T15:59:00.002+02:00

So I had fun with my devar torah at Rav Machlis's this past Shabbat. Rabbi Machlis had given a devar torah about how the half-shekel, equal for everyone - rich and poor alike - symbolized that we are all "half", and need to cooperate with each other to make a whole.

Then he invited everyone to speak, as long as they eschewed politics and anything opposed to Judaism. So I stood up and said the following:

Well, the rabbi told us to avoid politics, but he didn't say anything about economics. So in a few minutes, he'll be kicking me out of the house and amending his rules for the future.

What he said about the half-shekel being equal for all, reminds me of something my favorite economist, Murray Rothbard, said. Rothbard said that the beauty of a flat tax is that it is equal for everyone, and must be set for all - including the rich - at whatever rate the poor are able to pay. [Making Economic Sense, chapter 62 ("Mrs. Thatcher's Poll Tax" and chapter 63 ("Exit the Iron Lady"), at http://mises.org/econsense/econsense.asp] But for the record, I am not advocating anything politically; I am just speaking value-free economics.

Anyway, speaking of Rothbard, I am reminded of something I heard in a lecture given by his wife, JoAnn Rothbard. ["The Good Life of Murray N. Rothbard" at http://mises.org/media/2824/] Rothbard was an atheist, but his wife was religious, but Rothbard was not militantly atheist, so he didn't mind. But a certain famous, very militantly atheist [viz. Ayn Rand] told Rothbard that he had better divorce his wife and marry a more 'rational' wife. Anyway, this same famous atheist accused Rothbard of plagiarizing her, when in fact the ideas that Rothbard had allegedly stolen from her, were in fact commonplaces. Well, Rothbard sent his friend Ralph Raico to the library to find some references to these same ideas that predated her, just to prove the ideas weren't hers at all, and to make it fun, Raico went out of his way to make sure all the references he found were by Catholic theologians, just to poke fun at her, the militant atheist.

But it is obvious that her behavior was not the ideal way to regard ideas and their propagation. She was engaging in what economists call 'rent-seeking', in which one seeks to acquire unjust and undeserved profit off the work of others. This Purim, we read in the book of Esther that 'Esther told the king in Mordechai's name', and Pirkei Avot quotes this and say that anyone who cites another, brings the redemption. But why is this so? Rabbi Joseph Telushkin explains that there are two reasons for anyone to say anything: either he wants to look smart and get honor, or else he wants to improve the world with knowledge. If the former, then he will not cite his sources, but if the latter, he will. In such a world, where people spread knowledge not for personal glory but instead to improve mankind's condition - and therefore, they do cite their sources - then, Rabbi Telushkin says, we are well on our way to the redemption. This famous militant atheist, she was using knowledge to rent-seek, and not for the proper purpose which we learn in the book of Esther.

"Derrick Bell in 1994: ‘Jewish Neoconservative Racists’" by John Podhoretz in Commentary

2012-03-11T02:41:00.003+02:00

I just had some fun writing this letter:

Hello. I write in response to John Podhoretz's "Derrick Bell in 1994: ‘Jewish Neoconservative Racists’", at http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/09/derrick-bell-jewish-neoconservative-racists/. My response is rather off-topic, and not exactly relevant to Podhoretz's subject, but I wish to make some remarks which I nevertheless feel need to be said.

Podhoretz condemns Bell for writing about "all the Jewish neoconservative racists who are undermining blacks in every way they can". Well, actually, I would say Bell is exactly right, although he himself probably lacks the faintest clue why. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in "The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism" (http://mises.org/daily/1766), quotes Irving Kristol: "[T]he basic principle behind a conservative welfare state ought to be a simple one: wherever possible, people should be allowed to keep their own money—rather than having it transferred (via taxes to the state)—on the condition that they put it to certain defined uses." Hoppe comments, "This view is essentially identical to that held by modern, post-Marxist European Social-Democrats." I forget where, but I recall seeing a Neoconservative somewhere argue that thanks to Otto von Bismarck, the socialist leviathan welfare state is perfectly legitimate in the eyes of conservatives. The fact is, Neoconservatives are socialists, not only in their policy advocacy, but even in their lineage, as they are all Trotskyites. Now then, what does the welfare state do to blacks? As Walter E. Williams shows us, it does nothing to blacks but impoverish them. So Bell is correct: Neoconservatives are in fact "undermining blacks in every way they can", via their support of socialism.

I cannot help but notice that Neoconservatives are not only anti-black, but antisemitic as well. (As we know, Jews have no compunctions against being antisemitic.) How else can we possibly interpret their constant clarion call for the United States to imperialistically dominate Israel? True, they do not put it in such words, but few villains ever openly state their true intent. Instead, they must obfuscate by euphemism if not by outright lie. See, for example, George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". With Hanukkah, we learn that when two brothers vied for the office of high priest and invited a foreign power to adjudicate their dispute, the result was a foreign power conquering Israel and attempting to erase Judaism. Not long after, two Hasmonean princes, vying for kingship, invited Rome to adjudicate their dispute, and the rest is history. In essence, Neoconservatives today demand the United States behave towards Israel in exactly the fashion that Seleucid Syria and Rome did. Ron Paul was correct when he said, in his interview with Jack Hunter following his (Paul's) exclusion from the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum, that true Zionism means self-independence and a cessation of infantile reliance on a foreign imperial dominator. Well, as an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, I say, we expelled the British Empire from Israel and we shall expel the American Empire as well, no matter how many Neoconservative Jews side against Israel. See Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr.'s article "Ron Paul and Israel" (http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/ron-paul-and-israel/), which is in fact an except of a letter I sent to Dr. Walter Block in response to his An Open Letter to the Jewish Community in Behalf of Ron Paul (http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html). Long story short, America's imperialist domination of Israel shall soon end, if no other reason than that the Keynesian economics endorsed by the Neoconservatives (among other political factions) shall, if not altered, soon lead to runaway hyperinflation in the United States. Enjoy the mess you've created for yourselves, because you deserve every punishment conceivable for the crimes committed by the welfare-warfare leviathan state you advocate on behalf of. Here in Israel, we shall we heartbroken to see the American people destroyed by Neoconservative national-socialism, but we not shed a single tear when the Neoconservatives collectively fall into the pit they have dug for themselves with their crimes against humanity in general and against blacks and Jews in particular. (Not to mention your flagrant violation of the laws of economics. But the laws of economics can really be no more violated than the laws of gravity. Your socialism shall come back to rob you of everything you have.)

Oh, and I cannot resist adding: if I did support Neoconservatives, I would vote Barack Obama. He is twice the Neoconservative Bush ever was. (My brother has been saying for years now that Obama is like Bush's little brother, who strives to show his big brother that he can follow loyally in his footsteps. But see also Glenn Greenwald, "Vote Obama – if you want a centrist Republican for US president" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/vote-obama-centrist-republican).)

Thank you, and sincerely,
Michael Makovi
I am an alumnus of the Machon Meir yeshiva in Jerusalem, and I am presently studying for a BA in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Post: "What does the Torah say about social justice?": Abysmal economics

2011-11-13T22:51:00.001+02:00

A friend of mine posted (at https://www.facebook.com/groups/164893083528659/301368179881148/) a link to the Jerusalem Post's "What does the Torah say about social justice?" (http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=235398), by Barry Leff of Rabbis for Human Rights, advocating obedience to the Talmud's economic regulations. This is the reply I wrote there on Facebook, and also on the Jerusalem Post's own website:

We read, "Would the rabbis of the Talmud be out on the streets – and in the tents – with the protesters? Or would they be defending the government and the status quo?" This is a false dilemma. You don't have to be either a socialist (protestor) or a fascist (defender of the status quo - fascism/corporatism means governmental regulation of the economy, in which private ownership is nominally maintained while the government controls the actual use of that property). You can be a capitalist (laissez-faire, in which the government does not regulate or intervene at all).

We further read, "It is well known that the Talmud favors a strong 'safety net' for taking care of the poor." It also favors bloodletting and incantations to demons. We do not appeal to outdated Talmudic medicine or superstitution or science, says Maimonides, so why should we appeal to outdated economics? I don't get it. The same people who reject the Talmud's advocacy of bloodletting and astrology, suddenly consider it the apogee of economic science. I prefer the view of Maimondes (Rambam) and Rabbi Avraham ben ha-Rambam (son of Maimonides); Maimonides, regarding the Talmud's reliance on, and belief in, astrology, in his letter to Marseilles/Montpelier (http://www.scribd.com/doc/27122444/Moses-Maimonides-Letter-on-Astrology): "What we have said about this from the beginning is that the entire position of the stargazers is regarded as a falsehood by all men of science [madda]. I know that you may search and find sayings of some individual sages in the Talmud and Midrashoth whose words appear to maintain that at the moment of a man's birth the stars will cause such and such to happen to him. Do not regard this as a difficulty, for it is not fitting for a man to abandon the prevailing law and raise once again the counterarguments and replies [that preceded its enactment]. Similarly it is not proper to abandon matters of reason that have already been verified by proofs, shake loose of them, and depend upon the words of a single one of the sages from whom possibly the matter was hidden. Or there may be an allusion in those words; or they may have been said with a view to the times and the business before him. (You surely know how many of the verses of the Holy Law are not to be taken literally. Since it is known through proofs of reason that it is impossible for the thing to be literally so, [Onqelos] the Translator rendered it in a form that reason can abide.) A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back." And his son, about aggadah (Talmudic homiletics), in the introduction to the Ein Yaakov (http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Ein_Yaakov%2FIntroduction): "According to this preamble, then, we are not in duty bound to defend the opinions of the sages of the Talmud, concerning medicine, physics and astrology, as right in every respect simply because we know the sages to be great men with a full knowledge of all things regarding the Torah, in its various details. Although it is true that in so far as knowledge of our Torah is concerned, we must believe the sages arrived at the highest stage of knowledge, as it is said (Deut. 17, 11) In accordance with the instructions which they may instruct thee, etc., still it is not necessarily so concerning any other branch of knowledge."

Then, "The rabbis of the Talmud understand this verse as telling us that prices should be fair. A seller cannot charge more than one-sixth (15 percent) more than the market price. If he does, the sale is considered illegal and can be voided." The Talmud guarantees that poor people will starve. Prices are a signal of supply and demand, and when prices are high, it indicates that demand exceeds supply, and this encourages entrepreneurs to enter the market and satisfy that demand. When you impose price ceilings, you thwart this signal, and you falsely convey the message to entrepreneurs that demand is lower and supply is higher than they really are; by reducing their profit margin, you remove the incentive for entrepreneurs to enter that market. Thus, price ceilings also cause shortages; just look at the Soviet Union. See Walter Block, "Jewish Economics in the Light of Maimonides", http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block_jewish-economics-maimonedes-1990.pdf.

Furthermore, it is absurd to say, "A seller cannot charge more than one-sixth (15 percent) more than the market price.", because whatever the seller charges ipso fact *is* the market price! You are essentially telling the seller that he cannot charge more than 1/6 of what he himself charges. It's absurdly recursive; see again Block.

It also makes no sense to say, "...the maximum profit should be 15%." In a free-market, the rate of profit *is* the interest rate; profit and interest are the same. So to mandate 15% profit when the interest rate is higher than that, is to steal from the producer, and to mandate 15% profit when the interest rate is lower than that, is to steal from the consumer. Either way, to arbitrarily fix the rate of profit independently of the rate of interest is to rob *someone*.

This is again absurd: "As the great 18th-century economist Adam Smith said, 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.' The rabbis recognized this problem, and ruled that prices for staples, like wine and oil, should be fixed by an official superintendent of prices. Only for luxury goods, like spices, should prices be solely set by the market." What the author of this article has just said, is this: entrepreneurs and producers will meet together to conspire to defraud consumers by way of seeking government protection (Smith), so the solution is to have government stop this (Talmud)! The government is the one who provides the cartelization that the conspiratorial producers want, so the solution is to empower the government? Sheesh, let's just ask Hamas to stop terrorism and ask the Vatican to promote Maimonidean monotheism while we're at it! Also, as Block notes, price-fixing of essentials and laissez-faire for luxuries perversely assures that essentials will be in short supply while luxuries will be in ample supply; the Talmud is ensuring that people die of starvation well-adorned in jewels.

The Talmud was "opposed to middlemen", we are informed. Again, the Talmud ensures that we starve. Without middlemen, who will transport goods for us? If you live on one side of the country and the food is grown on the other, then the middlemen do the valuable service of transporting the goods for you, so that you do not have to travel yourself. If they did not do a valuable service, then you would not pay them! If middlemen made goods more expensive than necessary, without benefit, then you would eschew the middleman and buy direct! The fact that you buy from the middleman willingly, shows that you benefit from him more than if he did not exist, because *any* time *any* economic transaction occurs, it shows (according to Condillac) that this transaction was superior to its own absence, and that this transaction entailed mutual benefit, because without mutual benefit, it would not occur in the first place. And let us quote John Witherspoon, "An Essay on Money":

Economic regulations, "so far as they are executed, they have the most powerful tendency to prevent, instead of promoting, full and reasonable markets.

"As an example of our own skill in that branch, a law was past in Pennsylvania in time of the [Revolutionary W]ar [in America] precisely upon that principle. It ordained that in all imported articles there should be but one step between the importer and consumer, and therefore that none but those who bought from the ship should be allowed to sell again. I cite this instance by memory, but am certain that such was the spirit of the law.

"The makers of it considered that every hand through which a commodity passed must have a profit upon it, which would therefore greatly augment the cost to the consumer at last. But could any thing in the world be more absurd? How could a family at one hundred miles distance from the seaport be supplied with what they wanted? In opposition to this principle it may be safely affirmed, that the more merchants the cheaper the goods, and that no carriage is so cheap, nor any distribution so equal of so plentiful as that which is made by those who have an interest in it, and expect a profit from it."

The author of this article works to ensure we all suffer from poverty.

The Road to Serfdom and Omnipotent Government: "Hotovely: Bill will stop foreign cash to political NGOs"

2011-11-08T11:14:00.001+02:00

I just wrote the following letter to MKs Hotovely (zhotovely@knesset.gov.il) and Akunis (oakunis@knesset.gov.il), regarding the Jerusalem Post's article, "Hotovely: Bill will stop foreign cash to political NGOs" (7 Nov 2011, by Lahav Harkov, http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=244723), subtitle, "PM supports bill to prevent governments from donating to organizations that seek to influence policy, Channel 2 reports."

Hello. I am writing regarding the Jerusalem Post's article, "Hotovely: Bill will stop foreign cash to political NGOs" (7 Nov 2011, by Lahav Harkov, http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=244723):

If "foreign governments should not meddle in Israeli internal matters", then how about we start with ending Israel's acceptance of American money? There is a problem if there ever was one, and I believe Ron Paul puts the matter well, at 4:25 until 5:57 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_be9XZ_4_c; Ron Paul says, "They [Israel] shouldn't give up their sovereignty to us [the United States]", and that, I believe, is the great desideratum. When the Israeli government accepts foreign money, it not only ties the hands of Israel and prevents it from doing what it needs to do for its own safety, out of fear for the response of its donor; but also, it makes the Israeli government have a dual-loyalty, one loyalty to its own taxpayers but another loyalty to its foreign donor. This we cannot tolerate. The taxpayers alone should be the ones calling the shots, and no one else.

So if we want to find a problem to solve, let's start there: a bill outlawing the Israeli government's accepting any donations except from citizens of Israel.

Now then, as for this bill outlawing foreign governmental donations to Israeli NGOs: the Likud Constitution says the party is dedicated to the "establishment of a self-sustaining free economy based on competition and free enterprise, and reducing insofar as possible government intervention in the economy". I ask, does this bill make the Israeli economy more free? Does it encourage free enterprise? Does it reduce government intervention in the economy?

And what happened to liberty and human rights? These anti- and non- and post-Zionist NGOs, I of course reject their views as repugnant, but I respect their right to advocate whatever views they wish, as long as they hurt nobody. The United States Supreme Court recently held - quite rightly - in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 08-205 (2010) that any campaign finance restrictions were unconstitutional violations of "the" (meaning preexistent, prior to any government) right to freedom of speech. To restrict how one may spend his money on certain speech, is to restrict the speech itself.

But if the government restricts liberty and human rights, then wherefore the government? Is not its very purpose to protect these rights? "The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! ... For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?" (Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", trans. Dean Russell for the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.).

I am reminded of a passage by Ludwig von Mises, the teacher of Friedrich Hayek, in his book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (similar to his student's The Road to Serfdom, except Mises was himself a Jew and escaped from the Nazis to Switzerland): "It is vain to ﬁght totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The ﬁrst requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech."

If the Israeli government may restrict the use of foreign money to fund certain speech, then it may restrict the use of any money to fund any speech. The Israeli government may arbitrarily decide to restrict any speech whatsoever it doesn't like, and contrive any arbitrary restriction on funding it desires. I invite you to use your imagination to conceive of the possibilities, and then realize that the government always exceeds our imaginations' limits when it comes to trampling liberty and human rights. Whatever tyranny we imagine, the government will do double that. "This may serve to teach us the danger of allowing to any mortal man an inordinate measure of power to speak great things: to allow to any man uncontrollableness of speech; you see the desperate danger of it. Let all the world learn to give mortal men no greater power than they are content they shall use--for use it they will. ... And they that have liberty to speak great things, you will find It to be true, they will speak great blasphemies. ... It is necessary, therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited, church-power or other. If there be power given to speak great things, then look for great blasphemies, look for a licentious abuse of it. It is counted a matter of danger to the state to limit prerogatives; but it is a further danger not to have them limited: they will be like a tempest if they be not limited. A prince himself cannot tell where he will confine himself, nor can the people tell; but if he have liberty to speak great things, then he will make and unmake, say and unsay, and undertake such things as are neither for his own honor nor for the safety of the state." (John Cotton, "Limitation of Government", http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/texts/limitation_of_government/.)

In the end, these NGOs remain private individuals. They have a right to receive their own money from whatever source it may be - assuming there is no theft or fraud, i.e. assuming there is nothing intrinsically unjust according to natural law - and they have a right to spend that money on whatever speech they wish. If they wish to receive money from the UN and the EU and spend it on lobbying the Israeli government to pursue the so-called "Peace Process" (sic.), then that is their prerogative. If we are afraid that the Israeli government will capitulate, then that is the problem we must deal with! Your (MKs Hotovely's and Akunis's) bill is like a drunk man who cannot control his habit lobbying the government to ban liquor stores. If the Israeli government is so weak and pathetic and immoral that it cannot resist the temptation to aid its enemies, then that is the sad reality we must face and deal with. But to punish those who commit no crime or injustice in lobbying the Israeli government? That is tyranny. To punish the innocent provider of an innocent commodity just because one of his customers is weak-willed? That is despicable.

Don't get me wrong: I find the views of these NGOs to be repugnant. But if we restrict their speech, then...

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Paul Krugman Has Learned Some Undergraduate Economics, but Only Halfway

2011-10-06T16:40:00.003+02:00

Regarding Paul Krugman's Markets Can Be Very, Very Wrong:

Krugman, discussing air pollution caused by coal-burning power plants, says,

It does not necessarily say that we should end the use of coal-generated electricity. What it says, instead, is that consumers are paying much too low a price for coal-generated electricity, because the price they pay does not take account of the very large external costs associated with generation. If consumers did have to pay the full cost, they would use much less electricity from coal.

To this, I say:

Wow, Krugman has discovered the tragedy of the commons [1]! I'm glad he's finally learned some undergraduate economics.

So far, everything Krugman has said is perfectly true, if rather banal. But then, he goes to make a crucial error, which will occupy the rest of this essay:

At one level, this is all textbook economics. Externalities like pollution are one of the classic forms of market failure, and Econ 101 says that this failure should be remedied through pollution taxes or tradable emissions permits that get the price right.

...

So if you really believed in the logic of free markets, you’d be all in favor of pollution taxes, right? Hahahahaha. Today’s American right doesn’t believe in externalities, or correcting market failures; it believes that there are no market failures, that capitalism unregulated is always right. Faced with evidence that market prices are in fact wrong, they simply attack the science.

The truth is, no one denies that externalities (i.e. the "tragedies" of the commons, i.e. the "public goods" which lack private ownership and personal incentives) exist. No free-market economist says that externalities are nonexistent, and that the tragedy of the commons is a fiction. Krugman creates a straw-man, by discussing a position that no one believes in.

The issue is this: Krugman says the externalities should be solved by taxes and regulations. The problem is, who will impose these taxes, and how will the tax-rate be set? It's very easy to say, oh the government should tax air-pollution so that the nominal price of coal rises to include the true cost of the externality-pollution that coal imposes. That's right nice, but it fails to answer the question of who will impose those taxes, and what the rate will.

First, as for who: Public Choice school economist James Buchanan notes that far too many political philosophers will specify what the government ought to do, but fail to ask, what will make the government do this? Great, so the government ought to impose taxes to make the cost of coal include its externality, i.e. to make the market price of coal-supplied power pay not only for the cost of the coal itself (which is not an externality, because everyone pays personally, on his own electric bill, for his own personal usage, meaning that incentives and prices will be internalized, not externalized), but also for the cost of the pollution (an externality / public good / tragedy of the commons). Okay, very nice. So go make the politicians do this, and maybe 500 years from now, you'll succeed in convincing them. In the meantime, the politicians will use energy-taxes as a means of enriching their friends and despoiling their enemies. We will get graft and corruption and cronyism. Great, so we've replaced tragedy-of-the-commons with theft. Thank you, Dr. Krugman!

