New Kind of Mind

Fixing Misperceptions With Mischaracterization

2012-02-02T02:43:00.000-08:00

Stefan Molyneux has caused some controversy among the libertarian feminist community:

Stefan Molyneux’s recent video, a defense of his statement that "feminism is socialism with panties" (from which he takes his title) is not so much an enlightening philosophical speech as an ill-informed rant. The title of the video is intellectually dishonest, dismissing generations of women and men struggling for equality as panty-wearing socialists. The title panders to vulgar misogynists and is insulting to all women, feminists or not, and to anyone else who believes in equality between the sexes. The ideas expressed in this video and other videos of his that discuss feminism in a negative way are not only inaccurate but also dangerous, negatively influencing society’s perception of what feminism really is.

Because Molyneux’s anti-feminist views are unfortunately shared by many libertarian men and some libertarian women, we think it is important to take a stand and point out what is wrong and misguided about these views. Each one of the individuals signing this document has seen libertarian and conservative men attacking feminism without knowing what it means; men who have read nothing more than a few newspapers articles or anti-feminist rants by others and have no idea of feminism's rich and varied history. Their views, founded on little more than opinion, are merely knee-jerk "politically incorrect" responses that lack critical thinking and thoughtful analysis.

What's the problem? Well, if you watched the Molyneux's video, he says explicitly "Wendy McElroy and other fantastic libertarian thinkers are staunch feminists and, fantastic, more power to them. I stand with them." In The Life and Death of Radical Feminism, Molyneux captions the video with "One of the greatest tragedies to befall both genders was state-sponsored, anti-family radical feminism" (emphasis added). And near the end of this video, he states "I don't mean feminism, like, "women shouldn't be equal to men", of course they should." Molyneux has also done a video on the "delusion of gender," an issue, which if I understand correctly, is integral to third wave feminism. Whether he's done any more on feminist issues, I'm not sure, but if the open letter's definition of feminism -- "the belief that women and men are equal and should be equally valued as human beings and have equal rights" -- stands, then it sounds pretty clear that Molyneux is not an anti-feminist and is, rather, a feminist. I know that the open letter only addresses the first video, but it's clear from what I quote to whom he is directing his criticism: feminism/ists associated with the statist left. The funny thing is that, like most of his stuff, both of Molyneux's videos are filled with likely specious arguments which should have been and are addressed in the letter. So why the mischaracterization of him as "anti-feminist?"

Ignoring any personal motives, I myself not caring too much for a lot of what Molyneux has to say, my best guess is to say this is what people do. Everyone needs an enemy, so an imaginary one will suffice.

I can't recall ever meeting a libertarian who explicitly disagreed with "the belief that women and men are equal and should be equally valued as human beings and have equal rights" to a point which inclined them to support male superiority or female oppression. Libertarian hostility to feminism and feminists has a lot more to do with perceptions of political alignment than it has to do with misogyny. And while I have no doubt there are misogynist libertarians (as well as misandrist libertarians), there are unpleasant people everywhere. Libertarians are not going to be an exception; and absent the almighty purge, this is not going to change. Clearly, many libertarians have an impression of feminists as proponents of state enforced quotas, anti-pornography legislation, sexual harassment legislation, etc. I have no idea what the true extent of feminist advocacy of state enforcement of their pet projects is, but that is a real tension between libertarians and feminists. As Molyneux implies, there are self described feminists who do not advocate such government involvement and are, at the very least, advocates of means compatible with the libertarian paradigm. And to the extent which these feminists are ignored, rather than, as Molyneux did, generalized away, there is a misperception on the part of libertarians regarding feminists.

So how did the writers of this letter go about trying to correct this misperception? By calling a feminist an anti-feminist, of course. Just another fine day in the world of fringe politics.

Fighting Like Cats And Imaginary Dogs

2012-01-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

A while back, probably over a year ago, I made a comment on Reddit expressing my distaste for dogs in a fairly provocative manner. It shouldn't have come as any surprise that this trolling was met with some amount of hostility, most notably, the 'ol "AS IF cats are any better!"

It was just assumed that because I disliked dogs, I must like cats -- that pet preferences can be summed up in "either dog or cat." Of course, it's possible to dislike or like both animals, but because some people understand the preference as being an either/or scenario, my comment was likely to provoke a response in which the justification for the preference was framed in a false dichotomy. To serve as another example, "Democrats suck" is likely to produce several responses about how terrible Republicans are.

In a recent Students For Liberty post entitled Why Libertarians Should Embrace Feminism, the authors chose to write exclusively about feminism as it relates to the troubles of women. Naturally, the first comment came from a person who read the article to be something of a condemnation or blaming of men for the situation of women. As a person who thought the article left much to be desired, I found it kind of unfortunate that that comment could be used as anecdotal evidence that those who refuse to embrace feminism are completely out of the loop. But so it goes.

I bring this up not just to point out the absurdity of those that engage in knee jerk reaction, but to advise that people attempt balance for their own argument's sake. An article about feminism demanded discussion of the ways in which gender norms can be seen to harm males because that's part of feminism. Had the article included that, then the "this isn't fair" comments could have gone by the wayside and a hopefully more grownup conversation could have ensued -- then again, I may just be overestimating the ability of internet commentators to acts as grownups. I still would have found the article contentious, but not in a way that provokes a sense of unfairness.

(As it turns out, I do like cats. They don't slobber or bark.)

Dan Klein's Study on Confirmation Bias

2011-11-14T16:27:00.001-08:00

Daniel Klein follows up on a previous survey which had shown liberals to demonstrate poor economic aptitude. The first survey contained these seven statements with incorrect responses following in parentheses:

Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (disagree)
Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (disagree)
Rent control leads to housing shortages (disagree)
A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (agree)
Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (agree)
Free trade leads to unemployment (agree)
Minimum-wage laws raise unemployment (disagree)

(1), (3), and (4) are easy. There's no good excuse for getting those incorrect. (2) is easy speaking strictly in terms of wealth; in terms of quality of life, I'm not sure how anyone could say conclusively. (5) is, again, iffy. Given the phrasing, I don't know how that could be answered without resorting to either "not sure" or consulting ideology. (6) requires a qualifier to be answered effectively, but maybe I should assume "long term" is implied? (7) should contain "in a competitive market place" to avoid the monopsony/oligopsony counterpoint.

