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?