In fact, it is more ironic and pathetic than that: Krugman has merely replaced one commons (with its attendant tragedies/externalities) with another! The air we breath is one commons, that is clear. But government is also a commons. The whole problem with government is that politicians can act with others' money, creating a moral hazard (lack of personal incentives for responsibility) in which they will not use the money carefully or responsibly, because it is not their own. In other words, in the eyes of the politicians, the government's money is a commons.

Meanwhile, the politicians themselves are a commons from the perspective of the voters: the entire government affects every citizen whether he wants it to or not, but he does not own the government, and he is bound not only by his own electoral decisions, but also those of his neighbors. Just as the air I breath is polluted not only by myself but also by others (and so one has either the ability or the proclivity to fix the problem, because someone else will go off and ruin all your hard work), so too government. This tragedy of the commons reduces incentives (moral hazard): why should I do my best to keep air clean, with onerous labor, when someone else will sully it anyway? So we get a race to the bottom, or, in game theory, a prisoner's dilemma and the voter's paradox.[2]

So again, we have two commons: the money is a commons to the politicians, and the politicians are a commons to the people. So in trying to solve one commons (polluted air), you created two in its place!

Krugman has learned about externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and he is so giddy to apply his new knowledge, and advocate government intervention, that he has failed to heed Frederic Bastiat's lesson, in "That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen", that "Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee." Government can eliminate the commons that is the air we breath: that is seen. But exactly such a government intervention, introduces new commons just as morally hazardous as the one just eliminated: that is what is unseen. Krugman would do well to learn Bastiat.

Secondly, as for the tax-rate: how, just how, will you set the rate for the tax on air pollution? How do you price clean air? In a free-market, economic calculation is possible, because consumers demonstrate their subjective values by paying prices. A consumer will pay only that price which does not exceed his own personal subjective value for that commodity. Thus, for example, if a consumer wants clean air in his own home, he will spend money on an air filtration system, but only if the cost of the system is less than his desire for clean air. But in an un-free market, this is impossible. The government has no way of knowing how much consumers value clean air, so it has no way of knowing how to set the rate for the tax on pollution. Is the pollution of a given coal-burning power plant worth $1 million to the consumer? $1 trillion? Only a penny? The government has no way of knowing. Thus, in a socialistic system, the entire economy shuts down, as all prices, as set by the government, become entirely arbitrary, as Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises shows in his book, Socialism, which predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union decades before it occurred (originally published in German in 1922, in English in 1936), while everyone else was proclaiming socialism as the wave of the future.[3] By contrast, Krugman has not yet learned about the marginal revolution of Austrian School economist Carl Menger (as well as others simultaneously, namely William Stanley Jevons and Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras), which showed that all value is subjective, and that it is therefore impossible for the government to calculate economic value. According to the marginal theory of value, all government intervention into the economy is fruitless and destructive. The marginal theory of value is a subject of undergraduate economics, but apparently, Krugman has not yet reached that part of the curriculum.

In short: Krugman has learned well about market failure, but he has not yet reached the part of the curriculum where one learns that every attempt to solve market failure, merely introduces a government failure every bit as - if not more - disastrous as the market failure it attempted to solve. It is like trying to eradicate one invasive species with another. Krugman errs in stating that his opponents deny the reality of externalities and market failures. No, that would be like saying they deny the existence of foreign, invasive species. It is only that unlike Krugman, they realize that government failure, introducing a second invasive species to eliminate the first, is hardly a suitable solution to an admittedly very real problem.

But okay, I have pointed out Krugman's flaws, and showed that his solution is none at all. But do I have an alternative? Well, notice: the tragedy of the commons is solved by eliminating commons, by privatizing them. What worked for the farmland of England, works for everything else. The solution is more private property rights and more privatization. If commons are exploited, and externalities result, due to moral hazard, then privatization, by incentivizing responsibility and long-term planning, solves the tragedy of the commons. I confess, I do not know how to privatize air, but the point is, privatization is the only solution. It may not work in every case, but there is no alternative.

[1] The tragedy of the commons, is the observation that publicly-owned grazing land is overgrazed, because no one farmer has an interest in preserving the value of the land. He realizes that even if he takes care to preserve the land and avoid overgrazing, his fellows will not do so. Likewise, if one coal-burning plant stops polluting, the rest will keep on polluting. However, the tragedy of the commons observed, as soon as grazing land was fenced, i.e. de-commonized and instead privatized, the tragedy ceased. When someone has his own private property, for which he alone is responsible, and of which he alone eats the fruits, he guards it more carefully. If everyone had his own private air supply, no one would pollute the air. (return)

[2] In the prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners cannot communicate, and both are offered the choice of either being silent or ratting out the other. If both are silent, both do relatively well, say +5. If one is silent and the other rats him out, then the silent one loses immensely, say -10, and the ratter-out gains immensely, say +10. If both rat each other out, both lose a little bit, say -5. Now, logically, they both ought to be silent, and each get +5, right? The problem is, they cannot communicate! Each one, fearing the other will rat, himself rats, so they both get -5. After all, if you don't rat, he will. So the problem is essentially the same as the tragedy of the commons. But just as the tragedy of the commons is solved by privatizing land, so that it is not common anymore, so too, the prisoner's dilemma is solved by restoring communication between the two prisoners, so that they can cooperate. As for the voter's paradox, that states that voters will not have an incentive to vote wisely, because for all the effort it takes to learn the issues at stake, you get only one paltry vote. Should you spend 10 hours every day, for years on end, learning politics, just so you can contribute one vote? Of course not. You will instead have "rational ignorance". But if your vote were to affect you and only you, meaning your vote would be one vote out of one vote, instead of one vote out of millions, then you would indeed take the time to learn. Again, it is a tragedy of the commons. (return)

[3] Mises's friend, Historical School economic Max Weber, also conceived of his same problem of economic calculation, and likewise doubted socialism for the same reason as Mises. Weber was an odd fellow: his own Historical School was pro-government and pro-bureaucracy, the opposite of Mises's own Austrian School, but Weber himself was a methodological individualist, recognizing - as the Austrian theory of praxeology, "human action" does too - that as an objective fact, all of society comes down to individuals. Weber was anti-liberty, but he still knew that economic science comes down to individuals, not collectives and aggregates. (return)

Just what is the Jewish claim to the land of Israel?

2011-10-06T13:16:00.000+02:00

Obviously, one can make a religious claim to the land of Israel. On the first verse of the Torah, Rashi asks why the Torah begins with "In the beginning, God created" (Genesis 1:1), rather than, "This month shall be to you" (Exodus 12:2), the first commandment (mitzvah) in the Torah. After all, wouldn't it make sense for the Torah to begin with the commandments? Rashi answers, so that when the nations of the world dispute our claim to Israel, we can say, God created the earth, and can apportion it however He wants. The sense of the passage of Rashi, however, is not that we shall tell the world this, but that we shall tell ourselves this. That is, the point is not to convince the world of our rectitude, but only to convince ourselves. We take Genesis 1:1 seriously, and if they do not, that is their problem, not ours. So what argument do we make to the world?

Today, a friend of mine claimed that Jews are a genetic people, and I replied,

We're an ethnic group, but a cultural one, not a genetic one. Saadia Gaon says we are a people due to the Torah. Thus, Jewish peoplehood is about Sinai. Of course, there are citizenship requirements, and so you can be a Jew without believing in the Torah, and you can believe in the Torah without being a Jew. But putting the technical citizenship requirements aside, being Jewish is about following the Torah.

Now, Jews will happen to have a genetic commonality, but that's not what makes us Jewish. Jews marry other Jews, so you'll form a self-contained genetic pool, but that's not what makes person Jewish.

Studies show that Jews from around the world (Europe and the Middle East alike) have more in common with each other than with their neighboring gentiles, but

it's coincidence. We merely happen to have common ancestors, but that is not what makes a person Jewish.

Imagine a Jewish man marries a gentile woman. They have a daughter. She marries a Jewish man. They have a daughter. She marries a Jewish man. And so forth, ad infinitum. In the end, you have a gentile with 99.99% Jewish blood.

Conversely, imagine a gentile man marries a Jewish woman. They have a daughter. She marries a gentile man. They have a daughter. She marries a gentile man. And so forth, ad infinitum. In the end, you have a Jew with 99.99% gentile blood.

My friend said to me,

dont you feel like our not being an ethnic group semi-legitimizes arab claims? like if israel isnt the birthplace of our ethnic group, what do we have? i feel iffy about using religious claims

I responded,

We are still a people. Just because you're not a genetic relative, does not invalidate your being a cultural relative. We are a peoplehood. It's just that the criteria are different.

Why should ownership of land be genetic? Why not cultural? See http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1726 [ = "The Gene Wars" by Diana Muir Appelbaum and Paul S. Appelbaum, AzureWinter 5767 / 2007, no. 27]. The authors argue that even if the Palestinians do have a genetic relationship to the original inhabitants of Israel (which is a very doubtful claim, they show, but they temporarily accept it, for the sake of argument), that even so, Israel belongs to those who believe in the Biblical religion of Israel. That is, blood or no blood, it is Jews, not Palestinians, who have a cultural relationship to the land of Israel. In other words, who says everything comes down to genetics? Maybe it depends on culture.

Or, if you want to take a libertarian property-rights tack, then the land of Israel belongs to anyone who has a deed of ownership. Well, the Jews who were expelled by the Romans, they never renounced their ownership. Palestinians are squatters. Now, we cannot always determine which contemporary Jew is a lineal descendant of which Roman-era Jew (meaning he has inherited the deed of ownership), but the least we can do is say that the whole Jewish people have inherited those deeds of ownership, whether by blood-descent or by culture. Every convert who converts to Judaism, is regarded by the Jewish people as a valid member, and so the blood-Jews let him join in their property claims.

She asked, but doesn't genetics show precisely who is a lineal descendant, who has inherited the property? I said,

Okay, perhaps, yes. The problem is, most of the people who make the genetic argument, are not libertarians, and they do not believe in staunch, absolute personal-property rights. So they don't really have the credentials to argue that the Palestinians deserve the land by virtue of being the lineal descendants and inheritors of the deeds of ownership. If you generally do not believe in absolute personal property, you cannot suddenly invoke personal property claims when it is convenient.

For these people, who do not believe in personal property, cultural is as good a criteria as genetics. They have no basis to prefer genetics, because genetics presumes a libertarian take on personal property. Karl Marx, for example, advocated the abolition of inheritance. So anyone with socialist or social-democrat leanings, cannot use the genetic argument, because they already believe in the abolition of inheritance.

Only the libertarian who believes in personal property, can make the genetic argument. For everyone else, the cultural argument is as valid as the genetic one.

I neglected to say to my friend, that another crucial claim by Appelbaum and Appelbaum, is their precise justification for why culture should trump genetics: their claim is that property ownership (or rather, they speak of "national identify") is a cultural identification. If a group of Poles voluntarily moved to Germany, and married other Polish immigrants to Germany, would anyone claim these Poles deserve to be given Poland? Of course not. Or, in their words,

For example, no one would argue that the descendants of the several hundred thousand Poles who migrated to the Ruhr Valley at the end of the nineteenth century are anything but German, even those among them who have married only the descendants of other Polish immigrants. Nationality is a matter of culture, not genetics.

Sure, they have Polish blood, but they no longer identify as Poles, but rather, as Germans. To maintain a national (or property-ownership) claim, requires not just blood, but also the explicit identification and articulation of yourself as the legitimate heir. The problem with the Palestinians would be that, even if they have Biblical Jewish blood, they nevertheless came out of nowhere, and suddenly, in 1967, began making a claim they had never made before. For 2000 years, while in exile, Jews would constantly speak of a return to Zion, several times daily in the daily prayer liturgy. Where were the comparable Palestinian claims? How is it possible that someone in 1967 suddenly makes a claim to a land lost in 70, and claims that blood alone compensates for the cultural identification as heir which he neglected to previously make? The problem is that being someone's heir requires some sort of maintenance of that inheritance right. Jews have been claiming for 2000 years to be the exiled descendants of the Biblical Jews; the Palestinians have not.

I added,

Also ... if anyone says the Palestinians own Israel, tell them that apparently, it's because Mohammed's army conquered Israel. If so, then Israel's conquests are valid too! That is, if the Palestinians own Israel, one must either claim that (a) they are the descendants of the Biblical Jews or the Canaanites (a preposterous claim with no genetic or historical evidence), or (b) that conquest makes ownership. If (b) is true, then Israel's conquests are just as valid.

And, if one claims that property is owned by its original owner, then fine, it's the Canaanites, but please, find me a Canaanite, and I'll gladly hand over all of Israel to him. In the meantime, the second owner is the Jews. Whether Israel goes to the original owner or to its latest conqueror, either way, it's the Jews.

Haaretz: "Court to rule on legality of Israeli ultra-Orthodox 'Taliban sect'"

2011-10-05T14:23:00.001+02:00

Yes, you read that right: Haaretz, "Court to rule on legality of Israeli ultra-Orthodox 'Taliban sect'" (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/court-to-rule-on-legality-of-israeli-ultra-orthodox-taliban-sect-1.388187)

But it gets better:

"In a precedent-setting move, an Israeli court is expected to decide next week whether it is legal to belong to the extreme ultra-Orthodox group Lev Tahor, known as 'the Taliban sect.' ... The Jerusalem court's ruling will have implications for all members of the Taliban sect in Israel. Should the court find that it is illegal to belong to the community, social welfare agencies will be able to take immediate steps to remove children from the control of parents who are affiliated with Lev Tahor."

We read further,

"The two [daughters] were forcibly returned to Israel on Sunday under an order issued by the court."

Oh, great, the Israeli government is abducting young girls now. As if the government weren't totalitarian enough.

"Bringing the Beit Shemesh sisters back to Israel was an international operation, involving the foreign ministry and Interpol. The goal of the operation was to stop the pair from entering the ultra-Orthodox community in Canada."

So now, the Israeli government will not only try to stop you from leaving the country, but they will even send agents after you to return you to Israel! Not for committing any crimes (as no trial has been held yet, nor have the parents even been accused of any crimes themselves other than belonging to a certain sect that has not yet been outlawed), but just because the government doesn't want you to leave.

Yes, that's right: not only can the government declare a sect illegal, without giving individual due process to the members, but it can confiscate your children as well. So now the government decides not only which sects get money, but which sects are allowed to exist???!!! The article claims that parents in this sect abuse their children, but if so, put the parents on trial! But to outlaw a religious sect per se, without giving due process to the individual members, is simply totalitarian. That is what terrifies me: that the government can define an entire sect - irrespective of its individual members' conduct - as illegal, without due process. You might be doing nothing criminal, but all you have to do is be defined as a sect that is illegal - without trial! - and the Israeli government will abduct you from across the world.

So granted the girls might have Stockholm's Syndrome and need protection. I do not deny that. Perhaps the girls really do need protection from their parents. But the idea of accusing and trying and convicting a sect, and never giving the individual people a trial, terrifies me. Imagine if the government decided that certain Orthodox Jews are a danger, and so held a trial for "Orthodox Judaism", in the abstract, and convicted every Orthodox Jew at once. Or, for example, I am an anarcho-capitalist, which basically makes me a conservative anarchist, who wants to privatize and deregulate everything - including the police and military - but in a very stable, conservative, tentative fashion, not through vigilante force, but through persuasion and legislation. By contrast, there are anarcho-socialists, anarchists who believe (or, at least, traditionally believed, in the late-19th-century) in "propaganda through the deed", in committing terrorist acts of violence, and in dispossessing the capitalists of their property and redistributing it the poor. (Today's anarcho-socialists often disavow "propaganda of the deed", i.e. terrorism, but they still believe in socialistic confiscation of wealth.) Obviously, both have little in common, but both are "anarchists". What if the government held a trial for "anarchism" in the abstract, and convicted every living anarchist - of every stripe and persuasion? That is the danger I fear: of trying the whole sect and dragging innocent parents into a net they do not deserve to be in. I say, the individuals must be accorded due process.

Also, there is something else fishy in the article:

Rituals of the Lev Tahor community reportedly involve ... sending 14-year-old girls to the wedding canopy.

Now wait, what is the problem with that? Even if the government holds that such marriages are not binding, what crime has anyone committed? It doesn't sound like the parents are compelling the girls to marry; the article said "sending", which implies the girls are going willingly. That is, the parents are "sending" the daughters to be married, but it is the daughters themselves who consent to the marriages. Even if one holds that such marriages are invalid, it doesn't sound like the parents have done anything criminal. If the parents of a 14 year old send their child to the store to buy alcohol, then obviously, the liquor store will refuse to sell to them, but merely sending your child on this errand to buy alcohol under-age is not illegal. (At least, as far as I know.) In fact, while halakhah does permit a man to marry off his underage daughter, "underage" means prepubescent. (The Talmud says that for a father to do this, while permissible, is nevertheless evil.) After that age, when a girl has reached puberty, it is literally impossible in halakhah for a marriage to be conducted without the woman's consent; for the marriage to be religiously valid, she must express her explicit consent to marry. So if the Lev Tahor sect really believes in halakhah, then they ipso facto must be letting their daughters consent. Thus, apparently, while the parents are sending their daughters off on the errand to be married, it is the daughters themselves who are ultimately responsible for their own (underage) marriages. One might say that the daughters are not old enough to consent to this marriage, and that the marriage is therefore null-and-void (from the state's perspective) but that doesn't mean the parents compelled them, the same way that sending a 14 year old on an errand to buy alcohol will be fruitless, but not illegal.

But maybe you say that Lev Tahor pressures their daughters in some way? I admit this is quite likely. And the article says,

[T]hey [viz. the daughters] would be compelled to wed male members of the cult.

But somehow, I doubt they put guns to their daughters' heads and force them. I suspect that Haaretz is confusing strong cultural and societal and familial censure and pressure, with actual coercion. Suppose my mother told me that if I marry a gentile, she'll disown me. Is she forcing me to marry a Jew? No. She is merely exerting strong moral pressure. But there is no gun to my head. I suspect that Haaretz is failing to make this distinction, and so I suspect that the whole (implied) accusation - that the parents force their daughters to marry against their wills - is false. I suspect that while the parents send their daughters on the errand to be married, and maybe even exert very strong familial pressure, that the parents nevertheless do not use force to compel their daughters.

Plus, I simply don't trust the government's claim that it is protecting the girls from abuse (which I admit is a legitimate function of government). Why should I believe they have good intentions in this? The government claims the goal is to protect the girls, but I suspect the goal is to corral us all into a country-sized concentration camp. Why I am so suspicious that this is all a pretext to tighten Israel's borders against emigration? Let us look back at the article:

A decision reached this week by a family court in Rishon Letzion indicates that a ruling on Lev Tahor's legality is imminent. The decision follows what appears to be the conclusion of an international family drama involving two sisters from Beit Shemesh who belong to the Taliban sect. The two were forcibly returned to Israel on Sunday under an order issued by the court. The sisters, 13 and 15, were en route to a Lev Tahor village located on the outskirts of Montreal, Canada. ... The Jerusalem court's ruling will have implications for all members of the Taliban sect in Israel. ... The community was established about a decade ago.

In other words, the court decided to try the sect only after the parents already left the country! That is, it is not that the parents were indicted of a crime before they left Israel, and now the Israeli government is just bringing them to trial. No, the government waited until after the parents left the country to begin the indictment. Why did the government wait? If Lev Tahor is so dangerous, shouldn't the government have already indicted them long before the parents left the country? Why did the government wait until after the parents left? It seems that the government is troubled not by Lev Tahor per se, but only by their emigration. If they would just stay in Israel, the government would do nothing. "The community was established about a decade ago", but the government waits until now, when the parents try to leave the country, to do anything about it. What took so long? No matter how you cut this, the government is guilty: either innocents have been abducted for the sake of closing Israel's borders to emigration, or else the government has waited a decade to do anything about people who are (probably, pending trial to confirm) guilty of abusing minors.

Ron Paul put it well recently: speaking of illegal Mexican immigration, he said that one should be terribly afraid that the fences to keep Mexicans out, will be used to keep Americans in. See the 7 September 2011 GOP debate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp-ruhkZqQ):

"Every time you think about this toughness on the border and ID cards and REAL IDs, think it’s a penalty against the American people too. I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people controls. Every time you think about the fence, think about the fences being used against us, keeping us in." (transcript via http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-border-fence-could-be-used-to-keep-us-in/).

The United States is actually sending agents around the world to capture Americans who live outside America and have foreign bank accounts they have not reported to the IRS. In some cases, the children of American citizens elsewhere in the world, don't even know they're American citizens, and the American government comes after them. In one case, a family of Canadians who didn't even know they were American citizens, were prosecuted by America for hundreds of thousands of dollars for unreported bank accounts and unpaid taxes. (See Wendy McElroy, "The Attack on Accidental Americans", http://mises.org/daily/5666.) I suspect Israel is going for the same thing. The first step for any totalitarian government is to find a good scapegoat, and sell it as protecting the public. "The child abusers are extraditing their children." Yes, and with that, the government has gotten the ball rolling.