From the new survey (where conservatives and libertarians faired poorly):

A dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person (disagree)
Making abortion illegal would increase the number of black-market abortions (disagree)
Legalizing drugs would give more wealth and power to street gangs and organized crime (agree)
Drug prohibition fails to reduce people’s access to drugs (agree)
Gun-control laws fail to reduce people’s access to guns (agree)
By participating in the marketplace in the United States, immigrants reduce the economic well-being of American citizens (agree)
When a country goes to war, its citizens experience an improvement in economic well-being (agree)
When two people complete a voluntary transaction, they both necessarily come away better off (agree)
When two people complete a voluntary transaction, it is necessarily the case that everyone else is unaffected by their transaction (agree)

No excuses for getting (2), (3), or (7) incorrect. (1) I wouldn't say this is universally true, but it's true enough. Some subjectivists will make radically absurd statements to the contrary simply to bolster their points which otherwise stand. (4) and (5) are a little tricky. In each case prohibition and restrictions make the provision more expensive, but, in the end, it would depend on the elasticity of demand. It's also possible that the prohibition itself would affect the demand, pushing it forward as drug use becomes a status symbol of some sort. Seems to be an empirical matter, though I'd lean toward disagree. Unfortunately, a conclusive answer seems to require a ceteris paribus where none should be assumed. (6) is similar to (6) in the first survey. (8) and, to a lesser extent, (9) rely very heavily on the emphasis of "necessarily" which I would expect could makes them prone to biased responses -- as the answers without the qualification could read straight out of a textbook.

Many of the questions in each survey -- perhaps a little more in the second survey -- are not conclusively obvious and do seem to elicit ideological answers. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if most people were ignorant of the arguments they could appropriately make in their own answers' defense. Nevertheless, the ability to answer "not sure" -- an answer which was not counted as incorrect -- in each question does, however, make responding incorrectly pretty inexcusable.

Pay Attention to the Story

2011-08-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Breaking down a religion at every instance to point out an inconsistency is like watching a movie in two second intervals and screaming "He was wearing a red hat in the last frame!" Too many inconsistencies can totally ruin a movie, but if that's all you're looking for, you've missed the point.

Rahne, a respondent:

The problem is not that there are inconsistencies in the film. The problem is that the projectionists told you there were none, then became hostile when you noticed.

I agree.

Listen to My First Album

2011-07-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

After a great deal of work, I've finished my first album. I wrote every lyric, played every instrument, orchestrated every note, and did all the recording and production. It would sound better had it been done by a professional on professional recording equipment, but I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished. There's a lot of variety here and I hope you give it a chance and enjoy. And of course, consistent with my thoughts on intellectual property, the option to pay what you'd like (even if that means nothing) is available if you choose to download it.

Candy Eyes by Royal We

Wiener On Display

2011-06-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of torn on the whole Congressman Wiener "scandal." I agree with Glenn Greenwald that this is mostly just a juvenile response from a juvenile population (and/or press) that can't be adults with regard to anything sexual (though I also think sending cell phone pictures of your wiener -- how appropriate -- to anyone is pretty juvenile). However, I kind of think this is just. Congress critters receive their positions by pandering to the juvenile tendencies of the masses. It should be pretty damn obvious that they're on a short leash, so to speak, no matter how often it feels like they're the ones holding it.

So I guess the question is this: Is it okay for a really stupid issue be used to whip someone when their grandeur is entirely based on exploiting our collective childishness? Especially when that kind of shaming could act as an effective deterrent to others trying to make their way to positions of celebrity? I'm tentatively siding with Greenwald, but whatever the case, I can't figure out why anyone would want to be a public figure. It's not fun being the boss.

And if you thought I was above making dick jokes, I'm not:

Nation watches as Wiener wallows in self pity.
All Wiener wanted was a bit of attention.

The Onion, please feel free to use those as article titles.

Should an Anarchist Vote for Ron Paul?

2011-05-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

Tom Woods provides two reasons why even an anarchist should vote for Ron Paul:

(1) If you were stuck in a prison camp, and the guards let you vote on whether you were to have gruel or prime rib for dinner, would you be “consenting to the system” to vote for prime rib, or would you simply be doing the best you could under the circumstances to improve your material condition? (I owe this argument to someone but can’t remember where I got it from. Roderick Long, maybe?)

I'm not particularly fond of the "voting legitimizes the state" for precisely this reason. What exactly does my preferring better to worse and noting that preference on a ballot have to do with ceding legitimacy? There should be a third box that says "and a big fuck you too," but, ya know, I can deal without it. Better things are better. And I doubt voting for prime rib legitimizes the more common choices of gruel and slop. Voting for Ron Paul is pretty big middle finger to the legitimacy of the [federal] government anyway.

(Interesting ethical dilemma: suppose the options were gruel vs prime rib but some of the prisoners were [religious/ethical] vegetarians? Would it be unethical to vote for prime rib? I think a strong case could be made that it would be, especially on the grounds many libertarians argue.)

(2) Many Americans won’t consider even listening to a point of view that barely registers on the political radar screen. Whether out of intellectual laziness, cowardice, whatever, they just won’t. So it hurts us if Ron Paul gets 1% of the vote. But if he gets solid double digits, those people who might be faint of heart might realize they aren’t totally alone in supporting him, and will be more willing to do so. Yes, this is ridiculous and unjust, but that’s how it is. That’s why I think it hurts the cause of the free society not to vote for Ron Paul.

So we should vote for him so that the faint of heart might vote for him? I'm uncomfortable with trying to get the herd moving in any one direction. I kind of think the herds are the problem and, even if I'd prefer a herd nearer Ron Paul, I'm not so sure that's the environment ripe for liberty. If you're looking for an empirical example of what I'm talking about, look at the Tea Parties.

Anyway, voting for Ron Paul by itself is not going to be enough. If it were, then maybe it would alright. Instead, the Ron Paul campaign is going to consume tons of manpower -- writing, signs, picketing, shouting, talking, debating -- and money. Why? So that we can promote Ron Paul. I've learned something in my ventures into anarchist thought: messages and ideas become corrupted. What begins as "we want liberty" mutates into "we want Ron Paul and liberty" and again to "we want Ron Paul." I'm not saying Ron Paul is the same person, but what happened with Reagan? The assumption implicitly made in participating in the political system is that the political system matters. Voting itself doesn't make legitimacy, but thinking of voting as effective in and of itself does make legitimacy.

Right now the ballot doesn't say, gruel and prime rib; it says, gruel and slop. We're going to have to work extremely hard to get something else on the ballot, and rallying all of our resources around "prime rib" is a distraction. Donate some of your money to writers, musicians and others who can stir the pot. Set up small nimble media organizations. We all understand these top down methods of getting stuff done don't work and yet we'll use all the grassroots efforts to support that top down approach? Kinda ironic, right?

