Never Look a Policeman In the Eye

When I was in Junior High I heard a preacher say, from the pulpit: "Never look a policeman in the eye." He was warmly Amened by other pastors and male church staff in the audience. I supposed back then that all these men were saying Amen out of a religious respect for authority. Now these days I wonder how many of those men said Amen out of pure fear of those in power. And maybe a couple of them said it out of both respect and fear.

Just Stop the Ag Subsidies

Yesterday on 97.3 (yes, I sometimes listen to Alice) the morning show people said a few words about farmers markets, and one of them said that organic fruit and vegetables would be a whole lot cheaper if fruit and vegetables got subsidies just like corn, meat, and dairy - as if it's the lack of subsidies for fresh fruit and vegetables that makes them so expensive.

Here's the thing: I don't have any numbers right now, but I would bet that removing subsidies for corn, meat, and dairy would make fresh fruit and vegetables less expensive. When animal farmers would have to pay the full price to raise their animals, they would of course transfer the cost to the consumers, who would then reduce the amount of meat and other animal products that they eat. When the demand for meat reduces, so will the production of it, which would free up some of the resources used to make meat and other animal products. A lot of the land and water that went to make meat and food for animals (which is A Lot) would instead go to the production of foods for human consumption - fruits and vegetables. This would increase the supply of fruits and vegetables, and lower their price.

Subsidies for fruit and vegetables would just raise taxes, and taxes hurt the poor. And subsidies for fruit and vegetables probably wouldn't address the distortions in agribusiness, unless they were higher than the subsidies for cattle feed and meat. Of course, getting subsidies for fruits and vegetables would probably be a lot easier than getting rid of the subsidies for corn, meat, and other animal products. Once you get someone rich off of government largess, they're going to kick and scream when you even think about reducing their benefits.

But I wonder if getting "effective" subsidies for fruits and vegetables would really be that much easier. If subsidies for fruits and vegetables are effective, then they would lead people to increase their fruit and vegetable intake and drastically reduce their meat intake. And that would hurt the meat and cattle feed farmers just as much as slashing Big Ag's corporate welfare would. I bet that meat and cattle feed farmers would kick scream, and shit their pants over effective fruit and vegetable subsidies almost or as much as they would over ending agricultural subsidies alltogether.

Convert Talk

According to this report, two of the biggest reasons for conversion given by former Catholics who converted to Evangelical Protestantism are that these converts "stopped believing in Catholic teachings (62%) and specifically because they were unhappy with Catholic teachings about the Bible (55%)."

As a former fundamental Baptist who's seen my fair share of conversions from Catholicism to the Baptist religion, I personally doubt the accuracy of these reasons. I think conversions have almost nothing to do with belief and almost everything to do with personal connections. Converts to Evangelical Protestantism adopt Evangelical Protestant beliefs through a process of immersion in an evangelical church. The only uniquely protestant belief that a former Catholic and new convert takes to an evangelical church is their belief that they will go to heaven because they've been born again - and the only reason they have that belief is because another evangelical went through the work of getting to know them and leading them to Christ. The human interaction precedes the change in belief. The change in belief does not precede the human interaction, as the former Catholic converts to Evangelical Protestantism seem to think.

Really, it should be no surprise that the fault they claim to have found with the Catholic Church was its teachings on the Bible. They are looking back onto a past part of their life through a religious lense that they got since then. Now that they are Evangelical Protestants, they insert their present reason for not being Catholic as their original reason for leaving the Catholic Church. I'm sure someone else has noticed this, and has a phrase for it; but until I learn what that phrase is I'll call this phenomenon "convert talk".

A Normal Atheist's Reaction to Christian Atheism

This man's puzzlement with the label Christian Atheism are some of the reasons I decline to call myself a Christian Atheist.

Basic Income Guarantee

Last month I wrote about something I called Stipendism. Turns out there already is a similar idea floating around. The basic income guarantee is a proposed system of social security that periodically provides each citizen or resident with a sum of money, regardless of their present income. According to the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network:

"The Basic Income Guarantee differs from existing income maintenance programs in the United States and Canada in that it is both universal and has no work requirement. It is therefore, very simple and easy to administer. It helps the working poor, single parents, and the homeless, without placing anyone under the supervision of a caseworker."

Since there is no means test to deterimine eligibility for the program, the basic income guarantee may eliminate or reduce the welfare-created unemployment trap. According to the Basic Income Earth Network:

"...the regular, reliable payment of the benefit is not interrupted when accepting a job under a basic income scheme, whereas it would be under a standard means-tested scheme. Compared to means-tested schemes guaranteeing the same level of minimum income, this opens up real prospects for poor people who have good reasons not to take risks. This amounts to removing one aspect of the unemployment trap commonly associated with conventional benefit systems, an aspect to which social workers are usually far more sensitive than economists."

A basic income program was recently tried out in the poor village of Otjivero, Namibia. Contrary to what some people feared, it did not disincentivize work - in fact, it may have empowered people to work.

"...income has risen by more than the amount of the grants. People are now able to engage in more productive activities, which has fostered local economic growth and development ; several small industries have sprouted up in Otjivero, such as dressmaking, baking, and brick making. Indeed, since the introduction of the BIG, the majority of people have been able to increase their work and their income dramatically. Average monthly household incomes increased substantially over and above the value of the BIG payments : household incomes from wages increased by 19%, income from farming increased by 36%, and income from self- employment increased by 301% during the first year. These findings contradict critics’ claims that the BIG would lead to laziness and dependency."

It may be tempting to make economic stimulation the selling point for the basic income guarantee. But one of the attractive things about the basic income guarantee is the simple freedom from drudgery that it may afford, without penalizing productivity, as said in this video.




Don't get me wrong, I'm still a freed market anarchist. I believe that freedom from unnecessary drudgery can and should be gotten through voluntary interaction. Yes, I do object by principle to the basic income guarantee, because it would be implemented through a monopoly of violence and funded through either coercive wealth acquisition (taxes) or devaluation of a monopoly currency (inflation of a legal tender) (the test in Otjivero, however, is funded through donations). I merely find the basic income guarantee quite interesting, and I wonder if the BIG would involve less beuraucracy, less inefficiency, less frustration, more economic opportunity, and more personal freedom than the current welfare systems in California do.

Jeff Tucker, IP, Fashion, Freed Markets

Thanks to Jacob Spinney, a very good talk by Jeffrey Tucker on IP has been uploaded to Youtube.



After mentioning that the fashion industry does quite well without relying a lot on IP, Jeff Tucker delivers this beautiful apologia for the truly free market.

"...other producers jump into the market, eventually profits for everybody gets lower and lower and the margins fall ... until they approach the point of zero. This is the way markets work. If you want to think of the free market this way, you can look at it as a giant conspiracy to reduce all profits to zero. I mean that's pretty much what a free market is in a competitive free market. What IP does is stops this process...."

Twenty Square Miles

I decided on it tonight. Twenty square miles is the difference between rent and taxation. In a video of mine I propose a factor test, and yes I do think that the upward limit on the amount of land that can be possessed without disparities of power being steep enough to call coercion cannot be accurately described without very nuanced language and can only be approached in a very nuanced way. But I also believe that legal definitions must be obvious to laypeople, comprehensible by laypeople, and easily predictable. Landlords and DROs/PDAs aren't going to have much direction in how much contiguous land they may claim jurisdiction over when the question of whether they have a legitimate claim to such'n'such plot of real estate is a question that can only be settled in court or arbitration. The near-endless list of factors can be made a lot shorter if everyone agrees that contiguous jurisdictions have to be 20 square miles or less.

Why arbitrarily pick 20 square miles, you ask? Well, the land area of Santa Clara is 18.4 square miles, the land area of Malibu is 19.87 square miles, and both towns are small enough for only one aspect of the typical suburbanite's day to be contained in it - you either drive in for work and then drive back home, or you live there and spend only your evenings there. If you want to move, you can easily move to a neighboring town without drastically affecting your life. San Jose, on the other hand, is so big that all parts of a person's day can be contained in it, and moving to a neighboring town may be more difficult. I know, it sounds totally arbitrary. But it's a lot easier to say "20 square miles" than to go down an ever-expanding list of factors that contribute to the difficulty of moving to a different jurisdiction.

The 20 sq. mi. limit assumes, of course, that people have the means to get around quickly - that there are free or cheap roads and every adult has a car or a bicycle, or that there's public transport accross the whole city. Without the infrastructure for this level of mobility, the upward limit should probably be much lower.