In Spain, we said it couldn't happen. It did. In Germany, we said it couldn't happen. It did. Why should Israel be any different?

Think I'm exaggerating? Let us look at history. In 2005, the Israeli government sent 10,000 police to confront 4,000 protesters. Yes, you read that correctly: there were 2.5 police officers for every protester. And what did the police do? MK Aryeh Eldad, former IDF Chief Medical Officer, testifies that the police would bludgeon people on their heads until they were unconscious, and then continue to bludgeon them further:
("INN - Girls Beaten at Amona עמונה": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ_8JSr2eZ0)
The police also corralled a group of girls onto a rooftop, where the girls had no way of escape, and they proceeded to beat the girls:
("עמונה Amona - Police Assault on Teen Girls on Roof": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oq91Uv1JV0)
Here is a news program, with more footage:
("עמונה Amona - News Report on Police Pogrom מתנחלים": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDh85y7vM9)
That is what the Israeli government is all about.

(By the way, what's with the editorializing throughout the article? "Taliban sect"? That's not objective fact! To compare them to the Taliban in an opinion piece would be (technically) fine, but not in a news article! At one point, the article says, known as 'the Taliban sect', but for the rest of the article, they are referred to as the Taliban sect, without quotation marks. The intent is obviously to scare readers with baseless invective. )

Paul Krugman: War-mongerer

2011-08-16T18:51:00.001+03:00

Paul Krugman famously argued, recently, that war is a way to improve the economy. Writing in a column titled, Oh! What A Lovely War!
, he said,

World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy.

Understandably, many interpreted this to mean that Krugman is in favor of war, just as John Dewey was, in his "The Social Possibilities of War", where Dewey argued that WWI offered the great opportunity to expand the Progressive socialization of America. Krugman is now trying to backtrack, and in Evil Me, he now claims that he never wanted war.

A friend of mine is insisting that Krugman really only supports government spending per se, and that war was merely a hypothetical illustration, not meant to be taken seriously. I do not buy it. I said to him:

What if someone said publicly, "Killing all the elderly people would save us money on healthcare. Now, I don't want to actually kill them, but I just want to point out that it would improve the economy." What do you think would happen? And what do you think that candidate would deserve?

If I (as a libertarian) want to advertise the principle of cutting spending, I will not try to illustrate it by making a hypothetical suggestion of exterminating the elderly, and then saying, "But note, I am not in favor of killing the elderly. I just want to cut spending, and I chose this as a hypothetical illustration." So too, if you want to advertise the principle of government spending being good, it's rather idiotic to choose war as your example. What if Krugman had said, "Building gas chambers and railways to concentration camps is a good way to boost employment." That would be an idiotic example if all he wanted to do was promote government spending per se. That's why Keynes spoke of digging ditches, not building concentration camps. So if Krugman merely wanted to promote spending per se, he could have chosen a more benign example, just as, if I want to promote cutting spending, I can find a more benign example than killing the elderly. Krugman's promoting war as a hypothetical example not to be taken seriously, is the same as if he promoted building concentration camps as a hypothetical example not to be taken seriously. In other words, I don't buy it. All evidence points to his actually, truly wanting war.

I forget where, but I remember someone taking Jesus's parable of the faithful servant (investing funds to accrue interest) in Matthew 25 (where he says that faithful service of God is like being a faithful investor of someone else's entrusted money) and saying that if something is used in a parable (here, investment) to promote the "real" thing of interest (here, spiritual growth and worship of God), then the thing itself being used (investment) must itself be good. That is, if you compare worship of God to investment of money, then implicitly, one is saying that investment must be good. You do not analogize a good thing to a bad thing. So too here: if Krugman is comparing what he wants the government to do, to war, then he must therefore like war. War may not be the thing he is driving at really, just as Jesus was not driving at sound investment strategies. But just as Jesus's comparison of his target, namely spirituality and religion, to investment, implies that investment itself must be good too, so too, Krugman's illustraing spending in general with war, implies that he thinks war itself is good.

If Krugman thinks he can promote government spending in wartime without praising war, then fine, I invite him to promote government spending on concentration camps and gas chambers without praising genocide.

Ein Shaliah L-Davar `Averah: Politicians are Not Greater than Rabbis When It Comes to Government and Law

2011-08-10T14:27:00.002+03:00

In "A New Biography of Rabbi Yehuda Amital" (http://www.jewishideas.org/articles/new-biography-rabbi-yehuda-amital), by Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin, reviewing By Faith Alone, by Elyashiv Reichner, trans. Eli Fischer (Maggid Books, 2011), a new biography of Rabbi Yehuda Amital, we read, "Despite his strong feelings about the importance of Torah study and the need for Jews to observe the Torah commands, Rabbi Amital was opposed to rabbis setting public policy. Rabbis can advise politicians if the politicians want to hear their ideas, but it must be understood that the rabbi’s opinion carries no halakhic (religious or legal) force."

Now, Drazin is of course merely reporting Amital's view, so I cannot complain about Drazin. As for Amital, I have not yet read this book, nor do I have more than a very general, cursory knowledge of Amital. He is certainly someone I wish to learn about, but in the meantime, I really have no basis to speak about someone I know little about.

Nevertheless, the thought expressed here, is a relatively common, that I have heard from many different people, so I wish to respond to the general opinion, at least as I understand that opinion, beyond Amital himself.

There is certainly a great deal of validity and importance in the fact that we are to be m'kabel et ha-emet mi-mi she-amrah, "accepting of the truth from whomsoever states it". Maimonides (Rambam) and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch both constantly repeated the fact that there is only Truth. The natural world and logic and reason, when properly interpreted so as to yield truth, are just as true as the Torah. It may be that the Torah is more reliable and more easily interpreted, but the fact remains that truth is truth is truth. Scientific fact can always be disproven, but that just means that that science wasn't really science. If and when a given scientific fact is truly accurate, then that fact is just as surely true as anything in the Torah. Therefore, we must realize that a secular politician can be right just as surely as a rabbi can be wrong. Taking "science" in the broadest sense of all non-divinely-revealed truth, then secular or non-Jewish individuals can discover the truth just as surely as rabbis can, for truth and truth cannot contradict.

But if we are to avoid a false dichotomy, and avoid falsely elevating the Torah's truth over scientific truth, then we must avoid the opposite error of elevating scientific truth over the Torah's truth. I find it very perverse to say that rabbis can only advise politicians, and that politicians ultimately have the final say on the matter. It is very true that the rabbi can be wrong and the politician right, but is not the opposite also the case? Is it not possible that the politician is in error and the rabbi correct? If, as religious Jews, we are to realize that truth and truth cannot contradict, and that therefore, it may be that secular and non-Jewish individuals can be right, then, by the same token, rabbis can also be right!

In the end, if we believe in Pirkei Avot's statement to hafokh bah v'hafokh bah d'kula bah, "turn it (the Torah) over and over, for everything is contained within it", then the fact is the Torah has something to say about *everything*, including politics. If the Torah has something to say about politics, then it is criminal for us to ignore what the Torah says due to some perverted belief that politicians are ipso facto superior to rabbis. Yes, we must realize that rabbis are not prophets, but then again, neither are politicians. Both are humans and both can err. We must realize that rabbis are not omniscient, but we must avoid assuming that therefore, politicians are omniscient.

A real tragedy, I believe, is that few Americans realize how important religion was to American politics during the Founding era. According to Edmund Burke in the English House of Commons, in his "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies", delivered on 22 March 1775, "The [American] people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it. ... All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces." English Prime Minister Horace Walpole said at the same time, during the American Revolution, that "Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson", most likely intending the Reverend John Witherspoon, a key figure in the revolution. Other English observers would name the war the "Presbyterian Rebellion" or refer harshly to the "Black Regiment" of Calvinist church ministers who were largely responsible for instigating the war. Cf., for example, some collections of their sermons, such as Ellis Sandoz, ed. Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, 2 vols, (2nd ed. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998) and John Wingate Thornton, ed. The Pulpit of the American Revolution, or The Political Sermons of the Period of 1776 (Boston, 1860, many facsimile reprints).

John Locke (Thomas Jefferson's favorite) and Justice William Blackstone (the foremost authority on the English common law in the period) and the Baron de Montesquieu (one of the chief authorities for James Madison) were all quite explicit that a divine, Biblical natural law was authoritative over and beyond the laws of men, and that no law was valid which contradicted the Bible. James Otis, Jr., in a work celebrated by John Adams, his The Rights of British Colonies Asserted (Boston, 1763), wrote, "To say the parliament is absolute and arbitrary, is a contradiction. The parliament cannot make 2 and 2, 5; Omnipotency cannot do it. The supreme power in a state, is jus dicere [ = to declare what the law already is] only;—jus dare [ = to legislate new law], strictly speaking, belongs alone to God. Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is parliament that makes it so: There must be in every instance, a higher authority, viz. GOD. Should an act of parliament be against any of his natural laws, which are immutably true, their declaration would be contrary to eternal truth, equity and justice, and consequently void." This was not an unusual opinion, and it was quite ordinary for the Revolutionary War period. Thomas Paine went even further in his groundbreaking and unbelievably popular Common Sense, and wrote, "But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is." The interesting thing is, Paine was an atheist, and yet Common Sense, easily the single most influential tract of the Revolutionary War, was written in the form of a Congregational (Calvinist) church sermon! Paine knew his audience, about which Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth. The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live." And again, Tocqueville wrote, "Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion--for who can search the human heart?--but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican [what we today would call "democratic] institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society."

When the debate came up what the seal of the United States should be, Benjamin Franklin, hardly the most orthodox individual religiously, designed a symbol depicting the Jews crossing the Sea of Reeds and Pharaoh drowning, with God (depicted as the pillar of fire) looking on in approval. The motto surrounding the illustration was, "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God". Thomas Jefferson, even less religiously orthodox than Franklin, thought the image too violent, and suggested instead a depiction of the Jews walking in the desert, protected by the pillars of fire and cloud. As for the motto, Jefferson adopted it for his own stationary. Neither proposal for the seal was accepted, but the fact that the two least religiously orthodox men in America suggested Biblical images as the symbols for America, speaks volumes.

The customary oath for serving in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, specifies loyalty to the Israeli government and its laws. But when Rabbi Meir Kahane took his oath, he unilaterally added that his oath would be superseded by another oath, namely that he would only obey those laws which agreed with the Torah. Onlookers were aghast. After much controversy, it was finally decided that his oath was valid, but the controversy persisted. Media reporters asked him what on earth he was thinking, and he replied wryly (I am paraphrasing from memory, from the book The Wit and Wisdom of Rabbi Meir Kahane, by Lenny Goldberg, 2006), "What is a higher law above the Knesset? I think the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was following one when he disobeyed American law." Yes, Rabbi Kahane cited King, so let us quote King himself, from his "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail": "One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.' Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law." Now, that does not mean that every one of Rabbi Kahane's policy proposals was correct. I never said that his interpretation of the Torah was the same as my own. (By definition, I believe my own interpretation of the Torah is the correct one, and I assume that everyone reading this letter of mine believes his or her own interpretation of the Torah to be the correct one.) The point is that his elevating the Torah over the secular law is quite legitimate, going back through King right back to the Revolutionary War. His interpretation of the Torah might be justly disputed, but his elevating the Torah per se over the secular law comports with the most fundamental sources of American political philosophy.

The Shalem Center in Jerusalem is undertaking a certain project, a magnificent one, I believe, called Political Hebraism, focusing on the political thought of both Jews and Christian Hebraists. The object is to show that historically, for people like John Locke and others, the Torah was a perfectly legitimate and authoritative source of political philosophy. The Shalem Center's object is to show that a Jew need not believe that all politics must be secular, for the Christians who formed our modern political institutions never held such a belief. If Christians may bring God into the legislature, then so may Jews.

Again, rabbis are not always correct, but then again, neither are politicians. One has an obligation to follow what he believes is the truth, no matter what anyone else says. The Talmud declares, ein shaliah l'davar averah, "There is no proxy (or delegate, or power of attorney) in the case of sin", meaning one cannot delegate another to sin on his behalf, nor can one be another's delegate to sin. In other words, one cannot say, "I was only following orders". One must always personally due what he believes is right and eschew what he believes is wrong, whether his standard of right and wrong is the Torah or something else. In the leadup to the the 2005 expulsion from Gaza, some religious IDF soldiers asked whether they should obey orders they believed were unjust, some rabbis told them they must obey these orders, saying that the duly-elected democratic government is more authoritative than the Torah. But this is the Nuremberg Defense, and the Talmud rejects it. Rabbi Professor David Golinkin, President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, has a more Jewish attitude on the subject than these supposedly-Orthodox Israeli rabbis who so casually rejected the words of the Talmud: in his essay, "The Jewish Attitude Towards Non-Violent Protest and Civil Disobedience" (http://www.schechter.edu/insightIsrael.aspx?ID=57), Golinkin writes, "The opponents of disengagement [from Gaza] believe that their fellow Jews are committing a sin. I disagree, but l'shitatam, according to their approach, they should protest. ... In conclusion, while I believe that disengagement is perfectly permissible according to Jewish law and tradition, I also believe that Jewish law and tradition permit non-violent protest and civil disobedience, provided that those who engage in these actions are willing to face the consequences of their actions."

In the Geneva Bible, the Bible of the Puritans, at Exodus 1:17, we read, "Notwithstanding, the midwives feared God, and did not as the King of Egypt commanded them, but preserved alive the men children." On verse 19, the commentary there (written by Calvinist ministers in 16th-century Geneva, mostly in exile from Mary Tudor in England, who was martyring Protestants) says, "Their disobedience herein was lawful." In other words, the Calvinist ministers declared that Shifra and Puah were correct in disobeying Pharaoh. King James I of England, by contrast, declared this to be seditious rebellion against the crown, and the King James Bible was produced with the express intention of doing away with this seditious commentary that was contrary to the king's political program. Whereas Rabbi Golinkin takes the side of God, many Israeli rabbis seem to take the side of King James I, and declare that obedience to the Bible is illegal. Whereas Franklin and Jefferson said, "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God", these rabbis rather say, "Obedience to God is Sedition and Treason Against the Divine Civil Government". Rather than reading Torat Moshe, the Torah delivered by God to Moshe at Sinai (Avot 1:1), these rabbis prefer the sanitized, purified, cleansed, government approved King James Bible, translated into Hebrew perhaps. Long ago, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch castigated these supposedly-Orthodox Israeli rabbis as heretics ("Judaism Up-to-Date" in Judaism Eternal, and "The Jew and His Time" in Collected Writings): "Let us be clear about one thing: To me Scriptures are the Word of God; Judaism and the Jewish law represent the revealed Will of God. Is it then conceivable that I should place myself at the crossroads of history and inquire of every passerby as to his views and opinions, illusory and otherwise, and seek his endorsement of the living Word of God? Or should I, perhaps, alter the living word of God to accomodate his shrug of the shoulders and then say: Look, here now is Judaism brought up-to-date, the living Word of God authenticated and revised by man! ... Should I be allowed to alter the Divine Word to fit my own weakness and then announce with pride: Here it is and here I am, in conformity with my time! Let us not deceive ourselves. The question is simply this: The 'and God spoke to Moses, as follows,' which precedes all the laws of the Jewish Bible - is it truth, do we really and faithfully believe that God, the Almighty, the All-holy, spoke thus to Moses?"

Yoram Hazony of the Shalem Center puts the final matter well, in his essay, "The Jewish Origins of the Western Disobedience Tradition" (Azure No. 4 Summer 5758 / 1998): "Mankind has seen no end of attempts to render human laws inviolable in principle, usually on the grounds that one process or another has produced them: There have been those who claimed that the laws of the state were legitimate and binding because the earthly ruler was a god; those who claimed that the laws of the state were legitimate and binding because the ruler was appointed by God; and those who claimed that the laws of the state were legitimate and binding because the ruler was a hereditary monarch. Today it is the fashion to claim that the laws of the state are legitimate and binding because its leaders were chosen in democratic elections. And while democratic governments may indeed be the best steward of right that men have yet devised, this fact no more makes them the final arbiter of right than did the similar popularity of now outmoded political regimes in ages past. Even in a democratic age, it remains the case that right action cannot be deduced solely from the decisions of the state. All governments are, after all, composed of men. And as such, they are bound to err, and sometimes terribly so."

Rabbis are not omniscient prophets, but neither are politicians. In the end, we are obligated to obey no one except he who expresses the truth. Kabel et ha-emet mi-mi she-amrah, "Accept the truth from whomsoever speaks it", say Hazal, whether rabbi or politician.

(Again, I do not know Rabbi Amital's view. I am merely using his words as a convenient preetext to respond to a view that I know others express. Nothing I have said here should be taken to indicate disagreement with Rabbi Amital himself.)

"Sensible Economics" by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed

2011-08-07T03:20:00.003+03:00

Just before Shabbat began, I received the following column by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed in my email inbox, regarding the tent protest in Israel about a shortage of land and the high rent prices. His piece is quite excellent, and I am reproducing it here. (It is also online at http://groups.google.com/group/YHBN/browse_thread/thread/dba4325584409ac3/cea67c74b39f6fba?hl=en.) However, there are some errors in it, I believe, and so I am appending my own letter which I wrote to Rabbi Melamed in response.

Sensible Economics

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed

Judaism Favors Capitalism

Between the two extremes of capitalism and communism, the Torah generally tends to favor capitalism, given that freedom of choice and individual responsibility are the moral foundations of man's existence in the world. This is the essence of man's being created in the image of God – he was given the ability to think, decide, improve, or destroy, and to take responsibility for his actions. If he chooses well – he merits the World to Come; if he chooses evil – he inherits 'gehinom' (hell). This is equally true in this world: if one treats his family well – he'll have a good family life; if he ignores them – he'll destroy his relationship with them.

This is also true in connection to money and wealth. If a farmer is lazy – instead of produce, his field will yield thorns; if he is hard-working, he will harvest a healthy crop. If one is slack at work – he'll get fired, and have to pinch pennies. If he works diligently, he will reap the fruits of his labor. Just as a person is entitled to receive compensation for his physical labor, similarly, he is free to profit from his business initiative and natural talent of inventing and producing new products. The more popular his products are, the more profits he is entitled to make.

In contrast, the Communist system severs the connection between hard-work, initiative and production and their results, thereby causing people to be less responsible for their actions.

Thus, we find that in the Torah, the laws of ownership, and the prohibitions of stealing and robbery are based, in general, on the capitalist system, according to which the possessions one accumulates belong to him.

Hindsight

Today, nearly 100 years after the founding of the Communist system in Russia, in hindsight, we know that this method doesn't work. The removal of personal responsibility from the results of one's actions caused great damage to economic development. Consequently, countries that adopted the Communist system in order to provide welfare for its citizens, in the end, caused them appalling poverty. In a Communist economy, rather than working hard to improve and be more productive at work, the main effort is directed at obtaining larger slew of the public coffers. This is in addition to the awful tyranny and corruption this system creates by granting tremendous power to the rulers – besides being in charge of public funds, they also rule over private property, as well.

Socialism in Judaism

On top of the capitalist principle, the Torah commands the individual and society to care for the welfare of the poor, sick, and elderly who cannot provide for themselves. To this end, taxes were collected for the public fund. Care was taken not to encourage idleness and exploitation, which harms both society and the needy person himself, who gets used to living a life of shame.

In addition, the Sages also imposed upon the general public the responsibility of caring for the education of children whose parents couldn't afford to do so, according to the principles of the Torah which state that, first and foremost, it is the parents who are responsible for their children's Torah and vocational education.

The Boomerang-Effect of the Protests

If the government surrenders to the demands of the protesters, handing-out land for free to every citizen, then hundreds of thousands of families who invested their hard-earned money over the last twenty years by purchasing apartments in the center of the country will lose half of their assets, because two-thirds of the cost of an apartment in Tel Aviv stems from the price of the land. Such an extreme reduction of the cost of apartments is like pocketing money directly from the pension funds of the public.

The building process must be accelerated and wide-scale construction encouraged, making it easier for the needy to buy an apartment. However, it is forbidden to harm market prices in such a drastic way.

Market Logic

The rules of supply and demand which determine apartment prices are very logical. People earning higher salaries are able to purchase apartments in more exclusive neighborhoods, while people who earn less, buy apartments in less-desired areas. In the end, however, everyone has a place to live.
Market rules have another benefit: when the demand for apartments rises in the center of the country, prices also go up, creating a natural situation where families are driven to move to the periphery, and in this way, additional areas of the country are continually strengthened. When this natural process is interfered with, it creates a situation of national-disorder; the center of the country becomes over-loaded, crowded and choked, while at the same time, the cities and towns of the periphery are abandoned to poverty, crime, and seditious activities by internal and external foes.

Media Shame

In the coverage of these protests, the true face of the Israeli media has once again been revealed, as it enthusiastically offered its public relations' services to the protesters, and fanned the flames of the rallies. The media made it clear that, in its opinion, "the nation" is a specific, defined group, namely: secular leftists. In the media's eyes, a group of tens-of-thousands of young people from this category is considered a "people's protest, the likes of which have never seen before", while all the other millions of people mean nothing to them. This type of media event actually strengthens a commendable process, in which more and more people are waking-up from the fantasy that the media is reliable, and realizing that, in effect, it is simply a propaganda mouthpiece for leftist, secular, hostile view-points.