Ron Paul is a bearing a little off course. He's not so far off course that to support him is evil, but enough so that he's somewhat of a distraction. I'd love to see him continue in and provide more intellectual diversity to the debates. And he's fine as an motivational leader and educator, but let's leave it at that. I know I'm not going to stop the oncoming Paul-Train, but I think it's important to note that he's a human trying to gain the steering wheel of a large uncontrollable automobile. That automobile needs to be destroyed, not hopelessly wrestled with. Why waste time inserting a meaningless separate step in there?

Update: Andrew Taranto notes that voting for prime rib (best understood as good policy) doesn't mean we will get it when it is to come vicariously through a leader and bureaucratic maze. Electing Ron Paul doesn't change all that much in the whole scheme of things.

Sell seashells by the seashore?

2011-05-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

Quoth the very sexy Jackie of That 70's show:

Why would Sally sell seashells down by the seashore? I mean, that's a terrible location for a seashell stand.

Pombo's response:

Sally isn't selling just shells, she's selling time and effort.

She wakes up early every single day, before anyone else and scans the beach for the choicest shells washed up. She tracks the tides and knows to search at every opportunity. Customers are paying for the opportunity cost by trading cash, that they received for whatever service they provide to the community.

By setting up at the seashore, Sally is both advertising in the proper niche of interested customers and she's offering them a chance to save the time looking for a product that already has a high demand outside of her store. A person might spend an hour looking for a ideal shell at opportunity cost to themselves (say about $20 if they search for an hour), or they can spend a fraction of that cost right at her store for immediately.

NoobFace's response to Pombo:

However, due to a lack of barriers to entry into the market, many competitors setup next to sally, dropping her profit margin. In order to create a differentiated offering, Sally shifts locations in-land and sets up a logistics network to distribute her products to underserved locations, preserving margin.

My response to NoobFace:

Or rather, she calls her buddies at the Chamber of Commerce and works to set up a seashell dealer licensing system in which she would be in charge of determining the prerequisites for entry into the market.

Let's see, that covers comparative advantage, market development, and public choice.

When No One Wants X, You Ain't Gon Get It

2011-05-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

Brad Spangler (in jest):

A free market won't work because people don't care about X. That's why we need laws to address X. All we need to do to get these laws is that we need to get people to care about X so they'll vote for those laws.

The relevant point being that one can't blame the "market" when one's preferred values are unpopular since democracy runs into exactly the same problem. That is of course assuming that one favors democracy, generally considered the consensus political preference.

This does run into other problems, however. Democracy (i.e. majoritarianism) can impose values on others when there is enough of a consensus -- hence the libertarian objections to it. So any person who's part of a small majority would be perfectly reasonable in making the "free market won't work because people don't care about X." But it'd be closer to say not enough people care. In such a case, democracy actually does have its advantages. The first being that it requires the minority to pay or abide by the will of the majority which values the particular thing you value. The second is that it can account for free riders. Public goods may have a lot of support, but can have funding issues. Voting as an act in itself has less cost [directly] associated with it compared to the market means. Costs are costs, but voted on items have diffuse costs.

So what are some objections?

Everyone thinks they have the best values. What makes your values so special? The imposition of your values over someone else is basically some form of declared conflict. All society involves some degree of imposition, but mostly takes care of itself.
Is conformity really desirable? Conformity for perfect laws sounds good, but suppose voters in the majority is suffering from a "momentary" lapse of reason, or -- god forbid -- you're in the minority. You are after all bound to be in the minority sometime. Progressives certainly saw the ugly side of democracy when gay marriage was repealed in California. Anyone consistently fighting for the rights of minorities should have figured this out by now.
People resist things they don't like. That results in dead weight loss.
Regardless of the "goodness" of any value, there's still practical limitation on any social arrangements, especially when people don't like and are trying to avoid participating in them.

Essential Questions To Ask Before Justifying Anything in History

2011-05-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

History is definitely not my strong suit. Given the sheer number of things that could be relevant to any historical analysis, I'm not sure exactly who chooses what belongs and for what reasons. It certainly seems possible that some chain of events culminating in war as a result of a hemorrhoid and a bad mood could have occurred at some point in history, but I doubt you'll find that in any text. When all is said and done, the "facts" acknowledged are divisible by an infinite set of details missed. And not only are we left with an insignificant slice of the picture, but whoever matches up the few pieces ends up connecting the one that he think is particularly pretty. In other words, historical analysis is extremely biased. Fortunately there are enough people so boring as to obsess over the details that others neglected, providing us with a larger although still incredibly fuzzy picture.

But historians, it seems to me, must thoroughly address basic questions should they like to be taken seriously when offering retrospective justification of events.

The American Civil War serves as a particularly apt example. As the Civil War resulted in the freeing of the slaves, its status as a necessary and proper war goes generally unquestioned. And while I would certainly avoid saying much about the war one way or another, I think it behooves us to ask relevant questions at all times -- especially when the event being justified resulted in over one million casualties, a draft, and suspension of habeas corpus.

Were the outcomes of the war (e.g. Northern victory, the end of slavery) likely to occur (i.e. was going to war the smart strategic decision)?
Would the desirable effect of the war (the end of slavery) occurred without it?
If so, how long should we have expected that to take?
In sum, did the costs in blood and treasure warrant the beneficial effects at the war's close?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but anyone who would like to make the case that the war was or was not virtuous must at least address them. Disappointingly, though not unsurprisingly, I was asked in a recent reddit discussion how I could claim ignorance of the topic yet still know the relevant questions to ask and what the point of asking such unanswerable questions was. Shouldn't it be obvious that those are variations on basic questions you'd ask in order to effectively evaluate anything? Plus, if I were interested, and someone could provide serious responses to those questions, then I'd certainly be more willing to read their sources rather than slosh through the litany of incomplete text written on the matter.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-04-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

The links posts were getting to be annoying and tedious so I decided to create a Facebook fan page for this website. The stuff I've enjoyed reading and thought was interesting or funny will be posted on that page. Those links should then be displayed in the widget to the side. "Like" my page and you'll be able to stay up to date. Hopefully this works out better. If anyone can think of something else because they don't (or can't) use Facebook, please let me know. But I'm not sure how many people are even interested in the links I post. So anyway, that's the plan.

Update: Facebook has a new feature that forwards my posts to Twitter. So there's another option.

