What I think of Metal Coins

It's not that my dad hates Asians. He just thinks there's a scientific reason Asian houses keep getting burgled - everyone knows they keep precious objects at home.

This is why I'm very reluctant to get buttloads of gold and silver coins. Representing that much value with an object that small and that easy to loose would make me go crazy - Treasure of the Sierra Madre-type crazy. Add to that my inborn love for anything shiny and diskoid, and you get a real-life Shylock.

My dad has a friend who likes to give me advice whenever he's around, and once he gave me advice on how to store my hard assets. I'm to get a safe that's so heavy it's immobile, and if I can't dish out enough money for that I'm to find a discrete place in the back yard where I can burry my gold watchs, necklaces, and coins.

This must be one of the reasons "right"-libertarians are uber-gun-lovers. God forbid a common burglar stumble upon half their life savings. I'm not saying that fecetiously. I sincerely would feel heartache for anyone who lost their booty to a thief.

Isn't this what banks are supposed to be for in the first place? You'd think the market demand for secure places to keep precious objects would produce a lucrative way to delegate the safekeeping of my metals. But alas, we are screwed yet again.

If I get a deposit box in a bank to keep my coins in, I'd basically be renting storage with armed guards. My coins won't get much more valuable than inflation would make them, since I won't be making interest off of them. Paying a regular fee while not earning interest = loss.

Thanks to legal tender, you can't bank in gold. If you make a loan in gold, your debtor's only obliged to pay you back in that inflationary currency we're all trying to cushion ourselves against, and you're obliged to accept it. Sure, you can save all the gold you want; you just can't earn the interest on it to pay the cost of someone else keeping it safe.

Now, since you can't bank in gold, you can't use it as a monetary unit. If the coin is to be money, you have to be able to buy little things with it. Unless you can make a silver coin small enough to worth $1.50, you'll have to be able to cary receipts that represent that small amount of metal. And since no one banks in gold, those receipts don't exist.

If you can't lend in it and you can't buy in it, well then why think of it as an alternative currency? Maybe soon we'll see the emergence of a (probably black market) bank where people earn interest in metal off the loans they make in metal. Or maybe it already exists and I just haven't heard of it yet. If you know of it, or if you can convince me that keeping metal in a deposit box can increase the "real" value of my stuff, please tell me cause I really want to know.

And besides - I have no income and I'm paying off my student debt. I can't be buying metal when Wachovia owns my soul. Gold and silver coins' virtue is their ability to preserve a general amount of wealth over a long period of time, and due to the present circumstances my mind's set on the very opposite of that.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, R.I.P.

Roger Roots's essay at LRC shows how the American "Justice" system didn't work out perfectly for the Rosenbergs. Ethel might have been completely innocent. The evidence incriminating her was perjured - in the trial, witnesses against her said that she typed up notes on goings-on in Los Alamos, but at the grand jury hearing one of the witnesses admitted to typing up those notes herself. Had the transcripts for the grand jury hearing been openly available, the testimony against Ethel would have been noticed as bad testimony. But alas, jury transcripts are secret because we have to respect "jury secrecy", which - believe it or not - used to exist to protect the jury against undue influence from the prosecutors. We weren't able to learn all of the truth until the transcripts were released just now, more than 50 years after the trial (and, needless to say, too late to save the Rosenbergs).

Now, even if Ethel did write up those notes, and even if the information Julius conveyed to the Russians actually were designs for the A-bomb, the trial and execution still seems completely unjust. I don't believe in capital punishment, but even if it is justifiable to kill murderers confined after the act, what are we left with? A right to kill people who murdered in the past. If no one was murdered, there is no murder to punish, and an execution is totally uncalled for.

How many Americans died from a Soviet nuclear attack? Zero. So how many Americans did the Rosenbergs murder by conveying information on the A-bomb to the Soviets? Zero.

There is a phrase that used to be quite important in the American legal system, which roughly means "Show me the body."* Now it is hard to show a cadavre that's been nuked, but obviously no one here got nuked. Had our courts had a diligent interpretation of that phrase "show me the body", the Rosenbergs might not have been executed for a crime that resulted in no one's death.
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*Actually, the "body" referred to in the phrase habeas corpus is the living body of the petitioning prisoner, not the dead body of the victim. I'm just being poetic here.

My Conception Day Partay!

Non-Theistic Religions aren't necessarily Atheist Religions

A theistic religion is a religion that gives center stage to something or someone we can call "God". The stage might be the role of Creator or Sustainer or Most Intimate Chum (or it might be all of those) but whatever the role is, it's the most important one. And God, however you define it, is going to occupy that role.

A non-theistic religion is a religion that does not give center stage to anyone we can call "God". This doesn't mean, though, that the believers reject belief in God and all gods. It just means that non-physical beings don't take center stage.