And the 20 sq. mi. limit does not address entrapment, which can still occur when jurisdictions adhere to the 20 sq. mi. limit.

Musings on Another Reason.TV vid

The president of the libertarian club at my campus was interviewed by Reason.TV, and a few revealing points were raised.



For one thing, Michelle points out that young Republicans tend to be more receptive to libertarianism than Democrats. Part of this might be that we're at a Christian campus, but I don't think the Christian orientation of our campus has everything to do with it. From what I've seen in undergrad at a public school, libertarianism appealed mostly to conservative young people. Part of it might have been Ron Paul. And that definitely had a role in it, since I never called myself a libertarian until after I was already a Ron Paul fan. And I was drawn to sites like LRC and Antiwar.com through my involvement in the Ron Paul campaign.

Besides Ron Paul, I think the very nature of mainstream libertarianism today is set up to attract conservatives. Mainstream libertarian views on economics are - how shall I put it - unoffensive. There might be another side to this coin. Self-styled progressives militantly reject the idea that voluntary economic interaction produces economic stability and equity. Libertarianism as a movement has failed to attract American leftists because it has failed to tie economic freedom with opportunity and sustainability. There are so many catch-phrases on the left that libertarians seem oblivious too. There's environmental racism. There's food justice. There's water waste. Libertarianism misses these low-hanging fruits. All these things can be addressed with libertarian ideas, and mainstream libertarians express more outrage about San Francisco banning happy meals than they do about the Federal government subsidizing corn and meat.

Michelle was asked about social aesthetics among young libertarians, and she basically answered that we're all a bunch of nerds who spend more time reading online articles than watching tv - which is probably true. Michelle's interviewer pointed out that libertarians of his generation were punks when they were younger. Michelle didn't mention any particular subculture that most libertarians today are coming from or are drawn to, and I think that's true - we're not punks, we're not into hip hop, we're not much of anything. This might be good in a way. We can't be put into a box the way anarchist socialists can be put into the crust punk box. But there might be downsides to this too. We don't have any rousing songs. And if you think Aimee Allen's song was the kind of thing that can get people to raise clenched fists, just look at this leftist song by the Dropcick Murphys.



Let's be honest. Rousing songs, revolutionary imagery, and other kinds of symbolism get young people who want radical change to read your stuff and take you seriously. Mainstream libertarians' sense of aesthetic is Statue of Liberty stickers on sportcoat lapels. It should be no surprise that the kind of people we attract are the type who read Hayek for leisure.

Three Short Comments on an Interesting Video from ReasonTV

Chris Reed raises some interesting points here, and I think these points definitely need to be shared with progressives in CA. However, I have 3 things I need to add.



1. Charter schools have a reputation of having a high turnover rate of teachers. It may be an inaccurate reputation, but it's the reputation, and it must be addressed by anyone who wishes to present charter schools as a force for the benefit of the underclass.

2. Walmart, too, is not known for job security. Maybe this too is an inaccurate reputation, but that's its reputation, and libertarians, neoliberals, and conservatives who want to defend Walmart as a progressive force for the betterment of underserved communities must address this reputation.

3. No criticism of California's water policy would be complete without a detailed picture of how government subsidies for water and water infrastructure contribute to water waste and the betterment of large corporate water users to the detriment of smaller water users. Sadly, almost every libertarian critique I've seen of California's water policies has been a defense of consumption without regard to cost. Market-oriented voices for social justice and environemntal sustainability should propose to reform the system so that water is distributed in a way that regards its preciousness, rather than simply demand more water welfare or gripe about environmental protection.

Something About Women's Business Dress That Pisses Me Off

I'm not the kind of guy to complain about women trying to conform to men's expectations. Whether the aesthetic that women in the business world are expected to conform to is asserted onto them by men or by other women is flat out irrelevant - what's relevant is that high heels are fucking stupid. And I have a feeling that women are just as guilty as men are in subjecting young women to that foot-binding instrument.

I've believed for actually a few years that high heels are vain, but my stay at my current school has really driven me up the wall about high heels. There was a moot court competition here a couple weeks ago, and I stood there and watched a moot court team from another school walk towards our law school, and the clup-clup-clup of all the girls' heels drowned out the car engines on the nearby street.

I recently had the privilege of acting out the defendant for my apartment mate's moot court class, and now I hate high heels even more. The student pretending to be the prosecuting attorney was wearing high heels, and when she was setting up for her closing arguments she wiggled accross the courtroom to get a marker. It wasn't walking, it was wiggling. The altitude of her heels actually impeded her locomotion. Her cocounsel was wearing heels too, but fortunately she didn't have to wiggle accross the courtroom to grab a marker.

I don't know what there is about high heels that makes girls think they have to wear them if they want to look formal. High heels don't look formal. They look ridiculous. What we think right now of the court fashion of baroque men is exactly what we will think of high heels when female vanity is finally directed in more wholesome pursuits. Young women can look just as classy and just as pretty when they wear 1-inch heels, or - God forbid! - flats. Women wiggle less when their heels are closer to the ground, and I dare say less wiggling is more courtroom-appropriate than more wiggling.

There is no benefit to wearing something that strains your ankles and blisters your toes. I don't know of any men's clothing item that hurts to wear. If there were one, I don't think men would feel that obliged to wear it. And I say it's about time women no longer felt obliged to wear high heels.

Why do we say "Welfare-Warfare State"?

Why not "Warfare-Welfare State"? After all, shouldn't the worst evil go first? And isn't murder more evil than theft?

Cyrenaics

I recently changed my "religious views" on my facebook profile from "Esaianism" to "Esaianism (which is, Philosophical Taoism, Cyrenaicism, Epicureanism, Jainism, stirred well)". Epicureanism is doing moderately well as a quasi-religion, and by moderately well I mean that I have met 2 university professors who identify as Epicurean, one of whom was introduced in my class as an Epicurean, and the other, who did the introduction, and who was my Hellenistic philosophy professor, who lists his "religious views" on his facebook profile as Epicureanism. There are also a couple facebook groups dedicated to Epicureanism. I have found only one facebook page dedicated to Cyrenaics, and this was a "Community Page" devoted specifically to Aristippus. All 3 paragraphs of it were lifted straight from Wikipedia. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it might be nice for more light to be shed on this stripe of hedonism.

The Cyrenaics start from the Greek ethical commonplace that the highest good is what we all seek for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. This they identify as pleasure, because we instinctively seek pleasure for its own sake, and when we achieve pleasure, we want nothing more. Similarly, pain is bad because we shun it.

In this sense, they are like the other classical school of hedonism, Epicureanism. The two schools differ, however, on how exactly to define "pleasure".

Pleasure and pain are both ‘movements,’ according to the Cyrenaics: pleasure a smooth motion, and pain a rough motion. The absence of either type of motion is an intermediate state which is neither pleasurable nor painful. This is directed against Epicurus’ theory that the homeostatic state of being free of pain, need and worry is itself most pleasant. The Cyrenaics make fun of the Epicurean theory by saying that this state of being free of desires and pain is the condition of a corpse.

Or, as the omniscient Wikipedia puts it:

The Cyrenaics taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain, but positively enjoyable sensations.

If their reputation is accurate, which it probably isn't, then the Cyrenaics were total nutters. They do, however, contribute something very valuable - the recognition of pleasure as really something, and not just the absence of pain and anxiety.

Two Videos for Armistice Day

Posted My First "Question" on Facebook Tonight

What percentage of the CA GDP might consumer expenditures on water be,
if CA water were distributed at a market price instead of heavily
subsidized?

For the past couple days I've been plagued with daydreams of a socialist minarchy (if there's such a thing; I know "libertarian socialism" almost always refers to some faction of far-left anarchism) where instead of taxes there are water "fees" that fund modest stipends that are guaranteed to every resident from conception to the grave. The stipends would have to be big enough to cover rent and food. The state would have to have a monopoly on both water and currency, which makes it not at all libertarian by my standards. The total amount of money in circulation would have to be greater (probably much greater) than the value and amount of water being used at that time, because the amount of money coming in through water use would have to be roughly equal to the amount issued through the stipends (if the former is less than the latter then there would be inflation), and there needs to be enough currency floating around for people to save or spend on little vanities like internet access or art supplies or weed.

If you know this kind of socialism would be doomed from the start - doomed like Khmer Rouge doomed, tell me now. You probably won't deter me from continuing to think about it, but yeah.