Selective Praise

2011-04-29T02:03:00.000-07:00

Beltway politics is dirty. That's why besides the occasional joke or quip, I mostly ignore it. But it's pretty disheartening when libertarians seemingly go out of their way to make disingenuous comments about other libertarians. In particular, Ron Paul, in maintaining a cosmic balance for all the undeserved praise he gets, seems to get a good share of fallacious criticism.

Shikha Dalmia writes in praise of Gary Johnson:

Johnson, who became the first to declare his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination last week, is the most consistently pro-liberty Republican or Democratic candidate in living memory. Like [Ron] Paul, he is anti-war, anti-big government and pro-civil liberties. But unlike Paul, he is pro-choice (except for late-term abortions), pro-immigration, pro-trade and untainted by bizarre conspiracy theories that NAFTA is a prelude to the dissolution of North American borders. Nor does he have Paul’s racist newsletter baggage. His signature issue is not abolishing the Fed or returning to the gold standard. Rather, it is avoiding the impending financial collapse by cutting government spending on everything by 43 percent -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense -- a plan bolder than any that either party has proffered.

When I noted that Paul was also "pro-immigration" and "pro-trade," Dalmia responded with an article by Paul which argues that secured borders are integral for national defense, immigration should come legally, immigrants should assimilate, amnesty should be opposed, immigration should not be subsidized by welfare, and birth-right citizenship should be revoked. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the article, but it still doesn't demonstrate he's not pro-immigration. In fact, Paul has stated many times that he believes immigrants are scapegoated for problems actually created by governments. And he's said such things on national television and in debates. He's by no means anti-immigration and every indication is that he supports mobility between nations. The article provided to me was far more anti-immigration than anything I'd heard from Paul prior -- likely not a great indicator.

As far as allegations of not being pro-trade, Dalmia responded that he was "disingenuous" and provided this link which states:

NAFTA is not free trade. And in this I agree completely with Ron Paul. True free trade would require a single sentence “we remove all restrictions and regulation on trade.” It would not require the back breaking document that is the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is, as Congressman Paul says, managed trade not free trade.

I disagree that it would be a good move to get rid of NAFTA at the moment. It is certainly not perfect but it is better in many ways than what existed before and it is better than what is likely to replace it. If Congress would pass a bill with the words I wrote above, then NAFTA can be safely gotten rid of. This, however, seems unlikely.

Ron Paul has this idea that NAFTA will lead to a North American Union that is similar to the European Union. This is a gross misconception of what the EU is and what NAFTA is. There is nothing with the sort of power or role of the Commission, the Council of Ministers, or the European Parliament in NAFTA. There is not even a similarity in the range of policy areas that the two organizations handle.

Furthermore the underpinnings of both are completely different. NAFTA came out of the neo-conservatism of the 1980s. The EEC (later EU) came out of the neo-functionalism of the 1950s. These two concepts couldn’t possibly have less to do with each other. It was never a hidden goal of EEC supporters that they wanted to make a united Europe. It was the stated goal to bind together and avoid the horrors of another world war. The idea that there is a legitimate political movement pushing for a united North America is simply unsubstantiated. NAFTA was meant to increase trade and nothing more.

Disingenuous? I think not. Kooky or not pragmatic enough? That's debatable.

Ok, so a case, albeit I think a weak one, could be made that RP is not pro-trade or immigration (or that he's not concerned with the looming budget disaster and would prefer to yammer about the mundane Fed). What I want to know is why when discussing RP, it's a binary and when discussing Gary Johnson, it's degrees. Paul is implicitly labeled anti-immigration and anti-trade because he holds nuanced positions -- and in the case of the trade, it's actually more principled. But Gary Johnson's "anti-war" cred isn't held up to the same scrutiny. He's clearly not as disinterested in intervention as Paul:

Johnson is open, in principle, to waging humanitarian wars. ‘If there’s a clear genocide somewhere, don’t we really want to positively impact that kind of a situation?’ he says. ‘Isn’t that what we’re all about? Isn’t that what we’ve always been about? But just this notion of nation building—I think the current policy is making us more enemies than more friends.

Johnson might outscore Paul on immigration, abortion, and gay rights, but I'd have no doubt Paul would score better on war, civil liberties, drug policy, monetary and fiscal policy on the "standard" libertarian check list. And where Johnson outscores Paul, the issues are really up for debate.

If one wanted to make the case that Johnson is consistently more pro-liberty than Paul, I think they'd have to argue that pragmatic policy is more libertarian because it actually gets shit done -- that principled libertarianism doesn't get us anywhere. Even if that were the case, Ron Paul hasn't demonstrated that he isn't pragmatic. He's outlined where he would prioritize budget cuts and how he would phase out programs and allow opting out. He has not mention anytime in recent history how he'd just start shutting down operations with the flick of a switch.

Milton Friedman, perhaps the most famous libertarian of them all, argued against open borders in the presence of the welfare state. I highly doubt Dalmia would say he wasn't pro-immigration. In fact, Paul and Friedman are pro-immigration with caveats -- those things you add to your positions so that they make sense given different circumstances. Those caveats might be incorrect, but she ignored that they even existed. If there's one thing libertarians love to bitch about, it's how non-libertarians ignore their nuance. It seems libertarians can be good at playing the same game.

The article was clearly biased. I just want to know why. Why is Ron Paul frequently viewed as a kook, a bigot, a racist, an anti-semite, a homophobe, a xenophobe, etc, etc? Not that he couldn't be those things, but it seems more like it's just assumed by his critics by virtue of the fact that he's an old white Christian traditionalist from Texas. And Oh, he believes in state's rights! Clearly a fascist, right?

I'm not going to vote for Paul or Johnson. Hell, I'm not going to vote. And both have positions I disagree with, but when you're criticizing either one, fucking make sure you're criticizing a position they actually hold.

Fickle Jesse

2011-04-29T00:31:00.000-07:00

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. ~ Mark Twain

From Radley Balko:

Last month, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) suggested the government give every school-age child his own iPad. According to The Hill, when he was subsequently mocked for the proposal by right-wing talk radio, he strangely defended his idea by arguing "that technology is a product of the First Amendment, and also necessary to help maintain First Amendment rights."

This month? Jackson has reversed course, and is now assailing the iPad as a job-killer, and -- again, weirdly -- as a foreign threat to the First Amendment.

Here's Jackson:

A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs ... now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine...

...what becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? What becomes of book stores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not-too-distant future such jobs simply will not exist.

Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He’s created the iPad. Certainly it’s made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It’s not produced here in the United States. So the Chinese get to take advantage of our First Amendment values, that is, to provide freedom of speech through the iPad to the American people.

There seem to be two possibilities here, neither one much better than the other. The first is that Jackson is fickle and does not think his positions out very well. The second possibility is that he's corrupt. Maybe Borders lobbyists offered him something a little better than what Apple was. Though there's no reason to think this is an either-or scenario.

All I can say is that I'm glad I make $20,000/year and he makes $174,000.

Peter Leeson on Anarchy

2011-04-28T23:36:00.001-07:00

Gabriella for President 2012

2011-04-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

When young Gabriella was asked what she'd do if she were president she responded, "I’d eat ice cream." Most of the other kids thought being president gave them super powers. Gabriella's got her priorities in order: ice cream good; bossing people around and making decisions you have no business making, not so much.

A comedian's responses to the comments can be read here.

Eddy, You Didn't Need To Go The Moon

2011-04-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

That must have been the most expensive philosophy lesson in history. Next time, read some Plato or Descartes or Nietzsche or Berkeley.

Oh Paul

2011-04-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

From Paul Krugman:

How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.

Good point, Paul. We shouldn't refer to those who receive services at a price if we're talking about medical care. Medical care is special. Let's update the economics books: "There are 'producers' and 'consumers' except in the health care industry where there are 'doctors' and 'patients.'" That surely won't be at all unnecessary.

We have to do something about health care costs, which means that we have to find a way to start saying no. In particular, given continuing medical innovation, we can’t maintain a system in which Medicare essentially pays for anything a doctor recommends.

What's this about costs? These aren't cars or Barbie dolls we're talking about here. These are patients, dammit! Patients don't have costs, they have needs!

Fuck you and your money grubbing cost consciousness, Paul Krugman.

The Good, The Ignorant, and The Dumb

2011-04-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

NPR's Planet Money has a podcast posted featuring segments of an interview with Freeway Rick Ross, a big name former cocaine and crack dealer in '80s and '90s Los Angeles. They compare and contrast his experiences with economic theory proposed by anti-prohibitionists such as Jeffrey Miron. For the most part, it's a very entertaining and informative (at least to people ignorant of the effects of prohibition), especially when talking about the price inflation caused by prohibition. It's definitely worth a listen; however, there were two pretty big issues:

The Ignorant

The interviewers ask Rick Ross what effect risk of getting caught or killed had on the prices he's willing to charge -- apparently little to none. Ross explains that the environment he lived in was one of desperation and uncertainty with a substantial portion of the population doubting they'd even make it past 24-years-old. Essentially, the legal risk of selling prohibited substances didn't factor into his reservation rate -- had it been in the cards, he would have done the same for far less.

This leads the interviewers to tentatively conclude that the risk premium discussed by economists is not actually there. No, economists are correct, or, at the very least, Rick Ross's testimony is not counter-evidence. Economists are focused on an entire market. We are interested in how prices are determined given the tacit information presented to individuals or organizations. Even if risk is not a factor in the decision making of the downtrodden of inner city LA, it is a factor in why a middle-aged white suburban dad isn't stepping into that line of business. Sure there are cultural factors, but the entire reason prohibition makes sense is because of the risk component. Ross's anecdotes actually explain this well: why do the drug markets center in poor areas? Because the disenfranchised are the only ones willing to accept the risk -- because they have nothing to lose. Meanwhile, prices remain high while supply is constrained as a result of the legal risk imposed on the more risk conscious. The hosts' misunderstanding of this appears to be a result of them not actually know the argument very well.

The Purely Dumb

But economics is about trade-offs, right? Yes. If and when prohibition is repealed, there will be possible negative effects. The legal industry may have some huge cutbacks. More people might do drugs. It's hard to say.

Ostensible economist Peter Reuter realizes there are trade-offs. Here's how he explains them:

Legalization [of drugs] would dramatically reduce crime. Obviously in the drug market, crime would disappear and many drug related crimes... crimes committed in order to pay for expensive, illegal drugs -- that would go down a lot too. What goes on the other side? I'm making up a number here: 5 million more persons addicted. It's a big number. How do we compare the bad outcomes in the two cases: a very large increase in addiction with a very large decrease in crime? ... That's a value judgement.

Ooh, this looks fun. Let me try a rebuttal:

Yeah, but if we don't end the drug war -- and excuse me while I just make up some numbers here -- 7 million people will die, millions of locusts will descend upon us, and 10 years of drought will follow. Those are some huge numbers I just pulled straight out of my ass. That would totally suck!

I honestly don't think I've ever heard a more thoroughly stupid prohibition apologist argument in my life, let alone from a researcher. Let's make up numbers, big numbers, use them to describe something we don't like, then declare that they are big and we wouldn't like that.

It's reasonable to assume use and thus addiction may increase if drugs were made legal, but it's very unclear how serious such a problem would be. Even with the drug war, drugs aren't very difficult to find. And if Rick Ross is to be believed, a lot of the environment of use already fosters a reckless behavior. Meanwhile, the funds currently used to kill, imprison, and harass people could be directed toward helping real addicts.

It's also telling how easy it is for apologists to smuggle in presuppositions about drugs. We have two in Reuter's statements: 1) that use and addiction are not distinguishable and 2) that use is clearly and undeniably "bad." The first is dumb. The second is the result of close-mindedness. Drugs alter perception and create an experience. Some people are unable to keep such perspectives and experiences in context. Some become addicted. It's not a one size fits all type of thing. Hell, the one size fits all mentality is probably a major cause of drug use/addiction in the first place.

Luckily, the hosts ended by concluding that (although they omitted the caveat) if drugs are a problem, they are more effectively addressed on the demand side of the equation, in other words, education and treatment. All hail sanity.

(Feel free to comment with some research on the topic of legalization's affect on dependency. Portugal's experiment in decriminalization comes to mind -- in defense of the non-prohibitionist claims.)

Is this a "Free Market?"

2011-04-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

From The Economist:

Faith in the free market is at a low in the world's biggest free-market economy. In 2010, 59% of Americans asked by GlobeScan, a polling firm, agreed "strongly" or "somewhat" that the free market was the best system for the world's future. This has fallen sharply from 80% when the question was first asked in 2002. And among poorer Americans under $20,000, faith in capitalism fell from 76% to 44% in just one year. Of the 25 countries polled, support for the free market is now greatest in Germany, just ahead of Brazil and communist China, both of which have seen strong growth in recent years. Indians are less enthusiastic despite recent gains in growth. Italy shows a surprising fondness for markets for a place that is uncompetitive in many sectors. In France under a third of people believe that the free market is the best option, down from 42% in 2002.

