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--><generator uri="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</generator><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/17259557295560042878/state/com.google/broadcast</id><title>LeftLibertarian's shared items in Google Reader</title><gr:continuation>CK2b2uLtraIC</gr:continuation><author><name>LeftLibertarian</name></author><updated>2010-06-22T15:30:47Z</updated><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/leftlibertarianorg" /><feedburner:info uri="leftlibertarianorg" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><feedburner:browserFriendly></feedburner:browserFriendly><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277220647997"><id gr:original-id="http://c4ss.org/?p=2961">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/756b1daae3500bce</id><category term="Commentary" /><category term="anarchy" /><category term="commute" /><category term="highway" /><category term="roads" /><category term="rush hour" /><category term="trains" /><category term="transit" /><title type="html">Who Would Maintain Roads Worse Than the State?</title><published>2010-06-22T15:21:53Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T15:21:53Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/c4ss/~3/CeOFRrdmuoI/2961" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://c4ss.org/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;The question of transportation infrastructure is often posed to those who reveal themselves to be anarchists. “Without government, how would roads be built?” One can give plenty of reasons and examples concerning why coercion is not needed to construct something in such high demand.  But let’s start with “Without government, how could roads be worse?”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Roads are currently built according to political demand in an economy dominated by the state, which exists to secure power and ultimately answers to the powerful.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The US Interstate and Trans-Canada highway systems, which owe their existence to government intervention, appear to be a comparatively efficient and safe way to travel. But what is not seen are transportation methods that could have developed in a society free of state controls. For example, high-speed roads might have been built over existing throughways. Some might be exclusive to smaller passenger vehicles and some might expand vertically to accommodate more traffic without stealing from people who live beside them. Connected networks of local rail systems might be prominent, or more people could travel by personal aircraft (which could of course be shared).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Considering the numerous ways that certain modes of transportation are subsidized by state force shows the difficulty of calculating what method would be most efficient in a free society. Governments use the power of eminent domain to take land for roads and for the massive commercial and residential developments they are built to serve. Large commercial airplanes are likely more economically viable because their production lines depend on military contracts. In the past, large rail companies were subsidized. And governments have always controlled the use of land on behalf of the politically powerful.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Interstate highways might reduce trip time when compared to other options in the state-controlled transportation infrastructure, but they are an integral part of a state-dominated economy that makes it necessary to drive farther, drive more often, and drive at certain times. If authoritarian obstructions were done away with, it is likely that people could work for less time, and at hours more of their choosing. And it would be easier to support oneself from home or neighborhood economic activity. A free economy would increase available options and the opportunity to create new arrangements.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As for local roads in suburbia, some may have originally been built as mixed-use roadways back before the internal combustion engine caught on, but they now often function to limit the types of travel that can be practiced. When government roads make motor vehicles the only safe way to travel between home and work or the store, then government roads work together with zoning laws to enforce the use of motor vehicles. And those who are not able to afford cars or are not permitted by the state to operate cars have their choices further limited. So government action converts roads from tools of personal mobility into means of controlling the movement and settlement of people.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Roads were often constructed in American frontier towns before the arrival of formal government. Recognizing that having an accessible throughway would be in their interests, local residents constructed and maintained roads and benefitted from the labor they put into them. More recently, residents of the Hawaiian island of Kauai bypassed the state bureaucracy to repair a road vital to the local economy, using much less time and money than the state said would be needed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But the issue of transportation should be considered in terms of all transit options. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which constantly fails to support itself financially, recently announced more service cuts after increasing fares last year. Amtrak is expensive and frequently delayed. New Jersey Transit train lines have experienced service cuts and fare increases. This will cause more congestion on trains as well as on the roads as the costs of using trains outweigh the benefits for many potential customers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Clearly government is not very good at managing something that is in high demand — convenient mobility. Maybe railway workers know more about managing trains than politicians do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In a stateless society, transportation infrastructure would be built and operated on a consensual basis according to the demand of users. Any form of transportation that could be operated without coercion would be free to develop, and human creativity and cooperation would no longer be restrained by political domination. Without state control and state privilege, roads would be better.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/c4ss/~4/CeOFRrdmuoI" height="1" width="1"&gt;</content><author><name>Darian Worden</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/c4ss"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/c4ss</id><title type="html">Center for a Stateless Society</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://c4ss.org" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277209844187"><id gr:original-id="">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/14d37a5e1cb8a2cb</id><title type="html">The End of our Culture?</title><published>2010-06-22T19:00:00Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T19:00:00Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JamesLeroyWilson/~3/Ftw0xxLL_u8/rss.cfm" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://www.partialobserver.com/all_by_author.cfm?id=2" type="html">How little we've really changed in the past 50 years.&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesLeroyWilson/~4/Ftw0xxLL_u8" height="1" width="1"&gt;</summary><author gr:unknown-author="true"><name>(author unknown)</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/JamesLeroyWilson"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/JamesLeroyWilson</id><title type="html">James Leroy Wilson</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://www.partialobserver.com/all_by_author.cfm?id=2" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277206247385"><id gr:original-id="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/?p=149">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/89a0bd32ae3c18b4</id><category term="Libertarianism" /><title type="html">Law is What the Free Market Says it is</title><published>2010-06-22T11:16:22Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T11:16:22Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/law-is-what-the-free-market-says-it-is/" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/" type="html">Revisiting a recent post, Gene Callahan and Libertarian Obligations, I want to re-summarize my rebuttal regarding Callahan’s “obligations.” What Callahan was really saying is that where there is some mechanism of voice(i.e., voting), there is an impersonal duty to obey the State and that you are obligated to use legal means to correct injustices, perceived [...]&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=rulingclass.wordpress.com&amp;amp;blog=12551948&amp;amp;post=149&amp;amp;subd=rulingclass&amp;amp;ref=&amp;amp;feed=1"&gt;</summary><author><name>dL</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Libérale et libertaire</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277190043361"><id gr:original-id="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100616/0148599844.shtml">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/f88c8bbc744dbdbd</id><title type="html">If Your Brother Was Arrested For A Crime, Does It Violate Your Privacy When They Store His DNA?</title><published>2010-06-21T15:07:22Z</published><updated>2010-06-21T15:07:22Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100616/0148599844.shtml" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://www.techdirt.com/" type="html">Well, here's an interesting privacy conundrum.  In the US, if you are arrested, the government records your DNA in a giant database.  There is already some controversy over the fact that it's upon arrest, and not conviction, but the privacy issues appear to go much deeper.  Slate is running a fascinating article about how there are some &lt;a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2256966/?from=rss"&gt;serious privacy questions raised by law enforcement using that DNA database to track down &lt;i&gt;relatives&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of people in the database.
