Bastiat's Corner

Beyond Tuition - A New Model for Education

2013-06-12T07:51:00.002-04:00

I have a crazy idea - one that I think is just crazy enough to work. I propose a model for providing education, for a profit, without requiring students to pay tuition. The model also provides strong incentives for the institution to give career-relevant lessons and to ensure that each student achieves financial success after graduation. I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest this, though I have done zero research on the subject.

The model is simple. Students are enrolled in the institution based on whatever criteria the school finds appropriate, but the student is never required to pay tuition (room and board, books, etc. are TBD). The students agree by contract upon enrollment to pay the institution a percentage of their earnings following graduation for an agreed-upon period. It could be 10 years, or 20 or until retirement. I'm not sure how the numbers would work out, but it would likely correlate to the reputation of the institution for turning out successful professionals.

If the school is not successful in fostering a good career for the student, the student owes them little, or nothing. If there is a widespread failure to provide relevant education (hard to imagine...), the taxpayers are not on the hook to back bad loans paid to students with little chance of making a go of it with their degree in Art History. The institutions responsible would be...well...responsible.

First, Assume a Ladder

2013-06-06T21:14:00.000-04:00

I was reminded of a joke I haven't heard in a long time but that everyone should keep in mind when listening to economists prattle on about their theories. I have heard of few variants, but the one from this health care blog was the first to show up in Google and will do just fine:

[Have you heard ]the story of the engineer and the economist who, walking through a remote forest, fell into a very deep hole with vertical sides[?] The engineer said, "We'll die down here. No one can hear us calling for help, and it is impossible to climb out."

The economist said, "On the contrary, there is no problem. First, assume a ladder."

Peaceful Exploration in the 21st Century

2013-05-31T20:54:00.001-04:00

To those who say that exploration cannot be done without the forceful arm of the government, to those who have presumed to take my money by force to see their whims enacted in space and to all those without the vision to see the possibilities of a truly peaceful society, please consider eating crow and donating (voluntarily) to see a small project of great importance get off the ground. Is it the end of government funded science? Is it an all-in-one replacement for NASA? No, of course not. But it is a beginning. It is an idea so much more beautiful than two giant, lumbering gangs racing to the moon as to be in an entirely different category.

Things That Annoy Me - An Update

2013-05-28T07:46:00.000-04:00

In an update of my previous post on things that annoy me, I am providing a couple more things that are annoying me as of late:

The overuse of the term "Juxtaposition". It's not that the term is necessarily used inaccurately, I just see it cropping up all over the place for no particular reason.
The use of the term "Methodology" when "Method" would be more accurate.
The use of the term "Phraseology" in almost any case, because "wording" or "phrasing" would almost always suffice and be more accurate. Don't believe me that this actually happens? Check out this interview with Senator Harry Reid in which he attempts to explain through contorted logic that taxation is voluntary in the United States.

The common theme today is people trying to sound smart and sophisticated, when their goal really ought to be clarity and accuracy. This is a common tactic (though rarely is it conscious) among academics and politicians. My hypothesis is that this results from the lack of incentive for either of these groups to actually be clearly understood. Both academics and politicians have a considerable amount to gain from the appearance of mental superiority and relatively little to gain from the actual transfer of thought and knowledge.

The Mothering Effect of Government Regulation

2013-05-24T09:14:00.003-04:00

The Case for Regulation

On the surface, government regulation provides a much needed service to our uncertain world and protects us from rampant subjugation to the whims of our neighbors. It is such a compelling and simple concept that I have a great deal of empathy for those who believe it to be true. Many of my fellow travelers in the quest for greater individual freedom hold the position that, of course, we need some minimal level of regulation from government. Who could be so extreme, callous and ignorant to propose that we should have none?

Me for one.