Predictably, this led to the "this is not a truly free market" type comments and responses on Reddit. It shouldn't be a surprise that I agree. This is an incredibly stupid poll. I highly doubt they offered a definition of "free market," let alone account for variation in understanding of it. This was simply a poll to rate the emotional pull of a phrase.

The following is an exchange** I had with someone who thinks "free market" is an appropriate description of our current economic system:

The idea that the US does not have "a free market" to you seems to mean that we are controlling all these markets with all kinds of burdensome taxes and regulations that are so pervasive as to distort the market from performing optimally. But why do those things exist, and what effect are they really having?

Taxes (excluding tariffs) affect many different markets simultaneously, almost by design. The cost is spread out to limit the impact. Of course, they exist to fund government, which in turn exists to deliver valuable services. Are we debating whether or not government services are (or at least can be) more valuable to society than the taxes that are extracted to provide them? I'm happy to have that debate if we are. Public goods, rule of law, and necessary regulation will make my case for me. US tax rates are generally low in comparison with our peers (in technology, not scale) around the globe, and in my opinion the cutoff point is too low. We aren't buying as many government services as would be more valuable than the cost in tax as we could be.

Regulations are usually created to address some kind of exception where a normal market will not function optimally (meaning produce maximum welfare) in their absence. They are, by this definition, market improvements to private trade activities. There are certainly exceptions, in which regulations are politically motivated, exploitative, or otherwise counterproductive. If you need examples of situations where markets need regulatory intervention to perform optimally, there are many. Dispensation of public goods (e.g. gov't built utilities, public airwaves, etc), counteracting monopolies, applying the cost of negative externalities back onto the producer, social equality, and even setting the basic boundaries of monetary trade (e.g. defining and controlling the money supply), and I could honestly go on all day. This is just freshman/sophomore economics.

Subsidies, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and other forms of protectionism are the highest impact examples of "bad" regulations. There are others, and imho, everyone single one of these should be stricken from law, but you don't toss out the baby with the bath-water in the process.

Regulations like those requiring the licensing of hairdressers and interior designers? I work at a stock brokerage, part of a highly regulated industry. What does that entail? Mostly more paperwork, stress, and confusion. We're not saints either, but it's easy to get around the stuff that actually matters (for example, providing customers with unbiased information). If we had a sane regulatory policy, customers would have the regulations placed on them, guaranteeing their competence in performing a risky and difficult task. This is how we handle driving. You have to prove you're capable of driving according to government safety guidelines. Why aren't investors required to prove their aptitude? Such a policy would push costs onto the consumers of the service rather than socializing them onto the risk averse. It would also lower the costs of actual financial services by reducing barriers to entry and overhead. Which leads me to question why you didn't acknowledge regulatory capture, public choice theory, moral hazard, asymmetric information, agency problems, calculation problems, collective action problems, etc. [Besides a brief aside] you're not really applying critical analysis to government services. Private industries require regulation. Great. What about the government? Political pressure works for isolated bureaucrats, but not for competitive enterprise?

Here's the kicker: no one can explain the fundamental difference between government (especially at the scope it is) and corporations. People can vote? That's highly ineffective as people are, simply put, dumb. They lack incentives to remain informed and the information to make informed decisions. Meanwhile, concentrated interests have large incentives to lobby and engage in rent seeking.

You also ignore that the Federal Reserve sets the price of money. I assume you'd agree price controls are not free market policy?

Back to the original claim that we don't have a free market because of all these things. Well, if you accept that taxes serve a useful purpose, and you accept that regulations are created where they are needed (which they overwhelmingly are), and don't generally affect the market as a whole, it starts to look as though maybe the market is "mostly" free in a general sense, and only restricted where such restrictions improve the outcome.

"Free" market doesn't mean "optimal" or "efficient" even if that's what I think a free market would result in. You obviously think that regulations and taxes which do more than account for externalities provide [closer to] optimal levels of public goods and regulations. I disagree and the war on drugs, war on terror, convoluted tax system, myriad of legalese in just about everything, taxes on productivity rather than rents, etc, indicate to me that you're wrong. Of course, such things can only be compared to viable alternatives. Optimal or not, it is not "free."

If you look around at the products and services available in the US and ask yourself whether the pricing makes sense...most examples where it does not boil down to one thing: monopoly behavior. Corporations ability to skirt around laws and regulations and either destroy/buy competitors, collude and fix prices, dump onto markets, and do other supply/price distorting things alters free markets far more than the regulation boogeyman. Similarly, negative externalities impact public welfare many times more than tort laws are able to assign the cost back to the creator, and yet, all we hear is "tort reform!" Tort law exists to fix broken markets.

And yet they do it all in the presence of government. Not to mention that everything you just said applies directly to government, a monopoly.

I don't care about tort reform. As far as I know, it's fine (or fine enough). And yes, negative externalities are a problem, a problem that even when they can be solved, are routinely exaggerated or ignored by the federal government so that they can focus on steroids, drugs, war, and a bunch of shit they don't know anything about.

Libertarianism is just borrowing academic concepts and using them for distorted political agendas. It's very sad to see grassroots level participation in this process.

You seem to have an unwarranted disdain for libertarians who have, on multiple occasions, addressed every single one of your points. I agree that the amateur Austrians that seem to be gaining prevalence and the right-wing apologist/corporate shill "libertarians" are annoying, but you're ignoring pretty basic responses.

**I should probably note, as it would be seen by clicking the link, that this was not a disjointed back and forth exchange. I was his statement followed by my response.

Wisdom and Vision

2011-04-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

A decent while back, the anarchism subreddit was getting me down with its lynch mobs and sectarianism. To find some sanity (and probably to confirm a couple biases), I asked fellow Reddit user BondsOfEarthAndFire -- who describes himself as "a market-friendly, primitivist-friendly anarcho-communist" and is a member I've always found to be considerate and wise -- for his take on the situation. He did not disappoint:

I think that the notion that all of humanity will ever be operating under the same 'flag', so to speak, is astonishingly stupid, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of humanity and and dumbfounding ignorance of history. It frankly astounds me that the intelligent folk on this reddit manage to convince themselves that the future Earth will be entirely syndicalist or entirely transhumanist or entirely mutualist, or entirely re-wilded, or entirely fill-in-the-blank.