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;
Close relatives are genetically similar. Parents, children, and siblings share, on average, at least half of their DNA. Not surprisingly, similar DNA generates similar DNA profiles, which are the stripped-down numerical records stored in DNA databases. So, even if a crime-scene sample doesn't exactly match any existing offender profile in CODIS, police may still find a partial match--an incomplete DNA match between the forensic evidence and a known offender. If this happens, police know the offender who partially matches the evidence did not himself leave the sample at the crime scene, but--and this is where it gets interesting--it's very possible one of his relatives did. After screening those relatives with follow-up DNA testing, police may have a new lead.
&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
So, effectively, if a close relative of yours gets arrested, technically, a part of  your DNA is now in the government's database, which they can search for and track you down.  This opens up all sorts of thorny privacy questions:
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;
With these new techniques, relatives are effectively included in the database through their genetic similarity to a profiled offender. Think of it this way: If you've never been arrested, your DNA profile shouldn't be in CODIS. But if your brother has been arrested and is profiled in CODIS, then whenever these new searches are used, you, too, may be searchable--and targeted for investigation--through the database. These searches render offenders' relatives effectively searchable in CODIS, even though the relatives themselves have never been officially included.
&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
There are some serious questions as to whether or not that's even legal.  Think of it this way: if law enforcement instead wanted to include DNA samples from anyone who was arrested's immediate family, courts would almost certainly throw that out as a violation of the 4th Amendment.  But, it effectively happens anyway.
&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
On top of that, to make matters worse, it appears that many states regularly do such "partial match" or "familial search" queries with little or no oversight:
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;
California and Colorado are known to use familial search, and these states have at least publicly announced their new policies. But new survey results reveal that many other states also have familial-search or partial-match policies that went unannounced and were never even publicly debated. Most of these policies exist only in internal laboratory manuals, if they are written down at all. Nebraska, for instance, authorizes familial search in an internal lab manual. This policy decision evidently occurred without public discourse and has thus drawn virtually no public attention.
&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
In fact, no state has specifically authorized familial search through legislation. Only Maryland has addressed familial search by statute--and it banned the practice.
&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
The article goes on to detail what a number of states are doing, and how some policies are more secretive or restrictive than others.  But, overall, this seems like a legal issue that almost certainly is going to hit the courts sometime very, very soon.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100616/0148599844.shtml"&gt;Permalink&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100616/0148599844.shtml#comments"&gt;Comments&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100616/0148599844&amp;amp;op=sharethis"&gt;Email This Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
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&lt;a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=P77yhBPrS9s:O-KEuR10TCw:D7DqB2pKExk"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=P77yhBPrS9s:O-KEuR10TCw:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=P77yhBPrS9s:O-KEuR10TCw:c-S6u7MTCTE"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/P77yhBPrS9s" height="1" width="1"&gt;</summary><author><name>Mike Masnick</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://feeds.techdirt.com/techdirt/feed"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://feeds.techdirt.com/techdirt/feed</id><title type="html">Techdirt.</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://www.techdirt.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277188246052"><id gr:original-id="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509475.post-8422587554837391280">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/12c5cae77b66e5a8</id><category term="knowlege economy" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="dead" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="working class" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="work" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="alienation" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="capitalism" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="labour" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><title type="html">The know-nothing economy</title><published>2010-06-21T18:27:00Z</published><updated>2010-06-21T18:30:44Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/06/know-nothing-economy.html" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://www.leninology.com/" type="html">&lt;div style="text-align:justify"&gt;&lt;span&gt;“The  degradation of work brings with it the decolonisation of knowledge;  employers do not like the educated, above all the intelligent worker.   Intelligence is prejudicial to output; the conveyor belt operative and  the machine formed so perfect a symbiosis that an idea in the one had  the same effect as damage in the other.  Still absence of mind won’t do  either; inattention and forgetfulness could occasion as many disasters  as lucid thought; it is necessary to &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;be there&lt;/span&gt;, a vigilance without  content, a captive consciousness kept awake only the better to suppress  itself.&lt;/span&gt;”                                                                                                                                    &lt;/div&gt;&lt;table style="margin-top:10px" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="width:1px;padding:0px 10px 0px 20px" valign="top"&gt;                                         —                                     &lt;/td&gt;                                     &lt;td valign="top"&gt;                                         Jean-Paul Sartre, &lt;em&gt;The  Communist and the Peace&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com"&gt;Copyleft of Lenin's Tomb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img width="1" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5509475-8422587554837391280?l=leninology.blogspot.com" alt=""&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><author><name>lenin</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://leninology.blogspot.com/atom.xml"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://leninology.blogspot.com/atom.xml</id><title type="html">LENIN&amp;#39;S TOMB</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://www.leninology.