credible

What Ben Manski doesn't understand.

2012-01-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

Or how to distinguish a political protest from a childish tantrum.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2011/manski-occupy.php
"What some can't accept, they pretend not to understand . And the political class can't accept that the common demand of the current protest wave is for democratic revolution. We want them gone. We want power." This is Ben Manski's justification for the lack of expressed goals from the Occupy movement. It's far less revealing than I would have liked, and for that reason, far more revealing.

Let's start with the claim that the "common demand of the current protest wave is for democratic revolution. This is simply false. I haven't heard any demands for democracy as he later describes it from the Occupy movement let alone "constant" demands. Sure protestors have claimed "This is what democracy looks like" (while making absolutely no effort to vote or otherwise determine what the majority wants) but nobody has been calling for violent revolution.

Of course he might have meant nonviolent revolution, but this begs the question, what would that mean? What would constitute the "We" having power and the "them" being gone? If they mean the current government system why are they protesting Wall Street and not Washington? If they mean the financial system what exactly do they want gone? Do they want the Wall Street banks just to shut up shop because they said so? Even ignoring the absurdity of the idea that they would what's the alternative? How do they suggest business gets financed without banks? I don't believe I've heard the word "credit union" or "building society" out of the mouths of any of them. If this is a demand it's something that's far from constant and certainly not exactly universal amoung OWS. If they did want big banks replaced by cooperatives then here's an idea, START A COOPERATIVE. Or at least switch your money over to it. The Occupy movement isn't talking about this, although Manski is. The question is what is his evidence that the Occupy movement which keeps it's money in a big, bad bank is really interested in such things? Nothing.

He goes on to claim that "Democracy is a simple idea. The people rule.". These two sentences in succession mean that he does not understand the concepts democracy, "The people" or "rule". For a start which people rule? All the people? Great then he should ring up the guys in Africa and see what they think about wealth redistribution. Considering the USA has 300 million people and Africa has over a billion they should mostly be the ones deciding on this whole revolution thing. What? He meant the people in an arbitrary area should rule? Well which one? The entire nation, NY state, NY city? Maybe the borough, why not? There are so many arbitrary lines you can draw with one side meaning power over these people and the other side meaning power over others.

Let's make no mistake here, "Democracy" means having power over others. It means ruling which is to say maintaining your wishes by force over them. It means jails, fines, beating and executions. It is not freedom it is not justice, it is force pure and simple, with it's justification based on mathematics not morality. It is the limitation of such arbitrary power, that many of the founders knew was no more trustworthy in common than in royal hands, that led to the creation of a republic, not a democracy, a country of laws not men with the majority able to make some changes but no subvert the freedom of the minority (in theory at least). That a majority of people want something is no more morally convincing than that white people want it, or rich people, or lutherans or any other arbitrary group. So if this guy wants a system where a group uses force to control another group why would he be upset at cops getting rough with demostrators?

He believes "it our birthright to directly participate in power. ", note DIRECTLY participate, as in without elections. So he wants over 250 million people to vote on whether to increase or reduce fish catch numbers off the Florida coast. Of these less than 1% are either marine biologists, economists or work in fisheries. This will end well. Even assuming that electronic voting (which never gets rigged mind you) could remove the need to physically go to a polling booth the US government passes several laws each week at least, many of them longer than Atlas Shrugged but without the kinky sex. It's been estimated that most Congressmen don't read the the laws and they're paid to. This guy thinks 250 million people will read each law, understand the historical, legal, social and economic consequences, compare these consequences to what happens if the law doesn't pass, including evaluating alternative legislation and vote in a way that's isn't totally corrupt and self-serving? I haven't heard anyone be this optiministic since they disbanded the Office of Special Plans. Of course if nation-states were a lot smaller this would be easier, but I don't see too many OWS types calling for secession.

Then there is the claim that this form of government is a "birthright". Inherited from who? Who gained this right to rule over me and how did he bequeath it to all and sundry?
"The rights to housing, to an education, to health care, to child care, to a livable income, are all democratic rights." No they're not. Even granting that you have a right to beat people up if they don't give you a "liveable income", free health care, and an education these "rights" have nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is a method of choosing how force is to be used, not a theory of what force ought to be used to provide. There can be no such thing as "democratic rights" other than rights to participate in a democracy, because all other rights would be subject to a vote and therefore not a right. But feel free to pick these things off the tree where you think it grows to paraphrase Ayn Rand.

"Students of social change learn that mass movements are most likely to emerge at times when economic conditions become intolerable. " Said students might want to get a better teacher. In fact mass movements like the civil rights struggle came when conditions were improving as did pro-democracy movements in China, the American Revolution. Violent revolts might take place when conditions are intolerable but mass peaceful protests rarely. The reason is obvious, mass protests and mass movements rely on large numbers of people with spare time, spare energy and who aren't afraid they'll starve to death if they get fired.
His entire screed is simply a series of false claims about what OWS wants and whether this is likely to result in anything. Find me one OWS protestor who advocated the abolition of elections, and I'll call Manski something other than a complete liar.

An open letter to anti-war.com

2012-01-09T09:19:00.001-08:00

Dear Anti-war.com,
I write because your website is informative, honest and useful and therefore one of the best places to seek explanations for the US basing more 2500 troops in Australia. Your current explanation however is somewhat lacking, for reasons that I will detail below. To help you I have complied a list of things that are NOT the reason for these troops being there.

First they are not there because Australia is a weak country desperately needing defence against enemies with the ability to invade it. Whilst Australia isn't the greatest military power in the world it's army is not only more competent man-for-man than any in the region, but more competent than the US army and "battle hardened" thanks to the Iraq and Afghanistan stupidities. It is also big enough to handle any realistically transportable invasion force in the region. This is hardly relevant however since any invaders would have to overcome the Royal Australian Air Force and Royal Australian Navy before the first digger even puts his boots on. I do not say that the Malaysians, Indonesians, or Singaporese cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea. Which is where they'd have to get their supply from, given the place is a desert. So they'd have to get and keep air superiority against the best air force in the region for at least months. This would be even harder once we get our fancy new massively over-priced planes. If the F-35 isn't sufficient to defend destroy vulnerable troop transports we should ask for our money back. Even if a couple of thousand troops were necessary to forestall invasion Australia, (unlike some countries) has total government debt about 1/5 of it's GDP by IMF accounting and can thus easily afford to hire more.

The second possible reason is that they are there to counter China in it's attempts to control the South China Sea, a vital trade route. There are several reasons why this is not the case not, not the least of which is that armies don't float. You can't control a sealane with troops, unless it's the Strait of Hormuz and they have missles. Australia's over-budget, underperforming submarine fleet is far more capable of influencing events on the SCS than these troops will ever be. A far bigger problem is that why the hell would we care? By "we" I mean Australia. The main Chinese strategic interest in the South China Sea is to keep it open to trade, much of said trade being us digging up half of Western Australia and the Northern Territory then selling it to China. The only way US troops could help Australia's interests in this context is by refeuling Chinese ships when the Aussie troops take a sickie.

Another strategic interest is the control of energy resources around the Spratley Islands which are contested. However considering the estimated peak oil in the Spratley Islans about on par with Vietnam and the Natural gas fields are about rich as Thailand's. I hardly see this as worth getting into a shooting war over. If it was worth getting into a shooting war over it would be between China, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysian, Taiwan, and/or Brunei. Neither America nor Australia have a dog in this fight. Even if it was worth committing US troops to such a conflict it would make far more sense to station them in Taiwan or the Phillipines. Not that you'd even need troops to win such a fight since it would be an air/sea battle. Given that neither country appears to want US troops why should the US bother to defend their claims for them?

A third non-reason is that they're required to allow the US to invade nearby countries. While 2500 troops would probably be sufficient to occupy Papuan New Guinea who the hell would want to? The forces are nowhere near sufficient to take and keep Malaysia or Indonesia, even assuming neither went to the aid of the other. They might be able to conquer Singapore but selling Singapore as a threat to world peace would be beyond the capabilities of the most deluded neocon. None of this matters in any case because any invasion from Australia would have to get at least tacit Australian approval, and a shooting war along one of our biggest trade routes is to say the least, not in our interest.

Of course it's possible that Obama wanted the troops to have somewhere nice to stay. The cournterargument is they'll be staying in Darwin.

If anyone can come up with a semi-rational reason why it's in the strategic interest of America, Australia, or indeed any country to post these troo

Lies about Ron Paul Part 1.

2012-01-07T06:38:00.000-08:00

The first thing Gary Weiss claims in his article ("Ron Paul's wacky but influential Fed policy") is that the Republican party is falling "deeper into the clutches of Ron Paul's radical ideology,". Yeah right, that's why there's so many Republicans who want to end the Fed, FDIC, bailouts, etc. etc. That this lie can be told in a mainstream publication with the assumption that nobody will check (good luck on that one pal, the Pauline Church don't tend to miss much).