When I was growing up, my mother made us do chores. I'm glad she did because when I struck out on my own I knew how to cook, sweep the floors, do the laundry and clean the toilet. I had the skills and the compulsion to keep a clean kitchen and an orderly bedroom. But when I pause to think about the quality of the work I did as a child and contrast it to that which I do in my own house, I am embarrassed. Now I was a well-behaved child, but I did the bare minimum I could get by with less I disappoint dear mother. My style of cleaning in those days could well be described as "hitting the high spots." I never moved chairs to sweep beneath them. I rarely took the items off of the bathroom sink to wipe it down. I mastered the art of pushing them back, wiping and pulling them forward, thus creating an illusion akin to sweeping dust under a rug, which I was also not above.

Comparatively, I am a cleaning Nazi when it comes to my own house - think rigid discipline and rampant germicide.

Why the disparity? What drives us to literally and figuratively sweep things under the rug in certain conditions and not others?

Ownership and Responsibility

The difference now is that I own the house I live in and thus have an internal drive to keep it neat and orderly. Even when I rented an apartment, the effect of being the sole person responsible for housekeeping created an immediate shift in my behavior. I knew that if I did not keep my place in order it would directly effect how I felt about myself, and perhaps just as important, how visitors felt about me.

Granted, in the case of industry in the market there is still the effect of ownership and responsibility to one's customers. But consider for a moment the effects of a paternalistic regulatory apparatus on the goals of an organization. The confines of regulation are inherently slow to change and rarely focused entirely on the safety and satisfaction of the consumer or the public at large. They are necessarily driven in large part by political forces and are usually subject to the powerful influence of relatively small interest groups. Besides these effects they shift the focus of industry in part away from satisfying customers, which includes an interest in their safety, on to the particular guidelines provided by regulatory bodies. This provides industry with the perverse objective to dot the i's and cross the t's provided by regulation and then, if they run afoul of public safety, to blame the shortsightedness of the regulatory body which has claimed ownership and responsibility for an orderly society.

Advice for the Young and Unemployed

2013-05-17T19:27:00.004-04:00

I just found this great article on advice to young, unemployed workers over at FEE. There was one section where the author, Jeffrey Tucker, really stuck a note with me. He called out exactly what I have just learned after a very few years in the workforce:

"At every job, you are going to learn so much about human ethics, psychology, emotions, and behavior. Most of what you will learn will be enlightening and encouraging. Some of it, however, is not pretty and might come as a shock.

First, you will discover that people in general are extremely reluctant to admit error. People will defend an opinion or an action until the end, even if every bit of logic and evidence runs contrary. Sincere apologies and genuine admissions of error and wrongdoing are the rarest things in this world. There is no point at all in demanding apologies or in becoming resentful when they fail to appear. Just move on. Neither should you expect to always be rewarded for being right. On the contrary, people will often resent you and try to take you down.
How do you deal with this problem? Don’t get frustrated. Don’t seek justice. Accept the reality for what it is. If a job isn’t working out, move on. If you get fired, don’t seek vengeance. Anger and resentment accomplish absolutely nothing. Keep your eye on the goal of personal and professional advancement, and think of anything that interrupts your path as a diversion and a distraction."

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have felt my own progress or the progress of my employer hampered by the simple fact that those around me were afraid to admit they had made a mistake or, despite their credentials, might not know everything about a particular subject. If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would be openly ridiculed at work for having the skills and desire to quickly solve problems, I would have never believed it.

I encourage everyone to read the full article here.

Lysander Spooner on Democracy

2013-05-13T07:37:00.001-04:00

Of all the commentary on the failings and conceptual problems of democracy, I think Lysander Spooner put it best in No Treason - No. 1:

The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.

Just Think About the Average

2013-05-03T19:11:00.001-04:00

It's not every day that you run into expositions on mistaken aggregation in popular culture. Maybe you aren't as big of a Rush fan as I am, so you might think that their lyrics from 1976 do not constitute 'popular culture.' Let's just assume you are wrong and carry on. In case you are not familiar with this epic piece (I really mean epic, not in the overly broad sense it has come to mean in our vernacular. The song runs just over 20 minutes.), I will poach a portion of the synopsis from the wikipedia page for the 2112 album:

In the year 2062, a galaxy-wide war results in the union of all planets under the rule of the Red Star of the Solar Federation. By 2112, the world is controlled by the "Priests of the Temples of Syrinx," who determine the content of all reading matter, songs, pictures - every facet of life. A man discovers an ancient guitar and learns to play his own music. Thinking he has made a wonderful discovery that will be a boon to humanity, he goes to present the guitar to the priests of the Temples, who angrily destroy it and rebuke him for unearthing one of the "silly whims" that caused the collapse of the previous civilization.