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277181943499"><id gr:original-id="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/?p=665">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/f7e04f3b0bba65b4</id><category term="electoral reform" /><category term="2010 elections" /><category term="Afghanistan" /><category term="banking reform" /><category term="blue states" /><category term="campaign finance reform" /><category term="debt" /><category term="disenfranchised" /><category term="economic stimulus" /><category term="filibuster" /><category term="guantanamo" /><category term="instant run off voting" /><category term="Iraq" /><category term="irv" /><category term="libertarian" /><category term="postal ballots" /><category term="proportional representation" /><category term="red states" /><category term="ron paul" /><category term="single transferable voting" /><category term="turn out" /><category term="winner takes all" /><title type="html">The Red/Blue State Dilemma</title><published>2010-06-22T04:39:35Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T04:39:35Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/06/21/the-redblue-state-dilemma/" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Crisis of Democracy: Americans Don’t Vote&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There seems to be broad agreement – both on the left and the right – that the US faces a crisis of democracy. Americans simply don’t vote. Turn-out for off year elections averages between 25-33% of registered voters. In presidential years officials are thrilled to get a turn out of over 50%. Remember we are talking about registered voters here. And half of eligible adults simply don’t register. Which means somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of potential voters are choosing the elected officials who run the most powerful country in the world.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Poll after poll shows that the people who don’t vote are under under thirty, live below the poverty line and/or represent disenfranchised minorities – for the obvious reason that they rarely see the middle aged white men in suits who run for office acting in their interests. In 2008 Obama convinced a large number of these historic non-voters that he could and would represent their interests – as well as capturing a large anti-war protest vote (people forget it was mainly opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that made George  Bush the most unpopular president in American history).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Stalemate in Federal Governance&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now Obama’s own popularity is sinking fast, largely based to his failure to deliver on campaign promises to end the wars in the Middle East, close Guantanamo and deliver meaningful banking reform and economic stimulus legislation. This, in turn, is blamed on an impasse with Senate Republicans – owing to archaic filibuster rules that enable a minority party with more than 40 Senate seats to prevent passage of legislation they oppose. (I am very suspicious whether this is the real reason – I can remember imploring Democrats to block a number of really bad laws and judicial appointments initiated by the Bush administration – for some reason the Democrats don’t seem to know how to filibuster – maybe they should take lessons from the Republicans).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;According to mainstream media pundits, the main reason for Obama’s impasse in Congress is that we are a deeply divided nation. The problem is that some of us live in red states and some in blue ones. There is really nothing that can be done about it. This is just the way things are. If you happen to be a Republican living in a blue state or a Democrat living in a red state, it’s just tough luck. If you want a voice in government, you will just have to move to another state – or simply not vote, since your vote doesn’t count.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some of Us Like Other Colors (Such As Green)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I myself don’t buy the notion that the US is a deeply divided nation – or that American voters fall into two totally separate camps. I don’t believe Americans are substantially different from citizens of other western democracies in having a broad range of views on different political issues. I myself don’t find myself agreeing with Republicans or Democrats on everything. Though I am socially progressive, in that I favour abortion and gay rights, I am also a fiscal conservative and agree with right wing libertarians about the need to reduce the soaring US deficit and to implement major banking reforms that include closer regulation of the Federal Reserve.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The US seems have reached this crisis of democracy (in which declining voter turn-out produces a series of divided or minority governments incapable of passing legislation) compared to other parts of the world. Most western democracies (with the UK and Canada also being notable exceptions) seem to have got to this place in the mid to late nineties – and were able to substantially increase voter turn-out (and overall legislative efficiency) through a series of electoral reforms that encouraged the active participation of third parties in government. The replacement of “winner takes all” voting systems with some form of “proportional representation” is one important reform that enabled this transformation to take place. And not surprisingly instantly improved voter turn-out. There are a number of other simple electoral reforms (including postal ballots and scheduling of elections on weekends or holidays) that have also greatly improved voter participation in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choosing Electoral Reform Over Violence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I find the increasing Patriot and Tea Party rhetoric calling for violence and calls by the Democrats for even more government repression (including emergency shut down of the Internet – please) equally troubling. A far better solution is serious public dialogue about appalling voter turn-out and badly needed electoral reforms.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To be continued&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;</content><author><name>stuartbramhall</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/feed/</id><title type="html">The Most Revolutionary Act</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277167547424"><id gr:original-id="http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/?p=6709">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/42f4bfb19bbacb1b</id><category term="Videos" /><title type="html">Police Brutality: Cop Slams Elderly Woman’s Head On The Concrete.</title><published>2010-06-22T00:33:22Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T00:33:22Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/police-brutality-cop-slams-elderly-womans-head-on-the-concrete/" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-align:center;display:block"&gt;&lt;a href="http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/police-brutality-cop-slams-elderly-womans-head-on-the-concrete/"&gt;&lt;img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/yoSD79o0cOc/2.jpg" alt=""&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;br&gt;  &lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/francoistremblay.wordpress.com/6709/"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=francoistremblay.wordpress.com&amp;amp;blog=315059&amp;amp;post=6709&amp;amp;subd=francoistremblay&amp;amp;ref=&amp;amp;feed=1"&gt;</content><author><name>Francois Tremblay</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/feed/</id><title type="html">The Prime Directive</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277163046098"><id gr:original-id="tag:projects.radgeek.com,2009:lazy-linking/radgeek/20100621">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/8b5309e64b173d74</id><category term="Art and Literature" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Feminism" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Lazy