What Do the Protesters Want?

What do the protesters and the various media personalities want? Obviously, it's impossible to pass a law stating that anyone can prove that he or she hung-out for a number of hours in a Tel Aviv cafe or nightclub, is entitled to purchase an apartment there for half the price?!

If the government makes plans for the inexpensive sale of apartments in the center of the country, they will have to set criteria for those entitled to buy. Normally, the first in line are large families with low incomes. The protesters and media personalities will be the last one's on the list.

Apparently, the protesters are composed of three different groups. One group wants to topple the government – and it doesn't matter in which way, or for what reason. The second group supports Communist positions, repeating all the revolutionary slogans from over a hundred years ago. The third group are people who don't know exactly what they want, but, feeling distressed and without much thought, joins the 'revolution'.

Dangers of Communism

It is forbidden to disregard the dangers posed by the Communist way of thinking and style. Precisely because they come in the name of 'idealism', they have no problem ridding themselves of any moral barriers. The end justifies the means. They allow themselves to use false propaganda. The mobilization of the media, whose roots run deep in the political left, is also part of this. At present, the media is trying to create a false perception, as if life here in Israel is extremely difficult, and the entire nation is up-in-arms. Just like in all the Communist revolutions, once again, we hear how the leaders of the protests incite the people against the wealthy and the government, while scattering false promises that if they have their way, the belongings of the rich will be divided amongst the public, and that from now on, everything will be free. Such claims are enticing; the problem, however, is that, in the end, the ruler's are the only ones' who enjoy the plundered spoils. Currently, it can still be seen how the Communist system in North Korea caused the nation to deteriorate to the point of famine, encouraging tyranny and corruption, while at the same time, in South Korea, people of the same nation created a prosperous society by means of a democratic, capitalistic system. Greece also adopted an extreme, socialist approach, and the result – national bankruptcy.

Levels of Social-Welfare

Within the framework of Judaism's approach, which obligates us to take care of the poor and the weak, it's possible to lean in the direction of the socialistic approach a little bit more, or a little bit less. In other words, we must obviously help those who are not able to take care of themselves, however, the aid can be basic, or it can be generous. Assistance can be given only to people who really can't exist on their own, or also to those who find it a bit difficult to get by. Grants can be given to middle-class home-purchasers, or instead, they can be directed to the periphery. There, it's easy to buy an apartment, even without assistance.

The Arab Problem

I must admit frankly, that under different circumstances, we would probably favor the socialist approach more readily. However, because of our current national situation, where we are forced to contend with a large and hostile Arab minority, who naturally, according to any social criterion agreed upon, would be the first to receive any type of benefits – we favor the approach of tightening-the-belt. This method also has its advantages, placing more responsibility on the individual, his family, and friends.

Invest in Infrastructure and Education

The tightening-the-belt approach, which is presently our appropriate path, should be strengthened by investing in education, health, and infrastructure. Such investments benefit all – including the lower-classes. By improving education, children with poor parents can also improve their social-economic status. The development of infrastructure and roads will allow residents of the periphery to commute easily and inexpensively to business centers. Also, investment should be made in our soldiers, during and after their military spell, in compensation for their army service.

Promoting Competition, Breaking Monopolies

The difficult problem with the Israeli economy is that there are still sections – the legacy of left-wing governments – which have not been opened to free and fair competition, where exaggerated prices are being charged. For example, the media, which is still controlled as a 'cartel' by the leftists, without free competition. Moreover, a number of factories and public assets were sold (privatized) to various 'tycoons' at rock-bottom prices in lieu of ridiculously low royalties. For example, when Labour Party Minister of Finance, Biega Shochat, sold the 'Dead Sea Factories' in a lousy deal for the country, but a bargain for the Ofer brothers. Not by chance, most of these deals occurred under the socialist Labour Party, since the leftist approach encourages, unintentionally, corruption, 'protectzia', and monopolies. This is also the reason why many of the 'tycoons' prefer the left-wing government, which nurtured them. With the leftists, they know to close deals, blocking their competitors, and continuing to rake-in huge profits at the expense of the public. That's why the 'tycoons' and the media – which they own – support the protesters.

Binyamin Netanyahu

I wouldn't be disappointed if Binyamin Netanyahu lost his "throne". He has failed in his role as Prime Minister. He promised to build in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and instead, he froze construction and promised the Arabs a state in the heart of our country. Admittedly, as far as the economy is concerned, Binyamin Netanyahu, together with Minister of Finance, Yuval Shteinitz, is very good. There are still many issues which need improvement, but the general direction is correct. The economic situation of Israeli citizens today is far better than it was ten or twenty years ago, even in comparison to other developed countries. Netanyahu's weakness is that he is easily influenced by pressure. He is liable to squander many accomplishments by capitulating to the protesters.
If, in the economic arena he overcomes his tendency of being easily pressured, perhaps the Prime Minister will also be strengthened politically, returning to the legacy of his fathers', and working diligently to build Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed is the Dean of Yeshiva Har Bracha and a prolific author on Jewish Law. Rabbi Melamed is one of the most active leaders amongst the religious-Zionist public. This article was translated from his popular weekly column "Revivim" which appears in the "Basheva" newspaper. According to official media surveys, his column is the most widely read editorial amongst the religious and ultra-Orthodox public in Israel.

That concludes Rabbi Melamed's piece. Here is my letter:

Hello. I'd like to make some brief comments about Rabbi Melamed's article, "Sensible Economics". In general, I was very pleased by this piece, and very much enjoyed it. I have some comments and criticisms, however, and I will make them piece-by-piece, in the same order as Rabbi Melamed made his statements.

I am merely a student who learned for three years in Machon Meir and is preparing to begin a BA in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and who has been reading up on politics and economics in his free time. I claim no expertise, and I offer only what little I know, in the hope that it will help.

Judaism Favors Capitalism

I am very glad that Rabbi Melamed made the argument that generally speaking, Judaism believes in personal responsibility and free will and living with the consequences of one's own actions. The fact that socialism disincentivizes personal responsibility is a very crucial one, and I am glad that Rabbi Melamed recognizes and notifies his readers that Judaism would stand with capitalism in preaching personal responsibility.

Hindsight

Here too, I am very pleased with Rabbi Melamed. I will note that there a term in game theory (talk to Professor Aumann about this) for the fact that socialism disincentivizes personal responsibility: it is called the "tragedy of the commons". This phenomenon was named after the observation that common grazing land was almost invariably overgrazed to destruction, whereas privatized, fenced land was not. The reason is that whenever anything is made public, i.e. with equal access for everyone, then no one has any incentive to guard its long-term capital value, because everyone knows that if he does personally guard it, someone else will abuse it anyway, and so everyone figures that he himself ought to try to milk it for all it's worth before someone else does. In other words, if you do not personally own it, then you cannot personally ensure its long-term safety, and so you know that someone else will destroy it anyway, and so you figure, you may as well be the one to destroy it, and reap the profits, before someone else does. This is why, for example, we pollute the air and water: these, being public, are beyond any individual's control, and so everyone realizes that even if he, say, stops driving his car and rides a bike instead, everyone else will keep driving, and so pollution will stay virtually the same, but you will pay the cost of a longer commute, and so, you figure, you may as well drive a car too. But if you privatize something, then you personally own it, and you personally have full control over it, and so suddenly, your own efforts at conserving its long-term safety are rewarded. Imagine if everyone on earth were given his own personal supply of air and water. We would surely see everyone take special care to keep it clean and unpolluted. Similarly, fencing the common grazing lands resulted in individual owners of the divided plots taking special care to avoid overgrazing. Likewise, when forests are divided into discrete, privately-owned plots, loggers take special care to avoid chopping down too many trees, and they voluntarily will plant new trees to replace the ones they chop down.

In short, when a person must personally live with the consequences of his own actions, and when he personally is able to ensure whether something is used well or abused, he will take greater care, then when the consequences of his actions and the abuses of his neighbors are all socialized, i.e. spread equally. This is the tragedy of the commons. In short, socializing (making public) anything causes the tragedy of the commons, while privatizing it averts the tragedy. Giving the government control over the economy turns the economy from a network of individual, private transactions, into one giant public one, causing the tragedy to appear. Contrariwise, if we could figure out a way to privatize all the air and water on earth, then suddenly, pollution would be a thing of the past.

In general, humans are poor at cooperating with each other. This is a simple factor of the yetzer ha-ra, and it is no hiddush. Obviously, we must work to overcome this, but we cannot rely on miracles, and in the meantime, we should accept reality and man's nature, and deal with it. The best solutions are those that accept the yetzer ha-ra and harness it for good. So if people are poor at cooperating regarding public matters, then we ought to privatize things, and leave them up to personal responsibility. We will see that relying on human selfishness and greed will produce more wealth and prosperity than relying on altruism. Even the poor will benefit, because a businessman can profit only by selling goods that others want. The businessman will see the poor as a profitable market, and he will have to innovate and produce goods that the poor will want to buy. Any market transaction takes place only if the buyer and the seller both believe that they will personally benefit. So if a businessman wants to become rich, for example, he might invent a new car that is tremendously cheap, and all the poor people will buy one. The rich man will rake in profits, and the poor people will all have cars. Everybody wins. That is why America was historically the richest country on earth, not only for the rich, but even for the poor. To quote American free-market economist Walter E. Williams, "I praise lassez-faire capitalism as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man." Think about how Henry Ford made the automobile so inexpensive that his own factory workers were able to afford it. That was capitalism, not socialism. For another argument of how capitalism naturally results in the rich serving the needs of the poor and making the poor richer than they were before, see "Would You Give Up The Internet For 1 Million Dollars?" by The Fund for American Studies at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FB0EhPM_M4 :
{Quote}

It's cheap to get online and getting cheaper all the time. We see the same pattern with many other products. Take the cell phone. When it first arrived in the 1980s, the cell phone had no apps, no music, and no Internet access--it was pretty much a brick with buttons. Yet that brick cost about $4,000, and that's why only the super rich could afford them (think Gordon Gekko in Wall Street). Today, it takes only about 40 bucks to walk home with an iPhone.

Turns out capitalism has its own built in welfare transfer system.

"When a new product comes out we all get in line for it," says Cox. "The wealthiest people are in the front of the line and they pay the highest price for the worst version of a product." Real life Gordon Gekkos buy the products when they're expensive, and that lets the rest of us enjoy the cheaper, better versions.

Even in a lousy economy we all enjoy things, from smart phones to aspirin to air conditioning, that weren't available to the world's wealthiest people just a short while ago. And if we have access [for such a low price] to something like the Internet, something that's worth so much to us [and worth far more to us] than the price we actually pay for it], we just might be richer than we realize.

{End quote}

There is a second reason why socialism fails, that I believe is worth noting. This is the problem of economic calculation, first shown by economists Max Weber and Ludwig von Mises. Max Weber was a statist, a member of the German Historical School, and a proponent of big government. Nevertheless, he was a methodological individualist, meaning that he recognized that as an objective fact, humans exist while society does not. That is, contrary to his colleagues in the Historical School, who argued that society is real while humans are nothing but products of society, Weber argued that only individuals exist, and that society is a product of all the individual decisions of free-willed people. Therefore, Weber argued that as a matter of simple, scientific fact, all sociology and history and economics must be analyzed at the level of the actions of individuals, with all societies being nothing more than aggregations of individuals. Therefore, while he was a statist and a proponent of centralized government like his fellow Historical School members, he had much in common, in theory at least, with Ludwig von Mises, a free-market economist who believed in limited government based on the same theory of methodological individualism, which theory Mises called "praxeology", the study of individual human action. Weber and Mises disagreed on whether government ought to be big or small, but they both agreed on the reality that society is a product of individuals, not the other way around.

Mises and Weber both innovated the dilemma of economic calculation, which they claimed would cause socialism to collapse, and they made this prediction approximately around the end of WWII, the same time that everyone else was celebrating socialism as the wave of the future. Already at that time, however, Weber and Mises argued socialism was impossible. The reason was this: no central planner is able to know what everyone in society wants. Everyone has different needs and wants, and no one person can know it. So how can anyone centrally plan anything? The reason the economy works is that there are PRICES. Prices are how people indicate what they want. People spend their money on what they want, and avoiding buying what they do not. So people can indicate what they desire for their own happiness, by showing what they are willing to spend money one. Meanwhile, prices indicate relative scarcity of a good. A scarce good will have few suppliers and producers, and be high in price. An abundant good will have many suppliers and producers, and be low in price. So prices indicate both what people want, and how much of something there is to go around.

We do not live in the Garden of Eden, and government cannot produce something from nothing. Prices indicate what actually exists, and how much of it does. When the government artificially changes prices, it disrupts this, and creates a false signal. If it lowers the price, it will artificially signal abundance, and people will overconsume, believing there is more than there really is. For example, if the government artificially lowers the price of food, then everyone will eat too much, thinking there is more food than there really is, and so instead of rationing and scrimping and saving, people will overconsume, and we will end up with a famine, because people will discover the lie only when it is too late, and all the food is gone. If the government artificially raises the price, then people will consume less than they could, and surpluses will pointlessly pile up, with resources available but unused. Prices must be dictated by the market, so that they indicate what really is. Scarcity and abundance are caused by whatever really exists in the real world, due to God's curse on the earth, and government tampering with prices only hides this fact.

Meanwhile, prices indicate what people personally desire. Whether you pay $5 for rice or $10 for wheat, shows whether you prefer cheap rice or expensive wheat. Whether you pay $10 for wheat or $10 for a new piece of clothing, shows whether you prefer to be fed or kept warm. Whether you spend $10,000 on a used car or $20,000 on a new car, shows how much you value the newness of a car versus its simple functionality. All of our myriads of needs and desires, we indicate at the cash register, and all six billion people on earth have different needs and wants. No central government planner can know them. Entrepreneurs look at prices, and using them as indicators of customer demand, will enter markets where demand is high and they can make a profit, and leave markets where demand is low and they cannot make a profit. If prices are high, it means consumers demand that product (relative to other products, comparing by price), and so new suppliers will enter the market, increasing supply and lowering the price. If prices are low, it means that consumers do not demand that product, and so suppliers will leave that market, lowering supply and raising the price. In short, then, prices tell us not only how much of that good exists (supply), but also how much consumers desire it (demand). An equilibrium results, where supply and demand come to equal each other, and consumers purchase and consume as much of a product as actually exists (indicated by prices), and entrepreneurs strive to fill the markets with high demand and abandon the markets with low demand. If food is expensive, it means that food is scarce and in high demand, with supply falling short of demand, and so people will become farmers. If new technology makes food more abundant, then prices will fall, and some farmers will stop being farmers and find something else more profitable.

The problem with socialism, said Weber and Mises, is that destroys this entire process. Socialism destroys price mechanisms, by having not consumers, but the government, decide who should have what. Should a cow's leather be made into shoes or into belts instead? The government decides. No longer do consumers advertise their desires by paying prices, nor do prices indicate relative scarcity. No, the government decides what you ought to have. Besides being arrogant and Nimrodian, it is also impossible. No one in the government is so omniscient as to be able to know what billions of people need. The result is shortages and poverty. Not knowing what people want, there is absurd overproduction of some goods and underproduction of others. People might be swimming in shoes but be starving, because the government has no way of knowing whether people prefer shoes or food. Henry Hazlitt wrote an entire novel illustrating this problem, and the introduction to his novel, summarizing the theory of Mises, is very helpful, and is online: http://mises.org/daily/2457

That is why government generally fails to satisfy consumers. A businessman must make a profit, meaning he must satisfy actual market needs, and find actual people willing to buy from him. He must accurately gauge supply and demand, and fill a genuine market need. If he fails, he will go bankrupt. By contrast, the government taxes you, meaning it extracts the money whether you like it or not, and so it has no need to make a profit. The government has no way of knowing whether it is fulfilling genuine market needs. Ask anyone whether he believes he gets his money's worth from what his taxation pays for. Chances are, he does not. The reason is that the government cannot go bankrupt (because it can tax you against your will, and so make money without actually doing anything worthwhile or productive), so it has no way of knowing whether it is spending the money efficiently, on what people would actually like it to spend on. Maybe the government will build a grand, fine bridge. It might be a wonderful, stupendous bridge. But maybe people, if they got to keep their own money, would prefer something else instead of a bridge. The government has no way of knowing. In fact, by definition, taxation is when the government takes your money and spends it on something different than what you yourself would. That is why government never satisfies the people, except those people who receive more benefits from the government than they pay in; they are always happy.

Socialism in Judaism

Here, discussing social-welfare policies for the poor, and public education, I disagree with Rabbi Melamed. I recognize his only repeating what Jewish tradition says, and so I do not fault him. Nevertheless, I believe he is wrong. Let me explain:

The problem with government oversight of poverty-relief and education, is that *someone* must make the decisions. *Someone* must decide what must be done. And what if others disagree? Will you punish them? If you want the government to work, then yes, you must. Max Weber (whom we have already discussed) wrote, in his essay, "Politics as a Vocation", that the government is nothing more than the territorial monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That is, government is the only entity that uses physical force within a geographic area; the world is carved up into governments, with each government having one territory, and within each territory, the government has a monopoly on deciding who is allowed to wield physical power and force, and to what end. Therefore, Weber says, being a politician means using physical force against those who disagree with you. That is, if government is force, and all laws are backed by threats of punishment, then government means punishing dissidents who do not obey the law.

Weber concludes that it is *impossible* for a government to be moral and ethical. Why? Imagine you establish public education. You, of course, must enforce *your* personal standards of what good education is. But what if some disagree? Perhaps you are religious, and they are secular, or perhaps you are Haredi and they are Dati-Leumi. One way or another, someone dislikes your educational curriculum, and they do not want to pay. They merely want to keep their own money and hire their own private tutor, or send their children to a private school. But no, you cannot allow that. Being government means having a monopoly. You cannot have public education unless you have a monopoly on education. Even if you permit parents to use private schools, you must still tax them to pay for public schools. If you let them opt-out of the whole public schooling system, then your public system is really a private, voluntary one, that anyone can opt-out of. So maintaining your status as government and your public schooling system means punishing anyone who refuses to go along with your system and pay taxes to contribute to it. Even if the dissidents are justified, you must punish them anyway.

The truth is that *any* educational curriculum is parochial and biased. Whatever your weltanschauung (hashqafa) is, will be reflected in the system you establish. Perhaps for Hazal this was not clear, because everyone was a Pharisee, except for the obviously corrupt and Hellenistic and pro-Roman Sadduccees. It was therefore not clear to Hazal that public schooling is inherently tyrannical. No matter what system you establish, *someone* will disagree with it, and will not want to pay. Why do hilonim, haredim, and dati'im all send their children to different schools? Because they have different desires for education. Public schooling means forcing everyone to pay for the decisions and desires of only one party, whichever party happens to be in power. That party in power will use the force and power of government to punish anyone who refuses to comply. That is why, according to Weber, it is impossible to have moral and ethical government, because government is nothing more than using physical force against those with whom you have ideological disagreements. Punishing parents who refuse to pay taxes to a school system they dislike, is essentially the same as banning an entire religion; you are punishing disagreement in matters of belief.

Perhaps Hazal did not realize this, because in their day, there was perhaps less disagreement. Perhaps also, people in power (i.e. the rabbis in charge of education) were more moral and upstanding than they are today, and did not abuse their power. Also, it was perhaps because kehillot were smaller and more local: according to game theory, the tragedy of the commons manifests itself less in small groups, because it is easier for people to cooperate and admonish freeriders and abusers, when the group is small. In a community of only a few hundred people, it is easy to see when the rabbi is abusing his power, for example, and oust him. But in a large community, it is harder to see when someone is being lazy and freeriding, and it is more difficult to check the powers of a corrupt ruler. So today, perhaps due to yeridat ha-dorot, or perhaps because societies are so much larger and more complex than they were in the agrarian, rural past, I think it is obvious that power corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton said. To allow anyone the power of deciding what ought to be taught by children, by taxing parents to support the government school system, is tyrannical, I believe.

All the same arguments go for social-welfare to help the poor, as well. Someone must decide who deserves help, and he will punish anyone who disagrees with him, anyone who wants to do tzedaqa on his own, independently.

Even if the government is right and its dissenters and opponents are wrong, those dissenters and opponents are b'shogeg. Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra says even a heretic is not truly a heretic, if he believes what he believes, not as a pretext to sin, but as a result of honest, sincere inquiry. Those who disagree with the government on matters of public policy are honest and sincere searchers after truth, not sinners b'yad ramah. Therefore, as shogegim, it is forbidden to punish them, even if they are wrong. Only if the government can prove that someone is knowingly sinning, can they be punished. Two witnesses must say to a man, "Do you realize that by not supporting the public school system, you are harming the poor?", and he must answer, "Yes, I know, but I shall sin anyway." If, however, he answers, "I disagree. I think the public school system is flawed (for whatever reason; maybe because it misspends money inefficiently and he thinks he could do better on his own, or maybe because his religious hashqafa is different than the government's) and therefore, I do not support it", he is, at most, erring b'shogeg, and may not be punished. The halakhah has laws about when people may be punished, meant to ensure that only meizidim, not shogegim, are punished. Only if one says, "Yes, I know, but I shall sin anyway" may he be punished. For us to ignore these laws is bal tosif.