The section I would like to focus on is the main character's meeting with the priests. After the priests deliver their initial rebuke, he says in absolute confusion and dismay:

I can't believe you're saying
These things just can't be true
Our world could use this beauty
Just think what we might do
Listen to my music
And hear what it can do
There's something here as strong as life
I know that it will reach you

To which the priests angrily reply (italics mine):

Don't annoy us further!
We have our work to do
Just think about the average
What use have they for you?
Another toy will help destroy
The elder race of man
Forget about your silly whim
It doesn't fit the Plan!

Picture the central planners of today and think of their conceit in reference to the priests. There is no average, no class of averages, no average person or average family that can enjoy the beauty of music or will miss its absence. These are actions and passions of individuals that cannot be summed, divided or averaged. It is true that this wonderful new discovery doesn't fit the plan, because the goal of the plan is to maximize something that doesn't exist - average happiness.

Does Government Research Funding Really Contribute to Economic Growth?

2013-05-03T07:35:00.003-04:00

I just read a great article over at Reason on a subject near and dear to my heart and related to some previous posts of mine regarding NASA funding. I implore everyone to check it out. Here is my favorite snippet from the article:

The story of the airplane is instructive. After the Spanish-American War, the federal government supplied a grant of $73,000 to the director of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley to develop heavier-than-air craft. All six of Langley's prototypes crashed, the last one on October 7, 1903. Two months later, Ohio bicycle mechanics, Orville and Wilbur Wright, launched their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Their R&D budget? About $1,000.

This is merely an anecdote, of course, but what a powerful one it is, especially when the proponents of government funded science offer a handful of successes to make their case.

All Hail - May 1st is Now Officially "Loyalty Day"

2013-05-02T07:57:00.003-04:00

The proclamation has come down from on high: May 1st is now officially Loyalty Day. What sort of procrustean bed must one's mind occupy to celebrate Independence Day and Loyalty Day in the same year and on the same soil?

What exactly are we to pledge our allegiance and affirm our loyalty to? Well our founding principles of, "service and citizenship; courage and the common good; liberty, equality, and justice for all." These are the words of the president in his proclamation made April 30, 2013.

Herein lies the danger of the hero worship and allegiance to "founding fathers" and "founding principles". It is the tendency to twist, distort and add to those "founding principles" that makes them particularly dangerous. Principles, to be useful for the people must be few and clear. To be useful to the expansion of the state, it is best that they are many, unclear and broadly interpretable. Compare for instance:

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
service and citizenship; courage and the common good; liberty, equality, and justice for all

Service to whom and for what?
The courage to do what? To follow the rules, to stand up, to recite a pledge without understanding and to fit in?
The common good? Defined by whom and to what ends?

Ask yourself also if the founders had held as core values "service and citizenship", would they have ever declared independence from the king?

What are we being asked to celebrate exactly?

Ascending Into Anarchy and Order

2013-05-01T07:44:00.002-04:00

You always hear, in history and in fiction, about society "descending into anarchy and chaos" following the demise of some government or empire. This is the premise behind Asimov's Foundation Trilogy so loved by Paul Krugman. In summary, the ever present goal of generations of characters within the books is to restore the grandeur of the now fallen Galactic Empire and establish a second so that order, progress and prosperity would once again exist in the galaxy. Even within the state paradigm, the idea that such a broadly centralized government would be effective or beneficial to anyone - besides those in charge of it - is outright silliness. Still the specter of a galaxy "descending into anarchy and chaos" is invoked numerous times.