This is immediately followed by another lie, that "Castrating" the fed is part of an "anti-popularist agenda". Since when has supporting the Fed in any manner been "popularist"? If memory serves the Fed was created by closed-door discussions (oh no, a conspiracy theory! But we'll get to the conspiracies later) on Jeckyll Island by elites intent on foisting the abomination on the populace without it's understanding. Whether it qualifies as "popularist" or not it certainly doesn't count as "falling deeper into the clutches of Ron Paul's ideology". Anyone who read an article which mentions RP's actual Fed policy would know this. The weird thing is THIS IS ONE SUCH ARTICLE. It specifically says in paragraph 7 that Ron Paul doesn't support "castrating" the Fed. Perhaps like the grazier talking to the dingo population control officer with the dart gun that makes them impotent he understands that the problem is they're EATING the sheep. So this guy can't even keep a deception up for 8 paragraphs and thinks he's going to go up against Republican politicians? Again, good luck feller.

He keeps up with this lie by claiming that "Bray’s legislation amounts to 'Ron Paul Lite.' The proposed law wouldn’t toss the Fed in the ashcan, as Paul wants, but it would go to the very heart of the Fed’s mission.". But the good doctor isn't arguing with it's mission but with it's powers, unaccountability, inherent potential for corruption, misuse, political influence, incompetence and disaster and it's unconstitutionality. Limiting it the use of it's power supposedly to reducing inflation (which is more efficiently done by simply adopting a commodity currency) is like telling a coal power plant to only send it's electricity to the West not the East, the posions it spews don't get better Not that it would even do that because "some of those regional bank presidents might want to keep the Fed focused on job creation, even if it’s ostensibly stripped of its ability to do so.". Again this guy doesn't even bother to keep the evidence of his deception out of his own article. If its ability to "keep... focused on job creation" is only "ostensibly stripped" then what's the big worry? In fact this only proves that RP is absolutely on the worth-7-cents-on-the-dollar money when he says it's grandstanding.

Then he brings the claim that the good Doctor is a "faux popularist". This is somewhat puzzling as AFAIK RP never claimed to be a popularist, nor have any of his followers claimed this as far as I know. The term "popularist" is of course one with a long and complex history, but the Popularist Party was best known for it's radical anti-strong money position.

At least Weiss acknowledges good things that have come from RP's focus on the Fed, that is to say he acknowledges that some of these things happened, not that they came from RP's actions. How did Bloomberg "break the story" of $13T in loans to the banks? Because Dr. Paul pushed for, and got, some sort of accounting from the Fed (which was far short of a legal audit).. Note that Weiss calls auditing the Fed (and he puts the "auditing" in scare quotes) "throw[ing] a bone to the right". Why the right? Since when has the Fed been a friend to the poor, the disabled, racial mionrities and all the other people the Left is supposed to care about? The Fed has historically been bosom buddies with crony capitalists, arms dealers, Coca-Cola, and everyone else the Left sees as conspiring to rob the 99%. To call examining it's activities a "bone to the right" is an open admission that the left no longer cares about the link between big government and big business, it only cares about... it only cares about... I'm sorry I though I could finish that sentence but I have no idea what the Left cares about any more. It's not like they even care about taking power from the "Right" anymore or they'd be volunteering to audit the Fed's behaviour in the Bush years and shouting the results from the rooftops.

Weiss then claims the statement "The Federal Reserve is the chief culprit behind the economic crisis" "ideologically driven rhetoric". The problem is that it's incontestable. Whatever you think of the behaviour of the banks (and Dr. Paul and I are no fans) what caused the crisis was the inflation and subsequent collapse of housing prices. Without that there might have been defaults but they would have had minor effects on the banking sector because the houses would just have been sold to pay off the loans. No Fed money spout means nobody gambling their future on housing price increases, no sudden collapse of that housing price, and no banker left high and dry by the fallout. In the history of America there has not been an asset price bubble that didn't come from government interference in the money supply. Dr. Paul isn't ignoring the pre-Fed history of booms and busts, he's quite aware of them and the role government interference in the money supply in causing them. It is Weiss who ignores the historical evidence.

Then he accuses Dr. Paul of "retailing the conspiracist humbug" of an accusation that he doesn't bother to refute. All he does is helpfully link to a post that has Bernanke calling Ron Paul's accusations "absolutely biazrre" which we are supposed to take as proof positive that they are. There is no actual refuting of Paul's accusation, not even an indication that Bernanke would know if they were true or not before slinging mud. In fact the comments section includes this link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=33004 which seems to indicate that the accusations are the opposite of "humbug". That Weiss didn't do the most basic checking and was outresearched by the comments on his own link is disgraceful. How can you hold your head up in polite society Mr. Weiss?

"Ryan was quoted as pushing the Ron Paul nostrum that what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing churns out is really 'fiat money,' since it’s not backed by gold. ". Again this is a falsehood, although I hesitate to call it a lie since it's unlikely someone would tell a lie that demonstrates they don't know what "nostrum" and "fiat money" mean. A nostrum (and I admit I had to look it up ) is "a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness " or "a usually questionable remedy or scheme". Calling something fiat moneyis not a scheme or remedy. In this case it's the simple truth, which if Weiss really had enough economic knowledge to criticise Dr. Paul's belief's about economic history he'd know. Oh and it's not fiat money because it's not backed by gold. It's fiat money because its not backed by anything but the word of Wesley Mooch.

He also claims, with his VAST knowledge of monetary policy that didn't unfortunately include the definition of "fiat money" or indeed any apparent research into who called the current economic downturn (I'll give you some hints, 12 term congressman, loved by the guys on lewrockwell.com, reads actual books before making claims about what caused 9/11, was therefore able to pwn Rudolf Guiliani), that a gold standard would cause another Great Depression. Never mind that the Fed has openly admitted that IT caused the Great Depression, never mind that there has NEVER been a boom and bust sufficient to cause such under a strict gold standard. No never mind that because he's got a link to Paul "I get pwned by Austrian economists so often they don't even take the tag off when they buy me back." Krugman. Seriously. Krugman. That's your best shot?

Well I'll give him one thing, when he claims that a GOP controlled Fed wouldn't stop the next depression, he's on the worth-less-than-an-Aussie-buck-even-though-it-was-over-40%-more-only-3-years-ago money. After all it didn't stop the current one. Congratulations Gary, you got one important thing right. Given how you started I didn't even expect that. You know, because you're an idiot.

The truth that truthout leaves out.

2011-12-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

This post is an analysis of a single paragraph in this article:
http://www.truth-out.org/77-trillion-wall-street-anything-keep-banksters-happy/1322841741

It was inspired by the criticism of the article by Stefan Molyneux in his video,
Banksters Own You! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPjxGmh9i8&feature=g-u

"Only when the Federal Reserve becomes an instrument of the people to calm the mood swings of the market - and not a piggy bank for transnational banking corporations - can we really protect ourselves from a technocratic takeover in the future. And the way to do it is pretty straightforward - it was Alexander Hamilton's idea back in the George Washington administration. Have the central bank owned by the US government and run by the Treasury Department, so all the profits from banking go directly into the Treasury and you and I pay less in taxes while the banksters on Wall Street can find a job at Wal-Mart."

And this is why the 1% is powerful, because people like this guy do their propaganda for free. Let's start off with the idea that the Federal Reserve can become an "instrument of the people". What does that mean? Which people should it become an instrument of? Obviously "the people" is not the shareholders of transnational banking corporations since that's what he's arguing against. How about the shareholders of construction and concrete companies? Are they more "the people" than the shareholders of the companies that compete with them for resources? How about those who get their income from debt, including most pensioners? Are they more "the people" than those who get their income from owning businesses? Or working for those businesses? Under his system the group that is "the people" gets to control the money supply to their benefit and the opposing groups detriment. If anyone would like to write about how this causes and endless, destructive, embittering, cynical, deceptive, manipulative war of all against all, please do so, but read "Atlas Shrugged" first because to be useful you have to improve on that and that's pretty hard.

But suppose for a moment we could agree on which random assortment of interest groups constitutes "the people" (and I bet a moment is all we could agree on it on). How would said collection of interest groups make the Fed it's "instrument"? Would it just say "We want interest rates to be 4%" without worrying about the means? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Sort of like telling a ship's captain "Go in a direct straight line from Seoul to San Francisco". Inevitably the criminal gang interest group collective would have to transmit it's orders through several layers of technocrats, who could interpret their orders selectively and subtly push the advantages of people they're not supposed to push. They could then say that what the interest group collective asks is impossible given current conditions. Not being technocrats how would the IGC know the difference?
That the Fed couldn't be directly controlled by "the people" in the form of an electorate should be pretty obvious. Asking someone to make votes month-to-month on controls on M3, when they neither understand what it is nor the relationship to either other M-indicators, the interest rate, exchange rates, the real economy or anything else is bizarre and obviously not going to happen.

The alternative is that the Fed is controlled by people who are elected. The problem is that the job of any banker is to refuse to loan people money. This seems counterintutive, bankers surely get their money from _making_ loans right? But if depositors wanted their money loaned to whoever asked for it they could simply do that themselves, no need for fancy buildings, weekend golf trips deducted as business trips and all the other bank executives privileges. Banks must select amoung applicants, rejecting some or even most of them, if they want to add value to the loan process*. Politicians don't get elected, let alone reelected, by telling people they can't have stuff. It just doesn't happen. Popularly elected Fed Board members are a recipe for massive inflation, followed by popular complaints about the consequences of popular policies insistence on more power to the government, more policies that are popular and disasterous etc.