And since I couldn't find anything on something like this, I had to make up my own name for it - stipendism. Glamourous, huh?

Props to the Georgists, to Proudhon and Bakunin et al, to erudite progresive neoliberals and to Swedish-style social democrats, to the Property and Environmental Law professor who I've talked to twice, and to numerous others...

Don't worry, I'm not going statist all of a sudden. I've just been thinking about what kind of state socialism I would find most amenable, and I had to start making one up. I would be impressed with myself if this turns out to be theoretically viable.

So I'm going to be asking more questions of Facebook, if I get some helpful info as answers to the above question. Anyone know someone who's good at constructing economic models and has a lot of free time?

A Possibly More Realistic Interpretation

The right honorable Thomas DiLorenzo tells about his trip to Poland, where he was picked up by a young man who displayed on his dashboard a Confederate flag magnet which he bought while visiting Richmond.

Politically-Correct Interpretation: Obviously, this young libertarian, whose parents were slaves of socialism, is a racist who reveres nineteenth-century American slave owners and would probably like to introduce slavery to Poland.

More Realistic Interpretation: This young Polish libertarian, who has not been brainwashed by American government schools, and who has never attended a Claremont Institute seminar, naturally thought of the Confederate flag as a symbol of opposition to a hated centralized governmental tyranny.

Or how about this possibly more realistic interpretation: This young Polish libertarian is fascinated with not-exactly-libertarian idiosyncracies of other cultures' histories, just as I as a young American libertarian am fascinated by Soviet-era classical music and entertain an arm-chair interest in socialist realist art, and this young libertarian Pole wishes to collect trinkets and other paraphernalia that reminds him of these unlibertarian idiosyncracies, partly because they tickle his brain and partly because they make him feel rebellious.

Of course, it was Tom DiLorenzo who rode with him from the airport to the hotel or the conference, and so DiLorenzo knows more about the guy than I do. Maybe the Pole really was a Confederate sympathizer. Or maybe he was just being chatty.

Death

I just today stumbled upon this beautiful piece by Stravinsky.



The lyrics of the first movement are from Psalms 39: 13 and 14. At Wikipedia they're translated as:

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with Thine ears consider my calling: hold not Thy peace at my tears.
For I am a stranger with Thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more.

This translation grabbed my attention, because like several other passages of the Old Testament, this passage seems to present an image of death as the complete end of the individual's existence - which is very different from the contemporary view of death being just a temporarily painful transition to a better world.

My mind then wandered on to contemporary compassionate views of God. According to moderate and liberal theists, God couldn't have commanded genocide, punished whole nations with disease, disasters, or conquest, or set up all humanity to fail - He's too good for that. I think this view cuts away at least 50% of what the idea of God is supposed to be.

Religion is a reaction to death and suffering. That's why so many people turn to it - it helps them deal with suffering, and especially to make their peace with death. The Old Testament idea of God was a very useful innovation. "God", as something that's bigger than you, that holds the puppet strings to the conditions of your existence, and against which you as a mere human are totally powerless, instills a comforting dose of resignedness. Old-fashioned monotheism was an open and frank acceptance of those evils that we cannot control.

Monotheism began loosing its edge more and more, especially in recent amplifications of God's attributes of Mercy and Love, to the detriment of other traditional attributes. This blunting process accelerated 2 centuries ago, but I think it got underway more than 2 millenia ago, when monotheism started making explicit assertions of belief in an afterlife.

Belief in an afterlife is problematic for two reasons. For one, life after death is probably untrue. The idea of an immortal soul goes against the contemporary understanding of the interrelation between the soul, or psyche, and the physical body. You may as well believe that wiping yourself with fiberglass insulation won't irritate your skin. Heck, you may as well believe in pink winged unicorns. Placing your hopes on something that no one can venture even an educated guess about, and which all the evidence we have actually weighs against, is something the Epicureans call a "vain and empty" desire.

The other reason belief in the afterlife is problematic, is that it's inadequate for religious purposes. Your religious beliefs are supposed to help you make peace with death. Unfortunately, most people view death as a nap, or as a trip to another world. If you accept death as a benign transition to another world, then you haven't made your peace with death. You've made your peace with a coma, but you haven't made your peace with death.

Belief in the afterlife whitewashes what is most inherently evil about the world - the permanent end of one's existence as an experiencing being. Yes, death is evil. It is the elimination of all capacity to enjoy - it is the erasure of everything good. And yes, it is natural. This awareness of death being both essential to our world and evil is necessary for a full acceptance of death, and of this world in general.

Granted, some people just like to play religious make believe. It's as if the only thing that can help them make peace with someone's "homegoing" is to make things up about their loved one playing a gold harp in the sky and watching out for them. The Baptist version is a little different. In that version Heaven is a non-stop church service in a cube. Everyone stands around the throne and sings praises to Jesus without end while throwing their hard-earned crowns at his feet. If that's really what's needed to give them peace about it, then so be it, I guess.

Second Thoughts on CA Prop 19 (2010)

Up until yesterday or the day before that I was an ardent supporter of the ballot initiative to legalize weed in CA. The first mark I made on my ballot was to tick a yes on Prop 19. But I might ask for a new ballot soon. There are a few reasons Prop 19 might not be better, and might even be worse, than the laws as they presently are.

First things first, Prop 19 can make it harder for medical marijuana users to get all the weed they need. It sets a limit of one ounce per person, and makes no exception for medical marijuana users, who would need more. And though it allows up to 25 sq. ft. of cultivation space for personal use, it also allows local governments to tax and restrict (or flat-out ban) it. This could be the end of marijuana collectives in some areas. Since 19 does not exempt medical marijuana from being taxed, weed might get too expensive for some medical marijuana users to afford, and since the limitation on cultivation space might forbid users from growing enough for themselves, some (or many) medical marijuana users would simply not have access to weed - despite the nominal "legalization" of it.

Though weed may be legal, the symptoms of prohibition may remain. If the taxes are high enough, and the restrictions draconian enough, there may still be a black market in weed. Earlier I was hoping that weed legalization could make it possible for us to get old-school weed - weed that isn't potent as fuck. Hopefully the one ounce per person limit and the 25 sq. ft. limit won't make it impossible to get it; but these resitrictions along with the restrictions of local governments may likely allow the high-potency strains that originated in prohibition to remain the dominant products in the market.

Of course, what's keeping me from getting a new ballot right now is that I haven't yet decided whether the nominal legality ofweed woud be better than weed being unavailable to some medical marijuana patients. I guess it comes down to how many people would be getting thrown in jail for weed use or possession now than after 19 passes. And I don't have any numbers on that.

Anyone who does have numbers on that is more than welcome to share them with me.

Thank You Tim Profitt

It is behavior like yours that gives the government "reasonable cause" to detain anyone with a copy of the Constitution in their pocket. You really help advance freedom. Dumbass.

I'm going to go to a student-run political debate tonight and if the Democrat doesn't drop your name at least once I'm going to be impressed.

Ever read ALL of the 1st Amendment? It says "the right of the people PEACEABLY to assemble". Jeez, now I want to stomp somebody. See what violence does to people? Don't look at me, look at what your douchebaggery will do to your cause. You apparently haven't yet learned what BLOWBACK is. Well now you're gonna find out.

Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic attempt to wipe out a particular human population or demographic. The deliberateness of the crime is essential to it being classified as genocide. Wanton killing, even if accompanied by racism, should not be considered genocide unless it is carried out with the express intent to wipe out the entire target group. And the systematic subjugation of an entire nation resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths should not be considered genocide either, unless that subjugation is accompanied by the express intent to exterminate the people of that nation.

I'm writing this because someone I love just facebook "liked" the mis-named International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq. I've known for a couple years that the U.S. military and contractors have done things that result in quite a few deaths - not just of people killed in the crossfire, but of people whose standard of living plummeted after crucial services suddenly evaporated. But though lots of civilians died, and though their deaths can probably be called deliberate (if you know that the death results from your action and you perform the action, the death is caused deliberately), I wouldn't call this genocide against the Iraqis. It was not accompanied by the intent to wipe out every single Iraqi.

Of course, The International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq is not trying to convince us that the U.S. actually intends to wipe out every single Iraqi. The wiping out that the writers of this initiative are decrying is the destruction of Iraq as a nation state.

The crime of genocide is the intended destruction, in whole or substantial part, of an enumerated group as such. Iraq has been intentionally destroyed as a state and nation.