Furthermore, the Torah says individuals must help the poor, and individuals must teach their children. Nowhere does the Torah say the civil government may tax people to help the poor or support schooling. Therefore, I believe, all such systems are, once again, violations of bal tosif. The Torah says for individuals to help the needy and educate their children, not for the government to do so. If you see someone in need, whether they cannot afford bread or they cannot afford to educate their children, it is your own personal responsibility, not the government's, to rectify this. Public schooling and government welfare rob individuals of their opportunities to do mitzvot, and are furthermore violations of bal tosif.

So there are two counts of bal tosif: using the government to do things the Torah never commands the government to do, and punishing people contrary to the laws of testimony, under the halakhah.

The Boomerang-Effect of the Protests

This area is more difficult for me to assess, because I am not an economist, and so I am unqualified to provide practical solutions to economic problems. But these are my tentative thoughts:

Firstly, if the government has been robbing people and committing theft, via the Israel Land Authorities, then this must be stopped now, regardless of the consequences. If this robs people of their investments, then so be it. Justice must be done. The ILA is nothing more than a criminal band of thieves. You don't ask about the economic consequences of punishing thieves; you simply do what is just and right.

Secondly, however, we must honor the teachings of economist Frederic Bastiat, and look not only at what is seen, but also at what is unseen. What do we see? That abolishing the ILA would cause property values to plummet. Apparently, this would harm those who have already invested in real estate. But what is unseen? The fact that those who already own real estate, would not only be hurt by the fall in the value of their own property, but would also be helped by the fall in the value of everyone else's property too. For example, if you have invested in real estate, then, abolishing the ILA would cause you to lose money, but it would also make buying more property cheaper too. In the end, you could sell your own property and move somewhere else, just the same, because not only did your property fall in value, but so did everyone else's. Furthermore, the food factory would pay less money in rent, so their food prices would fall. In the end, the drop in property values would spread across the economy, affecting everyone equally. We must look not only at what is seen, but also at what is unseen.

But note that I am *not* calling for a Rome-esque distribution of free bread and circuses. I am *not* calling for land to be *free*. I am calling for the ILA to be abolished, and have land be priced by the free market, with anyone free to buy any available land for a market price. To quote the actor playing economic F. A. Hayek in the video "'Fight of the Century' Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Round 2" at http://hayekcenter.org/?p=4804, "We need stable rules and real market prices so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis. Give us a chance so we can discover the most valuable ways to serve one another."

Rabbi Melamed, you say, it is forbidden to harm market prices in such a drastic way". But the truth is, we do *not* have market prices. We have only the prices that the monopolistic ILA artificially sets (see what I said above, about economic calculation, and it being impossible for a central planner to know what people really want and what things are really worth). Abolishing the ILA would not harm market prices, but rather, would allow market prices to finally come into existence.

But again, I am not an economist. Hopefully, if we can all agree then on the general principles of free-markets, then we can all come together and determine a capitalistic, free-market way to solve the problem. I know more about theory than I do about how to practically solve the problems caused by socialistic violation of the theory; I know more about how capitalism works, than about how to transition from socialism to capitalism. I do not deny any of this. And in all likelihood, there *will* be pains associated with the transition. As Rav Kook tells us in Orot ha-Teshuva, change is never easy.

Market Logic

This section is a perfect illustration of the problem of economic calculation. When the ILA arbitrarily decides where to build apartments and how many, then we end up with over- and under-production in different areas. The market is not allowed to determine how many apartments are needed, and whether people prefer a high-priced apartment in the middle of the city, or else prefer a lower-priced apartment with a longer commute to the city. Without market prices, socialism results in misapprehension of what people really want, and so we end up with overproduction of what people do not want and underproduction of what they do want. Rabbi Melamed has hit the nail on the head. The ILA's policies are a perfect illustration of how government tampering with markets and market prices causes over- and under-production, surpluses and shortages, because prices indicate scarcity and abundance, supply and demand, and government interference merely obscures reality and replaces it with fiction, and by definition, therefore, can do nothing but harm.

Media Shame
and
What Do the Protesters Want?
and
Dangers of Communism

Indeed. I have no objections to Rabbi Melamed's words.

Levels of Social-Welfare

Here, I disagree with Rabbi Melamed, because, as I already argued, I find government-run social welfare to be inherently tyrannical. *Someone* must decide the standards for welfare, and he must punish all who disagree with him, even those who merely wish to nonviolently and peacefully spend their own money without hurting anyone. Max Weber is right: it is impossible to morally and ethically run a system whereby non-violent, peaceful, loving people are violently punished merely for politely disagreeing with the government, and telling it that they wish to do tzedaqa or the education of their children in their own way. I have a friend in America, a frum man - a ba'al teshuva, in fact - who tells me that he personally became a libertarian (a proponent of limited, minimalistic government) when his professor in law school told him that "all law is force". That is, every law carries a penalty for disobedience. This is fine when the law forbids murder and theft, but when the law mandates sending your money to the government's list of poor people and the government's school system, and violation of the law means sending your money to your own personal list of poor people and educating your own children yourself or assisting those of your own personal choice with the education of their children, then the use of force is not justified. It is not justified to use law and the force of punishment of violation of law, to punish those who commit non-violent, peaceful violations of the government's personal opinion. Being that all law is force, it behooves us to use the law to forbid only those things whose violations merit punishment. Murderers and thieves deserve to be punished, but those who refuse to support the public school system do not, so a law about one but not the other is in order. And again, we violate bal tosif when we punish those who honestly believe that their disobedience of the government is justified and not sinful.

The Arab Problem

I disagree with Rabbi Melamed here too. What is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. If social welfare is good, then it is good. If it is bad, then it is bad. Either we should or else we should not have social welfare policies. Whether Arabs wish to kill us or not, is irrelevant.

Furthermore, some Arabs are Noahides, while others are not. Those who wish to commit murder are not Noahides, but those who wish to live in peace are gerim toshavim, and Vayiqra 25:35 explicitly tells us that in matters of tzedaqa, the ger toshav is equal to the Jew. So whether or not social welfare is justified or not, it makes no difference whether one is an Arab. What matters is whether he is a Noahide or not. Arabs who wish to kill us are not Noahides, but those who wish to live in peace are Noahides. Rabbi Meir Kahane already said explicitly that we must not discriminate against the authentic Noahides amongst the Arabs.

Of course, maybe it is not simple to tell which Arabs tell the truth, and which tell lies, when they claim they want peace. The same Rabbi Kahane said we may tragically have to discriminate against even the peaceful Noahides amongst the Arabs, simply because we cannot tell who is who, and for the sake of piquah nefesh, we must unfortunately paint with a broad brush. Or maybe the secular Israeli government does not care, and it will make no effort to determine which Arabs are which. Perhaps any aid to the poor, if it exists, will go equally to both kinds of Arabs, and the religious will have no ability to ensure the government keeps the halakhah in this matter. These are of course difficult and tragic issues.

Invest in Infrastructure and Education

Here, I must disagree with the rabbi. We should let consumers invest in what they really want, not in what the government thinks they ought to want. If consumers want education and healthcare and roads, then let them invest in those areas. Let consumers have what they believe will make their own lives happier.

The government cannot know what will make people happy, so either it must guess haphazardly, or else it must ignore the people. That is why governments fight so many wars: it is difficult to make the people happy, because the government cannot know what they want, but it is very easy for the government to make itself happy, and centrally-plan its own happiness. To send all the food and clothing of a whole nation off to soldiers fighting elsewhere is comparatively easy to plan and orchestrate, and the logistics are simple. Meanwhile, it increases the amount of power wielded by government authorities, and makes it easier for them to get big wages and fat kickbacks, and the joy of simply wielding power over others. Therefore, socialist John Dewey celebrated WWI and how it led to socialism in the United States, in his essay, "The Social Possibilities of War", and his once-upon-a-time-follower-and-student Randolph Bourne abandoned his teacher in disgust and said, in "The State", that "war is the health of the state", recognizing that the chief occupation of most governments is to fight wars, in order to increase the government's power.

The same John Dewey was also a pioneer in the area of education. Typically, government involvement in education will result in the government promoting a curriculum that celebrates the government. Rabbi Melamed, do you think that a government that writes the educational curriculum, will choose textbooks that mourn the Gaza Expulsion and celebrate the rabbis who demanded disobedience? Of course not. The government will write the curriculum that casts itself in the best light. According to William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 248-249, Hitler wrote, in Mein Kampf, about "the importance of winning over and then training the youth in the service 'of a new national state.'" Shirer adds,
{Quote}

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,'" he [Hitler] said in a speech on November 6, 1933, "I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'" And on May 1, 1937, he declared, "This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."

{End quote}

So much for education. But let us speak a bit more about social welfare policies, and how the government will use force to ensure obedience to them: the same Shirer, writing about the same Hitler, has something to say about this too, in the same book, p. 96: "To combat socialism [in Germany, Otto von] Bismarck put through between 1883 and 1889 a program for social security far beyond anything known in other countries. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. It cannot be said that it stopped the rise of the Social Democrats or the trade unions, but it did have a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and a protector. Hitler, as we shall see, took full advantage of this state of mind. In this, as in other matters, he learned much from Bismarck. 'I studied Bismarck’s socialist legislation,' Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf (p. 155), 'in its intention, struggle and success.'"

So with both education and social welfare, Shirer tells us that state control over them eventually led to total tyranny. The government uses education to indoctrinate students to love the government, and it uses social welfare to ensure once again that the people love the government and rely on it as one relies on one's parents.

See also Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, showing how Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler were all very similar and often praised each other; and Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, by Ludwig von Mises (the same who elsewhere pioneered the economic calculation problem), arguing that fascism and socialism are essentially the same (Nazism, i.e. National Socialism, is merely a patriotic, nationalist form of Soviet International Socialism).

Promoting Competition, Breaking Monopolies

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Binyamin Netanyahu

Amen.

I might add that there is a very nice and excellent piece on the issue of land shortage and high rent, at http://thesystemworks.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/why-free-markets-will-make-more-room-in-israel/

And with that, I conclude. Thank you sincerely for your attention.

P. S. I believe Rabbi Melamed would enjoy the article "Jewish Economics in the Light of Maimonides" by Dr. Walter Block, at http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block_jewish-economics-maimonedes-1990.pdf . There, Dr. Block shows that from the standpoint of modern economics, many of the Talmud's economic provisions are unfortunately flawed. Personally, I would say that if Dr. Block is correct, then we could say that as with medicine, Hazal did not receive economics from Sinai. Hazal knew of the prohibition of theft and the commandment to be healthy, and set for their own personal, human opinions of how to be healthy and how to avoid theft, based on the medical and economic science of their day. Compare the dispute between Rambam and Rashba about tereifot; I would say we should follow the Rambam (except that with tereifot, Rambam said that we must obey the Talmud even when we know it is wrong, according to science; I would say that by contrast, with economics, there are issues of piquah nefesh that would demand we violate the Talmud if we know it is wrong, whereas with kashrut and tereifot, there is not such a danger). Therefore, in my own humble opinion, today, we ought to follow the best medical and economic science we have available, in pursuit of those very same mitzvot of saving lives and avoiding theft. Not that we should, God-forbid, abandon Torah morality for secular morality, but rather, that we should follow whatever secular science might have to say about how to follow Torah morality (assuming that science is accurate and true, and not false, as Rabbi S. R. Hirsch reminds us). We should be m'qabel et ha-emet mi-mi she-amrah, just as Hazal admitted when gentile astronomy was superior to Jewish astronomy.

The Sacred Rights of Conscience and Liberty: A Response to MK Nitzan Horowitz

2011-07-01T13:28:00.000+03:00

I just sent the following letter to MK Nitzan Horowitz.

MK Horowitz (CCed: Y-Net's Editorial Department and Editor-in-chief)

Hello. I am responding to your article "Let buses run on Shabbat" 27 June 2011, on Y-Net (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4087969,00.html):

There is a very simple solution to this issue: privatize.

Let me be blunt: *every* political issue is about how to coerce others. *Every* political issue is about one group of people deciding how another group of people must live. Max Weber, in "Politics as a Vocation", is clear: politics is the matter of using the territorial monopoly on the use of force to impose your opinions on others. (It is worth noting that based on this, Weber argues, at much length, that it is therefore impossible for politics to ever be conducted in an ethical or moral fashion, and that any politician has no choice whatsoever but to be Machiavellian. Weber's definition of the state is universally accepted by political philosophers and social scientists.) Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in Democracy: The God that Failed, goes one step further and notes that according to Weber's definition, the state also has a monopoly on unilateral determination of prices for the services it monopolistically offers: that is, not only does the state have a territorial monopoly on offering the goods and services associated with force (as per Weber), but furthermore, it can unilaterally coerce the payment for these services from the customers, via taxation. Everything that has ever been said about monopolies, applies to the government as well, with one difference: if a business has a monopoly, then they alone sell the product and determine its price, but unlike government, they at least cannot force you to buy from them; there is no one else to buy from (it being a monopoly), but at least you have the choice whether to buy or not; whereas government taxes, meaning it not only has a monopoly on its product but it even forces you to buy its product against your will. So let us not mince words. Let us at least accept things for what they are.

Therefore, to quote David Boaz, "The Separation of Art and State" (yes, you read that correctly: the separation of ART and state; http://www.cato.org/speeches/sp-as53.html): "Discussions of policy issues should begin with first principles. As my colleague Ed Crane notes, there are only two basic ways to organize society: coercively, through government dictates, or voluntarily, through the myriad interactions among individuals and private associations. All the various political 'isms'--fascism, communism, conservatism, liberalism, neoconservatism -- boil down to a single question. The bottom line of political philosophy, and therefore of politics itself, is, 'Who is going to make the decision about this particular aspect of your life, you or somebody else?'"

So those are the basic principles of political philosophy. Let us keep them in mind, as we examine the issue of buses running on Shabbat:

In this case, the issue is, must the religious pay taxes to subsidize buses on Shabbat? If the buses were private, and operated solely on fare, then there'd be no issue. The only reason there's an issue, is because the buses are paid for by taxation, and so if the buses run on Shabbat, the religious will be forced to pay taxes to pay for what they consider to be a sin. It would be no different, in principle, than the prime minister eating a pork chop and shoving the bill in the face of a man with a kippah and demanding he pay for it. It wouldn't be so objectionable were the prime minister to eat a pork chop on his own, but when he expects a religious man to pay the bill, then he is demanding that the religious man be personally and intimately complicit in the crime. It is perhaps possible for a religious man to be tolerant and stand by silently when another man sins, but there is no way he can be silent when he is expected to personally assist in the sin.

Thomas Hobbes thought that there would be chaos unless the king imposed one religion on everyone. Hobbes said that religious diversity caused wars, and so the king had to quash all dissent and impose one religion on everyone. John Locke responded that Hobbes was entirely wrong: the cause of religious warfare, said Locke, was not religious diversity, but rather, it was government that caused the warfare in the first place; Hobbes's proposal, said Locke, was not the solution but was in fact the cause. When the government imposes one religion on everyone, then everyone will fight to make sure *their* religion is the one. Protestants and Catholics and Anglicans and Puritans will all fight to see who gets to control the Church of England. But if you simply abolish the central religious authority altogether, then suddenly, no one fights anymore.

It is high time that Israel abolished the Chief Rabbinate, which is nothing but an adoption of the Ottoman millet system, a non-Jewish system that does nothing but inhibit the religious liberty and freedom of worship, of the religious and non-religious alike. I am Orthodox myself, but I harbor no love whatsoever for the Chief Rabbinate. It has no right to exist. For example, according to the halakhah, a man and a woman can privately marry each other, as long as they have two witnesses, and the man can divorce the woman himself as well. Nowhere in Jewish literature is there any basis for a hierarchical authority such as the Rabbinate to inject itself into these issues that are properly between a man and his wife alone. The government has no right telling anyone who to marry. The government has no business being involved in marriage in the first place. As Judaism contains no record of the government's involvement in marriage, the Rabbinate's involvement in marriage is not Jewish; it is either a theocratic imposition of some religion other than Judaism, or else it is a secular, non-theocratic imposition, but whatever it is, it is not Jewish. Let us cease talking about whether homosexuals ought to be allowed to marry, and instead ask, why is the government involved in marriage in the first place? According to the halakhah, marriage is a matter of private concern, not a public one. (Well, not quite: witnesses can go to a beit din and testify about anything they have seen, with appropriate consequences following. For example, if a couple is married, and witnesses testify to adultery, then consequences result. The point, however, is that the marriage and the divorce themselves, are private, not public, and there is no provision in halakhah for such a thing as a government to have any involvement whatsoever. Witnesses can report to a beit din to *confirm* preexistent facts, but the creation and dissolution of the marriage is private; only testimony as to the marriage's independent, private existence is within the purview of a beit din. By analogy, we might say that witnesses can testify that they saw a murder committed, but the murder itself occurred without the beit din's involvement.)

Locke's refutation of Hobbes is generally applicable. Boaz, speaking about public funding of art, says, "We fought these battles before, in the Wars of Religion. The American Founders knew that the solution was the separation of church and state. Because art is just as spiritual, just as meaningful, just as powerful as religion, it is time to grant art the same independence and respect that religion has. It is time to establish the separation of art and state." In a different article (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6102) that confusingly shares the same title, Boaz adds, "The American Founders observed the social and political conflict created by Europe’s intertwining of church and state and established a new principle for a new world: separation of church and state. The Founders thought that religion should be left to civil society because it was so important to individual dignity and social harmony. More precisely, it is wrong for the coercive authority of the state to interfere in matters of individual conscience. If we are individual moral agents, we must be free to define our own relationship with God. Furthermore, social harmony is enhanced by removing religion from the sphere of politics. Europe had suffered through the Wars of Religion, as churches made alliances with rulers and sought to impose their theology on everyone in a region. Religious inquisitions, Roger Williams said, put towns 'in an uproar.' Far better to make religion a matter of persuasion, not coercion. If individual rights and social peace are furthered by putting religion beyond government’s reach, this has implications for art, which -- like religion -- expresses, transmits, and challenges our deepest values." Boaz says all this in relation to public funding of art, so I believe I can apply it to public transportation:

If we simply abolished the use of taxation to pay for anything to which anyone disagrees by reason of conscience, then all political disputes would end. If the religious were not forced to pay taxes to pay for buses to run on Shabbat, then they would likely not protest. So let us either privatize the transportation, or else, let us grant all citizens a line-item veto on taxation: let every citizen declare to the government which taxes offend his conscience and violate his ideological principles, and let everyone be a conscientious objector. Let us coerce no one to pay taxes to fund something he believes is sinful or criminal. Anyone who disagrees with the policies of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, let him withhold his tax money from the Rabbinate, and so too with the buses on Shabbat.

I close with this quotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Politics" (http://www.panarchy.org/emerson/politics.1844.html), which I believe speaks for itself: "Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these."

Thank you, and sincerely,
Michael Makovi
Jerusalem; formerly of Silver Spring, MD
I learned for three years in Machon Meir, one half of a year in Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa, and I am applying for the undergraduate program in מדע המדינה / mada ha-medina at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On Eminent Domain: My Letter to Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

2011-06-29T22:37:00.005+03:00

[I just emailed this letter here.]

Judge Napolitano,

Hello. Listening to your talk today that you gave at Mises University, something occurred to me:

[Edit: let me embed the talk of his about which I speak; go to 12:47 for his discussion of eminent domain, on which I will be focusing: Again, go to 12:47. End of edit; back to the letter.]

The Constitution nowhere empowers the federal government to practice eminent domain. That is, nowhere in the Constitution is that power granted in the first place. Nor does the Constitution anywhere say that people hold their property by fee simple and not allodial title.

[Edit: let me insert USLegal.com's definitions for "fee simple" and "allodial":

Allodial means free from the tenurial rights of a lord, as opposed to feudal land. It refers to absolute ownership of land by individuals, rather than feudal property ownership, which is dependent on relationship to a lord or the sovereign. Allodial land is not subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgement to a superior.

Most property ownership in the common law world is held in fee simple. Fee simple ownership represents absolute ownership of real property but it is limited by the four basic government powers of taxation, eminent domain, police power, and escheat and could also be limited by certain encumbrances or a condition in the deed. Allodial title is often reserved for governments.

End of edit; back to the letter.]

Given the doctrine of limited, enumerated powers, doesn't that mean that at least with respect to the federal government (each state constitution is its own issue), we all ought to be holding our property by allodial title? After all, the Federalists - including Hamilton himself! - argued that the Bill of Rights is superfluous, because the Bill of Rights prohibits things that are not even permitted in the first place. (Hamilton, Federalist #84: "For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?")

The Fifth Amendment states, "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation", but even that does not empower the federal government to practice eminent domain; it merely limits that power insofar as it exists. It says that property shall not be taken without compensation, but nowhere is there a power to take any property in the first place.

Compare how the First Amendment prohibits the restriction of free speech, but that really, the government was never granted any power to restrict speech in the first place. So too, the Fifth Amendment prohibits taking property without compensation, but really, the government was never granted any power to take property in the first place.

In short: if we take the Federalist tack that the Bill of Rights is superfluous, and that really, we ought to entirely ignore it and do nothing without express sanction in the Constitution (and pretend the Bill of Rights does not even exist), then wouldn't that mean that eminent domain is legitimate only if we find a clause in the Constitution expressly permitting it? (I think the Antifederalists would agree, only they did not trust the government, so they wanted a superfluous and redundant Bill of Rights, just to be safe.) So doesn't that mean that eminent domain is unconstitutional even according to Hamilton?