So what about the Fed being controlled by people appointed by elected politicians? Well for a start that's what we have now, which should be a sufficient argument against it. In case it's not, such appointments are doubly deficient in terms of "the people" controlling the Fed. For a start "the people" would have to closely monitor the appointment process and hold the politicians accountable for the results. They are unlikely to do this because each individuals opinion of the process is unlikely to change whether he votes for a particular politician. There are many issues that may change a person's vote, and Fed appointments are not likely to be the tipping point. If they're not the tipping point for a particular voter they're not relevant to how he votes. Even if they were each individual voter is unlikely to be the difference between a politician getting elected or not. So any effort the voter puts into examining the issue has two big hurdles to jump before it effectively contributes to change. This effectively puts control over what politicians do in this process in the hands of those who are most interested in the outcome and have most ability to affect politicians, which is to say lobbyists for the most interested parties, the banksters.

Then comes the suggestion that we have a central bank "owned by the US government", which is what we have now in reality, "so that all the profits" (as opposed to 95% of them) "go to the government". Of course by "all the profits" he means all the profits of the central bank itself not al the profits that the actions of the central bank create. When Alexander Hamilton did create a central bank somewhat like this the profits generated by it's actions went mostly to exactly the sort of people the author thinks of as looting bastards. They were thought of that way at the time, which is why that bank was shut, ending an inflationary period that looted the 99% for the 1% very effectively. Needless to say in the end the 99% did not pay less in Taxes and the banksters certainly didn't shop at, let alone work at, the 18th century equivalent of Walmart.

So given that the causes the author supports are directly opposed by the effects of his proposed actions, what gives? Is it that he simply has never been exposed to the arguments that allowing government more power benefits the rich and powerful? No, because they were available to anyone interested, and indeed pushed on those not interested, for decades. It's one thing to not know Milton Friedman's arguments when they're published in "Abstracts of Working Papers in Economics" and another when they're on the Phil Donahue show. You can be politically engaged and disagree with the arguments of libertarians, but you can't do so and not know those arguments. What you can do is pretend they don't exist so as to pretend that your diagnoses and cures are the only ones available. This is what the author is doing. Why pretend? Put simply he wants to advance intersts other than the ones he claims to advance. Therefore he must present his solution as the only one that advances the claimed interests. Otherwise solutions that do advance the claimed interests but don't advance the hidden ones might be adopted. Try to figure out what the hidden interests are. I have some theories but I want some confirmation.

* Some might observe that US banks stopped doing this and started approving home loans to any idiot that was not provably brain-dead at the signing. This is not a flaw in my theory because I said "If" they want to add value.

A critique of "Occupy Demands: Let’s Radicalize Our Analysis of Empire, Economics, Ecology" by Robert Jensen

2011-11-12T07:07:00.001-08:00

"There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands?
I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands."

Wow, when you start out like this you know it's not going to get better. The Occupy movement is supposedly about two things, one, pointing out that the system is broken and two getting people to change it. Kudos on achieving the first. On the second this guy wants someone to change things without knowing what changes they want. I suppose they're just going to have to keep occupying until you guess right. It's like a bad wife telling you "If you don't know what you've done I'm not going to tell you" and expecting you to make her happy somehow. Oh god, I'm critiquing Lillian Reardon.

"The demand for demands is an attempt to shoehorn the Occupy gatherings into conventional politics, to force the energy of these gatherings into a form that people in power recognize, so that they can roll out strategies to divert, co-opt, buy off, or -- if those tactics fail -- squash any challenge to business as usual."

No the demand for demands is an attempt to subject the Occupy movement to rational critique. Now of course some of the people who are demanding that hope to portray the movement as a bunch of know-nothing hippies and losers. Some however genuinely want to determine what they want and consider if it actually has any sense, morality or practically. I am one of those. I gotta be honest with you, so far, not so much.

The strategy of not presenting demands is essentially the strategy of saying "There is nothing you can do to satisfy us.". How much effort will people go to giving you the things you want if this is your strategy? Why help those who will deny that whatever you do is help?

"Rather than listing demands, we critics of concentrated wealth and power in the United States can dig in and deepen our analysis of the systems that produce that unjust distribution of wealth and power. This is a time for action, but there also is a need for analysisun."

Great, analyse, I'm all for it. But considering that these people are in a protest movement not a university coffee shop the analysis better include a plan of action. Otherwise it's just a thesis that you won't get a grade for.

"Rallying around a common concern about economic injustice is a beginning; understanding the structures and institutions of illegitimate authority is the next step. "

If you don't understand these things how do you know there is economic injustice? Analyse first THEN tell people you're upset and why. Otherwise you're just a crying baby.

"We need to recognize that the crises we face are not the result simply of greedy corporate executives or corrupt politicians, but rather of failed systems. The problem is not the specific people who control most of the wealth of the country, or those in government who serve them, but the systems that create those roles. If we could get rid of the current gang of thieves and thugs but left the systems in place, we will find that the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss."

Absolutely right. The idea that replacing some personnel in a flawed system will solve the problem is very, very wrong. A new captain of a sinking ship is not a change either he or I can believe in.

"My contribution to this process of sharpening analysis comes in lists of three, with lots of alliteration. Whether you find my analysis of the key questions compelling, at least it will be easy to remember: empire, economics, ecology.
Empire: Immoral, Illegal, Ineffective"

I'm not going to comment much on the empire section as it's a fairly standard and fairly accurate account of US imperialism. If you're read one critique of US imperialism you've read them all. The only quibble I have is with the idea that the goal of US policy was to prevent independent development. Independent development that lead to greater production in the developing nation would have been a massive boon to the 1% who supposedly control things. And China is developing pretty independently, with the western capitalist class not influencing the Chinese government at all, if anything the reverse is true. A better explanation is standard public choice theory, government departments, including the military, do things because that's how you get a budget.

"Economics: Inhuman, Anti-Democratic, Unsustainable
The economic system underlying empire-building today has a name: capitalism. Or, more precisely, a predatory corporate capitalism that is inconsistent with basic human values."

And here he goes off the rails. Capitalism is a word used to describe a lot of different systems, from laissez-faire to mercantilism and even massively regulated fascism. He doesn't really distinguish between these forms.

"This description sounds odd in the United States, where so many assume that capitalism is not simply the best among competing economic systems but the only sane and rational way to organize an economy in the contemporary world. Although the financial crisis that began in 2008 has scared many people, it has not always led to questioning the nature of the system."

I'm not sure what he means but "has not always lead to questioning the nature of the system". Reading capitalist websites I've noticed a lot of questioning of the system, and on socialist websites too. Everyone from George Soros to the town drunk has been questioning the system.

"That means the first task is to define capitalism: that economic system in which (1) property, including capital assets, is owned and controlled by private persons; (2) most people must rent their labor power for money wages to survive, and (3) the prices of most goods and services are allocated by markets."

There is just so many questions begged here. How do you define if a capital asset is "controlled by private persons"? If there are literally thousands of rules about the asset you have to follow do you still "control" it? Even if one of those rules is "You must rent it to this person at this rate until we say you can rent it to someone else."? Because that's not much control, and arguably it isn't really ownership.

The idea that "most people must rent their labour power" is an untestable theory. Most people do but to what extent "must" they? If they decided instead to invest their savings in capital goods and start their own business would they survive? What does he mean by "most people must"? Is he saying that the majority of people are in the situation where they must rent their labour, or that even though each person who does so need not there must be at least a majority who do? Does he mean even if each one of the majority could individually quit and become an entrepreneur that less than 49% could do it at one time? What's his evidence for this? He has no experience in the entrepreneurial world so I can't see how he'd know.
As for the prices of most goods and services being allocated by the market, I don't believe that's true. With at least 40% of the money spent by government and regulations, tariffs, quota, subsidies and other forms of interference covering almost all the rest it's reasonable to believe that most prices are set at least in part by government action not the market. The most important price, the interest rate certainly is and that affects every other price out there. To really answer this question of what proportion of prices are allocated by the market would require a) a good definition of what we mean by "allocate prices" and "the market" and a probably a book length essay. Needless to say he has done nowhere near enough research to give us any of these.

" “Industrial capitalism,” made possible by sweeping technological changes and imperial concentrations of capital, was marked by the development of the factory system and greater labor specialization. The term “finance capitalism” is often used to mark a shift to a system in which the accumulation of profits in a financial system becomes dominant over the production processes."

Not exactly sure what he means by "accumulation of profits... dominant over the production process", without the "production process" the banks don't have anybody to lend to or get deposits from. The insurance and finance sector is about 8% of GDP, arguably too large but not exactly "dominant" over the manufacturing sector which is 11% of GDP. I don't think there has ever been a large modern economy with a finance sector bigger than the manufacturing sector, so when has "finance capitalism" happened? Of course there are small countries that were banking hubs for larger collections of countries, but since the whole reason they are is because the economies of said countries were interconnected and arguably one economy that isn't finance capitalism either. The finance sector in the USA is less about 1/5th the size of the government sector so what is "dominant"?

This is symptomatic of the problem of many intellectuals when talking about economics. They don't know basic facts about the economy, but they know what their fellow intellectuals have said, and believe them, without checking if they knew their facts.

"Today in the United States, most people understand capitalism in the context of mass consumption -- access to unprecedented levels of goods and services. In such a world, everything and everyone is a commodity in the market."