Over one million dead, a fifth of the population exiled, and millions more injured, alongside total infrastructural collapse and an unprecedented promotion of corruption, sectarianism and death squads, constitutes destruction substantial enough to negate the possibility of Iraq functioning as a viable entity. This is and heralds genocide.

Yes, social structures were destroyed in the war and this destruction resulted in numerous deaths. But the unviability of the nation state is not the same as a deliberate attempt to wipe out all members of a targeted group.

I'm being vain, of course, because the term "genocide" is totally useless as far as human rights is concerned. It's as irrelevant as the broader umbrella term "hate crime". Whether the victims were targetted for being members of a particular group is irrelevant - what matters is that their rights were trampled. Killing 6 million Jews with the intent to wipe out all of European Jewry isn't any worse than killing 6 million persons of diverse racial backgrounds without the intent to wipe out any race.

That said, I do think the word genocide shouldn't be used by people who oppose the war in Iraq. Either it makes us peace-niks look like we're dishonest and manipulative about our words, or it makes us look like we don't know what we're talking about. The initiative would sound just as urgent if it were called "The International Initiative to Prosecute US War Crimes in Iraq".

A Few Quick Words on Voting

I've read enough anti-voting comments from libertarian anarchists. I'll try to explain my pov very quickly:

I don't in any way give consent to the existence and abuses of a monopolistic government by sending a government office two pieces of paper with tick marks on them. And the governing "authorities" don't base their treatment of me on whether or not I voted, or whether or not I even consent to their authority. They're not going to go - "Oh, you declined to turn in your ballot last November? Well excuse me, here's the full amount of your fine back."

Voting might be an act of violence, but if you vote "correctly" it's analagous to an act of defensive violence.

The vast majority of anti-voting comments - probably 99% of the ones I've seen - are specifically about voting for candidates. These people speak as if they never before in their life seen or heard of a ballot measure. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that you can help prevent the passage of a bad law by voting against it. And they seem equally oblivious to the voters' ability to enact a law that is less evil than the ones that are in place. When CA Prop 19 fails by a handful of votes, all you libertarian anarchists in my homestate will sit there wondering if weed could have been legalized by you spending a couple minutes ticking "Yes" and dropping that ballot in a box.

Voting can be a fun and creative way to protest the ridiculousness (yes that's a word) of representative democracy. Ever tried writing in "Nobody" for President? Or have you ever considered writing in your own name? (Voting is self-government, right?)

The unspoken truth is that you don't have to vote for anybody when you vote. The ballots I mail in usually have very few candidates marked. Yes, I am afraid of voting in somebody who'll exercise power unjustly. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't turn in a ballot.

In short, I don't think voting is unprincipled, or a waste of time. It can actually be amuzing.

An Unsolicited Plug for Jacob Spinney

Jacob Spinney is a magician who makes videos on youtube about libertarianism and animal rights. He's an anarcho-capitalist, a bit of an animal rights activist, a vegetarian (though not a vegan...yet), and almost as "pro-life" as me. He might be called a "right-wing" anarchist, because he opposes most abortion and because he calls himself a capitalist; though like every good market anarchist he opposes IP - he even opposes contractual copyright, which is further left than where I stand. I'd say he fits into that very tight niche of pro-life animal rights market anarchist, which as far as I know includes 2 people - him and me. Indulge yourself at his blog.

They Murdered Che

I hate to sound as if I'm actually standing up for a commonly known murderer, especially one as brazen and psychotic as Che Guevara. But the latest article by anti-Che-cult activist Humberto Fontova compels me to open my mouth.

I could care less that this article uses more than a few recycled lines from a few of his previous articles written for this time of year. That doesn't aggravate me one bit. What really gets me is Fontova's last line in his latest article, referring to Che's execution without trial: "Justice has never been better served."

It is hardly within the spirit of "limited government" to defend summary executions. The whole point of procedural rights and duties is that to protect the innocent from wrongful punishment, you have to give the benefit of the doubt even to the most obviously guilty. "Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake."

By calling the murder of Che Guevara "just", Fontova poses himself as a defender of the very abuses that Che Guevara is apparently guilty of. This is reminding me of the War [of] Terror.

Fontova's jabbing rhetoric seems to be the delight of anti-commies, and his articles are unsurprisingly posted on both conservative and libertarian websites. If Fontova's latest article were posted on LRC, as are a few of his other October articles, I as an LRC reader would be embarassed. It would go beyond the typical coziness with deer hunters and caveman diet enthusiasts and enter the realm of neoconservative apologetics.

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Note: All my talk about presuming the innocence of the accused should not be construed as referencing grounds for a just execution. I think it's pretty obvious that the only way to ensure against unjust execution is to not have executions. I also personally believe that deadly force is only legitimate against people who are in the act of or just about to commit lethal force, and for that reason I believe that putting confined criminals to death is illegitimate.

A Conversation on the Burqa Ban

Below is most of a comments conversation that some acquaintances and I had on Facebook. I removed posts that I consider irrelevant to the discussion. I might post them if a reader begs me to. Nothing that I posted here is “improved” in any way, so all the spelling errors are sic.

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My brother: Any thoughts on France's burqa ban? I've generally felt that bans on this kind of thing are a bit totalitarian, but a friend of mine recently likened the burqa to "modern-day slavery." What are your thoughts? Should women be punished for wearing their religious clothing, as they would be under the new French law?

T: The burqa is a symbol of chauvanistic slavery. It's sad that the women who wear it tolerate it. France is simply saying they won't tolerate it. Which is good.(It won't last long.) Besides, it's a safety issue because of the face being entir...ely covered. It has nothing to do with religion. The mall I used to work security at had a zero tolerance policy for people walking through with a mask on- even on Halloween. Not only is it unsafe, but it also makes it easier to commit a crime without being recognizable. One guy even walked through with an all out Darth Vader mask. Did you see the story of the lady who wanted her driver's license picture with the burqa on? Holy cow.

My brother: I did hear about that story--what a mess that would have been for identification purposes. The burqa ban is interesting--it passed by an absolute landslide, and the 100 or so abstains were almost all leftists who didn't want to get caught up in the mess of it.

A: I don't agree with the ban, but I do agree that it is a symbol of a chauvinistic society/belief system. I actually get angry when I see women who wear it. It's like they are going along with the sadistic and profoundly unfair system of laws that keep women down in those parts of the world. The feminist in me screams and yells, kicking even. But I still don't think you can tell people what to wear on their heads.

My brother: A, I think yours is a perfectly sound viewpoint. I think it's possible to disagree with something without call...ing for an outright ban on it. I wonder if there's a more organic way to promote women's rights than bans like this.

Me: I'd say that a burqa can constitute a mask, and so any private agency has the right to exclude people who wear it, and any government agency that has a legitimate interest in seeing people's faces (ie a jail that needs to take a mug shot) has the right to make someone take it off. I also understand that people can read it as a symbol of chauvenistic slavery. However, the idea that it's a symbol of an unseemly thing is a social attitude that should be left up to individuals to embrace or refrain from embracing, and should not be enforced by a government as policy. Remember - lots of people think long full skirts are also symbols of chauvenistic slavery, and it would be a real shame for a government to prohibit women from adhering to their personal sense of modesty.

I don't consider the mere wearing of a garment to be necessarily coerced - even if the garment hides most of the wearer's body. It is conceivable that most women who do wear the burqa do so out of steep social pressure, or out of all-out coercion. But it is also conceivable that a woman can do it voluntarily, and if it's possible for a woman to wear it voluntarily - which quite a few do - then it should not be treated as slavery as far as government policy is concerned.

Like a few other government actions, this ban is an encroachment on the rights of private property owners, in that owners of private semi-public places like cafes, restaurants, and malls cannot tolerate women who wear burqas on their property - the women can still be fined, even if the owner of the property consents to the woman dressing that way on his property.

Me: And another thing: a national regualtion on what a woman may and may not wear runs completely against any supposed goal of liberating women.

Post-Bush Neocon’s Mom: So what do you think about a Government who requires a woman to wear a Burqa, Isaiah?

Me: Probably a slightly more pronounced version of what I think of a government that requires women to wear any clothes at all.