I've got news for everyone: If the societal framework for peaceful coexistence did not already exist, undergirding the law and order provided by the state, then the state could not provide it. There could never be enough laws or enough lawmen to make order out of a society in chaos. I could go outside right now, with all our laws and regulations, and throw a brick through my neighbor's window, run back in and probably not get caught. Even if he saw me, a conviction seems unlikely (and quite expensive at that). Think about it as you go throughout your day. What could you get away with if you were so inclined, and what is the likelihood of getting caught? If you work at it, I estimate that you could come up with a dozen or so petty, low risk crimes. Extrapolate by millions and imagine the disorder and chaos that would be far beyond the law's powers to contain. Now ask yourself why you do not do these things; I suggest by the way, that you do not. It cannot simply be a matter of economic incentives. Your neighbor's TV is pretty sweet, and you have seen where he hides his key and know what time he leaves and comes home. You do not steal his TV because of your own moral rules, whether you derive them from God, nature or otherwise.

These are the rules that 98% of us agree on 98% of the time and that hold our world together whether there is a state or not. So let's put an end to the rhetorical nonsense of anarchy equating to chaos and pause for a moment to appreciate how internal rules for proper conduct on an individual and family level provide an extended order for peaceful civilization without the aid of a ruling class.

A Chicken In Every Pot - A K-1 On Every Return

2013-04-26T09:35:00.001-04:00

Experience has an unrivaled ability for teaching us important lessons. The most persuasive arguments are still abstract compared to living experience. Even the ones you buy wholeheartedly will surprise you in their veracity once they are solidified by your experience. They are made real.

Think of it: "war is hell", "taxation is theft", "the dealership garage is trying to screw you". Experience matters.

Imagine if Karl Marx had owned his own factory, or even a small shop. Would his attempts to make a profit - a return on his own hard-earned capital - have still been viewed by himself as a parasitic exploitation of his workers?

If our dear leader Obama had done something more productive with his life than community organizing (I still haven't quite figured out what that entails) would he still shackle businesses with ever more regulations, stipulations and penalties (or are they taxes?) while deriding any theoretical business model that can not survive his machinations?

The obvious answer to me is, No! Take anyone agitating against capitalism, have them experience the risk of their own savings, effort and time toward some productive venture, and see how their tune changes with regard to state control and taxation of commerce. You may say that such a change of heart would be merely self-preservation or that they have become sell-outs in the eyes of the "greater-good" or "community cause". I say you are wrong. I say that the nature of human commercial interaction is clarified by experience. It is easy to be spoiled in the modern industrialized world into thinking that that which you can purchase is yours by obligation. It is just as easy to forget what your in-kind obligations might be.

This simplest path to libertarianism is an individual's dual realization that:

I don't want to be forced to live my life or make my living at the direction of my neighbor(s) or the state.
I don't want to be a hypocrite

I do not know how or if we will ever get there, but I contend that if a majority of Americans even attempted to operate their own business a rational understanding of capitalism would be pervasive enough to move us toward a free society. This is the educational experience we should hope for.

We're All Racists Now - or - The Pretense of Race

2013-04-22T20:14:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of filling out forms with the, usually optional, question of race. At what arbitrary point in history and by what arbitrary percentage of my lineage am I to decide my race? Some of my ancestors came from Germany and England in the 1750's. My great grandmother was half Native American, but I'm not even sure which tribe one of her parents was from (or which of her parents obviously). Some of my other ancestors were Irish, or Scottish or Scotch-Irish. I'm really not sure which, or maybe it was all three. These are only the aspects of family history which I know based on family names and certain individuals from history about which something was written or stories were passed down. If I knew all the maiden names involved in my family tree I might know more about the countries my ancestors came from. Given the time and location, it's a pretty safe bet that some were Italian, maybe even French, but there is little chance of something else. Given this information I feel pretty safe in checking the box beside "White", but how boring and overly general is that?