Everything is a commodity in the market? How much bride price did this guy pay? Where did he hire his friends? And the Social Security payments he's hoping to get, were they provided in the market or by government? Why is it people on the left can say things that everyday experience shows are false and be praised for it?

"In the dominant ideology of market fundamentalism,"

Ok, I know it's generally not cool to cut someone in the middle of a sentence but I gotta pull this guy up here. I happen to be a market fundamentalist and lemme tell ya, we're not exactly "dominant" (he keeps using that word). Let's run down a few of the things that "market fundamentalists" believe would be good and compare them to both what actually happens and what most people of influence like. Bear in mind this is in the USA where "market fundamentalism" is said to be at it's strongest. I think we can all agree in Europe it's much weaker. I've had some formatting problems so just scroll down.

What market fundamentalist like	What actually happens	What influential people say is good.
No central bank.	Central bank.	Central bank with even more power.
Spectrum allocated by "homesteading", no government involvement except to confirm homesteading rights in court.	Spectrum allocated by government agency, with rules on what can be broadcast, in what format at what time.	Spectrum allocated by government agency, with rules on what can be broadcast, in what format at what time.
Ron Paul for President.	Barack Obama	Rick Perry, seriously.
Farming not subsidised or regulated beyond "no force or fraud".	Farming heavily subsidised, with amazingly intrusive regulations where you have to pour bleach on your food if it's not up to code (even if it's perfectly safe)./td>	What actually happens but more so.
Education all private and paid for by parents. Government does not set or influence teaching methods, teacher selection, curriculum or other major elements.	Pretty much everything in education set or influenced by government. Few parents pay for primary or secondary education, considerable government finances at tertiary level.	What actually happens but more so.
Healthcare and health insurance not regulated beyond "no force or fraud", no government payment of health costs other than of it's employees as part of a compensation package. People can buy or not buy health insurance if they like.	Massive amounts of regulation of both healthcare and health insurance, with 1/3 of the money spent by government and mandatory purchase of health insurance for many people.	Some resistance to Obamacare but other than that the ruling class are happy with the status quo.
If banks go broke they go broke, don't come crying to us about it.	If banks go broke the government pays them hundreds of billions of dollars to keep working.	If anything they'd like to hand over even more of our money.
Anyone can be hired or fired for any reason, after all it's his money and if he doens't want want to spend it on you, tough.	Thousands of words of regulations on why and how you can hire or fire someone.	Maybe some influential people want the government to have less say in this but not much less.
Few regulations.	Thousands of regulations and a considerable increase in their number during both the Bush and Obama presidencies.	Again some might argue for a few less regulations, but by and large they're all in favour of having thousands, some just don't want to crack 5 figures, yet.
No subsidies for "alterantive energy" whether solar, nuclear or whatever.	Billions of dollars of subsidies for almost every form of energy known to man, including ethanol, the biggest agricultural boondoggle since "price stability".	If anything even more of this rubbish than we presently have.
Roads 90%+ privately owned.	Roads 90%+ publicly owned.	Roads 90%+ publicly owned.

So much for our "dominance".

"it’s assumed that the most extensive use of markets possible, along with privatization of many publicly owned assets and the shrinking of public services, will unleash maximal competition and result in the greatest good -- and all this is inherently just, no matter what the results. If such a system creates a world in which most people live in poverty, that is taken not as evidence of a problem with market fundamentalism but evidence that fundamentalist principles have not been imposed with sufficient vigor; it is an article of faith that the “invisible hand” of the market always provides the preferred result, no matter how awful the consequences may be for real people."

The fact that "market fundamentalists" can point to specific harms to the poor and others because our "principles have not been imposed with sufficient vigor" doesn't rate a mention.

"How to critique capitalism in such a society? We can start by pointing out that capitalism is fundamentally inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable."

Well you could start by pointing out it's mostly absent.

"Inhuman: The theory behind contemporary capitalism explains that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, a viable economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior."

Well no, because we are "self-interested animals" we must reward behavior that's actually good for other people. Self-interested behaviour will naturally reward itself because hey, that's the point. Of course much behaviour that is described in this paradigm as "self-interested" doesn't appear to be at first glance. For instance feeding one's children is "self-interested" because you want them to live. So is contributing to a club you want to continue operating, even if you don't have to. The trick is to arrange things so that by serving one's own interest one's serves the interest of others. It's hard to believe anyone is so ignorant of what capitalist proponents propose that they haven't heard this.

"That’s certainly part of human nature, but we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity to act out of solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior."

Nobody ever denied that people can be compassionate, or "selfless" whatever that means. What is suggested is that relying on compassion to get your bread baked isn't a good idea for most people. what are these situations where "compassion and solidarity are the norm"? How is it possible to make them more common? He doesn't say, he just assumes that capitalism reduces them. However since capitalism has flourished so has the desire to help the poor. Slavery was ended in large part due to the efforts of people in capitalist countries who had not a single friend or relative enslaved. The modern period has seen more non-kin altruistic behaviour than any other period in history both absolutely and as a percentage of production. Is this due to capitalism or in spite of it? He gives no indication he even knows the question could be asked.

He doesn't tell us how "competitiveness and agression" are rewarded and he doesn't seem to want to distinguish between these two very different types of behaviour. Aggresion isn't necessarily competitive and competitiveness isn't necessarily aggressive. Every day this guy uses products that are as cheap and as good as they are because the producers are competing for his business. Yet he presents "competitiveness" as a bad thing.

"Why is it that we must accept an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the cruelest?"

As pointed out he hasn't shown that we do. In fact arguably we accept a system that does the opposite.

"Because, we’re told, that’s just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we’re told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest."

Well considering the massive amount of philantropy in the US I guess that depends on where you look.

"So the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way."

Again the claim that capitalism rewards greed and self-interested behaviour is made, with no evidence whatsover. It rewards them compared to what? Would reward gree and self-interested behaviour more or less? How about totalitarianism?

"Anti-democratic: In the real world -- not in the textbooks or fantasies of economics professors -- capitalism has always been, and will always be, a wealth-concentrating system."

In the real world he cites not a single study, statistic, theory or even anecdote to support this view. The fact that textbooks of a subject say something would, for most people, suggest that there is at least some evidence that suggests it's true. This would tend to indicate to a real intellectual that he must present some evidence that it's not. Mr Jensen doesn't bother.

"If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. I know of no historical example to the contrary.

For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that for the most part, the wealthy dictate the basic outlines of the public policies that are put into practice by elected officials. This is cogently explained by political scientist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of political parties,” which identifies powerful investors rather than unorganized voters as the dominant force in campaigns and elections. Ferguson describes political parties in the United States as “blocs of major investors who coalesce to advance candidates representing their interests” and that “political parties dominated by large investors try to assemble the votes they need by making very limited appeals to particular segments of the potential electorate.” There can be competition between these blocs, but “on all issues affecting the vital interests that major investors have in common, no party competition will take place.” Whatever we might call such a system, it’s not democracy in any meaningful sense of the term."
Great so under what system would the major investors have the most power? Well under free market capitalism they would have virtually none, because by definition the governemnt doesn't do a lot so it can't do a lot to benefit major investors. Mr Jensen is so utterly ignorant of economics and politics that he has no idea that this is true.

"People can and do resist the system’s attempt to sideline them, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist sometimes win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate."

Ok, but WHAT does it dominate and to what end? Primarily it dominates (he really likes that word) governemnt interference in the market, the opposite of "market fundamentalism". So the best solution is to remove the government interference so that the motive for interference by concentrated wealth is removed.

"If we define democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it’s clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive."

Ok let's assume that's true, what would you rather have a "meaningful way to participate" in controlling someone else's life or control of your own? Because you can't have both. Either you get to help boss someone else around or you get to not be bossed around. Democracy is simply people thinking that because there is a lot of them they're right, the argumentum ad populem fallacy as policy.

"Unsustainable: Capitalism is a system based on an assumption of continuing, unlimited growth -- on a finite planet."

Actually it's not. There is no need for continuing, unlimited, positive or even non-negative growth to justify capitalism. If one was in a situation where for some reason economic growth was inevitably going to be less than zero e.g. on a spaceship with resources that depleted over time and with too few people to make technical advances big enough to compensate for that, capitalism would still be the most efficient and the best system. Capitalism has often been sold as though it's main advantage was economic growth, but the sales pitch isn't necessarily an indication of the best qualities of something, only it's most marketable ones.

"There are only two ways out of this problem. We can hold out hope that we might hop to a new planet soon, or we can embrace technological fundamentalism and believe that evermore complex technologies will allow us to transcend those physical limits here."

He likes this word "fundmentalism" too. Evermore complex technologies have already allowed us to transcend the physical limits here. That's why the US has as much forest now as it did 100 years ago, despite having an economy that with 1911 technologies would need several times more wood. That's why whale oil isn't in short supply any more, even though whales are.

"Both those positions are equally delusional."

Now what do you think is the most arrogant thing you can do when commenting on a political, scientific or economic issue? I would say that calling people delusional without presenting a single shred of evidence that they're wrong is pretty high up there.

"Critics now compare capitalism to cancer."

Which critics? Are they experts in either cancer or capitalism? Have they made useful predictions that would indicate their theories of capitalism are empirical?

