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...."