I've described myself as an Anarcho-ecumenist, but I fly the red star because the ancom belief system is closest to the system I would personally like to live in. That system may be made of a hundred people or a hundred million people; I have no way of predicting the future, and neither does anyone else. I do make some very broad predictions, however:

I think that the future will be a world of dizzying social complexity, replete with small city-states with governments ranging the gamut from democratic to monarchical to theocratic, surrounded by vast hinterlands filled with eco-villages and wild ranges where hunter gatherer humans chase wild game and forage for nuts and berries, while vast trade fleets of ultra-light zepellins transfer goods and services all over the planet, and transhumant consciousnesses zip through endless, decentralized computer networks maintained by industrial syndicates a million workers strong, who build satellites and launch them into orbit to maintain a global network of communication so primitivists can use cell-phones to trade furs for plastic-composite bows... and so on. Personally, I wish I was there right now.

In the immediate moment, I'm willing to ally myself with anyone who who believes that humans are capable of developing large-scale systems that can be entirely consensus based. I don't think these social technologies exist yet, and so I'm working towards trying to figure them out. The answers lie across a dozen different flavors of anarchism, and the only to even begin is to respecting A) each others opinions, B) our differences and similarities, and C) the fact that we don't have the answers yet - if we did, we'd already be doing it!

It always struck me as incredibly stupid to say, "We agree on 97% of everything, but we have differing notions of what the word trade means, so you are therefore my bitter enemy." It's a crock of shit, but it's worse than stupid: it's counterproductive. We're working towards a very different world than the one we live in, and we need 100% of the people involved to be, ya know, actually working towards it. Even if someone thinks your direction is 15 degrees removed from their compass bearing, you're both still pretty much headed in the same direction.

I'd like to think that my unabashed outreach to the pacifists, Christians, primitivists, transhumanists, mutualists, ancaps, and everyone else is beginning to pick up speed, but there's only so far the mass mentality can be pushed without a profound, systemic change in the way people perceive their potential allies.

...Granted, there's a lot of room for improvement in relations between the different flags, but on the other hand, compared to what we agree on, it's actually not that much.

Just beautiful.

Pretty Simple

2011-04-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

Gender Wage Gap

2011-03-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

Steven Horowitz has a Freeman article out debunking the gender wage gap. As it is argued, when human capital and preferences are taken into account, the 25% wage disparity between men and women largely disappears. He concludes:

When economists hold all these factors constant, they find that the gender wage gap largely disappears. Imagine two employees who are equal regarding human capital and preferences and who differ only by gender – what, if any, pay gap is present? In a study of people 27 to 33 who had never been married and who had no kids, the gap was only 2 cents. The strong implication is that if women want to earn as much as men, they need to adjust their human capital and preferences accordingly.

If we see the gap as a problem and the source isn’t the labor market, what might we do to correct the situation? Perhaps our expectations for girls and boys are different and thus we prepare them differently for the world of work. Rather than passing more laws, we could try harder to encourage boys and girls to pursue the same kinds of courses, majors, and jobs. We could encourage more men to see child raising as their responsibility as well, so that couples won’t blindly assume the woman will be the primary caregiver. If more women majored in computer science and more men majored in education — and if more men thought it was okay to work flexible hours so that they could care for the kids — we would make progress in reducing the gender wage gap. Markets will pay people for the value they produce, whatever the source of that value. Narrow the differences between men and women, and markets will narrow the wage gap.

That's right, the solution to any perceived problematic wage gap is to address preferences by reevaluating social norms and becoming more tolerant of deviationists. Beware institutional solutions.

Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education

2011-03-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

Some great points by Peter Davis. I wonder how much longer our institutional systems will take to adjust to the obvious -- if it can occur at all without some sort of systemic collapse/reorganization. (Emphasis added)

Denial of liberty on the basis of age.

In my system of values, and in that long endorsed by democratic thinkers, it is wrong to deny anyone liberty without just cause. To incarcerate an adult we must prove, in a court of law, that the person has committed a crime or is a serious threat to herself or others. Yet we incarcerate children and teenagers in school just because of their age. This is the most blatant of the sins of forced education.

Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.

It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do. We no longer use the cane, as schoolmasters once did, but instead rely on a system of incessant testing, grading, and ranking of children compared with their peers. We thereby tap into and distort the human emotional systems of shame and pride to motivate children to do the work. Children are made to feel ashamed if they perform worse than their peers and pride if they perform better. Shame leads some to drop out, psychologically, from the educational endeavor and to become class clowns (not too bad), or bullies (bad), or drug abusers and dealers (very bad). Those made to feel excessive pride from the shallow accomplishments that earn them A's and honors may become arrogant, disdainful of the common lot who don't do so well on tests; disdainful, therefore, of democratic values and processes (and this may be the worst effect of all).

Interference with the development of cooperation and nurturance.

We are an intensely social species, designed for cooperation. Children naturally want to help their friends, and even in school they find ways to do so. But our competition-based system of ranking and grading students works against the cooperative drive. Too much help given by one student to another is cheating. Helping others may even hurt the helper, by raising the grading curve and lowering the helper's position on it. Some of those students who most strongly buy into school understand this well; they become ruthless achievers. Moreover, as I have argued in previous posts, the forced age segregation that occurs in school itself promotes competition and bullying and inhibits the development of nurturance. Throughout human history, children and adolescents have learned to be caring and helpful through their interactions with younger children. The age-graded school system deprives them of such opportunities.

Interference with the development of personal responsibility and self-direction.

A theme of the entire series of essays in this blog is that children are biologically predisposed to take responsibility for their own education. They play and explore in ways that allow them to learn about the social and physical world around them. They think about their own future and take steps to prepare themselves for it. By confining children to school and to other adult-directed settings, and by filling their time with assignments, we deprive them of the opportunities and time they need to assume such responsibility. Moreover, the implicit and sometimes explicit message of our forced schooling system is: "If you do what you are told to do in school, everything will work out well for you." Children who buy into that may stop taking responsibility for their own education. They may assume falsely that someone else has figured out what they need to know to become successful adults, so they don't have to think about it. If their life doesn't work out so well, they take the attitude of a victim: "My school (or parents or society) failed me, and that's why my life is all screwed up."

Linking of learning with fear, loathing, and drudgery.