Before moving into the great melting pot, trading and marrying with each other and taking up a common language, my ancestors spoke a handful of different languages, had a wide array of inherited customs, food and dress. They even possessed among them a wide array of skin tones. What if I were to go way back? Maybe some of them were European nobility. More than likely they were serfs. Before that, some were probably citizens of the Roman Empire, or the republic that preceded it, or maybe they were part of barbarian tribes set against it. Maybe some fought against the Moors or even the Neanderthals going way back. That is all fun speculation that can hardly be proven or disproven, but the one thing I am confident of is that they all descended from humans who left Africa many thousands of years ago. So maybe the safest box to check, and this applies to everyone, is "African."

Certainly in the modern context, to do this would be disingenuous. The purpose of such questions is generally to collect data regarding relative distributions in various areas of employment, purchases of consumer products, patterns of behavior etc. But to assume the relevance of this information is, in my opinion, very much like Hayek's pretense of knowledge applied to the 'social sciences'. We assume that this one metric, because it is relatively demonstrable, is relevant to achieving our end, whether that end is to hire an appropriately diverse work force or to bring about fairness with respect to some measure of socioeconomic status. This is an understandably attractive technique because it is a simple matter of understanding history, defining under performing groups and then lifting them up through some political machinations. However, it can not be reasonably argued among serious adults that race on its own carries any information regarding the aptitude of an individual to be successful in life. So many more situations and events carry considerably more weight in one's life than ancestral lineage. Was your father a gambler, your mother an alcoholic, your grandfather a priest, your brother a murderer, or your sister a movie star? How much money did your parents make, and how did they treat you growing up? Did they read books, ask you what you learned in school and attend your baseball games? It will not take long to run out of room on the form at this rate.

It is an unfortunate fact that to be born of a certain race in many places around the world is a distinct disadvantage, and this is an evil that must be fought in the prejudices in the mind of every human being. But to see ourselves as social scientists, we must consider whether the things we seek to control are the ones that matter and whether the rules we presuppose contradict the notions of equality and liberty that we seek to maximize.

My point here is not to claim an ancestry that is not my own or to offend anyone by supposing I check a box other than "White." I simply resent the label as applying anything meaningful to my description and stand in firm opposition to the mentality that insists that we should continue to graduate ourselves by these ancient, arbitrary and irrelevant distinctions.

I hope that someday, we can all see this question of race as irrelevant and offensive to the variety and beauty of human experience as it actually is.

Remember the Alamo....I mean Arthurdale

2013-04-21T16:45:00.003-04:00

Arthurdale, in Preston County, West Virginia was founded as part of the New Deal by FDR during his first term in office. This 8-year experiment was part of the communist-inspired back-to-the-farm movement of the 1930s and was instituted in part to quell the upset of out of work coal miners in WV and to serve as a propaganda piece for the administration. In spite of the fact that I grew up only about 2 hours away and took an entire course in 8th grade devoted to the history of the State, I had never heard of the project before today. Perhaps, this speaks to the success of what was to be a model village for the country and the world moving forward from the great depression. It turned out to be severely over budget and under productive with nearly all of the residents working outside of the private sector. A variety of industries attempted to start up there and failed causing the federal government to give up on the project in 1941 and sell the property at a considerable loss.

This is an excellent historical anecdote to keep in mind as our noble leaders present their plans for our future.

The following links are worth reading for more history on the project:

The American Dream

2013-04-21T16:27:00.000-04:00

Turn on the tube and you are likely to hear talk of the American Dream. Owning a home is always considered part of that dream, and we are led to believe that this is what makes our ride up the most recent bubble a noble one. After all, isn't home ownership for all a noble goal?

Home ownership is not for everyone, especially bloggers. It's really tough to get time to write posts when you're refinishing your hardwood floor - trust me. The hours I have spent convinced me that life is too short to remodel your own house. This is why we have so many TV shows devoted to the process. This way, we can live the American Dream vicariously through HGTV.

The American Dream is not a house with a picket fence and a two-stall garage. The dream is not getting a college degree or retiring comfortably at 65. The American Dream is choice!