The issue is, that this implies a contradiction within the Constitution. I mean, if the Fifth Amendment merely said, "... nor shall private property be taken for public use", period, omitting "without just compensation", then fine, we'd say that the clause is redundant and superfluous, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. But that "without just compensation" throws a spanner in the works; it implies that someone thinks that WITH just compensation it WILL be legal, but that is apparently false. If, according to Hamilton's logic, eminent domain is prohibited absolutely (because there is no express permission), then why say "without just compensation"? Just say, "... nor shall private property be taken for public use", period. Heck, go one better and say, ""... nor shall private property be taken", omitting "for public use" as well! It's understandable when John Adams violates not only the First Amendment but also the doctrine of enumerated, limited powers (that renders the First Amendment redundant), because he is a selfish, power-hungry human, and the government applies the laws only when those laws are in its own favor. But one expects the Constitution to be at least internally consistent; it's reasonable when the practice of the government contradicts the theory, but it's not reasonable when the theory contradicts itself.

Obviously, states are not bound by the Constitution, so it is certainly possible that on the state level, property is held by fee simple, and not allodial title. (This would be despotic and evil, of course, but still constitutional. I am reminded of Rose Wilder Lane recounting a conversation with some primitive Himalayans, who said that if you must pay property taxes in America, then apparently, the government owns your property, and you merely rent it. From the mouths of babes.) So it is eminent domain on the federal level that I cannot wrap my brain around.

So I am confused. Could you please help me?

Thank you, and sincerely,
Michael Makovi
Jerusalem, Israel; formerly of Silver Spring, MD

The Purpose of Jobs and Employment

2011-06-20T12:06:00.003+03:00

There is an especially poignant moment in the lyrics of the "Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Round 2" video, where Hayek explains the very purpose of jobs and employment, to counter Keynes's fallacies:

Creating employment is a straight forward craft when the nation’s at war and there’s a draft. If every worker were staffed in the army and fleet we’d have full employment and nothing to eat.

Jobs are a means, not the end in themselves. People work to live better, to put food on the shelves. Real growth means production of what people demand. That’s entrepreneurship, not your central plan.

One internet commenter put the matter well, here:

First we have to consider what the purpose of jobs are. The purpose of jobs is to create things that we want; things like pizzas, ipods, and TV's. If pizzas and ipods and TV's rained down from heaven, we wouldn't need to work anymore. The purpose of jobs isn't to have everyone work. If that's all you want then here is the solution: Have one-half of the country dig holes, and have the other half of the country fill them up.

One thing people get wrong is they think that there are only a limited amount of jobs available for people to do, hence a person who can't get a job is "forced" to take anything they can get, like a horrible job from GE. Actually, there are an unlimited amount of jobs, because people have an unlimited desire for goods. Think of jobs as like having a wish-list with all of the things that we want and dream of on the list. The more jobs we accomplish at the beginning of the list, the further down the list we can go.

Think of it like Swiss Family Robinson. At the beginning of their list are tasks like "Get Coconuts," then "Build House," then "Build Raft" then maybe far down "Create Work Of Art." The more things they can produce, the further down the wish-list they can go. When a company is able to increase their efficiency and thereby produce more goods with the same amount of labor, they then are able to sell us those goods for less money. That means we then have money to spend on something further down our wish-list. Like a new bicycle for instance. And guess what that means for the bicycle company? They now need to hire new people to make more bikes which everyone is now buying because they can suddenly afford it. So jobs just shift down the wish-list.

This actually cuts through the baloney in that scene in I, Robot, where Will Smith tells the executive that his robots are crapping on the little guy because they are doing jobs like furniture-making that people used to do. He doesn't get that if robots made all of our goods, then the goods would be so much more abundant and therefore cheaper because greater supply lowers prices. And the furniture-makers could move down the list and start making works of art or whatever. Think about this: 99% of the jobs people used to do, like farming for example, are done by giant robot machine combines that can do in 5 minutes what a man took a day to do. So why don't we have 99% unemployment today?

The reason why there aren't an unlimited amount of jobs in America today and there is unemployment is because of things like unions [voluntary unions are fine, government backed unions are not], minimum wages, zoning, managed trade agreements like NAFTA that benefit big corporations because only they have a team of lawyers that can maneuver through them, Dept. of Agriculture laws where the government pays farmers for growing millions of dollars worth of food and letting it rot in the fields so that the price of food goes up (uhhh... how about not doing that and letting those farmers work on another item on our endless list?) and the Federal Reserve that causes the boom-bust business cycle and inflation.

Just one comment: regarding the governmentally-stipulated burning of agricultural produce to raise prices, the fear is that if farmers grow too much food, the prices on food will go down, and the farmers will not earn enough money to live. Somehow, it never occurs to the government that a few things could happen: (1) a few farmers realize that there is over-supply of food, and hence over-supply of food producers, and that they should go find jobs in better-paying sectors, "better-paying" meaning that supply is not yet sufficient to mean demand, meaning that their labor is needed more there than here; (2) they could sell more food to people, that more supply of food at a lower price might boost demand for people who couldn't afford enough food; for example, perhaps poor inner-city individuals or starving Africans might buy more American produce if that produce suddenly got cheaper, but the government cannot conceive of the fact that demand might increase. As the commenter put it, it used to be that 99% of people were employed in subsistence farmer; we aren't all unemployed today because once farming became more efficient, and the same food could be grown with less labor, we all diversified and found new jobs to fulfill new desires that we never even had an opportunity for. (A Medieval peasant did not care about art; he was too concerned about food. Now that food is satisfied, we can go down the list.) So the government assumes that with more produce and lower prices, demand will remain the same, and the farmers will become poor; the possibility that demand will increase or that some farmers will liquidate their jobs and find new employment in a higher-demand sector somewhere else, never occurs to the government.

The First Amendment and Expressions of Religion in Public Schools

2011-06-14T23:05:00.010+03:00

We hear a lot of talk about how expressions of religion in public schools - such as mentions of God by high school graduating valedictorians - is contrary to the First Amendment. The problem, however, is that such an argument ignores the actual text of the First Amendment itself. Let us quote that amendment, with emphasis added by me:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Fourteenth Amendment extends (federal) "Congress" to include the states(' legislatures), but nothing has changed "shall make no law". Actually, Clarence Thomas makes an argument that I have already previously made myself independently, namely that according to the literature of the Framers (see, for example, Justice Joseph Story's opinion), freedom of exercise was considered a universal human right, but freedom from a state-established church was not, and that therefore, if the Fourteenth Amendment extends protection of all liberties and rights (such as they were understood by the Framers) to the state-level, then, if we accept the consensus of what everyone considered to be rights at the time, states would be required to guarantee freedom of exercise but they would not be required to guarantee freedom from establishments. That is to say, the Framers recognized certain things as rights and certain things not as rights, and sometimes, they would say that something was a human right but that the federal Constitution had no power to force the states to respect that right; the Fourteenth Amendment changed this, by requiring states to recognize all human rights, but it did nothing to expand the list of rights beyond those recognized by the Framers. I would say, personally, that the Framers were wrong for countenancing state-level establishments, but they countenanced them nevertheless, despite my disapproval. According to this argument, the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the "freedom of exercise" clause but not the "respecting an establishment" clause. But be that as it may. The argument I will make below, applies fully even if the entire First Amendment is incorporated without distinction. So let us just say, for the sake of argument, that the Fourteenth Amendment extends the entire First Amendment to the state-level; if so, then it extends (federal) "Congress" to include the states(' legislatures), but it does not affect "shall make no law".

Given that the First Amendment speaks only of laws, it obviously does nothing to restrict the private sphere. As for the other branches of government, viz. executive and judicial, it would seem to me that the First Amendment does not affect them. Rather, what would limit them, is any constitutional - whether federal or state - stipulations of their power.

If, for example, the Constitution were to specify that the president cannot do anything not provided in law ("the president's powers shall be limited to executing any laws already passed by Congress"), then he could not do anything religious, insofar as any religious law would be unconstitutional, and so the only way he could do anything religious would be to act according to something other than the law, and this hypothetical provision already said that he cannot do anything except for what is in the law. (Obviously, the First Amendment does not speak of things that are merely "religious". And even if it did, what does "religion" mean? Does a religion have to be theistic? I don't want to get into defining religion. Let's just speak of "religion" and "religious", without bothering to define what that means.)

That is hypothetical, of course, as no such constitutional provision exists. The point, however, is that what would limit the executive and judicial branches is their own constitutional stipulations of power, be whatever they may, but the First Amendment affects only the legislature and no one but the legislature.

For example, the federal Constitution states the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient". Nothing there says that anything he states in the State of the Union, or any of his recommendations, must be in accordance with any other laws. So he can, apparently, say whatever on earth floats his boat. Congress cannot pass a law that favors or restricts religion, but apparently, the president could get up and read Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", and nothing would stop him, for Congress did not thereby pass a law, and the president did nothing contrary to his own personal stipulations of power. And if fact, if Congress passed a law banning the president from using the State of the Union address as an opportunity to hold a Christian revival meeting, that ban itself would violate the First Amendment!

So I ask: what law is there about prayers offered by a valedictorian? According to the First Amendment, any such religious expression, even by governmental officials, is permissible as long as there is no law mandating it. Only if some other express constitutional provision, outside the First Amendment, restricts the executive and/or judicial branches, is there a problem, but the First Amendment affects only the legislature; it does not affect even governmental officials not in the legislature, much less does it affect private citizens such as a high school valedictorian.

As an aside, I am frustrated to no end by those who cite the First Amendment's religious clauses in their defense (in order to restrict governmental involvement in religion) but who are otherwise do not oppose government involvement in general. I often say that religious freedom is merely a microcosm of libertarianism in general. If you study 16th-18th-century history, you see that much of libertarianism in general grew out of opposition to religious persecution in particular. After all, religion was the most important thing in the world, and if there was ever any opposition to government or tyranny, that opposition would first surface with religion. Whether a person was willing to change his religion to suit the government's, or whether he was adamant about worshiping in his own way; and whether he tried to use the government to force others to worship like himself, was always the first manifestation of whether a person was a statist or a libertarian. (The second manifestation was probably the right to bear arms; once a person decided to rebel against the government over religion, he needed weaponry in order to do so. "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God"!) So anyone who demands religious freedom but not libertarianism in general, is a hypocrite. In 18th-century America, there was already, for the most part, complete freedom of exercise. The state church of Massachusetts, for example, required people to pay taxes to support the church, but otherwise, everyone was free to worship as he wanted. Patrick Henry (the great Antifederalist!) wanted to imitate this in Virginia, with his "A Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion", but Thomas Jefferson opposed it with his own (and victorious) Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom. But as I said, there was already full freedom of exercise! So what did Jefferson oppose? Taxation. That is it: taxation. Taxation alone was the sole issue at stake. So how many people who cite Jefferson's famous letter to the Danbury Baptists (which relied on Roger Williams, hardly an atheist), also rely on Jefferson's argument that the primary issue of religion-and-government was taxation and taxation alone? Are these people who speak of "a wall of separation between Church & State", also voting for Ron Paul? Anyone who demands freedom of worship, without denouncing John Maynard Keynes as a despotic tyrant, is a hypocrite. Indeed, my own being a libertarian today, started with my opposition to the Israeli government's insistence that IDF soldiers had to obey orders to expel Jews from Gaza, which orders these soldiers felt violated the Torah. It was a short step from my opposing a government that insisted soldiers obey orders they considered to be contrary to their religion, to my today being a general libertarian, favoring Austrian Economics and all that jazz.

Anarchist's Progress: the State as a Monopoly on the Use of Violence

2011-06-10T08:49:00.002+03:00

I was just remembering how I first encountered Max Weber's concept of the state as that body possessing a monopoly on the use of violence, months ago, when a friend of mine posted on Facebook some article about sectarian violence in some Middle Eastern country (I forget which), where he commented in general about failed states that failed to exercise the monopoly on the use of (legitimate) violence.

In my naivety, I commented that according to natural law, all private men have a God-given, absolute right to bear arms, and that as per nemo potest dare quod non habet ("no man can grant that which he does not own himself", i.e. the government has only those powers granted to it by those citizens who themselves possess those powers), it is the people who grant the government the right to bear arms, not vice versa. Therefore, I said, the concept of the government having a monopoly on the use of violence, and granting to citizens the right to use violence, made no sense.

Therefore, I said, the notion that a state is "failed" for failing to secure a monopoly on violence per se, made no sense to me. To me, the state had a functional purpose, viz. to protect life, liberty, and property, but it did not have a monopoly on this function. The state was an organization formed by voluntary contract and consent, and citizens could, at any time, at will, revoke their consent to be governed. The state might "fail", in my mind, if it failed to suppress immoral or unjust violence, i.e. if it failed to fulfill its functional purpose, but not if it merely failed to suppress all violence per se outside the state's monopoly, which monopoly I did not recognize.

So we see that I was an anarchist a long time ago, but I just didn't realize it. I honestly thought I was a minarchist. To me, to say that the state ought to exist as a voluntary organization composed of those who consented to membership and who hadn't submitted a request to be disenrolled, was a perfectly cogent thing to believe without being an anarchist. In defense of my naivety, I quote Albert Jay Nock's "Anarchist's Progress":

It will easily be seen, I think, that the only unusual thing about all this was that my mind was perfectly unprepossessed and blank throughout. My experiences were surely not uncommon, and my reasonings and inferences were no more than any child, who was more than halfwitted, could have made without trouble. But my mind had never been perverted or sophisticated; it was left to itself. I never went to school, so I was never indoctrinated with pseudo-patriotic fustian of any kind, and the plain, natural truth of such matters as I have been describing, therefore, found its way to my mind without encountering any artificial obstacle.

Torah Judaism: A David Friedman-ite Anarcho Capitalism

2011-06-06T18:04:00.000+03:00

According to Rambam's view that a rabbi or dayan is forbidden to live off the public, but must earn his own income independently, Judaism is actually a David Friedman-style anarcho-capitalism. According to Friedman, anarcho-capitalism is simply when you have a justice system that must operate on voluntarily-donated/paid funds rather than coerced-taxation.

The Talmud also presents a society in which rabbis earn their own livings by manual labor, not subsisting off public funds.

Also, while the Torah does command that tithes be paid to the priests, Rabbi Emanuel Rackman notes in his book One Man's Judaism, that technically, the halakhah requires only that you separate the tithes from your food, not that you give them to anyone. That is, your food is not kosher until you separate the tithe, but once you separate the tithe, making the food kosher, there is nothing to force you to actually give that tithe to anyone. The Talmud says that everyone is free to give to the tithe to the priest of his personal choosing.

Anyway, I quote Pirkei Avot:

(1) "Rabbi Tzadok used to say: Do not make the Torah a crown with which to aggrandize yourself, nor use it as a spade with which to dig. As Hillel used to say: He who makes worldly use of the crown of the Torah shall perish. Thus you may infer that any one who exploits the words of the Torah removes himself from the world of life."

(2) "Shemayah and Avtalion received the Torah from them. Shemayah said: Love work; hate domination; and seek not undue intimacy with the government."

(3) "Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince said: Great is study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both puts sin out of mind. All study of the Torah which is not supplemented by work is destined to prove futile and causes sin. Let all who occupy themselves with communal affairs do so for Heaven's sake, for then the merit of their fathers sustains them and their righteousness endures forever. And as for you, G-d will then say: I count you worthy of great reward as if you had done it all yourselves."

Fiat Currency vs. Commodity Currency, and the Crime of Private Money

2011-06-04T21:56:00.000+03:00

On Facebook, my friend Brett posted Silver-Mad Small Investors Fueled an Epic Rise and Fall, about a crash in the value of silver. (The Facebook post, which will be viewable to you depending on Brett's privacy settings, is here.)

His friend Roberto commented, "As I believe I commented before, this, among many other reasons, is why non-fiat currency is bullshit."

I replied,

‎... and I suppose you're arguing that fiat currency cannot inflate, LOL? Last time I checked, the Federal Reserve has caused the dollar to lose 95% of its value. There's something perverse about arguing that because silver is not entirely stable, that we should therefore use something even less stable. City A has a relatively high crime rate, so everyone in City A should move to City B, where the crime rate is even higher. Yay!

Furthermore, silver is not the only commodity out there. You also have gold, platinum, palladium, antique furniture... Silver is like any commodity: its value changes. No one claimed that they are immune to changing in value, the same way that the value of anything can change. When cars were invented, the value of horses would have probably plummeted, but did people complain and petition that cars be banned to save the horses industry?

The ideal currency would be a non-coerced one, i.e. one without any legal tender law. Let people negotiate transactions in whatever currency they desire. If they want to negotiate transactions in United States Treasury Notes, then let them, by all means; they are free to do so. It's just that no one should be coerced into using a given currency against his will. So ideally, we wouldn't even have a gold standard or a silver standard; we'd just have a liberty-of-contract standard.

Like I said, if people want to voluntary trade in Treasury Notes, they should be free to do so. They simply shouldn't be coerced into using Federal Reserve notes against their wills. Keynesians are strangely reluctant to answer the following question: if their policies are so superior, then shouldn't they be able to prevail of their own intrinsic excellence? That is, if government money is so much more stable than the free-market alternatives, then why do you have to force anyone to use it? If it is so much better, then people ought to voluntarily gravitate to it, naturally and organically, without coercion. The very fact that the government must coerce people into complying with its policies, shows how vacuous the government's claims are, how naked the emperor truly is. You don't have to pass a law against yelling "the emperor is naked", unless he really is naked. If you have to pass a legal tender law, it means that you know your currency is worthless. To quote John Witherspoon, "Essay on Money", "The measure [of legal tender laws] carries absurdity in its very face. Why will you make a law to oblige men to take money when it is offered them? Are there any who refuse it when it is good? If it is necessary to force them, does not this demonstrate that it is not good?"

Roberto replied,

The difference between commodity and fiat currency -- really, the ONLY difference -- is that you can control the rate of inflation or deflation for a fiat currency in most cases. You can't with a commodity since it's tied to speculation and what comes out of the earth. That's why every nation on earth uses a fiat currency today; it simply works. Nobody is coerced into using any form of currency. Media of exchange are purely defined by what it accepted. ... ‎"Value" is just a number. Purchasing power is what counts, and purchasing power has largely held steady. Which, with advances in technology and infrastructure, mean purchasing power has in real terms massively increased.

I responded,

"That's why every nation on earth uses a fiat currency today; it simply works."

No. It's because fiat currency gives the government an amazing ability to monetize the debt. Likewise, no, it does *not* give YOU an ability to control inflation; it gives the GOVERNMENT ability to control inflation in whatever way will work to the government's favor. In fact, the Federal Reserve was founded when banks complained that having to have specie on hand to back their paper, cramped their style and prevented them from promiscuously over-inflating the currency via fractional reserve banking. The banks were being held accountable, and they didn't like it, so they asked the government to cartelize the industry. The government agreed as long as it got a cut of the plunder, via monetization of the debt.

Nobody is coerced, eh? What about when FDR outlawed the private ownership of gold and nullified all contractual gold clauses? That doesn't strike you as coercive.

By the way, having a human able to control inflation is inherently a very bad thing. It is precisely because specie currency cannot be controlled by any human, that it is so attractive. You have offered the best argument *against* fiat currency. Thank you, sir.

"'Value' is just a number. Purchasing power is what counts"

So you care nothing for people's savings? As long as people's wages rise commensurately with inflation, you don't care about those who have been saving their incomes for the long term, or even those who don't have incomes?

In other words, you have no regard for the poor who must save their money over time to purchase expensive goods, nor do you care about the elderly.

So you hate the poor and the elderly. Good to know. I bid you adieu, you asshole.

Brett's friend Matthew gave a valuable defense of my arguments:

This whole thread makes me laugh, then incredibly sad over and over again.

The difference isn't between "fiat" and "commodity" currency. It's between what people with guns say is money and what everyone else says is money.

Speculators can be the life and death of either. You will see this happen in just a bit, when no matter how high yields go on Treasury bonds they simply won't sell.

The question is, should everyone be allowed to switch currencies- use whatever medium of exchange they want- or should people with guns enforce a monopoly on this exchange. Whether printed currency is backed by commodities or not is irrelevant if the exchange rate is centrally controlled.

The Austrian school is for free money, not a gold backed currency. (Though they do recognize that gold is harder to tamper with

Roberto retorted,

Everyone can use any medium of exchange they want, Matthew. Seriously, go over to a local Mom-and-Pop store and try offering the owners something not in the form of dollars in exchange for goods and services (I recommend a fairly rare commodity that is commonly valued as a semi-liquid form of exchange, like gold or diamonds). If you offer 'em enough of something they want, I guarantee they'll provide to you in exchange for whatever it is you're willing to give them in exchange. This is done ALL THE FUCKING TIME in EVERY ECONOMY ON EARTH. :P

I responded to Roberto, saying,

@Roberto:

You said, "Everyone can use any medium of exchange they want, Matthew."