For many students, school generates intense anxiety associated with learning. Students who are just learning to read and are a little slower than the rest feel anxious about reading in front of others. Tests generate anxiety in almost everyone who takes them seriously. Threats of failure and the shame associated with failure generate enormous anxiety in some. I have found in my college teaching of statistics that a high percentage of students, even at my rather elite university, suffer from math anxiety, apparently because of the humiliation they have experienced pertaining to math in school. A fundamental psychological principle is that anxiety inhibits learning. Learning occurs best in a playful state, and anxiety inhibits playfulness. The forced nature of schooling turns learning into work. Teachers even call it work: "You must do your work before you can play." So learning, which children biologically crave, becomes toil -- something to be avoided whenever possible.

Inhibition of critical thinking.

Presumably, one of the great general goals of education is the promotion of critical thinking. But despite all the lip service that educators devote to that goal, most students -- including most "honors students" -- learn to avoid thinking critically about their schoolwork. They learn that their job in school is to get high marks on tests and that critical thinking only wastes time and interferes. To get a good grade, you need to figure out what the teacher wants you to say and then say it. I've heard that sentiment expressed countless times by college students as well as by high-school students, in discussions held outside the classroom. I've devoted a lot of effort toward promoting critical thinking at the college level; I've developed a system of teaching designed to promote it, written articles about it, and given many talks about it at conferences on teaching. I'll devote a future post or two in this blog to the topic. But, truth be told, the grading system, which is the chief motivator in our system of education, is a powerful force against honest debate and critical thinking in the classroom. In a system in which we teachers do the grading, few students are going to criticize or even question the ideas we offer; and if we try to induce criticism by grading for it, we generate false criticism.

Reduction in diversity of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking.

By forcing all schoolchildren through the same standard curriculum, we reduce their opportunities to follow alternative pathways. The school curriculum represents a tiny subset of the skills and knowledge that are important to our society. In this day and age, nobody can learn more than a sliver of all there is to know. Why force everyone to learn the same sliver? When children are free -- as I have observed at the Sudbury Valley School and others have observed with unschoolers -- they take new, diverse, and unpredicted paths. They develop passionate interests, work diligently to become experts in the realms that fascinate them, and then find ways of making a living by pursuing their interests. Students forced through the standard curriculum have much less time to pursue their own interests, and many learn well the lesson that their own interests don't really count; what counts is what's measured on the schools' tests. Some get over that, but too many do not.

Infantilization of Young People

2011-03-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

It's always cool when your abstract thoughts are echoed by someone else, especially a "man of science." This interview of psychologist Robert Epstein has some great points, which would probably be more or less common sense if we lived in a more sane society.

We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.

When I was, oh I dunno, in elementary school, it was explained that in the "olden days" all grades were taught in the same physical classroom, drawing a clear contrast between our segregated-by-age schools of present. Segregating by age seems to be a terrible system. The most obvious reason is that it assumes age, not aptitude or ability, should be the primary determinant of what you learn. That's of course assuming that there's some things which must be taught in a school setting to begin with.

There's also something to be said of treating children as if the age is the important social qualifier. Why shouldn't people of all ages have interaction with each other? Older people have more life experiences. They commonly have a lot to offer those younger than them. Even amoung the youth, ten-year-olds have things they can learn from fifteen-year-olds and vice versa. There's a sure element of learn by teaching involved. While I was going through the motions (read: sitting and waiting to get the fuck out of high school), my friend would try to explain physics material to me. It helped him learn. When I explain economics to others, it somehow lets things "click" in my own head.

(When I was a freshman in high school, I arranged a deal with my teacher: I didn't have to do any homework, if I tutored a senior. I ended up with the highest grade in the class and gained respect from my elder, though my arithmetic inferior. When you're a puny 15-year-old, gaining social credibility from a senior is nothing to shake a stick at.)

What teens do is a small fraction of what they are capable of doing. If you mistreat or restrict them, performance suffers and is extremely misleading. The teens put before us as examples by, say, the music industry tend to be highly incompetent. Teens encourage each other to perform incompetently. One of the anthems of modern pop, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, is all about how we need to behave like we're stupid.

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world, which is not the world of Britney Spears, they have no idea what's going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out.

In other words, most teens are ignorant of everything occurring outside their narrow social network -- they are ignorant of everything except ideas conjured from ignorance.

The adversarial relationship between parents and offspring is terrible; it hurts both parents and young people. It tears some people to shreds; they don't understand why it is happening and can't get out of it. They don't realize they are caught in a machine that's driving them apart from their offspring -- and it's unnecessary.

Instead of parents functioning as the most integral aspect of their child's development, both parents and offspring are herded into hierarchical structures with regimented social interaction with the former receiving an income to provide for the other to be processed into a similar functioning cog in the machinery.

I believe that young people should have more options -- the option to work, marry, own property, sign contracts, start businesses, make decisions about health care and abortions, live on their own -- every right, privilege, or responsibility an adult has. I advocate a competency-based system that focuses on the abilities of the individual. For some it will mean more time in school combined with work, for others it will mean that at age 13 or 15 they can set up an Internet business. Others will enter the workforce and become some sort of apprentice. The exploitative factories are long gone; competent young people deserve the chance to compete where it counts, and many will surprise us.

It's a simple matter to develop competency tests to determine what rights a young person should be given, just as we now have competency tests for driving. When you offer significant rights for passing such a test, it's highly motivating; people who can't pass a high-school history test will never give up trying to pass the written test at the DMV, and they'll virtually always succeed. We need to offer a variety of tests, including a comprehensive test to allow someone to become emancipated without the need for court action. When we dangle significant rewards in front of our young people -- including the right to be treated like an adult -- many will set aside the trivia of teen culture and work hard to join the adult world.

Though I don't argue for "competency tests," this is essentially a central point to my piece Guns and Dogs.

Unfortunately, the current systems are so entrenched that parents can do little to counter infantilization. No one parent can confer property rights, even though they would be highly motivating. Too often, giving children more responsibility translates into giving them household chores, which just causes more tension and conflict. We have to think beyond chores to meaningful responsibility—responsibility tied to significant rights.

Even if my parents had the knowledge of -- and given majority consensus, upbringing, and no higher education (ie no training in social thought), I could not have expected them to -- the deleterious effects of institutional schooling and childrearing, they'd have been effectively powerless to offer me something better. There's clearly neighborhood effects at play, and given the tax structure and the compulsory nature of education, it's simply not something that can be unilaterally overcome.

Despite my liberal quoting, there's still more to the interview. Please read it.

Beautifully Macabre

2011-03-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

This animated short is incredibly touching. Why, in the face of imminent death, do you do anything? Because that's the only way to feel alive.