Workplace Motivation - A Lesson in Human Action

2013-04-04T07:09:00.002-04:00

A while back I was introduced to this video (by Jake at The Voluntary Life) describing a slightly more nuanced and considerably more accurate account of workplace motivation than I had heretofore encountered. I don't endorse the video in its entirety, and I have not researched any of the reference material for myself. I had to put aside the fact that some of the research was funded by the Federal Reserve, the "mainstream of the mainstream" according to the video. Just shudder and move on.

In spite of a few qualms, I do find the explanations regarding incentivisation to be in line with my experience. I have, for the longest time, been walking around with this Homo Economicus model in my head when it comes to how people should be compensated and treated at work. But the fact that humans are not purely rational, profit-maximizing John Galt machines, flies in the face of this viewpoint. People are complex creatures with a wide array of subjective wants and needs who cannot be characterized by linear relationships of reward and behavior. To paraphrase the video, we are purpose maximizers and each with his own purpose.

Let this be a warning to central planners of all parties, personal autonomy is a requirement for the fulfillment of human aspirations, whether it is in the workplace or outside of it. Narrow-minded, linear incentivisation schemes intended to 'nudge' a society toward some optimum state of behavior, besides being morally flawed, is almost certainly going to fail in predicting some nuanced aspect of human action.

Discovery of the Week - No Treason

2013-03-31T10:48:00.000-04:00

Do yourself a favor and read Lysander Spooner's series of essays titled "No Treason." Doubtless, this will not be a discovery for a large portion of you, but wait there's more. If you go to the Wikisource page for the essays, you can download them as pdf or epub. I downloaded mine as epub on my Ipad and couldn't be more impressed with the quality of the result and ease of the process. Welcome to the future.

Full Faith and Credit

2013-03-29T17:01:00.003-04:00

Turns out I'm not infallible. Since I started my internal debate over whether to invest heavily into Bitcoin, it has more then doubled in value.

It seems that since the Cypriot banking debacle, Bitcoin has entered into the lexicon of the mainstream media. The general uncertainty regarding government-issued currencies has contributed to its rise in popularity and price. The news coverage has not all been well-informed or positive however.

The following segment was appeared on Bloomberg:

Right away the well is poisoned by the title, "The Anarchist Virtual Currency." My goodness, how frightening! It could just have well been titled, "The Incorruptible Currency." Maybe, "The Stateless Currency"? Oooo, I know, how about "The People's Currency." That one, I feel, has legs.

The hosts, to their credit, do not seem to expend much energy hiding their ignorance of the subject of Bitcoin. They brand the creators of Bitcoin as...gasp... "hackers". "Who wouldn't trust hackers?" says one host. It's not as if the creators of Bitcoin were doing anything nefarious. They could just as easily be described as innovative, tech savvy, cryptology experts, but no I guess the producers are right, "hacker" gets ratings.

Side Rant: The nerve of these hackers by the way, creating a potentially stable system of currency not "backed" by the full faith and credit of any official state body! Have they no knowledge of history?! Do they not understand how effective fiat currencies (the Continental, the Greenback, the Mark, the Zimbabwean dollar, the Drachma...etc) have been in protecting the holders' wealth over time? Furthermore, do they not understand how dangerous it would be for governments around the world to not have ready access to taxation free currency? Just imagine how onerous it would be to start a war!

In other news, Tech Crunch is shocked at Bitcoin's success given its having "been relegated to the realm of the super geeky, or seen as the currency of anarchists or crazy digital libertarians."

And much to the sorrow of liberty-loving, thug-hacker anarchists everywhere, New Scientist reports that the US government has released new guidelines that would, in my opinion, fundamentally disrupt the Bitcoin community if they were to be thoroughly enforced.

It's been a mixed period for Bitcoin, but I still hold out temendous hope.

Related post: The Bitcoin Economy

IRS Wastes Money to Save Us From "Total Anarchy"

2013-03-27T21:28:00.001-04:00

This IRS made video would be humorous if it wasn't so enraging. Count the crimes. Your money (reportedly $60,000) was taken to make a terrible Star Trek parody with the intention of training 'public servants' in the proper practice of taking more of your money.

