Octopodial Chrome

A.J.P. Taylor wrote this in 1970:

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913–14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. … broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.

Is there anywhere in the world today so free?

Hat-tip to Daniel Pipes.

I found this illuminating graphic of how long the net worth of various people could power the federal government’s borrowing. If we confiscated every last penny of Bill Gates’s fortune (not his income—his fortune), it would only finance 12 days and 8 hours of borrowing. If we were to confiscate the fortunes of the 400 richest people in the country, it wouldn’t even cover a year of what we’re borrowing.

That’s…concerning.

Former United States Attorney General Ed Meese argues that we have too many federal crimes and that more oversight is needed. I think it says something when someone who dedicated his life to enforcing the laws calls for fewer of them.

It turns out that Colorado restaurants and bars are allowed to sell high-alchohol beer, not the weak stuff. The law had never really been enforced, but due to some political manoeuvering (grocery and convenience stores are only permitted to sell the weak stuff; they want to be able to sell it all; so they got the law enforced in order to annoy people) it is now.

So right now in Colorado one can buy weak beer at a grocery or convenience store to take home, or can sit in a restaurant or bar and drink a strong beer. How is one supposed to get home safely—levitation?

Back in September 2009 Washington Monthly, a centre-left publication, had an article about how state healthcare is a giveaway to proprietary software vendors. This isn’t really a surprise: Big Business loves Big Government, and vice versa. It’s much easier to deal with a single customer spending other people’s money than many customers spending their own; it’s much simpler to deal with a few suppliers than with many.

That it leads to poorer outcomes really doesn’t matter. The goal of business is not quality but money; the goal of government is not quality but survival.

One of my brothers recently linked to this hilarious list of things one must believe to believe in gun control, written by Michæl Z. Williamson. Some of these are a bit hit-or-miss, but others are just brilliant. Among the better ones:

• That a mugger will kill you in the half-second it takes to draw from the holster, but won’t harm you while you dial 911 on your cell phone, talk to the dispatcher and wait half an hour for the cops to arrive.
• That the Second Amendment only applies to flintlocks, just as the First Amendment only applies to quills and lead type.
• That 1 firearm owner in 10,000 will commit an act of violence in his or her lifetime, and this is far more frightening than the 25% of drivers who will cause a serious or fatal accident.
• That families with children should not be allowed to own guns for safety reasons, just as they aren’t allowed to own dogs, power tools, or toxic chemicals.
• That one can sue a store for having a slick floor, falling ceilings, and sharp corners, but if they refuse to let you bring a gun in and you get shot by a criminal, they aren’t liable for enforcing that rule with others.
• That Charlton Heston as president of the NRA is a shill who should be ignored, but Michæl Douglas as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.
• That the New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns, just as Guns and Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.
• That the right of the people peaceably to assemble, the right of the people to be secure in their homes, the enumeration herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people, The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people, refer to individuals, but the right of the people to keep and bear arms refers to the states.
• That women are just as intelligent and capable as men, but gunmaker’s advertisements aimed at women are preying on their fears.
• That a handgun, with up to 4 switches and controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile which only has 20.
• That rifles with pistol grips are assault weapons, just like vehicles with racing stripes are sports cars.
• That people who own guns out of a fear of crime are paranoid, but people who don’t want other people to own guns in case it causes them to commit crimes are rational.
• That we should ban Saturday Night Specials and other inexpensive guns because it’s not fair that poor people have access to guns too.
• That teaching abstinence exclusively rather than use of condoms is doomed to fail, but encouraging absolute bans on guns rather than education in safe use is the only acceptable method of reducing crime.
• That it is outrageous that civilians have rifles that were designed for the military for their own self defense, but perfectly okay to have polluting, potentially unstable, heavy vehicles that were designed for the military simply as status symbols.
• That people are too stupid to handle guns, but are intelligent enough to vote.
• That the NRA, with over 4 million members, is out of touch with America, and HCI, with 50 thousand members, has a mandate from the people.
• That private citizens making private sales of private property is a loophole.
• That the existence of weapons not banned by previous laws is a loophole.
• That it’s safer to do nothing than resist with a gun, which is why the military wins so many wars by not fighting.
• That we must close shooting ranges because of the noise, but ban silencers because they are quiet.
• That owning a gun for self-defense indicates an intent to kill, just like owning a first aid kit indicates an intent to impersonate a physician.
• That suggesting teachers be armed is an outrageous suggestion for a civilized society, which is why the Swiss and Isrælis do it.
• That making it harder and harder for even cops to have guns on school property will somehow make it harder for lunatics to kill the utterly helpless students.
• That the 14th Amendment requires states to accept each other’s drivers licenses, even with age or vision requirement differences, marriage licenses even with age or relationship differences or if it’s a gay marriage, but somehow doesn’t apply to licenses to carry weapons.
• That banning rifles with bayonet lugs will cut down on all the drive-by bayonetings.
• That shooting at an intruder who smashes your door and enters with knife in hand will somehow escalate the violence.
• That it’s safer with less guns, which is why lunatics shoot up schools instead of gun shows or police stations.
• That it’s outrageous to count 18 and 19 year-old parents as children for statistical purposes, but perfectly acceptable to count them as children for purposes of exaggerating gun deaths among children.
• That the few people who can’t use martial arts or other non-lethal means of self-defense–the young, the old, the infirm, the disabled, the weak, the small, and the pregnant–are simply the necessary sacrifice we must make to criminals to avoid the risks of letting people be armed.
• That the dangers of guns outweigh their recreational uses, unlike alcohol and motorcycles.
• That getting rid of guns reduces violence, so the military should be armed with bouquets of flowers.
• That only people over 21 are allowed to defend themselves.
• That if a group of anti-gun protesters feels threatened, they should ask police with guns to protect them while they tell everyone how worthless guns are for protection.
• That the 1939 US vs Miller case, is established law that endorses gun control and the matter is closed, just like Plessy vs Ferguson endorsed separate but equal schools and the matter is closed.
• That when the government promises that they won’t confiscate our weapons after we register them, we can believe them, just like the Commanche, the Sioux, the Apache, the Kaw, the Cree, the Blackfoot, the Italians in NYC, the Jews in Germany, the Zulu in South Africa…and the Americans at Lexington and Concord.
• That Charlton Heston, as president of the NRA, must be a racist, despite his marches with Dr. King in the 1960s. After all, all gun owners are racist, and that theory isn’t bigoted.
• That allowing the poor and minorities to defend themselves is Fascist.
• That small arms can’t win wars, as all the Viet Cong bombing, air superiority, and naval missions prove.
• That hate is not a family value, but all gun owners are tobacco-chawin’, beer-swillin’, racist, redneck bubbas.
• That there’s no contradiction in the same liberals who said in the 60s that 18 year olds who could fight should be able to vote, now saying that 18 year olds can vote but shouldn’t own guns.