"The inhuman and antidemocratic features of capitalism mean that, like a cancer, the death system will eventually destroy the living host."

The "inhuman" features of capitalism if you'll recall consisted of it allegedly being based on theories of human behaviour he didn't like. Nothing else, just a contradiciton between what he would like to be true and what capitalism allegedly holds to be true. This doesn't exactly prove that ie will destroy anything let alone everything. As for the anti-democratic features, non-democratic societies persisted for thousands of years so clearly being anti-democratic isn't a death sentence.

"Both the human communities and non-human living world that play host to capitalism eventually will be destroyed by capitalism."

Again this is based soley on the belief that it's based on certain theories of human behaviour, is allegedly anti-democratic, and allegedly assume continaully growth none of which he shows is true and capable of destroying the earth.

"Capitalism is not, of course, the only unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system,"

Again he presented no evidence that it was unsustainable, only his belief that it
assumes continual growth (it doesn't), that such growth is impossible (it doesn't appear to be)

"and it’s the one in which we are stuck. It’s the one that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air we breathe. But the air that we are breathing is choking the most vulnerable in the world, choking us, choking the planet."

The most vulnerable in the world appear to mostly live in very uncapitalist places.

"Ecology: Out of Gas, Derailed, Over the Waterfall
In addition to inequality within the human family, we face even greater threats in the human assault on the living world that come with industrial society. High-energy/high-technology societies pose a serious threat to the ability of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it. Grasping that reality is a challenge, and coping with the implications is an even greater challenge."

But the greatest challenge is finding a single fact that backs up this theory in his essay.

"We likely have a chance to stave off the most catastrophic consequences if we act dramatically and quickly. If we continue to drag our feet, it’s “game over.”
While public awareness of the depth of the ecological crisis is growing, our knowledge of the basics of the problem is hardly new. Here is a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” issued by 1,700 of the planet’s leading scientists: "
And how many of these scientists have studied the relationship between population and poverty? Because they made a big thing about how there's so many poor people and how we need to stabilise population, even though the greatest reductions in poverty happened during the industrial revolution when populations were exploding in the places were poverty was imploded.

“Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”

http://deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm

That statement was issued in 1992, and since then we have fallen further behind in the struggle for sustainability. Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live -- groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity -- and the news is bad. "

So even the argument from authority he used is 19 years old. He claims that every measure shows us worse off, but he doesn't quote one. Nor does he compare the deterioration in capitalist and non-capitalist countries. So basically he's claiming there's a problem, that capitalism caused it and that less capitalism would solve it, without even a scintilla of evidence that this is true.

"Remember also that we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of easily accessible oil,"

Yeah, remember that, because he's not about to remind you by posting any actual evidence to that effect.

"which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure that undergirds our lives. And, of course, there is the undeniable trajectory of climate disruption."

Let's agree to disagree on whether it's undeniable or even undesirable.

"Add all that up, and ask a simple question: Where we are heading? Pick a metaphor. Are we a car running out of gas? A train about to derail? A raft going over the waterfall? Whatever the choice, it’s not a pretty picture. It’s crucial we realize that there are no technological fixes that will rescue us."

And by "realise" he means "assume" because again, he presents no evidence of this.

"We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed."

Yeah I'm betting this guy is vaccinated, so clearly he believes some attempts to dominate (again that word) the non-human world worked out pretty well.

"Facing a Harsh Future with a Stubborn Hope
The people who run this world are eager to contain the Occupy energy not because they believe the critics of concentrated wealth and power are wrong, but because somewhere deep down in their souls (or what is left of a soul), the powerful know we are right."

About what? Criticism of concentrated wealth and power or criticism of capitalism? These are not the same thing. Or does he mean criticism of the current system which is not capitalism as understood by "market fundamentalists".

"People in power are insulated by wealth and privilege, but they can see the systems falling apart. The United States’ military power can no longer guarantee world domination. The financial corporations can no longer pretend to provide order in the economy."

Actually the regulators pretended to do that. They were quite convincing, as long as you didn't enquiry too much.

"The industrial system is incompatible with life."

And the unsupported assertions just keep on coming.

"We face new threats today, but we are not the first humans to live in dangerous times. In 1957 the Nobel writer Albert Camus described the world in ways that resonate:

“Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.”

The question of how to get rid of hierarchies is a vexed and important one. What does he suggest?Well nothing really, except the implication that democracy is good, which in any large society will lead to hierarchy. Note that the fear Camus had was of nuclear weapons, a problem entirely created by government.

"A stubborn hope is more necessary than ever. As political, economic, and ecological systems spiral down, it’s likely we will see levels of human suffering that dwarf even the horrors of the 20th century."

Again, no evidence for this likelihood is presented.

"Even more challenging is the harsh realization that we don’t have at hand simple solutions -- and maybe no solutions at all -- to some of the most vexing problems. We may be past the point of no return in ecological damage, and the question is not how to prevent crises but how to mitigate the worst effects. No one can predict the rate of collapse if we stay on this trajectory, and we don’t know if we can change the trajectory in time.

There is much we don’t know, but everything I see suggests that the world in which we will pursue political goals will change dramatically in the next decade or two, almost certainly for the worse. Organizing has to adapt not only to changes in societies but to these fundamental changes in the ecosphere. In short: We are organizing in a period of contraction, not expansion."

Of course there is no actual guidance for how that affects organiation or even if it does.

"We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves. Here, just as in human relationships, we either abandon the dominance/subordination dynamic or we don’t survive.

In 1948, Camus urged people to “give up empty quarrels” and “pay attention to what unites rather that to what separates us” in the struggle to recover from the horrors of Europe’s barbarism. I take from Camus a sense of how to live the tension between facing honestly the horror and yet remaining engaged. In that same talk, he spoke of “the forces of terror” (forces which exist on “our” side as much as on “theirs”) and the “forces of dialogue” (which also exist everywhere in the world). Where do we place our hopes?

“Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun,” he wrote. “I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought.”

The Occupy gatherings do not yet constitute a coherent movement with demands, but they are wellsprings of reasonable illusions."

Well if they're illusions how are they reasonable?

" Rejecting the political babble around us in election campaigns and on mass media, these gatherings are an experiment in a different kind of public dialogue about our common life, one that can reject the forces of terror deployed by concentrated wealth and power."

Ignoring something is not the same as rejecting it. If you seriously think that the answer is to protest without even the pretence of being mollifiable then you're just ignoring the forces of terror and indeed reality. Of course one has to ask, is Jensen even prepared to reject the forces of terror? Well his solution appears to depend on men with guns making other people do what he wants (or what "we" want since he's so democratic.

"With that understanding, the central task is to keep the experiment going, to remember the latent power in people who do not accept the legitimacy of a system."

Right, so the idea is not to actually achieve political goals but to continue trying to achieve them. That's the "central task", not oh I don't know, helping the poor, educating the people, giving the people revenge justice for the crimes of banksters. No it's just keeping the momentum, without reason or motive. You might think I'm misinterpreting him here and maybe I am, but I suspect not. I suspect he and a large number of intellectuals benefit both materially and non-materially from this sort of thing continuing. Materially this sort of protest sparks more interest in political events and perspectives lifting book sales (he has written several). Non-materially as long as OWS continues the dream of intellectuals challenging and changing the status quo continues and they can think themselves movers and shakers and not discredited time-serving wretches who long ago gave up their idealism for tenure and a book deal. Fundamentally this article wasn't an intellectual piece it was a religious one. A prayer to secular gods which no more required evidence than Sunday mass does.

First Truths: Osgood on "Scientific Anarchism"

2011-09-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

First Truths: Osgood on "Scientific Anarchism": From Volume IV., Number I. of Political Science Quarterly (March, 1889): In anarchism we have the extreme antithesis of socialism and comm...

Failed attempt at Lot5R odds calculator.

2011-07-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

function: limitedex DICENUM with SIDES for NUMEX{
STORE: 0
loop COUNT over {1..DICENUM}{
STORE : STORE + ( NUMEXdSIDES = NUMEX * SIDES)
}
result: STORE
}
function: A lotfrdice B{
TE: [limitedex A with 10 for 3]
DICELEFT: A - TE
DE: [limitedex DICELEFT with 10 for 2]
DICELEFT: DICELEFT - DE
SE: [limitedex DICELEFT with 10 for 1]
DICELEFT: DICELEFT - SE
TECOUNTED: [lower of TE and B]
DECOUNTED: [lower of DE and B-TE]
SECOUNTED: [lower of SE with B-TE-DE]
RES: 30 * TECOUNTED + [highest TECOUNTED of TEd10]
RES: RES + 20 * DECOUNTED + [highest DECOUNTED of DEd10]
RES: RES + 10 * SECOUNTED + [highest SECOUNTED of SEd10]
RES: RES + [highest [B-TE-DE-SE] of [A-TE-DE-SE]d10]
result: RES
}
output [3 lotfrdice 2]

So the liar known as agapeiron said he will resond.

2011-06-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

Specifically to this:

www.jim/cat/terror.htm
Let's see if he does.

The reason the State is desperate.

2011-05-30T03:07:00.001-07:00

Stefan Molyneux claimed that the US state has become more tyrannical and violent because it's running out of money to bribe their constituents. While this certainly adds a level of desperation the primary cause is an accelerating cycle of propaganda and failure. The State is fundamentally trapped by the expectations it creates and every time it expands it's power and expense to escape this trap it makes this worse. One of the problems is that the State's agents are highly propagandised themselves and therefore cannot adjust policies even to benefit the state.