Post-Bush Neocon’s Mom: Isaiah, sorry but I don't get your response. :-/

My brother: It's interesting that you bring up governments requiring women to wear a burqa, Nancy--because Isaiah seems to be really honing in on that key word: require. Personally, I'm adamantly opposed to any government requiring a woman to wear a burqa; then in France the government is requiring women to NOT wear them. Amid all this requiring I wonder whether governments should be making any requirement about that at all.

Post-Bush Neocon’s Mom: What reasons are there to require women to not wear a burqa? Is it for national security?

My brother: When the French government first made the recommendation, it said "to ensure the dignity of the person and equality between sexes." Other reasons given include public safety. I don't see national security as a reason; this follows a 2004 law disallowing children from wearing any overt religious symbolism whatsoever in French schools (that includes religious head-scarves and cross-shaped necklaces).

Me: Sorry, I was being facetious. I believe that a national government should have a very minimal role in dictating what people wear. It does have an understandable and excusable reason to require people to dress fully and formally for an appearance in federal court, or for a visit to any other meeting of the national government. I do not believe that should include a requirement to wear a face covering. A national government has an understandable and excusable reason to require minimal dress standards for certain public places like public parks and beaches, though it has just as understandable and excusable reasons to designate certain parks and beaches as clothing optional. It's also understandable and excusable for a government to require people to show their faces in their drivers' license photos (though of course I oppose government mandating any kind of licensing, including drivers' licenses). All of these considerations above are very time- and place-specific.

Some national laws dictating what one may or may not wear would be understandable and excusable regardless of place and time - for instance a ban on wearing a live bomb vest. But a national law regarding what people wear in their personal and day-to-day lives, without being necessary to address a public safety need, is an unjustified intrusion into the individual's personal sphere.

Rules about what one may and may not wear on the sidewalk or a city bus are more understandably the role of local governments; though here too I think it is more justifiable to err on the side of liberality than on the side of astringence (and some cities are just too big for me to call "local"). And I would be reluctant to step foot in a city that required its women to wear burqas in public - if that's what you're asking about.

E: Aww, shucks, Nate considers me a friend. ~;)

I think if we don’t look at this as telling people what to and what not to wear but, rather, look at it as a matter of human rights one might think differently.

Obviously, in our society, more legislation is almost always viewed as a bad thing - Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do! We view it as protecting our liberties to do whatever the hell we want (within reason, of course), even screaming at the top of our lungs against our government.

But there are many times in history where legislating human rights was, indeed, the only way to foster equality. Take desegregation for example. Or women’s suffrage. Or the current issue of gay marriage. Sometimes legislation is the only way to FORCE people treat everyone equally. It may not be pretty but if people aren’t going to stand up for others on their own, and the group does not have or does not think it has the power to stand up for themselves, then what possible other course of action do you take, other than to be content with the status quo?

I don’t want governments to legislate away our rights and freedoms. But I want everyone treated equally, whether bigots, misogynists and homophobes agree or not, and I support any legislation that forces them to do so.

You can show me a plethora of women saying that they are wearing the burqa by choice, but I will never believe that is a choice that comes from free will. Too often women in Muslim societies are oppressed and they don’t feel they have other options. They have been raised to believe they are less than their male counterparts and all of the aspects of their lives (food, education, choice) have reinforced that belief.

I am not saying that all Muslim culture is misogynist. Indeed, there are many Muslim communities that choose to treat women as equals and believe in a different interpretation of the Koran. But having traveled through Muslim countries as a woman, I most certainly felt oppressed and unable to express myself. And I didn’t even live there.

So…that’s my .02 since I apparently started this interesting discussion! Thanks, [my brother], for continuing it! ~:)

Me: I agree that legislation to end government discrimination is appropriate. About legislation that forces private groups and individuals to integrate, I offer the perspective of this article. http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010.../0526/Rand-Paul-and-the-Civil-Rights-Act-Was-he-right "Starting in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, lunch counters throughout the South began to be desegregated through direct but peaceful confrontation – sit-ins – staged by courageous students and others who refused to accept humiliating second-class citizenship. Four years before the Civil Rights Act passed, lunch counters in downtown Nashville were integrated within four months of the launch of the Nashville Student Movement’s sit-in campaign."

About gay marriage, I offer the perspective of this article. http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-04-02-faith-edit_x.htm The solution called for here is not forced integration.

I would not believe for one milisecond the idea that *NOT A SINGLE* woman who wears a burqa does so freely. That's just such a broad statement it looks wrong on its face. Of course the ideas people are raised with are going to have an effect on the choices they make - that doesn't mean that the clothes they decide to wear are necessarily going to be clothes they were forced to wear. And besides ideas that people are raised with, what about ideas that people adopt? What about the white English or American women who convert to Islam and start wearing burqas on their own? I don't see any firm ground to assume that they too were somehow coerced into donning the burqa by some radically constricted gender role that they inherited.

Where I'm Liberal

The other day my brother and I were talking on the phone, and I started talking about how uncomfortable I am even identifying with the not-so-grand not-so-old party. To illustrate, I tried to list those issues where I’m liberal. I mentioned my stances on war, gay rights, and drug rights, then my mind went blank. It was a little awkward, considering that I had just said that I am only conservative on 2 or 3 issues and that I’m radically liberal on everything else. So when I got back to my room I started writing up this list of issues where I’m liberal, and where I’m uber liberal. At the bottom of this list I give 3 positions that mark me as very conservative. This isn’t all of it, and these aren’t the defining principles of what I believe politically. But I just wanted to give a sketch of how many arms and legs I would need for the Twister game of Politics.

1. I oppose pretty much all wars.
2. The death penalty should be immediately, completely, and permanently abolished.
3. Abolish the draft. All of it.
4. People who grew up here shouldn’t be deported to a strange country.
5. Increase the number of workers visas to meet the demand. Don’t make them wait in line so long or pay such high fees that they would rather hire a coyote to sneak them across the desert to get in.
6. I’m very careful about where my chocolate comes from. I rarely buy any. Ever heard of chocolate slavery? It’s real.
7. The sovereign debt of 3rd world nations should be forgiven.
8. Factory farms should not be eligible for federal or state subsidies. In fact, not one bit of Big Ag should get subsidies (which means there shouldn’t be agricultural subsidies, since Big [fill in the blank] is what happens when you start subsidizing [fill in the blank]).
9. Animal welfare regulations are small steps forward.
10. I strive to abstain from consuming animal products. No sentient being exists for another’s pleasure.
11. Same-sex couples have just as much a right to marry as do opposite-sex couples.
12. Islam is just another theistic religion, and should be treated as such.
13. Students at public schools have the right to pray and conduct religious activities during lunch and before or after school. Not during class.
14. Reparations are due to the victims of the Rodney King riots, the victims of U.S. concentration camps, and American Indians.
15. Patent amounts to Peter getting forced to pay Paul for permission to use things that Peter invented himself.
16. “Neighborhood improvement” projects that involve eminent domain hurt the poor the most. It’s usually the dirt poor areas that get condemned, meaning that loads of renters for whom “just compensation” doesn’t mean much get thrown onto the street and have to find some other crowded neighborhood to squeeze in to.
17. The drinking age should be reduced to 18, probably lower.
18. I want all drugs legalized. Or at least legalize weed, acid, and coke.
19. I want prostitution legalized. Women shouldn’t be thrown in jail for trying to get by in a way that violates no one’s rights.
20. Pornographic material should be legal, and stay legal (except for crush, snuff, and film recordings of actual rapes, of which regulation or prohibition is understandable and excusable).
21. Bring back the topless coffee drive-thrus.
22. Only violent crimes should be punished with prison time.
23. I believe not just in a right to die, but also in a right to suicide. All of this is depends, of course, on whether the person consents to it.