Let's look at a list of non-theistic religions. There's Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, a few others that I won't list here, and others that I don't remember. Followers of each of the four that I list have accepted the existence of at least ghosts. Both Buddhism and Jainism accept the existence of pretty much all Hindu gods.

If you go to the Jain temple in Milpitas, you'll see a shrine to Dhurga and a couple other Hindu gods. This isn't a belief in a symbolic god; it's belief in actual beings who watch over earthly affairs and intervene to protect the temples and the people who worship in them. Jains wouldn't reject the existence of Jesus or God, either. They just think, as do many Buddhists, that every single soul is subject to Samsara - that is, being reborn and treated according to how ethical you act. The Jewish God has yet to die, and when He does, he will be reborn into a position that reflects how justly he ruled as God. He may have to live hundreds, or thousands, or millions more times before he can attain moksha.

The ones who get most of the adoration in a Jain temple are a set of 24 ancient religious leaders who attained moksha and now do absolutely nothing but sit blissfully and peacefully (that's what you do in Nirvana). Worshipping them is more like honoring someone for adhering to a very strict ethical path, than worshipping any kind of God or god - you don't get favors from or have any personal relationship with these ones. We can say that it's really the path itself that's being worshipped. Center stage, then, isn't really occupied by anyone.

But though no God or gods take center stage in Jainism, Jainism can't be called atheist according to today's meaning of the word. Atheists, as understood today, reject all supra-empirical reality - if you can't prove it, they don't believe it. Jains and most Buddhists, though, believe in supraempirical reality.

For one thing, Jains believe that the souls of their 24 Tirthankaras are sitting peacefully in Nirvana. That is just as much a belief in the "superantural" (I don't like using that word) as the belief that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. (Buddhists don't believe that Buddha exists, because if he is Buddha then he attained Nirvana, and Buddha himself defined Nirvana as the annihilation of the self.)

Also, Jains (and most Buddhists too) believe that each one of us who isn't going to attain moksha in this life is going to be reborn in a future life. This is just as supra-empirical as the belief that those who are saved go to heaven after they die. There's no way we can possibly prove that any one of us was someone else in a past life. And so, an atheist would reject belief in reincarnation for the same reason he would reject belief in heaven and hell.

To be a properly atheist religion, the belief system can't have any room for any thing whose existence can't be proven. God, Nirvana, Karma (as understood by Jains, which is as heavy dust particles that cling to your soul when you sin and literally weigh you down so that you're reborn as a lower life form), and rebirth all have to go out the window for the religion to be an atheist religion.

Three religions immediately come to mind when I think of atheist religions: Objectivism, LaVeyan Satanism (which can be described as Objectivism with robes and candles), and Marxism. All three of these reject God and all supernatural phenomena. Each one of them is a religion because each one of them is dogmatic - they're just not dogmatic about God (or rather, they're dogmatic about him not existing).

There are other atheist religions. There's atheist Judaism and atheist Christianity, and if it hasn't already come about, sooner or later there's going to be atheist Islam. There used to be an all-out atheist school of Hinduism called Carvaka, and from what I see there's at least one person today who identifies with that school. If there are others who share their Hindu and atheist beliefs with that blogger, then Carvaka is risen from the dead.

...Yet Another Political Spectrum!

I was overjoyed today when I saw Frank van Dun's essay "Freedom and Property: Where They Conflict" posted as a Mises Daily at my favorite anarcho-capitalist economics website. I was even more impressed when I saw that it's a chapter in that new book in honor of His Princely Majesty Hans the Great.

That essay wasn't my introduction to left-libertarianism. When it comes to economic and criminal justice, I've been some kind of a left-libertarian for about as long as I've been a libertarian (and I didn't consider myself a libertarian until I adopted views that pretty much amount to anarchism).

Neither was the essay my introduction to Frank van Dun. I was familiar with his work since the summer before last, when I tried to find a constructive and straightforward debate on limited liability and instead found this rich yet notably continental essay against it. I also found other rich yet continental essays at his website, and read to exhaustion.

That summer I was lucky enough to find and read the essay I mention and link at the top, or one almost identical to it. What's so "revolutionary" about it is its suggestion that if you want to be completely pro-freedom, then not only do you have to be anti-government but you also have to be a little anti-capitalist. Again, I've had that sentiment since I started calling myself a libertarian. But an essay like this helps you put it into words.

Being introduced to ideas like this can change how you mentally map out political views. The Nolan Chart, which I bet accompanied (or even constituted) your introduction to Libertarianism, helped you distinguish libertarians from regular off-the-wall moderates, centrists who say "We need a little government to do a little of everything", and totalitarians. Here's an even better political spectrum.