The United States government begs to differ: http://mises.org/daily/5184/The-Crime-of-Private-Money

Regarding Bernard von NotHaus's Liberty Dollars, for which he was convicted with counterfeiting, Robert M. Murphy has two salient comments:
(1) "It would be naïve to conclude that von NotHaus would have been safe had he taken more care to distinguish his coins from those of the US mint. For one thing, the government's case was internally contradictory: On the one hand, von NotHaus is accused of counterfeiting, in other words, trying to pass his coins off as authentic US coins. On the other hand, von NotHaus is accused of undermining the 'legitimate' US currency by offering a product to compete with it. Indeed, von NotHaus advertised his Liberty Dollars as inflation-proof substitutes for the "genuine" US currency. So which is it? Either von NotHaus was trying to pass his coins off as regular quarters and dollars, or he was trying to convince people that his own coins were superior."

In other words, von NotHaus was convicted of both counterfeiting ( = imitating US currency) and of competing with it ( = deliberately NOT counterfeiting, and offering something patently unlike US currency for the express purpose of highlighting how it is NOT US currency). He was damned either way.

The government's indictment of non NotHaus read, in part, "Along with the power to coin money, Congress has the concurrent power to restrain the circulation of money not issued under its own authority, in order to protect and preserve the constitutional currency for the benefit of the nation. Thus, it is a violation of law for private coin systems to compete with the official coinage of the United States." I will note in passing the fact that the Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to prevent competition with its own currency; indeed, the states alone ratify currency as legal tender, and they are perfectly entitled to ratify FOREIGN NATIONS' currency as legal tender! In fact, the US dollar was originally just a rebranded Spanish dollar! But aside from this fact, the point is that the United States government has announced that it will crack down on COMPETITION with its currency.

So Roberto, when you said, "Seriously, go over to a local Mom-and-Pop store and try offering the owners something not in the form of dollars in exchange for goods and services", you were advocating that Matthew violate the law. Roberto, you are guilty of sedition, of active and explicit advocacy that Matthew ought to break the law.

(2) Murphy's second comment is this: "As a college professor and lecturer at the Mises Institute, I have always had some difficulty explaining exactly how the government kept everybody using fiat money. Students would often think that legal-tender laws explained everything, but I would point out that they weren't the whole story. ... I would argue that if any attempts to circumvent the dollar actually got off the ground, then the government would find some legal pretext to shut it down. So it was pointless to study the legal code and come up with loopholes, because the government wouldn't play by the rules. It would find a way to shut down a genuine threat to its monopoly on money, meaning no entrepreneur would spend the resources and time trying to launch an alternative system. The fate of Bernard von NotHaus has vindicated my musings."

Edwin Vieira has a different explanation than Murphy about why private currency has not taken off. His argument is, that once FDR outlawed all private gold clauses, people forgot about the possibility of such clauses even after they became legal again. But Vieira's argument, though different than Murphy's, does not make the government look any better.

Here Comes My Baby: Isaiah on Social Security

2011-05-30T17:28:00.002+03:00

Today, a friend posted a satirical argument from the Borowitz Report, Republicans Propose Replacing Social Security with Groupons. The article was of course hilarious, but I couldn't help but respond:

The Amish advanced the argument that Social Security is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and I think they were exactly correct. I have been saying for some time now, that egalitarian redistribution of wealth in general, as part of "welfare", violates liberty of conscience and freedom of religion. The Amish merely applied that argument to Social Security specifically.

How to Fix Social Security, Amish Style

Valentine Byler vs. the IRS: "Pay Unto Caesar - The Amish & Social Security"

To quote the Amish themselves:
We, as representatives of the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church, do herein express our deep appreciation, and with grateful hearts do we recount the favors and consideration accorded our forefathers in the past...

We believe in a supreme being and also the constitution of the USA, and we feel the Social Security Act and Old Age Survivors Insurance [OASI] is abridging and infringing to our religious freedom. We believe in giving alms in the church according to Christ’s teaching.

It has been our Christian concern from birth of our church group to supply those of our group who have a need, financial or otherwise... Our faith has always been sufficient to meet the needs as they come about, and we feel the present OASI is an infringement on our responsibilities; as a church we feel grieved that this OASI has come upon us...

We Bishops, representatives of the Old Order Churches of the USA are appealing to you to prayerfully consider and reconsider this favor. In God we trust.

After this exchange, pondering the subject of Social Security, and thinking about a letter of support to the Amish from a writer in Dallas, Texas, reading,

May I congratulate you on having the intestinal fortitude to stand up for your beliefs. While I am aware that your action stemmed from a love of your religion rather than from defiance, I hope that your example may serve to point out to some of us just how far our benevolent Government will go to reach its goal of making dependents of us all. There seems to be no place for a person who asks merely to be left alone, and to provide for himself and his family.

...I was reminded of Isaiah 42:7, "To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house."

Meanwhile, I was listening to Cat Stevens sing "Here Comes My Baby", and I realized that one could listen to the song, as if it were God singing it to humanity, echoing the immediately following verse from Isaiah 42, namely verse 8, "I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images."

So without further ado, I offer, as a religious-political expression, Cat Stevens's "Here Comes My Baby", accompanied by Isaiah 42:6-8:

I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and have taken hold of thy hand, and kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations; To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images.

אֲנִי יְהוָה קְרָאתִיךָ בְצֶדֶק, וְאַחְזֵק בְּיָדֶךָ; וְאֶצָּרְךָ, וְאֶתֶּנְךָ לִבְרִית עָם--לְאוֹר גּוֹיִם. לִפְקֹחַ, עֵינַיִם עִוְרוֹת; לְהוֹצִיא מִמַּסְגֵּר אַסִּיר, מִבֵּית כֶּלֶא יֹשְׁבֵי חֹשֶׁךְ. אֲנִי יְהוָה, הוּא שְׁמִי; וּכְבוֹדִי לְאַחֵר לֹא-אֶתֵּן, וּתְהִלָּתִי לַפְּסִילִים.

Israeli Torah-Theocracy: Simple Libertarianism

2011-05-22T09:57:00.000+03:00

If you check the halakhah (Jewish law), it says that ANY gentile can live in Israel as long as he keeps the Noahide laws (the laws of basic, righteous conduct, expected of gentiles). And what do the Noahide laws say? Do not hurt your neighbor; do not commit crime. So basically, as long as you're a libertarian, you're allowed to live in Israel, according to the halakhah.

If the halakhah also demanded that Noahides be monotheistic (the first Noahide law is that you cannot be an idolater), and that gentiles cannot wield power in Israel (only Jews are allowed to wield political power in Israel, according to the halakhah, even if gentiles are allowed to live in Israel), it was likely because being a monotheistic Jew was the safest guarantee of being a libertarian.

The same way that religious tests of office in Puritan New England were meant to keep pro-monarchy Anglicans out of office (who would have surrendered the whole community to the king if they got into office), so too, the restriction to monotheists (for gentiles' habitation in Israel) and Jews (for office in Israel) was meant to make sure that only libertarians would populate and run the country.

These are my own thoughts, but I am inclined to agree with Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom: Abraham "had taught his increasing family that men are free." (p. 73) "Abraham said that none of these gods exist. He said that God is the One Creator-and-Judge. God is The Right, he said; Rightness creates the universe and judge's men acts. (As water judge's a swimmer's rightness in swimming, God judges rightness in living.) But God does not control any man, Abraham said; a man controls himself, he is free to do good or evil in the sight of God." (p. 74) "When you think of the pagan world as it was in the historical time when only the Israelites held this truth, you see their preserving it as the great achievement of all history." (p. 75) "They were a very small group, surrounded by powerful pagan empires; Egypt in the south, Armenia, Persia, Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, in the north and east, and in the west, Rome. The most promising young Israelites were always falling in love with pagan girls. The pagan achievements awed them all. When you see the incredible walls of Baalbek or Tadmor, in ruins as they are now, and even with the memory of New York's towers behind your eyelids, you are struck dumb. The simple Israelites who saw these gigantic cities in their magnificence, dwarfing their thronging populations, must have been stunned. They would have melted humbly into those pagan multitudes, if their strong men had not stood in the way and driven them back with threats, telling them that they were like no other people, that they were set apart, chosen to know the truth and hold to it. They wanted to be 'like all the other nations.' But to be like any other people, they must forget that men are free. That is the truth they held. Therefore, of course, they were anarchists. They lived and prospered for centuries, with no government whatsoever." (pp. 77f.)

Regarding all inhabitants of Israel having to be monotheist, cf. John Locke's "A Letter Concerning Toleration", that Biblical Israel punished idolaters because, in a unique fashion, God was the immediate Legislator.

Disingenuous Cherry-picking: The Fallacies in Citing Alexander Hamilton and the Supreme Court

2011-05-20T16:05:00.000+03:00

Thomas E. Woods responds to Paul J. O'Rourke's claim that Ron Paul does not know the Constitution. Basically, O'Rouke had cited Alexander Hamilton's broad interpretation of the "general welfare" clause and the 1798 "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen" (which was an act of socialized healthcare), to argue that Obamacare is constitutional and that Ron Paul is wrong for arguing that the "general welfare" is not a broad, unlimited grant of power. Woods in turn refutes O'Rouke, but I just want to add a few remarks to what Woods says.

For the statists (such as O'Rouke), it seems that as long as you can find any opinion permitting government action, that action is alright. If Alexander Hamilton interpreted "general welfare" as a carte blanche, then who are we to disagree? The fact that others, such as Madison, disagreed with this interpretation of "general welfare", and the fact that the Federalists in general had succeeded in getting the Constitution ratified only assuaging the fears of the Antifederalists and convincing them that the federal government would have only limited, enumerated, delegated powers (which means "general welfare" cannot be a carte blanche), is seen as irrelevant by them.

Similarly, they'll cite Supreme Court decisions, as if a Supreme Court decision contradicting the Constitution is more valid than the Constitution itself. They'll say, "See, the Constitution permits X, because Judge So-and-so said so!" But the possibility that the judge was wrong, never occurs to them. The entire case law method of law is thus fundamentally moronic. What is authoritative is the Constitution, not anyone's personal opinion of it. Court decisions ought to be cited insofar as they are (thought) to express valid interpretations of the Constitution, not as having any authority in and of themselves.

The statists will cite actions of the Federalists like Adams and Hamilton, and say, "See, the Framers did it!" Now, I must admit, this IS a valid argument. When they make this argument, they are at least on reasonable territory. O'Rouke cites Adams's coerced insurance for sailors, and implies the rhetorical question, are we going to say that Adams, one of the Framers, did not know the Constitution? The argument is a seriously reasonable one. But there's still a problem: Madison's and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions claimed, very vehemently, that Adams was eviscerating the Constitution. Regarding the "general welfare" clause, Madison's Virginia Resolution says,

That the General Assembly [of Virginia] doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has in sundry instances, been manifested by the federal government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that implications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which having been copied from the very limited grant of power, in the former articles of confederation were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect, of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases...

So contra O'Rouke, yes, it is very possible that Adams did not understand the Constitution! Alternatively, I would say, the Framers themselves were more more correct than they knew, when they said men are sinful and liable to abuse power. In fact, when Jefferson was president, he imposed a trade embargo which New England thought unconstitutional, and the New Englanders quoted his own Kentucky Resolution right back at him in justifying their disobeying him. So I would say that it is far more significant when a Framer thought the Constitution forbade something, than when he thought the Constitution permitted it. כחא דהתרא עדיפא ("the power of permission is superior"), a permission is more novel (and thus more suspicious) than a prohibition. To forbid the government an exercise of power, is always the safest and most reasonable route, ספק דאורייתא לחומרא ("in a case of doubt about a Torah law, be strict"), in a case of doubt, we should be strict. To be lenient and permit the government an exercise of power, is suspicious and novel, and it is always possible that the official in power is either maliciously abusing his power, or else his own aspirations have clouded his judgement and he honestly believes his exercise of power is legitimate when it is in fact not. But when anyone interprets the Constitution as limiting the government's power (Madison: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."), it is much more reasonable for us to take it at face value and as accurate and true.

These people will cherry-pick permissive legal opinions the same way that some lax and lazy Modern Orthodox Jews will, but with one difference: when a lax person cherry-picks an obscure leniency, he is affecting only himself, and if his cherry-picking is sinful, at least he is hurting only himself. But it is perverse to cherry-pick a lenient opinion for the government, because this means the government will use that leniency to exercise power over others. It is perverse to be lenient at someone else's expense.

Will We Have a Sanhedrin In the Future?

2011-03-25T10:57:00.009+02:00

I know I am going to receive a lot of flak for the following, but thankfully, the Chief Rabbinate (who performed - and claims to be able to annul - my conversion) doesn't read my blog, and furthermore, nothing a man does (versus what a woman does) can harm his shiddukh chances. So I figure, go for broke:

It seems to me that the entirety of Mesekhet Horayot - about what to do when the Sanhedrin errs - itself is the eulogy for the Sanhedrin. The Yerushalmi there says that you disobey the Sanhedrin when it says left is right and right is left, and the Bavli there says that there is no kavod ha-rav (honoring a rabbi) in a case of hillul ha-shem (desecration of God's name, including pronouncement of erroneous halakhic views). Furthermore, the principle of ein shaliah b'davar `averah ("there is no [excuse of being someone else's] proxy [as an agent] in the case of [the performance of] sin [at their behest]"), which demands disobedience of everything and anything anyone ever commands anyone else when it violates the Torah, means here would never be a case where you should obey the Sanhedrin if you disagree with it, which results in abolition of the Sanhedrin altogether.

Now, the Sifrei famously disagrees, and say to follow the Sanhedrin even when it says left is right and right is left, but we have already seen that the Bavli and Yerushalmi seem to disagree, as well as the fundamental and axiomatic principle of ein shaliah b'davar `averah. Rabbi D. Z. Hoffman suggests that the Yerushalmi and Sifrei simply disagree, while others suggest that Sifrei and Yerushalmi are talking about two different situations: Sifrei says obey if you are a layman and don't know enough, Yerushalmi says to disobey if you are a hakham and know enough to question authority. Others, however, suggest that the two are talking about different kinds of errors of the Sanhedrin's: Sifrei says obey a minor error (such as a disagreement between you and the Sanhedrin on how to interpret a source), but Yerushalmi says to disobey a major error (such as the Sanhedrin's grossly overlooking an entire critical source). But of those three opinions (one, that Sifrei and Bavli/Yerushalmi disagree; two, that they are directed at different kinds of people; three, that they are speaking of different kinds of errors), the first two of them seem to annul the entire existence of the Sanhedrin; when taken to their logical conclusions, they seem to say that no one should ever obey the Sanhedrin when they disagree with it.

Update: In the comments, here, Larry Lennhoff directed me to here. There, two commentaries are translated, one by the RambaN - summarizing the simple and traditional view of obeying the Sanhedrin - and the other by the Yad ha-Melekh (a commentary on the RambaM), summarizing the view of disobedience which I here, in my blog, am favoring. The RambaM, in Hilkhot Mamrim 1:2, says,

ב כָּל מִי שְׁאֵינוּ עוֹשֶׂה בְּהוֹרָאָתָן--עוֹבֵר בְּלֹא תַעֲשֶׂה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמָר "לֹא תָסוּר, מִכָּל הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר-יַגִּידוּ לְךָ" (ראה דברים יז,יא). וְאֵין לוֹקִין עַל לָאו זֶה, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁנִּתַּן לְאַזְהָרַת מִיתַת בֵּית דִּין: שֶׁכָּל חָכָם שֶׁמּוֹרֶה עַל דִּבְרֵיהֶם--מִיתָתוֹ בְּחָנֵק, שֶׁנֶּאֱמָר "וְהָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-יַעֲשֶׂה בְזָדוֹן, לְבִלְתִּי שְׁמֹעַ . . ." (דברים יז,יב).

(My translation) Anyone who does not act according to their (the Sanhedrin's) ruling, violates a negative commandment, as it says, "Do not depart from any word which they shall tell you" (cf. Deuteronomy 17:11). And we do not lash (violators) for (violation of) this negative commandment, because it is warned in the Torah as being liable for capital punishment, i.e. death by the court, for every sage who rebels against their (the Sanhedrin's) words (i.e. the zaqen mamre), his death is by strangulation, as it says, "And the man who shall do deliberately, without listening..." (Deuteronomy 17:12).

Back to the Yad la-Melekh, commenting on RambaM, he says,

…It is clear that according to the understanding of Rashi and the Mizrachi the intent of the Sifre [that one must listen to the rabbis even when it apparently involves Torah prohibitions] is against the view of the Babylonian Talmud and also against the Yerushalmi. Furthermore since the Rambam omits mention of this Sifre therefore we have only the halachic view that is explicit in the Bavli and Yerushalmi. Thus all halachic rulings which appear to contradict the words of the Torah e.g., eating prohibited fats or killing an innocent man – irrespective as to the authority of the rabbi giving the ruling they are not to be accepted. It is stated explicitly in the Yerushalmi and also the Bavli that if someone errs in this matter and thinks it is an obligation to listen to these rabbis to eat fat prohibited by the Torah because he thinks it is a mitzva to always obey the rabbis – this individual is obligated to bring a sacrifice as he would be for eating any Torah prohibited food in error.

(End of Update)

All the arguments against Haredi Da'at Torah (see Professor Lawrence Kaplan: (1), (2)) apply to the Sanhedrin too, albeit to a different degree. That is, while Haredi rabbis are very wrong and provide no justifications for their insanity other than "because I said so", by contrast, the Sanhedrin would, hopefully, be only a little bit wrong and actually try to justify itself, but the principle of the Sanhedrin is the same as with Da'at Torah. If we reject one, why not the other?

All this means that the entire institution of zaqen mamre (the rebellious elder wo disobeys the Sanhedrin) is like ben sorer u'moreh (the rebellious child, whom Hazal said was never meant to be punished in real life, with the Torah's treatment of that subject being an educational lesson of an ideal but unrealistic concept).

Update: my friend Michael Berg showed me this, a passage (and commentary thereon) from the Mei ha-Shiloah, the Ishbitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, discussing Korah. The Mei ha-Shiloah writes,

"The entire congregation is holy, and God is in their midst; why then do you lift yourselves up above the congregation of the Lord." (Num 16:3). Here Korach makes the claim that there is no hierarchy in Israel where one individual ought to be set higher than his fellow man, for God is in the midst of the entire congregation. That is to say that Hashem dwells within everyone equally, as it is written in the midrash (Talmud Bavli, Ta'anit, 31a) "In the future, the Holy One Blessed Be He will make a dance for all the righteous." "Dance" refers to a circle, in which no one is closer [to the center] than his fellow man. And Korach claimed that this vision was already realized at the time!?!

The blogger there, Elli Sacks, comments, saying,

wo weeks ago, in Parashat Be-ha'alotekha, we read about the story of Eldad and Meidad. As you will recall (Numbers: Chapter 11) the 70 elders of Israel had traveled from the Israelite camp to the Tent of Meeting where the Spirit of the LORD descended upon them, endowing them with the power of prophecy. At the same time, the Spirit of the LORD descended upon two additional men -- Eldad and Meidad -- who had remained within the Israelite encampment, and who also began to speak the word of God. Moshe's second-in-command, Yehoshua Bin Nun, feared that this "extra-territorial" prophesying represented a threat to the hierarchical power structure within Israelite society and asked Moshe to forbid them from doing so. But Moshe's reaction towards Eldad and Meidad is not only not hostile, it seems downright giddy. "Would that all of Hashem's people were prophets, and that Hashem had put His Spirit upon them!"

Does not the voice of Moshe in Be-ha'alotekha sound similar to Korach's voice in our parasha? Perhaps Moshe was echoing a sentiment that was popular in the Israelite camp. After all, hadn't the entire congregation achieved the level of prophecy at Sinai, when God spoke directly to each and every person present? If only the Children of Israel could have maintained that level of intimacy, that level of connection, there would have been no need for priests or elders or for political leadership. Moshe could have retired to the quiet of the Beit Midrash, learning Torah all day instead of constantly dealing with the enfuriating complaints of the maddening crowd.

So why is it that Moses was so offended by Korach's challenge? Why wasn't he wooed by the vision Korach proffered from the conclusion to Masekhet Ta'anit:
"Ulla Biraah said in the name of Rabbi Elazar: In the future the Holy One, Blessed be He, will make a dance of all the righteous people, and he will sit among them, in the middle of the circle, in the Garden of Eden; and each and every one will point with his finger toward Him, as it says: He shall say on that day, "Behold! This is our God; we hoped to Him and He saved us; this is Hashem to Whom we hoped; let us exult and be glad in His salvation."

The answer according to the Ishbitzer is that Korach was essentially correct in his claim, but, as so often is the case in life, his problem was one of timing. Korach expresses the true egalitarian ideal that will be realized in the End of Days when the righteous will dance around the Holy One in a circle, and everyone will commune in equal proximity to Hashem who will then truly be "in their midst." Nevertheless, it was patently clear to Moshe that this was NOT that time and that no matter the legitimacy of his ideals, Korach was jumping the gun.