The liberal stances I have which the “progressives” are often too wimpy to talk about:

24. There should be no licensing laws for beauticians.
25. I want moonshine whisky legalized.
26. I think children who are old enough to talk politics are old enough to vote.
27. Children who are old enough to sell cookies or clean up a senior citizen’s yard are old enough to get paid for their work.
28. Children have a right to free time safe from the encroachment of homework and chores.
29. The mutilation of the infant male’s genitals (aka “circumcision”), whether performed for mystical superstitious reasons or for vain aesthetic reasons, is a violent invasion of the child’s physical integrity, and should be abolished in all 50 states of the Union.
30. Children have a fundamental human right to unilaterally divorce their parents for any reason they fancy.
31. Screw marriage equality. Give us marriage freedom. Let’s recognize the legitimacy of poly-amorous unions. Better yet, get government completely out of the business of defining what a marriage is and what it’s not.
32. If a restaurant owner wants to allow people to smoke in his restaurant, people should be allowed to smoke in his restaurant.
33. The U.S. should get out of the UN, for the UN’s sake.
34. “Defense” spending should be cut by at least 80%.
35. Government subsidies for transportation contribute to environmentally- and economically- unsustainable development. Our governments should just stop repairing the roads and highways and then see what happens. (Maybe they already started that.)
36. Water should be sold at a graduated price that allows the “little guys” access to it, encourages conservation (and even savings), and takes into account how much water is being lost on the way to the tap. People in So-Cal should pay more than double the price that people close to the water sources in Nor-Cal pay.
37. African Americans probably deserve reparations too.
38. Urban tenants should probably be granted title to their flats.
39. People should be free to make residence in any house that has been unoccupied for a long time, and to plant or build on any lot that has been empty for a long time.
40. Everyone’s debt should probably be forgiven. Start over with an almost clean slate. If you’re a lender, sucks for you. At least you won’t owe any debts either.
41. Sick and tired of all the stupid Mexicans around you? Ever wonder whether they might learn better in their own language?
42. Stop putting poison in our water.
43. Young people should not be required by law to perform community service. Last I checked, involuntary servitude is still slavery.

Where I’m not liberal very much:

44. About 98% of abortions are murder.
45. Taxation is theft.
46. The disparity of power between an overbearing and intrusive government and its hapless subjects may be reduced with the widespread individual ownership of, open possession of, and familiarity with semi-automatic firearms; and restrictions on private ownership of lethal weapons only exacerbates that power disparity between institutions of violence and the individual.

While we're posting metal videos on our blogs...

Darian Worden's latest post at his blog inspired me to find an equally-fitting metal video to post here. Granted, not many things can equal performing with a viking ship on stage and billows of live flame shooting up whenever you growl the word "Fire!" But I think I found something fairly close.

In the late 1930's Sergei Prokofiev wrote the score for a Soviet war propaganda movie entitled "Alexander Nevsky", based on the historical and legendary figure of the same name. The music, and the movie it's written to accompany, can count as good examples of Socialist Realism - simple musical and literary themes, unambiguous moral virtues of the good guys and unambiuous evil of the bad guys, heroism of the crowd, cheap jabs at the rich, etc. - though this particular movie is probably more of a "let's kill Nazis" movie than a "nationalize the means of production" kind of movie. The villains are blond-haired German knights who wear scary helmets that have funny statuets on the tops of them, who lead thousands of faceless pawns, and who receive spiritual support and justification from pale, sunken-eyed black-hooded monks whose empathy for lost souls leads them to do the sign of the cross in front of each Rus child who is then thrown into the fire.

The Russian band Merlin made a death metal cover of one of the songs in the score, and very appropriately made a music video with footage from the 1938 movie.



I have but one criticism of the song - I wish they had included a choir. A choir would have made it WAY more epic. But I guess they didn't want something that sounds like they just added bass drums and guitar distortion to the orchestral and choral arrangement.

Another Email from My Friend - This Time About Child Sexuality

"My mom regularly gets books from the library, as she really likes to read. Today I saw she has a book called "Too Sexy, Too Soon", about the "sexualization of childhood" and "what we can do to protect our kids". As if kids who sexualize each other or adults either don't exist or are simply confused. She should read "Harmful To Minors" to balance it out (which I haven't in fact read myself, but definitely want to one of these days). In any case, I doubt I could ever have a mutually understanding conversation with her about childhood sexual feelings and their role in shaping how kids develop into adults. Not that I really would necessarily want to, anyway."

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"Actually, on further examination, the book is called "So Sexy, So Soon". And the rather odd thing of it is, I can agree with a lot of the messages in the book, at least as described on the inside front cover. Basically, the book is about commercialism and how children are born into a culture that tries to sell them values, so to speak. I can certainly agree that the images used in advertising and television present a narrow view of the world, and embody a passive mode of understanding that eschews critical thinking (and yes, I used the word "eschews" mostly just to sound cool). I can also agree with ideas like encouraging kids to play and invent their own imaginative, creative games, and express themselves more.

"The connection to sexuality, however, is where I get lost. It seems that not only does the book attempt to replace one form of repression and value-foisting with another, but it seems to relate two things that have little in common except being "fashionable" to worry about. If I wrote a book discussing the implications of school shootings that were supposedly shown by high obesity rates, people would shake their heads and wonder whether I really think that the students at Columbine turned to playing with guns because they didn't know how to exercise. Similarly, why is precocious sexual behavior now a symptom of commercialism? Do kids become curious about genitals after watching people experience wardrobe malfunctions while wearing the latest fad outfit?"

You know it's a good song when

lots of people cover it. You know it's a great song when lots of people sample it. This song (or rather, this chord progression) easily gets stuck in my head, and that's all right - it's the kind of tune you don't mind getting stuck in your head. Even though in high school my brother and I listened to a show named after the original song, I never heard this chord progression until the music video at the bottom came out. I was a freshman in college then. It was the first year I had a computer in my own bedroom. First year I stayed up all night with a person of the opposite gender. First year I tasted alcohol, first year I smoked anything, first year I seriously explored religions other than fundamentalist Christianity, and the first year I voted - and though I was a Republican among Republicans, I didn't vote for the Republican presidential candidate. For some reason.

International Read a Book Day

"We can actively work towards an open and informed society, or we can be complacent to paranoia and tribalism. I choose the former." -- Me

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Salmonella, Egg-laying Cages, and Prop 2

There is something to be said about the role that agricultural subsidies have in the scale of farming, and thus in the existence of factory farms where cramped conditions can lead to higher risks of infection. But the most you'll hear about it is the cursory comment in a documentary or at a book talk. The policy proposals made by food justice advocates always include subsidies for local and urban small-scale organic farms and gardens; they never talk about getting rid of agricultural subsidies all together, and I personally have never seen or heard any support in the food justice movement for even slightly cutting federal spending on big ag (if any of you have, please send me a link!). Guess it's less of an uphill battle to get pork for the good guys than it is to get rid of bad guys' pork. This is a problem that both sides of the aisle face. Even Tea Party candidates would be reluctant to propose slashing Big Ag welfare (this isn't to suggest that Tea Party candidates would ever propose federal subsidies for urban agriculture).

So I'm not surprised, or even all that disappointed, that tax subsidies for Big Ag weren't mentioned in the Chronicle's article on inhumane farming and the egg recall.

Now, a few words on Prop 2, since that's what I originally wanted to write about in this post:

The Chronicle's article linked to above mentions that animal rights/welfare advocates, including the head of the Humane Society's anti-factory farming campaign, are under the impression that Prop 2 will prohibit egg-laying cages completely. But that's not what I get when I read the text of the new law. Prop 2 mandates that farm animals including egg-laying hens be allowed to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs, and turn "in a complete circle without any impediment...and without touching the side of an enclosure." There isn't a single word in the entire poposition even suggesting a prohibition of all egg-laying cages. A plain, straightforward reading of the new law shows that come 2015, egg-laying cages that are packed in a way that hens have enough room to lie down, stand up, and turn in a complete circle without any impediment and without touching the side of the cage would be perfectly legal (assuming a more strict law doesn't get passed and come into effect before then).

Granted, those cages would probably still be inhumane by most animal welfare advocates' standards (and by my standards). Instead of standing flat on a floor, the hens would probably have to constantly cling to wires below them, and foot and joint problems might still be a normal fact of an egg-laying hen's life. But Prop 2 doesn't say anything about being able to stand on a flat, solid surface. If the Humane Society wants to make a court case out of this, they would have to be doing some legal gymnastics to get a prohibition of all egg-laying cages out of Prop 2.

Let me be clear that I'm not defending bigger egg-laying cages as an alternative to battery cages. I oppose all egg-laying cages. I oppose animal agriculture. I don't think sentient beings can legitimately be owned as property. I just think that Prop 2 is a small step forward (some abolitionists disagree) which does not ban all kinds of animal abuse, and one of those kinds of abuse it doesn't ban is egg-laying cages.

And while we're on eggs and salmonella, here's a neat post by David D. Friedman on voluntary certification and safety measures in egg production in the UK.

Censorship of Certain Acts in the UK

This article is almost a year old now, but I hadn't realized that this small step forward was made in the UK.