Read the whole list—it’s quite funny. Completely unpersuasive to the unconvinced, of course (I imagine by hoplophobic friends are sputtering right now), but funny nonetheless.

This story is disgusting: an inmate in an Arizonan prison was caged in the desert until she died of dehydration—and no-one will be punished for it. When she died her body temperature was 108°; her body was thoroughly burned and blistered.

I’m sure she was a rotten person in many ways; I’m sure she was a discipline problem; I’m sure she well-deserved punishment. None of that excuses treating a human being that way, none of it. I’m sure she made life very difficult for her guards; some people are simply not great people. But that doesn’t matter. If a father treated his wayward child that way, he’d be executed. And none of those responsible for this is even going to jail.

It’s very sad. For all her faults, Marcia Powell was a human being. God loved her just as much as He does any of us; she had exactly as much inherent worth as any of us. And she didn’t deserve have her life baked out of her in the desert sun.

I found this great table of taxes on common items. I don’t mind taxes—we need them for a functioning state, and we need a functioning state—but 37.6% (soda) to 86.71% (cigarettes) is extortionate.

Avik Roy makes an excellent point: most health care is not life-or-death—and thus it can be dealt with in a market manner. He also argues for consumer-driven health plans, which I think would be a great idea: let the market efficiently allocate resources to routine health issues, and insure against catastrophic medical events.

I think we all agree that something’s wrong when a single disease or accident can lead to financial ruin, and that the situation should be fixed. But does society as a whole need to pay for Brooke Shields’s eyelash medicine or Bob Dole’s Viagra?

Phillip Longman argues quite persuasively that we should increase our use of water transport. It looks like where water travel is possible that it uses less than 20% of the fuel that trucking does; it has less than .7% the fatality rate of trucking. And it can be faster—the Boston to Orlando can legally be made by truck in 54 hours, while it’s only 33 hours by ship.

Why don’t we ship more goods by water? Well, it comes down to perverse incentives: we subsidise high-polluting, road-damaging trucking (e.g. a truck causes 41¢ per mile in damage but only pays 9¢ in tolls & taxes). Another issue is that while trucks are taxed by weight, ships are taxed by cargo value; this means that shipping companies must track the value of all goods they ship, unlike trucking companies. Worse, the tax is extremely high: the example given was of identical loads where the ship pays $625 while the truck pays $3.25.

This is a good example of how the free market is subverted by the state. It’s also an example of how policy can be uncoordinated: on the one hand we’re concerned about congestion and road-building; on the other, we’re encouraging congestion and road damage.