The drug war is a great example of the propaganda/failure cycle. It started with a flawed idea of removing drugs from America. Naturally this failed. In response to any failure the person or group who fails has four options. Firstly they could state that the original concept was fundamentally flawed and unachievable. Secondly they could state that while the concept is sound, they are not competent to execute it. Thirdly they could claim that they could achieve it but were not allowed to do the things neccesary to do so. Fourthly they could claim that the policy suceeded, possibly by redefining "success". A propaganda/failure cycle occurs when the first two options are extremely undesirable in career and pyscological tersm for those participating and the fourth is not credible. The drug war is a prime, but by no means only, example of this in government.

As failed results for a policy accumulate the part of the state held responsible for it has a problem. This includes not just cops and civil servants, but senior policy makers and politicians. They must maintain the belief that the policy is worthwhile and best achieved by keeping the current personel largely intact. Of course the occasional sacrifice, even a high ranking one, can be made. One or two can retire to spend more time with their families, the interests of the families of course being irrelevant. However if the participants are to retain their careers, their prestige and most importantly their self-belief then the main body of them must continue doing the jobs they're doing. Therefore they insist that they must be less restricted if they are to achieve their goals. The two main forms of this are requests for more resources and for greater ability to violate traditional liberties.

If this approach results in something that can credibly be called a "success", at least at a minimal level, then further attacks on liberty, fraternity and prosperity are unnecessary. That doesn't mean they won't happen, but they will certainly be less rapid and may be abandoned in the face of determined opposition. If the project, like the drug war, is fundamentally flawed and incapable of any but small and transitory sucesses then each expansion of resources and powers must be followed by another. Not to do so is impossible because the people making the decisions have a combination of interest and propagand-created belief in the program that makes it impossible to abandon it. There are occasional exceptions to this for instance Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, but the vast majority of the people in the apparatus will be effectively rock solid on continuing.

To understand why this is so consider that they are the prime recipients of State propaganda for the project. Obviously those who believe most in the project will be more likely to be recruited for it. After recruitment their leaders will have an interest in continuing the propaganda so as to get the best motivation and results. This is true even if adequate results are impossible to achieve since the leader of each section wants to have his team shine compared to other teams. Those who are not effectively propagandised will tend to leave the project as it's failure becomes more and more evident. Those that remain have invested more and more time, knowledge and esteem (including self-esteem) in the project and lose it if failure is ever acknowledged. Therefore they have an interest in never admitting defeat and that interest is abetted by their bosses.

Each time the participants attempt to increase the money and power available to them they must propagandise the people who determine whether or not they are allowed to do so. This is to some extent the general public, to some extent business leaders, special interests, politicians, foreign governments and anyone else whose support or at least non-opposition could prevent the increase. A certain power balance must be achieved to actually advance, and since the policy is fundamentally flawed it cannot deliver net benefits. Therefore some must be deceptively convinced they gain by the policy and those who lose must be propagandised to ignore their costs. The resultant propaganda is a trap. The relevant parts of the State cannot be "depropagandise" these people, or even attempt to do so, without a backlash of anger and resentment. They effectively become part of people held responsible for the policy, since they supported it. To see it end would implicate them in the abuses inflicted for it which were justified "pragmatically". This would make the supporters even since once the ends that justified the means are gone, there is just the evil means. Therefore they form part of the reason that going back on the policy is "politically impossible". That is to say no sufficiently powerful combination of political forces exists opposed to the policy. Too many people have too much to lose from it's ending.

Not only that but the project must continually seek to expand it's size, power and abusiveness. Since the excuse for failure is insufficient size, power and abusiveness in the inevitable absence of sucess a vote not to expand these is effectively a vote to end the project. If the statement is made "We must allow (warrantless searches/confiscation without trial/abusive detention/etc) if we want to end (insert problem)." then a refusal is effectively saying it's not a gaol worth pursuing. If the goal is not worth pursuing then the conclusion will be reached that obviously the current costs in liberties and money aren't worth it either. Since the entire aim is to avoid that conclusion this is unacceptable and the people held responsible for the project will do anything to avoid it. Thus the cycle ends only when the expense and abuses are so egregous a fundamental political realignment, possibly a revolution occurs. This stage is fast approaching in the USA.

Lastly the reason I don't believe that bankruptcy and subsequent ending of goodies for the people are the reason for the most recent new tyrannies. The powers that be are fully aware that they don't have the strength to suppress the parasite classes. There are simply too many people who get goodies from the current system to jail them all or even a large enough part of them to intimidate the others. Naturally both wings of the Demopublican party will be bribed but there comes a point at which even the most extravagent campaign donations and ludicrously biased coverage won't make up for the votes lost from no longer divvying up the loot. Therefore it's politically impossible to pursue this as well. Indeed attempting to use these tactics against the parasite class will destroy their support for it's use against others massively eroding the power of the State.

Murder, Purpose and the State.

2011-04-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

How to make tax-funded sadistic serial killers scarier.
By Michael Price

Once again I learn of brutal, tragic murders by US forces from Stefan Molyneux. Once again I am struck not just by the brutality, but the incompetence of the US forces. This might seem besides the point, it would be little comfort to the victim's relatives that they were murdered by people who could actually win wars. But in fact it is the key to a much darker, much more horrifying side of the story than Molyneux, or indeed anyone that I can find has detected.

It is well known that murdering people makes people want to kill you. Indeed blood-feuds were common in pretty much every ancient culture we know of and never stopped in some areas (Afghanistan in particular). An armed force that genuinely hopes to gain control of an area without exterminating it's inhabitants needs to minimise it's killing to avoid retaliation. Naturally armed opponents still need to be killed or at least run off, but killing civilians is VERY counter-productive. This is not just my view, it is official US counterinsurgency doctrine. No competent coalition officer would be ignorant of this. Yet such killings occurred in this unit and kept occurring for months, raising the anger at US forces and encouraging attacks. Further more the breakdown in discipline makes the whole unit much less effective at actually fighting. How can one explain such a lapse, not just in the morality of the troops but their effectiveness in what is allegedly the chief goal of the occupation, winning over the Afghans?

Several explanations are possible, firstly that such activities are so difficult to detect that dedicated officers simply weren't capable of curbing the violent impulses of the troops. However this explanation is wrong on two counts. Firstly the criminals weren't hard to detect, they were known to everyone with remarkable speed. Suspicions were raised possibly before the first victim was even dead and they openly showed signs of exactly the behaviour they were subsequently found guilty of. Secondly officers made little or no effort to determine if these soldiers were murdering civilians even when they had good reason to suspect them. They did have suspicions from the very start of the killing spree, yet the officer's first act was to ensure one source of information, the first victim, was destroyed.

There was no attempt to search for other evidence, for instance the pin and spoon of the grenade the victim was supposed to have thrown. Significantly the murderers knew to conceal these as they were US issue and might have pointed to their own guilt. But their absence was scarcely less incriminating. The pin on a grenade keeps the “spoon”, a spring-loaded lever, in the safe position. If not held by the pin, the throwers hand or some obstacle the spoon revolves away from the body of the grenade and then completely separates from it. The spoon is normally released either before the weapon is thrown (if you wish to shorten the time between throwing and detonation) or as it is. In the former case you would expect it to be fairly close to the original throwing point, in the later further towards the target but probably still close. In neither case should a metal object be hard to find with metal detectors. Yet no attempt was made to do this, despite Afghanistan being notorious for mines and other traps.

When suspicions were raised officers didn't seem to take even the most basic steps to find the truth. At the scene a village elder accused Morlock of throwing the grenade. The obvious response would be to ask Morlock how many grenades he had checked out and how many he had now. A discrepancy would be obvious evidence of wrongdoing. Officers have every reason in the US army to keep track of grenades, as they can be used to kill them without leaving forensic evidence. Killing one's commanding officer during Vietnam was called “fragging” (after “fragmentation grenade”) for a reason. Another would be to ask him where he was when the grenade exploded and to search the area for the spoon and pin, exactly what Morlock anticipated when he was “careful not to leave the grenade's spoon and pin on the ground”. Which leads to the question, where did he leave them? The obvious answer is on him, in a pocket or in his webbing. This means that at the very start a suspicious officer could have searched the murderer and found part of the murder weapon on him. You don't have to be CSI-qualified to make a conclusion from there.

So why didn't he? One explanation is that he's bad at his job, which is controlling his men in such a way that they both say within the approved methods of war and achieve their strategic objectives. However nothing bad seemed to happen to the officers in charge of these men, even those who knew about the killings don't seem to have suffered. They haven't even lost out on promotions. The obvious answer is his job and that of other officers isn't to wage war within approved methods of war and achieve the strategic objectives. In fact their job isn't to do either.

If they wanted to achieve their strategic objectives they would eliminate soldiers under their command who went around murdering people and thus undermining everything the US government is (supposedly) trying to achieve. And by “eliminate” I don't necessarily mean try or transfer, the odd “coordinate mistake” with the artillery will work just as well. Even better if the troops suspect the truth. If the troops can be intimidated to cover up a murder of an innocent they can certainly be intimidated into not talking about the execution of said murders. Particularly since the executioners control their deployment and whether they get reinforced. Even if the leadership aren't prepared to treat their troops that badly* they could still mount courts martial against the suspects and make it clear that anyone even thinking of doing this is in for hell on earth.