Last week, female porn director Anna Span triumphantly announced that as a
result of her intervention the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) had
over-turned a long-standing ban and allowed a film that included images of this
phenomenon—also known as "squirting" or "gushing"—to go on general release.

I thought I should post the link to the article here, since posting this link directly onto my Facebook wall would be inappropriate in the eyes of my more conservative Facebook friends (and probably in the eyes of "the law", who might not take too kindly to me making an article about sex and porn openly available to my friends who are younger than 18). So if you're under 18, don't click on this link. If your parents catch you reading this and then have a cow about it, just know that I warned you.

And parents: if your kids are growing some adult anatomical features, they probably already have some adult desires, and the best way for you to react to that is not to construct some little cardboard cut-out world for them where everyone pretends they don't have any inborn curiosities. (And kids! This does not mean you should disobey your parents!)

Rating Websites

For quite some time I considered rating websites to be a very feasible path to incentivize socially-expected behavior in a complex society. Some of my readers know that I have an arm-chair interest in gift economies, and anyone who thinks for 2 minutes about gift economies knows that the success of deferred non-explicit reciprocity depends on peer pressure - there have to be ways people can share not only their expectations of how productive and generous people should be, but also their assessment of each other regarding their productivity and generosity. In short, you typically need face-to-face interaction for gift to go well, and in a large urban or suburban community you need a way to openly and instantly praise good behavior and reproove bad behavior.

That's what I thought something like Yelp could do - until some really lame daycare moms who got pissed off at my mom for kicking them out of her daycare went ahead and made incorrect allegations about her online. One of the ladies first did it on yellowbot - which I was unable to give two shits about, given that pretty much nobody uses it. Then she did it on Yelp, and a second lady who got kicked out of my mom's daycare went and seconded everything that the first lady wrote. That's when I got really agitated. I use Yelp. And I take it very seriously. I do have my ways of telling how descriptive a rating is, but this still worries me. If I hadn't known my mom, I don't know if I would be able to tell whether the first lady's allegations could hold any water. And that's a threat to the usefullness of credit rating websites.

Part of the problem, I think, is that while there is an openly-known target of criticism, the criticizer is more or less anonymous. Were the criticizers subject to the same standards to which they are subjecting their targets, would people be as willing to post untrue statements about their targets?

There might be another issue besides that. Even if everyone were required to state their whole name and post a picture of themselves on their user profiles as a condition of use, there's still the possibility that they might not feel any negative repurcussions for making untrue statements on the rating website. This might be especially true for people who have no vested interest in the accuracy of their ratings - people who post to the website for the sole purpose of shit-talking my mom, and have next to nothing to do with it after that.

For that reason, I have three suggestions for rating websites (and especially for whoever makes a rating website for a network of gift circles):

1. No anonymous posting - everyone who wants to post should be required to complete an accurate user profile, with a picture of themselves, and any comment completed through an account that lacks a complete and accurate profile should be deleted;
2. Possession of a user profile should be conditioned by long-term contribution to an individual or group effort which is itself subject to ratings in the website;
3. Users themselves should be subject to ratings regarding the helpfullness of their reviews (Yelp already allows users to rate each other's comments, but I don't think it allows users to rate each other).

I'll probably come up with more, but I just had to get this off my chest for now.

And for the curious, here's what a Yelp user profile looks like.

From an email to a friend

Me: ...And yes, I have come accross agorism and mutualism before. I am to the left of agorism and both to the right and to the left of mutualism.

Him: You mean, to the right of some aspects of mutualism, and to the left of others?

Me: I guess so. From what I've seen, most mutualists (or at least the most popular contemporary mutualist writer, Kevin Carson) see primitive accumulation as a problem that can be caused only by government intervention into the economy. I personally believe that primitive accumulation in land can very much be a problem on its own, and I don't think it needs a government to cause and sustain it. So in this sense I'm to the left of mutualism. I think there should be an "upward limit" on how much contiguous land people can legitimately be allowed to accumulte and keep. I should actually phrase it this way - I think there IS an upward limit on how much contiguous land some individual or entitiy can legitimately own - any landholding bigger than a certain size is a state, and states are illegitimate in my book.

I'm also to the right of mutualism in that I'm okay with rent, interest, and profit. I don't see them as dependent on the state, and I don't see them as violations of individual freedom.

Freedom of Religion is Freedom to Offend

People who support using the government to prevent the building of the Cordoba House, also known as the Ground Zero Mosque, speak as if all of Islam now is some special category where the freedom to peacefully gather and worship on one's own property is now qualified by sensitivity to mainstream America. As if freedom of religion is merely the freedom to choose between the little white church on the green grassy hill and the megachurch in the suburbs. Freedom of religion is not just for the wholesome, the familiar, and the unoffensive. Freedom of religion is for the ones who feel called to be different. It's for the peculiar people. It's for the ones who think everyone else is going to hell. It's for the ones who go door to door asking people how they know they're not going to hell. It's for the ones who won't entrust broader society with the education of their children, and who teach their kids at home or in private schools where they assign them weird science books with unorthodox slants on natural history. It's for the girls who insist on wearing long skirts and maybe even bonnets in public. And it's for the girls who want to wear veils too. It's not just for people who want to burn candles or refrain from burning candles; it's also for the ones who want to grow long black beards and bow down and touch their faces to the ground. Freedom of religion is not for the followers of familiar and unoffensive paths. Those people have social nostalgia on their side. Freedom of religion is for the weird, the awkward, and the offensive. If the freedom of religion you believe in is to make any sense, then you have to be willing to be offended. And if you're unwilling to be offended by a religious practice that violates no one's rights, then you don't deserve to be called a patriot, or even an American.

While we're on Youtube...

The Insight tab on the youtube account is just amazing. It lets me know so much about the kind of audience I get.

For instance, I now know that 86% of my viewership is male, while only 14% is female - going along with the idea that libertarianism today is a man's ideology. (I also talk about philosophy of religion and sociolgy of religion on my youtube channel, so this might not represent the popularity of just libertarianism.)

A little more than 40% of my viewers are between 25 and 35 yrs. old, and almost 40% are between 18 and 25. This might have more to do with who uses what medium, than with what age groups are attracted to which viewpoints. But there is the idea that libertarianim appeals to younger people, and this does correlate with it. What strikes me, though, is that I have more viewers who are older than me than I do who are my age or younger than me. Of course, I would be just as puzzled (and maybe disappointed) if most of my viewers were younger than me.

My videos are being most viewed in the United States. Canada comes in at a close second, and the United Kingdom takes third place. This might have a bit to do with language - I think only two of my videos have ever been viewed in Mexico, and that was a while back. It might also be explained by the idea that libertarianism is very much an American ideology. Of course, I'm not a hub of libertarian mingling, so I wouldn't know. I think I could say, though, that of all the English speaking regions, I have regular viewers in only North America and the UK. I have no regular viewers in Australasia or South Africa. Again, I'm not the hub of libertarian mingling, but is it safe for me to suppose that there are no left-leaning market anarchists Down Under? (Watch, by tomorrow morning I'm going to learn about some Australian cooperative village with its own alternative currency, or something like that...)

I also seem to have a bit of a viewership in Argentina. This has a bit to do with my Falklands video, but my Falklands video isn't the only one of my videos being viewed in Argentina - which is curious, and encouraging.

Marketable Aggression

I'm making a rambling and (I hope) constructive critique of market anarchism. Right now it's two little videos where I argue that free markets depend on "religious" presumptions of individual freedom. On my last entry, a youtube user left a comment asking how I think people in a market anarchist society would be able to respond to violent invasion if "we exclude the possibility of selective market-based violation of individual autonomy". I responded that I do believe that some violent retaliation can be legitimate (and thus shouldn't be called a "violation"), but that that retaliation must be proportional and discriminate, and that non-discriminate or non-proportional retaliation is illegitimate regardless of the market demand for it. I thought it was a fairly tight response. But maybe it was too focused.

I didn't have to concentrate on proportionality. I could have just mentioned what a lot of people today think should count as crimes. Most people I know think pedophiles should be thrown behind bars - even the non-violent pedophiles. Most people I know think the producers, sellers, and users of heavy drugs should be thrown in prison. Most people I know think the practice of keeping more than one spouse at a time is an affront to the natural order of things, and that it is within the "public interest" to legally forbid such abominations.

The policies mentioned above are all violent actions that many people would willingly demand in order to get what they believe would be a more secure environment. And all these marketable uses of violence are initiations of violence, which should go against any libertarian's code.