Linking" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Media" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Politics" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Entertainment" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Free the Earth" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Lapsus Linguae" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Left and Right" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="terror and war" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><title type="html">Monday Lazy Linking</title><published>2010-06-21T22:00:00Z</published><updated>2010-06-22T19:19:16Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/21/monday-lazy-linking-9/" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/21/monday-lazy-linking-9/#comments" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/21/monday-lazy-linking-9/feed/" type="application/atom+xml" /><content xml:base="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/21/monday-lazy-linking-9/" xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2010/06/i-just-want-to-express-my-support-for-what-julian-assange-is-doing-withwikileaks-listening-to-the-msm-youd-think-it-was-obv.html"&gt;i just want to express my support for what julian assange is. Captain Capitulation, &lt;cite&gt;eye of the storm&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-17)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;i just want to express my support for what julian assange is doing with wikileaks. listening to the msm, you&amp;#39;d think it was obvious that videos of america&amp;#39;s heroes slaughtering civilians should be kept secret. um, why exactly? i guess i could see how some information should be kept secret, though...&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://anarchywithoutbombs.com/2010/06/19/there-is-no-libertarian-case-for-restricted-immigration/"&gt;There is no libertarian case for restricted immigration. Less, &lt;cite&gt;Anarchy Without Bombs&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-19)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;It is almost 30 years to the day since Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Ed Clark set off a firestorm of criticism within the party for indicating that he didn’t think free immigration should be immediately adopted.  One of the strongest criticisms came in a post-mortem of that campaign by Mr....&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://aaeblog.com/2010/06/19/bobbing-along-on-the-beautiful-briny-sea/"&gt;Bobbing Along on the Beautiful Briny Sea. Roderick, &lt;cite&gt;Austro-Athenian Empire&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-19)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;From the “you can’t make this stuff up” department: [BP CEO Tony] Hayward took a break from overseeing the energy giant’s efforts to contain the undersea leak so he could watch his 52-foot yacht “Bob” participate in the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. If you put...&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://anarchywithoutbombs.com/2010/06/17/the-machinery-of-freedom-now-online/"&gt;The Machinery of Freedom now online! Less, &lt;cite&gt;Anarchy Without Bombs&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-18)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;More than 30 years ago, the first edition of David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom was the book that first made me comfortable calling myself an anarchist. The second edition, from 1989, has been out of print for a while, but David has just put online a complete copy of...&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2010/06/homebrew-industrial-revolution-low.html"&gt;Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Kevin Carson, &lt;cite&gt;Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-15)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto is now available in hard copy format. The eBook version is here.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://articles.burbankleader.com/2010-06-19/news/blr-lr-0619-fired_1_force-and-misconduct-porto-s-case-robbery-investigation"&gt;Three more officers fired - Burbank Leader. &lt;cite&gt;police excessive force - Google News&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-18)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;Three more officers fired / Burbank Leader / All of the officers were fired for allegedly acting improperly or using excessive force. While some of the alleged misconduct occurred during the robbery ...&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/O_Vrg8MZXdM/louis-armstrong-deat.html"&gt;Louis Armstrong death metal version of "What a Wonderful World" Mark Frauenfelder, &lt;cite&gt;Boing Boing&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-16)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;q&gt;(Thanks, Adam!)&lt;/q&gt; &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/05/31/what-we-read-when-we-dont-read-the-internet-presents-au-revoir-pretty-horses-or-why-i-dont-read-man-books-any-more/"&gt;What We Read When We Don’t Read the Internet PRESENTS! Au Revoir, Pretty  Horses; Or, Why I Don’t Read Man Books Any More. &lt;cite&gt;Tiger Beatdown&lt;/cite&gt; (2010-06-20)&lt;/a&gt;. "Some more telling characteristics of Manfiction: ... 2. Male characters cannot communicate with their sons, brothers, and fathers. Or anybody else, really; but they are particularly hampered in inter-man relationships (this is important to emphasize regularly, because the only men who are capable of talking in polysyllabic phrases to other men are gay, and the only thing less manly than writing thoughtfully about women is writing about gays. An inability to communicate is the literary equivalent of the empty seat between two dudes in a movie theater). Instead of communicating the men will drink a lot, commit random acts of violence, beat their sons or pets, and drive around in trucks without speaking. These men do not have daughters." &lt;em style="font-size:smaller"&gt;(Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;</content><author><name>Rad Geek</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Rad Geek People&amp;#39;s Daily</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277133344171"><id gr:original-id="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-2714267105472870129">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/c023e7df7c2ec185</id><category term="George W. Bush" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="torture" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="medical research" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><category term="war on terror" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><title type="html">Did Bush &amp;amp; Co. Do Medical Research on Detainees?</title><published>2010-06-21T14:29:00Z</published><updated>2010-06-21T14:29:00Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-bush-co-do-medical-research-on.html" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/" type="html">&lt;blockquote&gt;As time goes by, the record of the  Bush administration gets worse and worse. It could turn out that the most egregious offense of the Bush-esque  Obama administration will be that its Justice Department let Bush-Cheney &amp;amp; Co. off scot-free. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  It’s not enough that the last gang to  occupy the Executive Branch got us into two illegal wars, accumulated autocratic powers, violated our  civil liberties, and tortured suspects. Now it appears that it kicked things  up a notch. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)  says it has unearthed “evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and  unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody.” &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Read the full op-ed &lt;a href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com1006f.asp"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0,0,0)"&gt;here&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/atom.xml" title="Atom feed"&gt;Atom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img width="1" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/20077444-2714267105472870129?l=sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com" alt=""&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</summary><author><name>noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman)</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss</id><title type="html">Free Association</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277122547960"><id gr:original-id="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/?p=145">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d1d200b8aee013aa</id><category term="Libertarianism" /><category term="National Corporatism" /><title type="html">Paul Samuelson and Hayek</title><published>2010-06-21T12:01:45Z</published><updated>2010-06-21T12:01:45Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/paul-samuelson-and-hayek/" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/" type="html">With the recent ascent of Hayek’s book, “The Road to Serfdom,” to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list, there has been renewed debate about Hayek’s influence in shaping modern economic and political thought. Don Boudreaux recently went to town on the Wall Street Journal for insinuating that while Hayek’s work has had a lasting [...]&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=rulingclass.wordpress.com&amp;amp;blog=12551948&amp;amp;post=145&amp;amp;subd=rulingclass&amp;amp;ref=&amp;amp;feed=1"&gt;</summary><author><name>dL</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Libérale et libertaire</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277102744620"><id gr:original-id="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/?p=42218">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/f8b533109f7cca1f</id><category term="uncat" /><title type="html">Chart of the Day: Capacity Utilization vs Unemployment</title><published>2010-06-20T19:58:21Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T19:58:21Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~3/O6qg5WJmW7Q/" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://thinkprogress.org/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;Mark Thoma &lt;a href="http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/06/capacity-utilization-versus-unemployment.html"&gt;offers this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Caputil-vs-un.gif" alt="Caputil-vs-un" title="Caputil-vs-un" width="491" height="358"&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;From a forecasting point of view, I think it’s not totally clear how you want to interpret this. I think it’s noteworthy that capacity utilization at our last peak was actually pretty low—similar to the early-nineties recession level. I take that as evidence that global policy leaders haven’t learned how to fully take advantage of developed world economic progress. In the aggregate, the planet earth is getting much, much, much better at making stuff and we’re distributing it effectively. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=O6qg5WJmW7Q:uspyNgJe0YU:H0mrP-F8Qgo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/O6qg5WJmW7Q" height="1" width="1"&gt;</content><author><name>myglesias</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/matthewyglesias"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/matthewyglesias</id><title type="html">ThinkProgress » Yglesias</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://thinkprogress.org" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277092843253"><id gr:original-id="http://aaeblog.com/?p=5575">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/9bf602e6598e4202</id><category term="Uncategorized" /><category term="Ethics" /><category term="Left-Libertarian" /><title type="html">Puzzlement</title><published>2010-06-21T01:19:16Z</published><updated>2010-06-21T01:19:16Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://aaeblog.com/2010/06/20/puzzlement/" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://aaeblog.com/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;For some reason I can’t post comments on Gene Callahan’s blog, so I’ll put the comment here.  In response to the &lt;a href="http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/06/obligation.html"&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; where Gene says:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obligation is the crucial idea denied by libertarian political theory. We can have obligations that we did not agree to take upon ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I reply:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can think of hardly any libertarian political thinkers who say that we have no unchosen obligations.  (Rand says it, but that has more to do with her metaethics than her political commitments.)  Most libertarians would say that we have a) some &lt;i&gt;enforceable&lt;/i&gt; obligations we didn’t choose (like the obligations not to kill, steal, assault, etc.), plus b) plenty of moral obligations that aren’t enforceable.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Of course it’s true that libertarianism denies the existence of various enforceable obligations that other theories assert; but libertarianism also asserts the existence of enforceable obligations that other theories deny.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;</content><author><name>Roderick</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://aaeblog.com/tag/left-libertarian/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://aaeblog.com/tag/left-libertarian/feed/</id><title type="html">Austro-Athenian Empire » Left-Libertarian</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://aaeblog.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277077872536"><id gr:original-id="http://radgeek.com/?p=5199">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/bb79a6e894d2ea76</id><category term="Effluvia and Ephemera" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Holidays" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Lazy Linking" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Father's Day" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Shameless Self-promotion Sunday" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><title type="html">Shameless Self-promotion Sunday</title><published>2010-06-20T15:34:08Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T15:34:08Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/shameless-self-promotion-sunday-37/" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/shameless-self-promotion-sunday-37/#comments" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/shameless-self-promotion-sunday-37/feed/" type="application/atom+xml" /><content xml:base="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/shameless-self-promotion-sunday-37/" xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;Happy Sunday, y’all! As you may know, in the U.S. it’s Father’s Day today. Remember: necktie fashions come and go, but Shamelessness is forever.