Obviously if they were trying to wage war within approved methods they weren't trying that hard.

So what was the job of these officers? What were they in Afghanistan to do if not to achieve the strategic objectives of their masters and thereby the political objectives of their master's masters? Well they were in Afghanistan to be in Afghanistan. “We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here” as the old song goes. The purpose of the killing (both “legitimate” and “illegitimate”) is to persuade the ones with the purse-strings that killing needs to be done. Their function is propaganda, not on behalf of the state, but on behalf of the armed forces in general and the army in particular. This propaganda is aimed not just at the people of the United States but at the United States Government itself. They are their to convince politicians that a force capable of action such as they take is needed. In this context, the murders and the official response to it make perfect sense. The more killing the more it looks like they are facing great opposition and therefore the more justified their presence is. The only problem was that the “kill-team” (a grandiose title for a “team” that would have been useless in a firefight) couldn't keep their mouth shut and eventually told someone who had no reason to be loyal to them.

* note the troops that aren't murdering people actually benefit from such a brutal regime towards murders, it reduces murder of civilians which reduces retaliation attacks which makes them safer.

Oil, scarcity and US foreign policy, A response to Michael Klare's “The collapse of the old oil order”

2011-03-24T01:03:00.000-07:00

Klare's article http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC05Ak02.html

Modern US and Western foreign policy in the middle east has been going on for at least 60 years. In that time much evidence about it's nature, intention, extent and effectiveness has been observed. Michael Klare's piece references this evidence, but primarily to directly contradict it. There is little evidence that the survival or authoritarian governments in the middle east is necessary, sufficient or even helpful to “the expansion of Western economies after World War II” or the “current affluence of industrialised societies”. If every one of the authoritarian regimes in the middle east were to perish there is no indication that oil production would fall. Indeed it might rise. The interventions in the Middle East are even less helpful to this and were and are generally a hindrance to oil production.

Klare's first historical reference is to Iranian oil and imperial ambitions towards it and machinations about it. Aside from replacing a pro-German with a pro-British shah however none of these developments would have increased Iranian oil production. During WWII Iran would have had little problem selling all it's oil, the only possible interruption to the supply would be if a pro-German Shah refused to sell oil to Britian even if he couldn't transport his whole production to Germany. No doubt up until December 41 he could still sell to Russia. Increasing production was therefore not realistically the goal of British policy, only ensuring that the production was available to them. This is the closest thing in the entire article to a Western power putting a despot in charge to increase oil supply.

Klare then talks about the 1951 coup against Mohammed Mossadeq, prompted by the proposal to steal I mean nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. If the Brits thougth nationalisation was so bad for production why did Winston Churchill nationalise the same company (then known as Anglo-Persian Oil Company) in 1914? The simple answer is they didn't, they just didn't want powerful British interests to get ripped off by the Persians. They had less objection when British interests were ripped off by the British government. To what extent the widespread unpopularity of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi impacted oil production isn't addressed in the article so perhaps it's negative effect wasn't significant. What cannot be doubted is that it was a negative effect. A government that is extremely corrupt, unpopular and oppressive doesn't get the best out of it's workers, not even the ones in potentially very lucrative businesses. A less corrupt, more accountable, more popular government would certainly have outproduced Shah Reza, the only question is was the amount significant?

After the Shah was thrown out in 1979 Iranian oil production “never recovered” (his words). Why is that? Is it because the revolutionaries restricted supply? Did they hate the West or getting it's money? Not according to Klare; “To punish Iran’s new leaders, Washington imposed tough trade sanctions, hindering the state oil company’s efforts to obtain foreign technology and assistance. Iranian output plunged to two million barrels per day and, even three decades later, has made it back to only slightly more than four million barrels per day, even though the country possesses the world’s second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.”. So the first time that US and Western policy affects Middle East oil production the result is to cut a countries oil production by 2/3. So much for promoting production. Nor is this an unforeseeable outcome, it hardly takes a genius to see that restricting a Middle East nation to using the technology it [EDIT: cannot] make itself will substantially cut oil production. Iran at the time simply didn't have the skills to substitute for Western know-how, and everyone knew it. They still don't.

Then we come to the Iraq war. Production dropped from 2.8m b/day to 0.5m b/day after the war and sanctions took their toll. Again this is not an unpredictable occurrence, when you bomb somebodies oil fields and then forbid them from trading naturally their production of oil for international markets drops. A policy of refusing to buy oil and preventing others from doing so is not a policy designed to increase oil production or the prosperity that flows from it. This policy was however kept up long after it became clear it's alleged goals (removal of Saddam or destruction of his weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist) would not be achieved. In spite of these efforts production was up to 2.5mbd by 2001.

Another war against Iraq was launched which did increase Iraq oil production, but only because sanctions were lifted in it's wake. Klare uses the claims of Bush officials that after an invasion the privatization of State oil companies and Western investment and technology would life production to support the claim that this was the aim of the invasion. Does he take other Bush claims, such as the claim that they would destroy Saddam's WMDs as seriously? If the US government had seriously wanted to sell oil technology and investment to the Iraqis it would have been as simple as letting them buy it. Yet they went the tremendously expensive route of invading, with all the predictable disruption this causes.

Given the extensive politicisation of the State oil company it was the opposite of surprising they would resist privatisation. Why would a group that got it's highly lucrative jobs from elite friends want to compete in the market? Especially when the beneficiaries killed their former patrons? Obviously such a move would encourage sabotage both of the privatisation itself and of production efficiency. If the Bushrangers could have presented privatisation as a genuine market reform designed to get the most benefits for the Iraqi people (or at least government) from their oil there might have been some public support. However the administration mostly put it's faith into no-bid contracts often with firms of questionable competence (KBR couldn't even construct barracks without dangerous electrical faults). There is no reason to believe that Bush administration aims included greater production, even allowing for their incompetence.

The Iraqi people on the other hand have every reason to promote oil production, provided distribution of rewards is even close to equitable. Unlike Bush administration officials they do not have monetary interests in American oil resources that compete with Iraqi oil.

Klare mentions that Egypt and Jordan guard vital oil pipelines and/or canals, but guard them from who? The only time since WWIII a major oil sea-lane has been threatened that I can remember is when the US and the Iranians went at it for years in the Gulf of Oman. Since as previously mentioned this resulted from US hostility to Iran including sanctions and a proxy war that reduced it's oil output what is the point of “guarding” any of the routes? Why not simply not cause trouble along them? Even assuming there are those who would disrupt the routes for political or monetary gain why should the US or other Western powers pay for the protection as opposed to the oil sellers? They have the most to lose after all. If Western policy was truly aimed at maximising production they would stop angering the “Arab street” with support for Israel thus making disruption of oil supplies by governments and other groups seeking to cash in on anti-western sentiment less likely.

Libyan production is off for obviously reasons and Klare presents this as a serious problem. If so the solution is to back whichever side looks like winning so the revolt is over as soon as possible. Obama did the opposite, and was supported by France and England as well as other countries. Egypt and Tunisia are “expected to restore production, modest in both countries, to pre-rebellion levels soon,” which is the complete opposite of the point of his entire essay. He continues however by saying they “are unlikely to embrace the sorts of major joint ventures with foreign firms that might boost production while diluting local control.”. This he bases on, what? No evidence is given that popular politicians are more adverse to joint ventures than dictators. In Russian joint ventures ground to a halt because the foreigners were getting constantly ripped off by an unaccountable government and it's cronies. This suggests joint ventures are easier with an accountable government, not harder. Again the main problem with joint ventures in the two countries he mentioned as having lower production after becoming more anti-western resulted from WESTERN GOVERNMENT RESTRCTIONS, not native public opinion or policy.

He finishes off the paragraph by saying that Iran and Iraq “exhibit no signs of being able to boost production significantly. Iran is currently under sanctions for alleged misdeeds and Iraq has an ongoing civil war as a result of Western policy. Lack of expanding production in either cannot be blamed on the sort of change that Egypt and Tunisia experienced.

Nor can stagnant production in Saudi Arabia be blamed on such change, which has not occurred. Klare makes it quite clear that “The Saudi royals have expressed reluctance to raise output much above 10 million barrels per day, fearing damage to their remaining fields and so a decline in future income for their many progeny. “. So much for the dictators keeping production up. Klare then asserts that “rising domestic demand is expected to consume an ever-increasing share of Saudi Arabia’s net output”. He only names one person who expects it and that is someone with every reason to push scarcity fears, Khalid al-Falih, CEO of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company. He predicts a 260% increase in domestic oil consumption in 18 years or about 7.4% a year, which would be impressive for a tiger economy, which SA is not. Nevertheless Klare takes this figure as gospel, or at least does not indicate it might be even slightly doubtful.

His pronouncements on Saudi domestic oil consumption are at least based on some evidence. His claim that “no other area is capable of replacing the Middle East as the world’s premier oil exporter“ is based on nothing but ignorance of oil's history. The big players in the oil market were always surprised by the next big field, let alone the general public or the intellectuals. To claim that because you don't know what could replace the Middle East and therefore that nobody knows it and theefore no such field exists goes against everything observed about the oil business for decades. Which is pretty much par for the course with this essay and one's like it.