I'd like to offer a more zoomed-in political spectrum that can show where left-libertarianism stands and how it relates to other factions of the ideology we call "Libertarianism".

First, get a blank piece of paper. Fold it hamburger style, and then as it's folded hamburger style fold it hot dog style. When you unfold it and look at it "landscape" you should have four collumns. At the top center, write "4 Strands of Pro-Market Libertarianism". I say "Pro-Market" libertarianism because there are leftist factions that call themselves libertarian and which totally reject individual property rights (and which I'm a little sympathetic to).

In the furthest right collumn, write "Classical Liberalism". This is the political philosophy of those who have the strongest claim to being the ideological heirs of Thomas Jefferson. Classical Liberals understand that government is a monopoly on the use and threat of violence, and insist that its role should be strictly limited to the provision of those services that cannot possibly be provided in the free market - things like the common defense, police and courts, environmental protection, roads (Walter Block once called Milton Friedman a "road socialist", and Friedman responded "Yes, you're right, I'm a road socialist!"), universal access to education, and regulation or outright provision of "natural monopolies" like water, gas, and electricity. Classical Liberals also believe that government services should be as decentralized as possible. If gas and electricity can be doled out by the cities, then let the cities do it, and not any bigger government. If access to secondary education can be provided by state governments, then let the state governments do it, and keep the Federal Government out of it. The Federal Government should only be providing those services that can only be addressed on a national level, like national defense.

In the collumn just to the left of that, write "Objectivist Minarchism". Objectivists believe that government exists only to protect you and your stuff, and that's it. The only legitimate roles of government, they believe, are military, police, and courts. Everything else should be left up to the free market. Probably all of them dabble in clever daydreams about "voluntary taxation".

In the middle left collumn, write "Anarcho-Capitalism". These are the ones who recognize that (a) if all transactions should be voluntary, then there's no place for taxes anyway, and (b) if there is to be complete economic freedom, then there should be free trade in government services, and government as a monopoly of violence is just as illegitimate as any other monopoly that uses government force to make itself the only option available to consumers.

Then, in the far left collumn, write "Left-Libertarianism". Put simply, Left-Libertarians recognize that coercion is not just an action, but also a state of being. It is possible for coercive conditions to result from "voluntary" transactions - the mere fact that no one initiated the threat or use of force does not mean that everything is now really voluntary. There can be coercion even when no one was beaten, defrauded, or extorted. Probably the best example is the encirclement problem that van Dun writes about.

Now, roll up the paper so that the Classical Liberalism collumn overlaps a little with the Left-Libertarianism collumn, and staple the two ends together.

Both Classical Liberalism and Left-Libertarianism recognize that there should be limits on property rights, and that the way strict libertarian capitalists define property rights isn't good enough. Classical Liberalism and Left-Libertarianism differ on how that limit should be made.

Classical Liberals would want the limits drawn out and enforced by government. The limitations on economic power of private elite then amount to increases in the power of the political elite. Left-Libertarians, on the other hand, want the limits drawn out through the consideration of each individual case by arbiters selected by the involved parties. Authority and Power would be as separated as humanly possible.

Classical Liberalism and Left-Libertarianism also both accept the traditional distinction between the public and private spheres. In this regard, Left-Libertarianism is more "conservative" than anarcho-capitalism, which relegates everything to the private sphere. In a free society, not only would it be possible for certain resources to be set aside for public use, but it would be essential - it wouldn't be a free society if everyone always has to do another's bidding just to get around and get by.

Some of the ideas that Liberals have brought to the table in the past hundred years might actually become useful for Left-Libertarians. There is much opportunity to develop anarchist legal theories on which goods and services should be freely available to the public, how they should be made available, and what legal tools are necessary for that to happen, and many ideas can be borrowed not just from the Classical Liberals, but also from socialist anarchists and even from Contemporary Liberals (neither of whom I put on this spectrum because they're both anti-market, but if you must add them the socialist anarchists would be to the left of and overlapping with the Left-Libertarians and the Contemporary Liberals would be to the right of the Classical Liberals).

Again, Liberals and Left-Libertarians would disagree on how the public sphere should be created and maintained. Liberals think the public sphere should be managed by the monopoly of violence. Left-Libertarians insist that a public option from government is not a moral option, and that public resources should be provided in ways that are completely voluntary.

On a less theoretical note, I didn't vote for or against the measure on our ballot this month (we had one thing on our ballots). It was one of these "you'll approve of wrenching more money from everyone around you or you hate children" kinda deals. I wrote in my own measure, with Yes/Si and No/No options, and ticked Yes/Si. It calls for repealing all truancy laws and funding public schools completely through donation.