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So what have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Rad Geek</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Rad Geek People&amp;#39;s Daily</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277077871870"><id gr:original-id="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-3455081817576831936">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/c02b7f27d7050e32</id><category term="capital punishment" scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" /><title type="html">Firing Squad in Utah</title><published>2010-06-20T19:29:00Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T19:29:00Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2010/06/firing-squad-in-utah.html" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/" type="html">The state government in Utah has executed a convicted killer by &lt;a href="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Ronnie_Lee_Gardner_executed_by_Utah_firing_squad?dpl_id=191949"&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0,0,0)"&gt;firing squad&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Someday, let us hope, governments will be unable to find marksmen and physicians willing to participate in such barbarism. The State should not be allowed to execute.&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/atom.xml" title="Atom feed"&gt;Atom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img width="1" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/20077444-3455081817576831936?l=sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com" alt=""&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</summary><author><name>noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman)</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss</id><title type="html">Free Association</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277043346004"><id gr:original-id="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/?p=143">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/816c81b999d3bb4e</id><category term="Communitarianism" /><category term="Libertarianism" /><title type="html">Gene Callahan and Libertarian Obligations</title><published>2010-06-20T14:09:14Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T14:09:14Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/gene-callahan-and-libertarian-obligations/" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/" type="html">Gene Callahan, a former scholar at the Mises Institute and libertarian writer, has apparently repudiated libertarianism. Granted, I’m not at all that familiar with his work, but his critiques of libertarianism(he calls himself a recovering ideologue) are popping up in the libertarian blogs I read, so I decided to take a gander at his blog, [...]&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=rulingclass.wordpress.com&amp;amp;blog=12551948&amp;amp;post=143&amp;amp;subd=rulingclass&amp;amp;ref=&amp;amp;feed=1"&gt;</summary><author><name>dL</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Libérale et libertaire</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277034341374"><id gr:original-id="http://radgeek.com/?p=5194">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/70ab4e4f162f878d</id><category term="Fellow Workers" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Politics" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Race" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Smash the State" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="The Long Memory" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Bruce Bartlett" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Free markets" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Jim Crow" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="KKK" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Plessy v. Ferguson" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Rand Paul" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><category term="Ridiculous Strawman Watch" scheme="http://radgeek.com" /><title type="html">Ridiculous Strawman Watch (Part 4 of ???)</title><published>2010-06-20T10:52:20Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T10:56:23Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/#comments" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/feed/" type="application/atom+xml" /><content xml:base="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/" xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;It’s R.S.W. time again, which puts me in a bit of a quandary. Not about who to recognize in the Watch: &lt;a href="http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1734/rand-paul-no-barry-goldwater-civil-rights"&gt;Bruce Bartlett’s recent column on libertarianism and Jim Crow obviously deserves a place in the R.S.W.&lt;/a&gt; far more than any lesser imitator. But Bartlett’s post &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; raise a very serious problem: the problem of how I’m supposed to decide &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; pull-quote from the post actually represents the &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; ridiculous Ridiculous Strawman that Bartlett has to offer?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Is it &lt;strong&gt;Ridiculous Strawman A&lt;/strong&gt; (of &lt;q&gt;the free market&lt;/q&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;The Court’s philosophy in these cases led logically to &lt;cite&gt;Plessy v. 
  Ferguson&lt;/cite&gt; in 1896, which essentially gave constitutional protection to
  &lt;strong&gt;legal segregation enforced by state and local governments&lt;/strong&gt; throughout the 
  U.S.&lt;/p&gt;
  
  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of 
  segregation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/#ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4-n-1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Or is it &lt;strong&gt;Ridiculous Strawman B&lt;/strong&gt; (of &lt;q&gt;the libertarian philosophy&lt;/q&gt; and &lt;q&gt;freedom&lt;/q&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;the libertarian philosophy&lt;/strong&gt; of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s [?! &lt;i&gt;sic&lt;/i&gt; — Ed.] gave us almost 100 years of &lt;strong&gt;segregation&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;white supremacy&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;lynchings&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;chain gangs&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;KKK&lt;/strong&gt;, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. … &lt;strong&gt;Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn’t work.&lt;/strong&gt; Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Long-time readers may remember that &lt;a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2009/06/01/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-2-of/"&gt;Bartlett was already named as an R.S.W. laureate a little more than a year ago&lt;/a&gt; (in which he decided that the problem with American libertarians is that they never talk about interventionist foreign policy or the War on Drugs). But such a man of action is not content to rest on his laurels, and he has certainly outdone himself this year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, of course, I have little interest in defending a weaselly conservative statist like Rand Paul; and none at all in defending the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s. But I do have some passing familiarity with the libertarian philosophy, and with the meaning of the term &lt;q&gt;free market&lt;/q&gt;; and I think that if you consider almost a century of &lt;q&gt;legal segregation enforced by state and local governments&lt;/q&gt; to be the right setting for a historical on free market outcomes; or looking at what happened under politically-enforced white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs and the KKK to be &lt;q&gt;a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy&lt;/q&gt;  — apparently on the notion that libertarian anti-statism is identical with a doctrine of unlimited &lt;q&gt;States Rights,&lt;/q&gt; and &lt;q&gt;the free market&lt;/q&gt; is identical with the market outcomes that you get when pervasive racism and segregation are &lt;em&gt;explicitly required by an extensive system of government economic regulation&lt;/em&gt; — well, then, you, sir, are eminently qualified for the R.S.W.