My Problem with Star Trek

2013-03-23T10:38:00.001-04:00

I'm a big fan of Star Trek. I may not know as much trivia about the show, its characters or the actors and actresses who played them as the biggest nerds do, but I have as much admiration as anyone for the backdrop that the writers created to explore human nature.

I do have one relatively large quibble on the other hand. I do not have a problem accepting the technological achievements of the time period. Warp drive, teleportation, phaser pistols and all the rest I can handle within the context of the Star Trek universe. What I cannot fathom on the other hand, and what seems too unrealistic to me, is the idea that they exist in a post-scarcity society in which money is no longer is necessary. "We solved poverty." is the line the comes to mind. Maybe so; maybe everyone in society has ample means. I can buy that with sufficient technological achievement. What I cannot buy is the idea that time, energy and materials are no longer scarce and that there is no longer a desire anywhere to make relative value judgments between any combination of goods or services. Getting 'beyond money' in my mind is tantamount to getting beyond heartache and disappointment. These are fundamental aspects of being human and living with other humans. Even in space drama, subverting fundamental human characteristics runs counter to one's story telling goals.

Where are all the Former Libertarians?

2013-03-21T07:46:00.000-04:00

I am sure that I am not the first person to make this observation, but it seems as if there are very few people who have converted from libertarian or anarcho-capitalist to one of the more mainstream viewpoints on the political spectrum. I never hear about anyone in the Republican or Democrat camps saying in an interview, "You know, I used to believe in the sovereignty of the individual and in doing all that we can to defend individual rights, but now I have seen the light and joined the Democrat party. I realized after all that it is in fact morally justified to take some money from neighbor A and give it to neighbor B if he really needs it (or if he seems like a likely voter)."

Am I wrong here? Can someone provide counter examples? Where are all the libertarian defectors?

It's 10 o'clock, do you know where you ideas are?

2013-03-19T07:57:00.001-04:00

Imagine that you have a grand idea for some new widget. Maybe you will change the world. Maybe you will make a mint. Or, maybe you will just end up with a pile of scrap and an empty bank account. Regardless, you need a plan of action to turn your dream into a reality. What do you do now?

The first thing you need to do, as usual, is check with the State. Someone else may have had the same idea, or a similar one, and applied for a state-granted monopoly on the use of it. If you forge ahead, you could stand accused of stealing someone's idea, regardless of its actual origin! You had better hire a lawyer to search the government's file of officially recognized ideas, though having done due diligence will grant you no immunity from future litigation. If that goes well, you will need to hire another lawyer to help draft an otherwise very unhelpful document. It will need to describe as many potential manifestations of the idea as possible, even though you already know what manifestation it will take. The document will need to be both as specific and as general as possible. After all, you need to protect your specific idea in as broad a manner as you can. This will, of course, make the document unreadable and uninteresting to anyone not being paid $500/hour to interpret it, but it is very important that you protect yourself from someone taking your idea away from you in the dark of night. Worse still, someone could submit your idea in writing to the state, and they will come take it, though it will probably be in the light of day.

Now after considerable expense of time and money, and provided someone didn't already write down a similar idea, you can begin working on development, somewhat safe in the knowledge that your brainchild is protected by and from the long arm of the law. After countless months building prototypes, meeting with engineers and business managers, courting potential investors and ignoring your health and family, the commercial launch comes, and it is an unprecedented success. The product, now a household name, is flying off the shelves. No one can keep it in inventory. Sales projections are astronomical. The burgeoning new company that you have started signs enormous contracts and hires a small army of employees to build, sell and improve its wares.

And just when you are having your first success and think that your young idea has grown up to be big and strong, you learn that it is not so safe after all. Some men - wearing very nice suits no doubt - have sent you a letter claiming that your idea is a bit too much like their idea. Now that their idea is making you money, they would like a little taste of it. Of course, it's true that it wasn't their idea to begin with, but they bought it fair and square from a guy who just couldn't quite make it work commercially at the time. Clearly, you have proven that he was right all along. Their letter makes it seem like this process hurts them as much as it does you. They go on to say that maybe if you could work out a payment system for their valuable service of having purchased an idea kind of like yours, they won't have to get the State involved.