Then there's other kinds of marketable violence. Most people I know think it's okay to force kids to go to school - that is, to confine a non-aggressing child in a particular place regardless of his or her saying "no". Most people I know think it's okay to give kids shots against their will. Most people I know aren't disturbed in the least bit by infant genitle mutilation. Most people I know think spanking is as good and right as little league baseball.

It's easy to imagine that, if we were to get competition in governance today, our legal systems would not be libertarian (it might be better in some regards than the statist system we have now, but it wouldn't be libertarian). A market "anarchist" society without widely-shared and firmly-held beliefs about the sovereignty of the individual, and without widely-shared and firmly-held condemnations of encroachment onto the individual, would be little more than a bundle of all the worst things about democracy tightly wrapped together with all the worst things about capitalism. The political rules of a society are deeply intertwined with the prevailing sentiments of it. If we wish to ever see a world where we are free to choose otherwise, then the freedom to choose has to be something like a dogma.

"We only oppose *illegal* immigration"

I'm getting sick of hearing this. If your only problem with illegal immigration is that it's illegal, then you should be okay with all immigration if the government adopts an open-border policy. All immigration would then be legal, and you wouldn't have any illegal immigration to worry about.

But no, if the government were to adopt an open-border policy, the anti-"illegal" immigration activists would probably be very pissed off.

How about this: rather than immediately abolishing all borders, let's just remove all immigration quotas. Give a visa (for FREE! or at least a very very small fee) to anyone who requests it and turns out to not be a violent criminal. That way, anyone who wants to come here and work can come and work, and there wouldn't be any excuse for not coming the "right" way. And as an alternative to deporting people who overstay their visas, allow people to renew their visas after expiration by paying a goodly fine.

Again, the anti-"illegal" immigration activists would still oppose this. What they fear isn't people coming and staying here without the government's authorization. What they fear is a lot of foreigners being here.

Voting Rights and Immigration

When I was an elections officer in the November 2008 election (yes, I was already an anarchist, and yes, I recognize there's a bit of disonance there, but hey at least I declined to work in the Census), everyone on my team was instructed to not ask the voters for their I.D. Since it's a citizen's almost unqualified right to vote, possession of an I.D. should not be a requisite for voting - so we were told. When someone came up to my table and showed me their driver's license, I'd say "Put that away, I don't need your I.D."

So when we looked at our list of registered voters in our precinct, we would basically be taking their word for it that they were who they claimed to be. You could imagine a problem arising there, but thankfully that problem didn't happen at our polling place.

(Do keep in mind, this is the San Francisco Bay Area we're talking about. I don't know what it's like in other parts of California, let alone other states.)

But our open-door policy went a bit further than declining to check people's I.D. Again, voting is a right, so showing up at the wrong polling place to vote shouldn't prevent you from voting. If you show up at the polling place and your name isn't on their list, and you don't have the time, energy, or willpower to go find the place where you should vote, the election officers just hand you a ballot with a special envelope, have you fill out your information on the envelope, and you can vote. Your ballot would be counted last, but it would probably still be counted, if the election results are too close to call without counting your vote, and the counters check your information and find you to be registered.

In other words, we - the election officers - were letting people vote with absolutely no proof that they were legally permitted to vote. If they were voting illegally, that was their problem, not ours.

We used a good number of special envelopes that day. Some special voters looked like they really were registered but just couldn't go to their real polling place. But there was at least one voter who I was quite confident had no legal business voting.

She looked like she came from Iran, or north India, or one of those places in between. She was ushered in by her family, most of whom had already voted earlier in the day. Her name wasn't on our list. She explained that she just arrived "here" a couple weeks ago (whether by "here" she meant the U.S. or the Silicon Valley I don't know), and it looked like she was enthusiastic to exercise her newly acquired right to vote. I did something I wasn't supposed to - I asked her if she was registered. She said she wasn't. I looked at our supervisor. Our supervisor nodded gracefully, with a "let's accomodate her anyway" look on her face, so I gave the voter a special envelope and showed her how to fill it out.

At the time I thought it was just an excersize in civic duty. When they find she's not registered, they'll just not count the ballot. But the consequences of voting when you're not supposed to can be much more severe than not getting your ballot counted.

If the woman was not a citizen (which I'm almost sure she wasn't), then her act of voting can count as a false claim to U.S. citizenship, which is a grounds of inadmissibility. Voting in a U.S. election before becoming a U.S. citizen can get in the way of you ever becoming a citizen. It can also get you deported.

Granted, the government has to show that the person actually meant to lie about their status. But the hassle of having to show up at court and defend yourself is a hassle that no one wants.

People have to be really careful about this. I heard a story about a Civics teacher who gave out voter registration forms and had his class fill them out. Nice little civics lesson. Now his students know how to register. He then went and submitted their forms for them, and at least one of his non-USC students got in trouble for registering to vote when they weren't supposed to.

You might think you're being graceful and accomodating. You might think you're acting in line with fundamental democratic principles of openness and free participation. You might think you're doing somebody else a favor; but you might also be hurting their position before the law. And the whole burden of your misinformation is going to be born by them - not you. So you're probably not doing one bit of a favor.

I hope to all the gods that that woman was already a U.S. citizen. If she wasn't, then she's gonna get in deep trouble for just following directions from somebody who was uninformed about the law. And what'll happen to the guy whose directions may have ruined her chances of becoming a full member of our society? Well, I'm going off to law school.

Mother Earth can still be a God Concept

Church this past Sunday was a tiny bit dreadful. The week before it was amazing. The theme then was on humanist spirituality. This week the theme was earth-centered spirituality. To be fair, it was still refreshing in the sense that these folks openly admitted that their environmentalism is a religion. But some aspects about it showed that their version of it (or at least, the version presented by the lady who conducted the service) is a religion more on the level of traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than on the level of, say, Taoism or Jainism.

The lady conducting the service read a creation story that was written by a Unitarian Universalist. It was about the Goddess who decided to take care of her loneliness by curling up into a ball and spinning around really fast, forming mountains with the ridges of her spine and lakes with her breasts, and giving birth to all manner of plants and creeping things from her womb, and making 8 humans, 4 male and 4 female, a white male and female, a yellow male and female, a brown male and female, and a black male and female created she them, and she called them good, and they called her Mother.

I've always been perfectly comfortable accepting the common theory that white people are a genetic accident. I've known since I was a very small kid that the paintings of a white Adam and Eve were a bit fanciful. A brown Adam and Eve made much more sense to me. I know that the writer of this Mother Earth creation story wanted to be inclusive - to show that every phenotype is within the Divine plan - but it really looks like it's suggesting that racial categories are Divine constructs and not social constructs. (There's a very thin line between saying that everyone should be allowed a place and saying that everyone has their place.)

But the predestination of race isn't my main beef. My main beef against this creation story is that it has the very same problem that almost every theistic religion has. It ascribes onto humans a raison d'etre that they did not choose. According to this story, we are essentially bi-pedal pets that are supposed to keep someone else company.

I think a lot of theistic creation stories have the same problem - they point at some relationship in some purported origin and say that that relationship is the rightful one. Connected to this is the Divine Command problem. In these stories, the rightful relationship is the one that was determined by whoever the Divine entity is.

Theism can be used to prop up all sorts of hegemonic pyramids. Most of us know that associating the Divine with monarchy (calling God a King, painting Him sitting on a thrown, etc.) is a justification for all sorts of domination that occurs within monarchical political structures. I think the same thing happens when the Divine is associated with Nature. I'm speaking, of course, about religious justifications for the hegemonic system of animal predation.

The lady leading the service did some readings from a book that came out just recently. One of the scenes in this book was the author's observations of a leatherback turtle swimming along with jellyfish tentacles dangling from its mouth like noodles. She kept referring to its prey as "its lunch", as if killing another sentient being to eat it is just another one of those simple pleasures we're all entitled to.

Animals killing and eating other animals is something you have to smile on if you worship Nature. I think this is a problem for people who believe that the inherent worth and dignity of every being implies that the sentient ones are entitled to be left to enjoy their own lives.

People who worship Nature and oppose unjust domination seem to ignore that there is such a thing as Sin Nature. They seem oblivious to the fact that cruel domination is written into the very mechanisms that the ecosystem runs on.

Those who do recognize that cruelty is programmed into the natural order say that they themselves wouldn't engage in the predation of animals. But the predation of animals by other animals? Well that's the will of Our Mother.