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;See also:&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/18/in-a-freed-market-with-no-government-anti-discrimination-laws-what-will-stop-bigoted-business-owners-from-resegregating-america/"&gt;GT 2010-06-18: In a freed market, with no government anti-discrimination laws, what will stop bigoted business owners from resegregating America?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/05/23/shameless-self-promotion-sunday-35/"&gt;GT 2010-05-23: Shameless Self-promotion Sunday&lt;/a&gt; (on Rand Paul Vs. Rachel Maddow)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Of course, to be fair to Bartlett here, it is &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; that the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation in the American South. Neither did a Communist invasion of the United States, or a visitation by space aliens. Guess what all of these things have in common? —&lt;strong&gt;R.G.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2010/06/20/ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4/#to-ridiculous-strawman-watch-part-4-n-1"&gt;↩&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;</content><author><name>Rad Geek</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://radgeek.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Rad Geek People&amp;#39;s Daily</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://radgeek.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277028941453"><id gr:original-id="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/?p=141">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/3bd83344dfb3e411</id><category term="Georgism" /><category term="Libertarianism" /><title type="html">Reposting A Dismissal of Brad Spangler’s Dismissal of Georgism</title><published>2010-06-20T10:12:24Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T10:12:24Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/reposting-a-dismissal-of-brad-spanglers-dismissal-of-georgism/" type="text/html" /><summary xml:base="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/" type="html">Back in May, Brad Spangler published a quick dismissal of Georgism which I criticized in a follow-up post. Spangler never responded to the criticism of his position, which I believe is rooted in a flawed understanding of Georgist rents. There was a good discussion at Freedom Democrats with one libertarian blogger, Kurt Horner, taking the [...]&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=rulingclass.wordpress.com&amp;amp;blog=12551948&amp;amp;post=141&amp;amp;subd=rulingclass&amp;amp;ref=&amp;amp;feed=1"&gt;</summary><author><name>dL</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/feed/</id><title type="html">Libérale et libertaire</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://rulingclass.wordpress.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277017245569"><id gr:original-id="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=9254">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/0652a4b520325fba</id><category term="Cognitive Capitalism" /><category term="Free Software" /><category term="Open Innovation" /><category term="P2P Business Models" /><category term="P2P Company Watch" /><category term="P2P Economics" /><category term="P2P Theory" /><title type="html">Open Source: Value Destruction vs. Value Creation</title><published>2010-06-19T04:21:49Z</published><updated>2010-06-19T04:21:49Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~3/jB8qDMPrmck/19" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/" type="html">&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would go so far as to say that very few open source startups will ever get anywhere near to $1 billion. Not because they are incompetent, or because open source will “fail” in any sense. But because the economics of open source software – and therefore the business dynamics – are so different from those of traditional software that it simply won’t be possible in most markets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt; Via Knut Staring:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Glyn Moody, who talks with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, about the question: &lt;a href="http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=3010&amp;amp;blogid=14"&gt;Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;… has a cogent analysis of the value destruction and creation cycle achieved by open source software (and which would be true for open and shared designs as well).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glyn Moody&lt;/strong&gt; (excerpt):&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“His answer was a good one. He said that he did think that Red Hat could get to $5 billion in due course, but that this entailed “replacing $50 billion of revenue” currently enjoyed by other computer companies. What he meant was that to attain that $5 billion of revenue Red Hat would have to displace software that currently costs $50 billion. Selling $50 billion-worth of software – even if it only costs $5 billion – is somewhat hard, which is why it will take a while to achieve. &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I think this is the first time I’ve heard someone as senior as Whitehurst admit something rather profound: that open source solutions save money for customers by doing away with the fat margins for existing computer companies – and thus shrink the overall market. Opponents of open source like to paint this as “value destruction” that takes money “out of the economy” – as if free software went around burning down offices and warehouses. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What they fail to grasp is that the 90% savings do not just vanish like the smoke from those supposed conflagrations. That money is still in the economy, it’s just spent on other items: free software allows people to use their hard-won money for things other than operating systems, office suites and applications. In developing countries, for example, it might mean more funds available for education or health. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;…&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As Whitehurst pointed out, open source software typically costs just 10% of the proprietary equivalent, and so the profits – and outflows – are reduced proportionately. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Whichever way you look at it, open source is good news for companies and consumers: they pay less in the first place, and as a result even less leaves the local economies – which means that more can be spent with indigenous companies on locally-produced goods and services. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, there is a very important corollary to this – the point that Whitehurst made several times. Indeed, practically his opening words were: “selling free software is hard”. A knock-on consequence is that it harder – roughly *ten* times harder – for an open source company to grow to a given revenue level than it is for the corresponding proprietary company.” &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=jB8qDMPrmck:sa6lWxpVzUE:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=jB8qDMPrmck:sa6lWxpVzUE:D7DqB2pKExk"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?i=jB8qDMPrmck:sa6lWxpVzUE:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=jB8qDMPrmck:sa6lWxpVzUE:2mJPEYqXBVI"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~4/jB8qDMPrmck" height="1" width="1"&gt;</content><author><name>Michel Bauwens</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?feed=atom"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?feed=atom</id><title type="html">P2P Foundation</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277017244874"><id gr:original-id="http://highclearing.com/?p=11301">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/afbce8bd46dd1438</id><category term="Main" scheme="http://highclearing.com" /><title type="html">Pentagon says that hippies were right</title><published>2010-06-20T01:00:15Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T01:00:15Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/06/19/11301" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/06/19/11301#comments" type="text/html" /><link rel="replies" href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/06/19/11301/feed/atom" type="application/atom+xml" /><content xml:base="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/06/19/11301" xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By Thoreau&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/06/18/war_for_resources_afghanistan/index.html"&gt;This article in Salon&lt;/a&gt; makes an excellent point:  It used to be considered traitor hippie lefty anti-American slander to dare suggest that the U.S. fights wars because we want to control natural resources.  Now the Pentagon is making a big deal about the lithium deposits in Afghanistan.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I actually don’t think that resources are the sole factor behind our wars.  Wars are complicated, and there are non-oil reasons for attacking Iraq instead of Iran or Yemen or Saudi Arabia.  However, we wouldn’t be interested in the Middle East in the first place, we wouldn’t be tangled in their messes at all, if there were no valuable resources.  Also, contrary to what some people insist, wars fought for oil aren’t fought for the economic well being of the average American.  If we were Switzerland or Italy or Finland or whoever we could still buy oil on global markets.  There’s no oil company that says “Ya know, Dr. T, I was gonna ream you because your name sounds French, but then I realized that you’re a red-blooded American, so here’s a discount on the oil.”  Oil wars are fought for the benefit of those who extract the stuff, not those who buy the stuff.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At this point it is customary for a liberal to say that gasoline is more expensive in Europe.  Yes.  Yes it is.  And as I understand it the main reason is because they tax gasoline more than we do, not because we have more troops in the Middle East than they do.  The credit (or, perhaps more appropriately, blame) for cheap oil lies in domestic policy, not military policy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It is also customary for somebody to say that oil would be even more expensive without the US military guaranteeing the security of the Middle East.  Maybe.  OTOH, it’s not like oil prices fell after 2003.  A strong case can be made that clumsy meddling raises risk premiums.  I assume that if we weren’t involved in the Middle East somebody there would find some way to sell us oil.  Moreover, we spend a lot of money “securing” all that oil.  &lt;a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html"&gt;We import 10 million barrels a day, or 3.6 billion barrels a year&lt;/a&gt;.  Most of that doesn’t come from the Middle East, but it does come from global markets that are responsive to conditions in the Middle East.  The US spent almost $700 billion on the military in 2009.  Not all of that was spent in the Middle East, but a conservative ballpark figure would be that at least a quarter of that is either spent on operations in oil-producing regions or activities that support operations (or potential operations) in oil-producing regions.  So, $170 billion for 3.6 billion barrels, or $47/barrel.  If oil prices rose by less than $47/barrel in the absence of US intervention, it would be cheaper to do like the Swiss and buy oil.  If they fell in the absence of US intervention, even better.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Plus, all of those resources could be devoted towards making or doing useful things, or at least entertaining things, instead of things that break things and kill people.  Call me crazy, but I see the tech-wizardry of the defense industry and I wonder how much better off we’d be if those engineers and scientists were in medical research or alternative energy research or video game development or something.  There’s no guarantee that we’d get clean energy if we built fewer bombs, but it’s worth a try.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As I blogged a while ago, it’s usually &lt;a href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/01/20/7747"&gt;cheaper just to buy stuff&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Thoreau</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://highclearing.com/index.php/feed/atom/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://highclearing.com/index.php/feed/atom/</id><title type="html">Unqualified Offerings</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://highclearing.com/" type="text/html" /></source></entry><entry gr:crawl-timestamp-msec="1277015449240"><id gr:original-id="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/?p=652">tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/8c94dd3cd3c26048</id><category term="Memoir of An American Refugee" /><category term="Uncategorized" /><category term="911" /><category term="agent provacateur" /><category term="american expatriates" /><category term="bin laden" /><category term="black bag jobs" /><category term="CIA narcotics trafficking" /><category term="covert assassination" /><category term="libertarian" /><category term="mercenaries" /><category term="money laundering" /><category term="mozambique" /><category term="nsa" /><category term="seattle informant" /><category term="seattle left" /><category term="seattle progressive" /><category term="shadow government" /><category term="surveillance" /><category term="weapons of mass destruction" /><title type="html">The Most Revolutionary Act (excerpt Chap 2)</title><published>2010-06-20T06:22:18Z</published><updated>2010-06-20T06:22:18Z</updated><link rel="alternate" href="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/06/20/the-most-revolutionary-act-excerpt-chap-2/" type="text/html" /><content xml:base="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/" type="html">&lt;p&gt;I have just put up a new page with a Chapter 2 excerpt – subtitled Close Encounters of the 4th (US intelligence) kind. Click the 2nd link on the tool bar on the right (under About the Author)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Still no winners on the prize offer I made last week – to the reader who could identify the entity or entities funding mercenaries in Mozambique in the late eighties.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have three reviews on Amazon now.  They are really quite fascinating. There is a debate going on between a right libertarian and a left libertarian (who both agree the details of the JFK assassination) whether there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whether Bush the elder had business dealings with the bin Laden family and whether members of the Bush administration played some role in 911.&lt;/p&gt;



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&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;</content><author><name>stuartbramhall</name></author><source gr:stream-id="feed/http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/feed/"><id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/feed/http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/feed/</id><title type="html">The Most Revolutionary Act</title><link rel="alternate" href="http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com" type="text/html" /></source></entry></feed>