Putting aside your own self preservation for a moment, don't you just have to admire these noble souls who protect the safety of poor, orphaned ideas until such time that wealthy parents emerge? After all, if someone doesn't protect our ideas, they might get seriously hurt. Then new ideas might not come around any more out of pure fear!

I hope that at this point your story would go on. I hope that you would fight, but I would not blame you if you decided to settle. Perhaps at this point you would have become jaded with the very concept of legally protecting something as intangible as an idea. Is it theft to copy the actions of another? Further still, is it criminal to see another's product and make a better one of your own? Neither of these behaviors deprive the other of their property. In our modern world, are there any truly original ideas that do not stand upon the foundation of some prior art, such that we can honestly consider them to have sprung full-formed from any one mind? How, in this legal paradigm, does one properly resolve a dispute between two honestly independent inventors happening upon an idea simultaneously? Which one is the thief? You say that taking another's idea deprives him of future profits. You have thus found the theft! But your logic is circular. The inventor can only expect such profits to be protected under at state paradigm that protects his ideas as property. Therefore, your rationalization for the law is nothing more than a plea for the status quo.

I hope you come away with the realization that when something seems too complicated to be true, it probably is.

The Real Impact of the Minimum Wage

2013-03-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

I usually like to post original content on this site, and I have been meaning to describe in detail the disastrous effects the minimum wage can have on the poor in particular and the economy in general. However, I found this article on the minimum wage over at Skeptical Libertarian that does a fantastic job at just that. What's more, our old friend Frederic Bastiat is invoked in a discussion of the seen vs. the unseen.

He pulls some excellent information from the following video, which he links to.

I apologize for the simple plug, but it is well worth your time, so I hope you head on over and check it out.

Read the original article here.

The Iron Fist of Daylight Savings Time

2013-03-13T07:59:00.001-04:00

Who do the governments think they are helping with daylight savings time? And what great numbers must benefit from the barbaric practice before it justifies imposing a shift in all of our schedules? If it is to benefit the farmer, who for some unknown reason is commonly romanticized and heavily subsidized beyond practically every other profession, I have a better solution: Have the farmers adjust their own schedules by mere minutes a day to keep up with changes in daylight. If the cause is to reduce expenditures on energy, what do these same masterminds so often tell us about the stimulative effect spending has on the economy? Every argument I have heard in favor of interposing the collective will on my daily schedule can be classified as a weak, pos hoc rationalization of a long-held mass delusion.

What does it say about our conception of government that in most of the country, we willingly disrupt our lives with nary a whimper? All the while, few of us are even aware of the purported benefits of the activity, and fewer still actually realize anything more than mild sleep deprivation as a result.

John Bolton Defends Killing of American Citizens Without Due Process

2013-03-05T20:47:00.001-05:00

John Bolton, statist apologist and war monger extraordinaire recently appeared on Stossel. He made the following statements that I simply could not believe, even from him. When asked by a student about the government's power to kill civilians without due process, the meat of Ambassador Bolton's response was:

We killed tens of thousands of American citizens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, with no due process whatever in the Civil War. And it was the right thing to do.

Too which the crowd boos appropriately. He follows up:

You know, you want to discredit a movement, defend the Confederacy... Go ahead.

This all begins around 4:40 in the following video. Really, Mr. Bolton? Is it defending the Confederacy to disapprove of your justification of murdering thousands of people without due process because the "good guys" decided it was necessary in order to preserve the almighty Union?

When will we be able to have a rational conversation about the War Between the States in this country without the Union state chauvinism and good side/bad side dichotomy? Is it possible to not support the rampant killing of citizens without due process and to also not be an advocate of slavery at the same time? This is the mental barrier people like Mr. Bolton would like to see erected, because they know that in the minds of most people not adoring Lincoln and his flagrant abuse of power constitutes a vile form of racism.