Roger Clegg offers up an illuminating parable. It starts:

Suppose you are a lifeguard, and you are presented with studies showing that boys are more likely to drown than girls, probably because they engage in riskier behavior. Now, how does this affect the job you do as a lifeguard?

Well, I hope that one thing you do not do is shrug if you see a girl drowning. You also should not try to rescue boys who are not drowning.

In fact, if this datum doesn’t help you spot drowning people, and it probably doesn’t, then it won’t affect the way you do your job as lifeguard at all. You look for people flailing and screaming, and knowing that most of them will be boys is really irrelevant to you.

Would it prompt you to support “Safety First” swim programs for boys only? Well, so long as there is some percentage of girls who would benefit from such programs, it’s not clear why you would want to exclude girls from them. Maybe the “Safety First” videos you show in the programs would be more likely to depict boys doing typically boy-things, but that’s about it.

And, of course, if further studies showed that it’s not so much sex that matters, but some other factor, then you would care even less about gender, and would be even less supportive of a program for boys and boys alone. For example, if there were some way instead to target risk-seekers for the program—thereby excluding cautious boys (and girls), and including risk-seeking girls (and boys)—then you would be all for it.

Read the whole thing—it’s good.

Slowly but surely the forces of freedom are pushing back the liberty-hating brigades of anti-smoking fascists. This is a Good Thing, not because cigarettes are particularly pleasant (they’re not) or because Big Tobacco is particularly decent or honest (it’s not), but because it’s a fundamental principles of property rights that a property owner has the right to allow what he wants within extremely broad limits, and the public has the right not to attend if they don’t want to.

Sally Pipes makes some excellent points about health care. The most important one IMHO is that health care is a necessity but not a natural right. Here’s another good one: A little known fact is that of all of life’s necessities, save clothing, health care is by far the least costly. It’s not until Americans become senior citizens that the average household spends more out of pocket on heath care than entertainment and dining out. Yet we don’t decry the crisis in restaurant bills, football games, and rock concerts.

Oregon plans to raise the beer tax nineteen-fold, from $2.60 per barrel to $52.21. Crazy stuff.

Well, America has passed a milestone: we now have more people employed by the State than in manufacturing and construction. In other words, we have more leeches than producers.

I, of course, am one of those leeches, at least in part. In fact, looking at my family two of my brothers (as well as my sister-in-law) are paid by the State; my remaining brother lives off of scholarship money; and my parents both make their money off of the Church.

Once again the magnificent machinery of our republic has turned and we have a new president. It’s a remarkable thing for one man to cede power to another so easily, without violence or bloodshed–that’s terribly uncommon in an historical sense.

I’m sorry to see George Bush go. He did some things right and some wrong, but I think that history will agree that in the main he was a decent president and a fundamentally decent man. The Editors of National Review agree on that score; Peter Wehner has more to add and Victor Davis Hanson caps it off. Bush did his best to be bipartisan—his unprecedented renomination of Clinton appointees is just one instance—but the unfortunate circumstances of his initial election and a Left eager for vengeance for the Right’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome conspired to prevent that. I firmly believe that had he been a Democrat the media and the intelligentsia would have loved him to death and in eight years he’d be as popular as Bill Clinton is now. As it is, I imagine that we’ll have to wait a good 60–80 years for historians to honestly examine his record.

It’s pretty cool that we have a president perceived as black (really, he’s as white as he is black…). It’s a nice milestone in the road to racial equality. Now that we have a black president, can we get rid of racial discrimination finally?

Now this is just hilarious: a group of drug legalisation activists set up a honeypot for police: they rented a home and proceeded to grow two small Christmas trees inside it. There’s nothing illegal about that, and yet somehow the police managed to get a search warrant and raid the home. What the police didn’t know is that they were on tape…

Radley Balko has some analysis: basically, it’s likely that illegal (under an opinion written by Justice Scalia and joined by Justice Thomas) thermal imaging was used to detect the grow lights, and that the police then lied on an affidavit, alleging either that they smelled marijuana or that they had been tipped off (neither would have been possible since no marijuana was ever produced or sold at the house), got a warrant and raided.

In a police department which followed the law, they would not be using thermal imaging. If the department followed the law, they would not lie on an affidavit. In this case, it appears that a lot of care was taken to ensure that there was no legal probable cause to raid the house.

Within 60 days the police have to release the warrant and the affidavit and we’ll see for certain. The question is—if they indeed broke the law, will the offenders be punished? We are a nation of laws, and our public servants should be scrupulous about following those laws. When they are not, they should be held accountable.

This is actually orthogonal to the issue of drug legalisation: even if you support drug prohibition whole-heartedly, you should be concerned when police and prosecutors break the law.

