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.