It seems to me that we go a bit further: Exodus 20:15 states, "And they said unto Moses: 'Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.' Deuteronomy 5:5 has Moses recalling that event, saying, "I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare unto you the word of the LORD; for ye were afraid because of the fire, and went not up into the mount." The people asked God to not speak directly to them anymore, but to use Moses as His intermediary. And what was the result? According to the Kuzari, the Golden Calf was not an attempt to replace God, but to replace Moses; when Moses failed to return from the mountain, the people were terrified at the prospect of losing their intermediary between them and God. In other words, the desire to set up a religious hierarchy to interpose between man and God, resulted in idolatry. And with good reason: how could a desire to interpose something between man and God result in anything but idolatry?(End of Update)

So much for the theoretical aspect; let me ask practically: what need do we have for the Sanhedrin? All of the problems in the Orthodox world today, are not due to disunity and lack of a central authority, but rather due to the ignorance and/or ignoring of the mesorah (tradition) and authentic halakhah. Our problem is not that there are two Torahs in Israel (cf. the houses of Hillel and Shammai), but that some of these Torahs out today, are ridiculous perversions of the true Torah. The reinstitution of the Sanhedrin wouldn't solve any problems. Reinstituting the Sanhedrin would merely provide one party with a monopoly, and political science, game theory, and public choice theory tell us quite amply what happens when a political party gains a monopoly and lacks any competition. In short, they become hideously corrupted; witness: the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The last thing we need to do is provide any party with a monopoly. At least today, despite all the insanity in the Jewish world, one has the ability to disagree and follow his opinion, the one he believes he is correct. We need to increase the possibility by disbanding the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, not decrease it by turning the Rabbinate into a Sanhedrin.

The only need I would see for the Sanhedrin, is to legislate for the Beit ha-Miqdash (Temple)'s `avodah (sacrificial order), as there is no way to privatize the Temple. But Rabbi Avraham Yitzhaq ha-Qohen Kook and Rabbi Haim David Halevi said that sacrifices will not exist in the future and that they will be annulled, and if so, then there remains no need whatsoever for a Sanhedrin either. The historical institution would merely be like kingship or sacrifices: a concession to primitive, ignorant men of the "God speaks in the language of men" and "every prophet speaks in his own style" sort. Honestly, is my saying the Sanhedrin won't exist, any more extreme than saying qorbanot (sacrifices) won't? But Rav Kook and Rabbi Halevi said qorbanot indeed would not exist in the future! Now, the Torah has merely a few sentences about the Sanhedrin, while the entire book of Vayiqra (Leviticus) wasn't enough for qorbanot, and it had to spill over into Shemot (Exodus)!!! So if we can say that sacrifices - the subject of more than a fifth of the Torah! - will cease, then what is the danger of suggesting the same for the Sanhedrin too, which occupies merely a sentence or two in the Torah? And conceptually, what's the difference between ben sorer u'moreh and zaqen mamre? My point is that I do not believe my proposal is really so radical.

Regarding the Torah making concessions to primitive men, let me quote Rav Kook on this general subject, (Igrot 478, translated in Tzvi Feldman, Rav A. Y. Kook - Selected Letters (Ma'aliot Publications of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe; Ma'aleh Adumim, Israel, 1986), pp. 17f: [] are Feldman's, {} mine):

And if we find in the Torah certain things which other people think were based on the widely accepted notions of the distant past, but which are incompatible with the scientific knowledge of today, indeed, we do not know at all if today's research is absolute truth, and even if it is true, certainly there is also some important and sacred objective for which certain matters [in the Torah] needed to be presented in the commonly accepted description and not the exact one, as is plain in the spiritual concepts and in certain foundations of practice, for "the Torah provided for man's evil passions" {i.e., the Torah made certain laws as concessions to man's nature} or "to make [its words] intelligible {by using human idioms and language usage}," and upon all of them appears the living endearing divine wisdom.

Similarly, Rav Kook's Eder Hayakar (pp. 42-43, translated in Ben Zion Bokser, The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (Amity House: Amity, New York, 1988.), p. 48, "Assyriology and the Bible"):

As to the similarities in teaching [between the Torah and the Code of Hammurabi], it was already made clear in the days of Maimonides, and before him in the teachings of the Talmudic sages, that prophecy reckons with man's nature, for it is its mission to raise his nature and his disposition by divine guidance, as is implied in the statement that "the commandments were only given so as to refine the nature of people" (Genesis Rabbah 44:1). Hence, whatever educational elements there were in before the giving of the Torah, which gained a following among the [Jewish] people and the world, if they only had a basis in morality and it was possible to raise them up to a high moral level - the Torah retained them.

According to the Midrash Rabbah on Devarim and Rabbi Yitzhaq Abarbanel, and the simplest interpretation of the book of Samuel, all this applied to kingship in the Torah (an opinion in the Talmud says that no, kingship is not a concession as these other sources believe but rather an ideal); why not to the Sanhedrin too? Why not say that like sacrifices and kingship, the Sanhedrin too was a concession to primitive man who needed an authority to compel him?

Furthermore, to quote Professor Marc Shapiro here, Rav Kook also says (to pastiche several disparate statements of his):

ואם תפול שאלה על איזה משפט שבתורה, שלפי מושגי המוסר יהיה נראה שצריך להיות מובן באופן אחר, אז אם באמת ע"פ ב"ד הגדול יוחלט שזה המשפט לא נאמר כ"א באותם התנאים שכבר אינם, ודאי ימצא ע"ז מקור בתורה.

כשהמוסר הטבעי מתגבר בעולם, באיזה צורה שתהיה, חייב כל אדם לקבל לתוכו אותו מממקורו, דהיינו מהתגלותו בעולם, ואת פרטיו יפלס על פי ארחות התורה. אז יעלה בידו המוסר הטהור אמיץ ומזוקק.

כל התורה הזאת של מלחמת רשות לא נאמרה כ"א לאנושיות שלא נגמרה בחינוך.

כל לב יבין על נקלה כי רק לאומה שלא באה לתכלית חינוך האנושי, או יחידים מהם, יהיה הכרח לדבר כנגד יצר הרע ע"י לקיחת יפת תואר בשביה באופן המדובר. ומזה נלמד שכשם שעלינו להתרומם מדין יפת תואר, כן נזכה להתרומם מעיקר החינוך של מלחמת רשות, ונכיר שכל כלי זיין אינו אלא לגנאי.

To translate myself:

And if a question arises about any law of the Torah, that according to ethical notions it will need to be understood in another manner, then if indeed the Sanhedrin decides that this law was made only for conditions that are no longer extant, then indeed a source for this [ethical notion] will be found in the Torah.

When natural[-law] morality strengthens in the world, in whatever form it will, every man is obligated to incorporate it into his own ethos from its source - namely its manifestation in the world - and its details will be explicated according to the way of the Torah. Then pure morality will arise into his grasp, strong and purified.

This entire teaching of milhemet reshut [voluntary wars of aggression, which the Torah permits] was said only for a mankind that had not yet completed its education.

Every heart will understand easily that only for a nation that had not come to its humanistic-educational conclusion - or individuals thereof - could need a concessionary law for the selfish human inclination via the taking of a beautiful woman (yafet toar) captive [in war] in the manner spoken of [in the Torah]. And from this we will learn that just as it is incumbent upon to rise beyond the law of taking a woman captive in war, so too we will merit to rise beyond the educational principle of voluntary wars (milhemet reshut), and we will recognize that every vessel of war is disgraceful.

Rav Kook is saying that we must reinterpret the Torah in accordance with new ethical notions. The Talmud itself already says that the law of taking a woman captive in war, is not an ideal but merely a concession, and Rav Kook extends this to the law of voluntary wars of aggression, which the Torah also permits. Rav Kook even says that any new ethical notion in the world must be incorporated by everyone, with the Torah explicating its details. I believe individual liberty and freedom to be one such new principle; to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson's Politics:

The tendencies of the times favour the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to the race.

Similarly, Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience":

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

So at most, we'll have a Beit ha-Miqdash that functions as nothing more than a beit ha-knesset (synagogue) for tefilah (prayer), and a Sanhedrin that does nothing more than decide which siddurim (prayerbooks) to buy and which building maintenance and janitorial staff to hire. Update: I forgot that according to Rav Kook, while the sacrifices cease, there will still be flour (minhah) offerings, according to him. So perhaps we will still have a Sanhedrin to decide the laws of flour offerings. But my point is the same: we will, at most, have a very tiny, minimalistic Sanhedrin with almost no responsibilities or authority.

Thus, in my view: in the future, we will no longer have a Sanhedrin. There is simply no need for it.

Oh Vilken Härlig Dag: I Am Now an Anarcho-Capitalist

2011-03-22T19:13:00.012+02:00

For the past while, I have considered myself a minarchist, a limited-government libertarian, as opposed to an anarcho-capitalist. I have been sympathetic to the anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, because according to minarchism, government is merely a necessary evil, and so all one has to do is prove it unnecessary, and show that private markets can perform the same tasks as the government, and voila, the government ceases to be a necessary evil, and it becomes simply evil. Most of my reading has been about 16th-18th-century Reformed Christian political thought (including Colonial and Revolutionary America), so most of my reading has been minarchist, not anarchist. But the moral philosophies of the two are the same; both regard government as evil, only one sees government as a necessary evil, and the other as not. So the moral philosophy of the two is the same, so even reading minarchist writings is a fine gateway drug to anarchism. So while I have considered myself a minarchist, I have been open to the anarchist perspective, and I thought, as soon as someone proves to me that anarchism will "work", then I'll have no reason to avoid becoming an anarchist. So I was completely and totally receptive to that viewpoint. It is just that I have not yet had the time to read anything from Murray Rothbard or the like; having read only Reformed Christian minarchism and not any anarchism, I have not yet had any reason to become anarchist.

But for the past few weeks, I have been pondering something, a certain thought experiment, which today has finally convinced me to officially consider myself an anarcho-capitalist. My thoughts of the past few weeks were finally crystalized by a passage in an article my friend Cam Nedland showed me, here, quoting David Friedman, Law as a Private Good:

Imagine a society with no government. Individuals purchase law enforcement from private firms. Each such firm faces possible conflicts with other firms. Private policemen working for the enforcement agency that I employ may track down the burglar who stole my property only to discover, when they try to arrest him, that he too employs an enforcement agency.

There are three ways in which such conflicts might be dealt with. The most obvious and least likely is direct violence-a mini-war between my agency, attempting to arrest the burglar, and his agency attempting to defend him from arrest. A somewhat more plausible scenario is negotiation. Since warfare is expensive, agencies might include in the contracts they offer their customers a provision under which they are not obliged to defend customers against legitimate punishment for their actual crimes. When a conflict occurred, it would then be up to the two agencies to determine whether the accused customer of one would or would not be deemed guilty and turned over to the other.

A still more attractive and more likely solution is advance contracting between the agencies. Under this scenario, any two agencies that faced a significant probability of such clashes would agree on an arbitration agency to settle them-a private court. Implicit or explicit in their agreement would be the legal rules under which such disputes were to be settled.

Under these circumstances, both law enforcement and law are private goods produced on a private market. Law enforcement is produced by enforcement agencies and sold directly to their customers. Law is produced by arbitration agencies and sold to the enforcement agencies, who resell it to their customers as one characteristic of the bundle of services they provide.

This passage finally crystalized two thoughts I had been having for the past few weeks, about private security agencies replacing government:

First, it seemed to me, violent war among competing private security agencies seemed unlikely. Market forces would dictate that out of parochial self-interest, each agency would form implicit (unwritten) mutual understandings and explicit (written) treaties, among each other, to prevent violence as much as possible, just as Friedman says.
Second, it seemed to me the only real, substantive difference between anarchism, and minarchism/statism (i.e. some sort of government), is the ability to opt-out of paying taxes to the police and military. You'll still be jailed, but you won't have to pay your own jailer, proverbially speaking. (I say "proverbially" because jails are not the only possible form of punishment for criminals.) I repeat: the only real core, substantive difference between statism (including minarchism) and anarchism is this: the ability to opt-out of paying dues to the police, not one's liability to punishment at the hands of the police. After all, today, a country is liable to "punishment" at the hands of a foreign, invading army, even though the invaded country never paid money to the invading army. It would be likewise with an anarchist society: the thief would be punished by the police all the same, but he wouldn't have to pay money to the police.

We might have all sorts of moral philosophical notions of which laws are good laws, and what the laws ought to be, but these disputes are besides the point. A coercive government can have either good or bad laws, as can a private security agency. A coercive government might punish only murderers and thieves, while a private security agency might go out killing people who worship the wrong god. So the quality of the laws themselves, is not relevant here. I am not saying there is no avoiding bad laws under an anarchist society. I am saying there is no guarantee of avoiding bad laws and instead having good laws under an anarchist society, just as there is no guarantee of avoiding good laws and instead having only bad laws under a statist regime. One can envision a coercive government that obeys morality and a private security agency that violates morality. Market forces will affect which one is more likely to do which (more on which below), but that is only a likelihood. A coercive government of saints will be moral, while a private security agency of devils will be immoral, with their private moral inclinations overpowering those market forces. After all, charity (tzedaqa) itself is nothing other than morality overpowering markets. Economically, I have no reason whatsoever to help a poor man on the street. So why do I help him? Because my conscience overpowers market forces and parochial self-interest. (Actually, it would be more correct and precise to say, as my friend Rocco Stanzione pointed out, that really, giving charity and helping the poor is merely one more selfish desire. If I am a charitable person, then for me, helping the poor gives me the same sort of satisfaction as another person might get from buying a car. In that sense, my desire to give to charity is subject to market forces just as much as the purchase of any other good. The same way, one could classify anti-Jewish pogroms or black lynchings as a selfish, market-driven desire, with the deaths of Jews and blacks being a market-driven commodity no different than anything else.)

And either way, whether with anarchism or statism, you are going to be coerced against your will. Even if we limit ourselves to good laws against murder and theft, even then, whether a murderer or thief is punished by the government or by someone else's private security agency, it makes no difference to the murderer or thief. Like I said, the jail will still exist and you'll still be jailed (proverbially).

The only difference is, who pays for the government or private security agency - everyone, or only the subscribers. Does the murderer or thief also have to pay dues, or only the murdered('s family) and the stolen-from who hires the agency to exact his revenge?

Now, this will have important consequences, according to market forces. If you specifically have to pay for every action of your hired agency, then you'll be unlikely to expend precious money hiring an agency to prosecute people smoking marijuana or worshiping the wrong god, i.e. things that do you no harm; whereas, if everyone must pay equally, then the diffusion of costs versus the concentration of benefits implicit in government, means that a few people will hire the government to outlaw marijuana at the expense of everyone else. With coercive government, everyone must pay the costs of your decisions, so you will make decisions that benefit only you yourself, knowing everyone else will pay. But with anarchism, you yourself must individually pay for everything you do, meaning you will be more likely, according to market forces, to hire a private security agency only to exact revenge on those who actually hurt you, and not for "sins" that do you no harm (like smoking marijuana). But putting aside these market consequences, the fact remains that in essence, the only real, substantive, core difference between anarchism and statism is whether you can opt-out of paying the government/security agency, not whether you'll be liable for prosecution at the government's/agency's hands. As I indicated, private moral inclination can overpower market forces and self-interest; we can envision, for example, a private security agency of rabidly fervent religious folk prosecuting their neighbors who are peacefully worshiping false gods, and we can envision a coercive government that punishes only murderers and thieves. Market forces incline statism and anarchism in different directions, but only in terms of likelihoods and probabilities.

Also, if justice is defined as a marketable commodity, then the same market forces that make capitalism superior to socialism or central planning for producing televisions or cars, ought to make capitalism superior in producing justice as well. And if the majority of people are evil or unjust, making their selfish and evil desires a marketable commodity for them, well, then the same evil people would use the government for evil too. Human nature will not change. The hope is simply that all things being equal, capitalism will make goods and services (including justice) more plentiful, higher in quality, and less expensive.

In short, human nature will remain the same, regardless. The same people who staff the government today, will staff the private security agencies. There are consequences related to market forces, but in essence, the only real, core, substantive difference between statism and anarchism, is who pays the dues, which results in market-related consequences. In other words: the only real difference between anarchism and statism is: who pays the dues. That's it. The ability to opt-out of paying money to the police and army, is the only difference. You will still be liable for punishment at the army's and police's hands regardless.

When you put it this way, the difference seems mighty small, doesn't it? It is so small, that I can now comfortably consider myself an anarcho-capitalist. Until now, I have not wanted to consider myself an anarcho-capitalist, because while I was very strongly sympathetic to that viewpoint, I had not done enough reading or thinking about it to be entirely confident. I didn't want to be a hypocrite and claim to be something I was not. I did not want to announce myself to be something unless I was really, truly indeed so, and unless I really, truly understood what I was saying. I didn't want to utter empty, vain, hypocritical words. But now, thanks to this thought experiment, I feel confident enough in the concept of anarchism, that I feel my declaration is not empty and vain. When a gentile asked Hillel to describe Judaism on one foot, Hillel said, "Love your neighbor as yourself; the rest is commentary." So too now: I have my one-sentence-long summary of anarcho-capitalism (viz.: the ability to opt-out of paying for the police and army), and now I merely need to go read through everything Murray Rothbard has ever written.

---

Other than that, I spent the day today, not only deciding that I am now anarcho-capitalist, but also gleefully listening to a song by one of my favorite artists, Swedish country singer Jill Johnson. This song, which I discovered today and cannot get enough of, is "Oh Vilken Härlig Dag":

According to a Google Translate translation of the song, it is apparently about a person seeing a naked person at the lake and proclaiming, "Oh what a lovely day!" (the English translation of the Swedish title of the song). It occurred to me that this would be excellent material for a Ladino romance, the often sexually-risque ballads traditionally sung by Judeo-Spanish Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire. My friend Evan Gadol (who is himself (unlike me) a Judeo-Spanish Sephardi and who, like me, considers Judeo-Spanish Sephardi rabbi, Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel, to be his rabbi) opined that while this song is a bit more risque than the usual Ladino romance, it is not by much. This song is therefore, it seems to me, on the outer boundaries of what could pass for a traditional Ladino romance (if it weren't in Swedish, of course).

As an example of such a traditional romance, Vítor André Ferreira Monteiro provided this (here):

If you're wondering how on earth a traditional Sephardi Jew could sing risque ballads, Rabbi Angel explains that for a traditional Sephardi, there was no contradiction between being a Torah-observant Jew, and being an ordinary human being. The risque romances, he says, merely represented ordinary human emotions and feelings about sexuality, which a Jew, no differently than a gentile, also felt need to express. The Sephardim, he says, had a joie de vivre which permitted such an attitude. On page 125 of his book, Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality: The Inner Life of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, (quoted in my article, "A New Hearing on Kol Ishah", commissioned and published by none other than Rabbi Angel himself) he adds,

Although there were religious pietists who objected to singing love songs, the romances were very popular throughout all strata of Sephardic society. Men and women often sang these songs together. It was not unusual for women to sing solo parts in the presence of men. People participated in the singing and enjoyed the songs in a natural, easygoing way.

So here we go, the original Swedish lyrics and a draft Ladino translation:

Original lyrics to Jill Johnson, "Oh Vilken Härlig Dag"

Draft Ladino lyrics by Vítor André Ferreira Monteiro at https://www.facebook.com/home.php?
sk=group_164893083528659
&view=permalink
&id=202374523113848

Steg upp på morgonen
Innan min dag var riktigt vaken
Oh vilken härlig dag

Smög mig på knä till sjön
För att få se dig bada naken
Oh vilken härlig dag

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Såg du mig?
Såg du vem det var?

Jag hade satt mig ner
När du tog av dig dina kläder
Oh vilken härlig dag

Fick syn på svalorna
Dom kunde lova vackert väder
Oh vilken härlig dag

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Såg du mig?
Såg du att det var jag?

Du låg på rygg o sög
ut saften från ett strå
Och du hade ingen annan
Än dig själv att tänka på

Men trodde du att
Du var ensam i det blå
Jag satt bakom och såg på
Aahh..
Jag vet att jag blev smått generad mmmm
Men jag tror även att även du var intresserad
Såg du mig?
Såg du att det var jag?

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Såg du mig?
Såg du att det var jag?

Jag tror du hörde mig när du
Försvann in under kjolen
Oh vilken härlig dag

Så jag fick fly iväg och
Jag sprang naken bort mot solen
Oh vilken härlig dag

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

LLevantome en la mañana
Antes de mi diya estar realmente akordado
Oh kue diya adoravle

Se arrastró ella de rodillas hasta el lago
Para te ver nadar desnudado
Oh kue diya adoravle

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Me haz visto?
Tu haz visto kuién fué?

Yó me habia sentado
Kuando kuitaste tus ropas
Oh kue diya adoravle

Dé mirada de las golondrinas
Podrian prometer bueno tiempo
Oh kue diya adoravle

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Me haz visto?
Tu haz visto que fué ió?

Te dektas sobre sus espaldas scgando
fuera el suco por una
E no tenia ninguno otro
Sinó tu mismo en kue pensar

Pero pensaste
Kue vosotros estaban solos en el azul
Me sentaba atraz i miraba
Aahh ..
Sé que torno algo envergonzada
mmmm
Pero también kreo kue estabas interesado en mi.
Me haz visto?
Tu haz visto que fué ió?

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Me haz visto?
Tu haz visto que fué ió?

Kreo que me hoyisté kuando tu
Sumiste sobre su skirt
Oh que diya adoravle

Así tube que voar lejos i
Estaba korriendo desnuda lejos del sól
Oh kue diya adoravle

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala

Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala
Lalalala lalalalalalala