Today is election day here in America. Unlike many others, I will not encourage you to just vote. You have that right, of course, but you also have the right to stand on a sidewalk claiming that Martians are running Major League Baseball. No, I’m going to encourage you to vote wisely. Vote for men and women who will faithfully discharge their duties under the constitutions of both the United States and your individual state. Vote for ballot issues which are consistent with those same constitutions. Vote wisely, having done your research. If you’ll vote foolishly, then please: don’t. Exercise your right not to vote. But if you will vote soberly and seriously, with an intelligent grasp of the issues at stake, then please: head down to your nearest polling station and vote.

As we all know, assimilation is key to successful immigration: foreigners immigrate, assimilate and their grandchildren are just as American as those whose forebears came over on Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery. Unfortunately, immigrants from Mexico are not assimilating; in fact, assimilation is reverse in some cases. This is hardly healthy.

A disturbing statistic is that one in ten children born today has a mother born in Mexico; of those half never completed high school. This is not at all good for our republic: 10% (at least) of our citizens have roots in a culture which is not at all republican, and half of those come from uneducated families. The survival of our republic and our liberties relies upon an electorate which is cognisant of its history—what will happen when it feels more affinity for the failed policies of a failed state (Mexico is the very definition of a failed state: it has gotten so bad that it openly encourages the emigration of its citizens) than for those principals which made our union great?

Dr. Lawrence Huntoon has written a great article about health care costs. He says pretty much what I’ve been saying for years, so naturally I think him a genius. Medical insurance is no longer insurance at all, but rather inefficiently pre-paid medical care. Since it is generally obtained through an employer (due to tax laws dating back to the Second World War), it is more inefficient and harder to keep. The uninsured face a nasty tax liability ($19,000,000,000 per year). The way to fix rapidly-escalating health care costs is via a market mechanism using medical savings accounts.

Of course, this applies to just about everything. We’d all be better off if the money we’d spent on Social Security all these years were in a 401(k) or IRA or other investment vehicle.

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a reasonably strict libertarian in both economic and social issues. I tend to think that the State has no business regulating private affairs, and my definition of private is fairly broad. I don’t believe, for example, that marriage should be an institution of the State (it is God’s creation, not man’s). This has led me to oppose the anti-polygamy laws not because I support polygamy (I oppose it) but because I don’t think that punishing polygamy is the proper business of the State any more than punishing the wearing of shorts by grown men (an offensive practise far more common) is the proper business of the State.

Rich Lowry has an article which gives me pause. He points out that polygamy as practised in Islamic and fundamentalist Mormon circles inevitably results in some pretty severe social effects. The most notable is that a few high-status men have many wive, leaving low-status men on the fringes of society, with little hope of marriage and children.

He’s right about the problem, although he doesn’t seem to realise that this is an effect of polygyny (multiple wives) rather than polygamy. A similar effect would probably be seen with polyandry (IIRC that was common in Tibet at one point, with brothers marrying a single wife).

The article provides a good reason for polygyny to be illegal: its negative effects spill over to the population as a whole. It may be that even a few polygynous marriages would be enough to have widespread negative effects.

I wonder though if those effects would hold in a generally polygamous society in which there were group marriages, polygynous marriages, polyandrous marriages and true marriages. And I wonder if polygamy would actually be all that common even were it legal. Certainly the majority of the churches would refuse to perform such marriages (though no doubt the Episcopalians would rush to be the first to allow them). Most women would object to a plural marriage as strenuously as they would to an affair. And I think most men really don’t want the extra bother.

Still, it does demonstrate that private choices can have public consequences.

The esteemed playwright David Mamet had discovered that he is no longer a brain-dead liberal. Apparently considered thought and careful reading revealed that his leftist tendencies were in part incorrect.

One hopes more leftists will have similar epiphanies.

Apparently homeschooling one’s children without a teaching certificate is illegal in California. Naturally, the teachers’ union is happy about this, as it helps cut down competition for their services. Interestingly enough, most of the great men of history were taught by teachers without credentials, and they turned out alright. Moreover, so far as I can see the education of teachers is sadly lacking in any sort of realistic philosophy of education, as can be seen in the end-product of both our public and private schools (and to be fair, many home schools as well).

What’s really sad is that we know how to teach; we just don’t want to teach. Rather, we want to be seen to have taught, which is something very much different.

Lisa Schiffren writes about polygyny in New York City. I’m of two minds about polygyny in particular and polygamy in general. On the one hand I don’t see that it’s any of the State’s business who sleeps with whom, or who lives with whom, or any of that. But on the other hand it’s clearly unacceptable for women to be brought over illegally and kept in subjugation to autocratic husbands; moreover given that the modern State in its limited wisdom sees fit to award funds to pretty much anyone, it’s inappropriate for the rest of us to have to pay for the kids produced thereby.