The worst review

2011-02-14T01:33:00.000-08:00

A review of Whittaker Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged .

Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the worst review in the history of literature. I do not mean by that that is it the least complimentary (although god knows it's not a love letter) but that it is the least accurate. Generally when a review misreports a work it is perceived as innocent incompetence, but this is hardly likely here. Atlas Shrugged is not a complex work by the standards of a nationally known reviewer and some of the “mistakes” he makes are obvious to anyone of average intelligence who actually read the book. Some of the claims he makes about AS and Rand are merely unsupported, but others are directly contradicted by the work itself. I am forced to conclude that the review isn't just nasty, it's dishonest.

“It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. “ This is perhaps just an exaggeration based on the reviewers limited memory of the work, but it is the first claim that can be factually verified or denied by reference to the work, the latter occurs. Is he seriously saying that Hank Reardon, who betrayed the productive class of a whole country so his girlfriend wouldn't look bad, is “only the whitest white”? Or how about “non-absolute”? If he is only the whitest white or the blackest black which is he? And at which stage of his character development*?

“The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. Insofar as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in boardrooms. “ Right, so Dagny Taggart is a “curmudgeon”, yeah because she hated socialising with her friends. What Chambers seems to misunderstand, perhaps deliberately perhaps not, it that it is not “ curmudgeonly” to not what to socialise with people who you don't like or trust. That is the extent of the “ curmudgeon” tendencies of the heroes of AS. Note also that he is already inserting the impression that the heroes of AS are all millionaires and that we only need to consider whether they might be known in real life to “the business community”, not the arts or philosophical community. I will come back to this.

“All Miss Rand's chief heroes are also breathtakingly beautiful. “ Midas Mulligan is breathtakingly beautiful? Ken Dannager too? Really? There is no accounting for Whittaker's taste.

“Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no children — it suddenly strikes you — ever result. “ Chambers here seems surprised that a woman who wants to become chief of a transcontinental railroad and has sex at lot has mastered birth control. “You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. “ No Chambers, you speculate that. I speculate that she knew little about how to raise children and spent little time with them and so didn't consider it a good idea to write a lot about them. Just as Jane Austen never wrote a scene with no women present so Rand didn't write a lot of scenes with children in them. As for AS depicting a world that isn't a good place for children, it's a dystopian novel, it's not a good place for adults. “How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you can't fool little boys and girls with such stuff — not for long. “ Apparently he thinks naming a character “Midas” means that the author hates children or something, only his bile is clear in this case.

“Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. “ Note here that he leaves out completely the fact that plenty on the Right also qualify, as do plenty of religious people. The idea that the bad guys in AS are unbelievable caricatures is simply wrong. There are many people who are as bad or worse as the average Ayn Rand villain. I'm looking at you Krugman. In fact the response to one section of Atlas Shrugged perfectly mirrors the response to the statements of one of the characters in that section. You will no doubt have heard of the train wreck where Rand goes through each car and details how someone in that car endorsed the disastrous philosophy that led to it. Francisco comments on this fact and the outrage is greater than the outrage at the wreck itself. What Rand was doing in this piece was talking about a much larger train wreck, which similarly killed people who, by and large, endorsed to a greater or lesser extent the philosophy that caused it. And just like Francisco the torrents of abuse came down on her far more than on those who caused the wreck. The train wreck by the way was the 20th century. How absurd is it to be condemned for writing unrealistic characters by people who are doing what you have your characters doing?
“This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.” Actually the entire book is about how these people came to exist and become powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. I suppose she could have gone into greater depth, but if Chambers really wants this he is the only person I know who thinks AS should be longer.

“Robin Hood is the author's image of absolute evil — robbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the weak (and hence no good). “. Here Chambers simply substitutes “Strong” for productive and “Weak” for unproductive hoping we won't see the difference. In fact the heroes in AS are consistently overpowered in almost everything they want for most of the book. To describe that as “Strength” is just a trifle disingenuous. The character arguably depicted as the worst in the book is Dr. Robert Stadler, who is intellectually strong and even brave. It is not strength but willingness to deal with others through consent only that separates the heroes from the villains.

“I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, “ Note again he gives the impression that al l the heroes are businessmen.

“Happily, in Atlas Shrugged (though not in life), all the Children of Darkness are utterly incompetent.” Dr Robert Stadler is utterly incompetent?

“In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. “ Excep t that they don't intend to “repossess” anything, simply to deal consensually with those outside Galt's Gulch. There is no hint that the Gulchers even want to take back what was legally there's let alone “repossess” the whole world.

“More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, “ Much of the book is about how dollars mean you don't have to submit to anyone. That Chambers pretends to misunderstand this after over 1000 pages is breathtaking. The whole point is that by trading consensually nobody needs to submit to anyone's will. If Rand had only mentioned this once I could excuse Chambers, who no doubt was distracted by guilt at being a pawn of socialist murderers, for missing it. But as we all know saying something once isn't really Rand's style. The point is hammered home repeatedly, and anyone who pretends not to get it is dishonest either right on the surface, deep down or both.

“by Miss Rand's ideas that the good life is one which 'has resolved personal worth into exchange value,' 'has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash-payment.' “ The idea that Rand thought that only cash should come in to a relationship is similar to the idea that Marx thought laissez faire was a great idea. Throughout Atlas Shrugged the heroes sacrifice material well-being for abstract values like friendship, integrity and pride. Henry Reardon refuses $20 million dollars for the rights to Reardon metal, far more than he could possible gain from selling it (in fact it's not clear that he ever makes a profit from it's sale). His justification? “Because it's good.”. John Galt gives up far more by not patenting his motor, which conservatively would be worth $50 million given the power/weight ratio and feul economy. Quentin Daniels gives up the chance to own a considerable percentage of the profits from making the same motor, just so he can work as an apprentice in Galt's power station. The refusal of Halley to take payment from Dagny for the concert because her satisfaction and it's source are enough is minor in comparison but still significant. It is certainly less impressive than having 40 men ready to die to rescue someone they love. Death of course would make money pretty meaningless. So much for the idea that Rand favors “no other nexus between man and man... than callous cash payment”.

“It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. “ Materialism has two meanings “ 1. preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. 2. the philosophical theory that regards matter and its motions as constituting the universe, and all phenomena, including those of mind, as due to material agencies.“ (dictionary.com based on the Random House dictionary) Chambers says “philosophic materialism” which means the second, but he's talking about the first. He either doesn't know or doesn't want us to know the difference. With regard to the first meaning Rand was specific that she did not chiefly value material things. Hell the only reason you read John Galt's speech was that she gave up material things to get it printed. Again the heroes of AS gave up material things repeatedly in AS, and not small ones either. Akston gave up salary and tenure and became a sandwich hand. Galt as previously mentioned gave up his rights to his motor, possibly the most valuable possession on the planet at the time.

“Henceforth man's fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rand's words, 'the moral purpose of his life.' Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free-enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. “. Yes Rand thought about what it means to pursue pleasure and how it can affect the will, intelligence and spirit. She even wrote about it, chiefly in the voice of Francisco d'Anconia. The claim that the pursuit of happiness tends “automatically” to 'the pursuit of pleasure' which of course Chambers doesn't define , let alone differentiate from happiness is obviously wrong. Not everyone who pursues happiness spends their time getting drunk and laid. That the forms of pleasure seeking are only effective if they have the content of achievement is mentioned at least twice, firstly by Dagny as a comment on her social debut, then by Francisco as he comments on his fake “playboy” lifestyle and the sort of man who would actually seek it and why. It's OK if Chambers doesn't believe what Rand says about pleasure here, but to pretend she hasn't said it just to justify smearing her philosophy is just plain evil.

“For, if Man's heroism (some will prefer to say: 'human dignity') no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsche's anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity." Again this is something that Rand specifically dealt with in AS and to just skip over it to pretend that she did is the work of a propagandist not a reviewer. I guess once you learn from the Trots you never forget.

“So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, “ Interesting choice of words, “ruling caste”. Note that none of the heroes ruled or sought to rule anyone. The closest any of them came to doing so was Judge Narragansett, writing a constitution, which would give him as judge less power than he had under the previous one. But the word “caste” is even more revealing, since it refers to a class that is determined by birth and impossible to get out of. Given that every one of the heroes in AS changes “caste” and that the only two sibling pairs in the story end up in completely different circumstances how is this word justified? It's not. It's simply another attempt to imply something untrue about AS, in this case that those who triumphed would have some sort of inescapable hold on the world. In fact not only do they not seem to want this but at least one specifically rejects having an inescapable hold over his employees, hiring only those who will quit and become his competitors.

“For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, “ Right, because AS has nothing to say about how politics works and what it means. God how did this guy not get laughed out of the literary profession.

“In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. “ Here we come to the real objection, the crux of the matter, even more important than the god stuff. Rand thinks that philosophy should actually be applied to real life. My god doesn't she know that philosophy is to be kept in the drawing room of effete professors and never taken out In public? The relevance of philosophy to our “highly complex society” being “everywhere in a high state of instability” apparently escapes Chambers. “And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them. “ So naturally we must abandon all philosophy in politics, all attempts to find underlying principles for understanding the world. No instead we must simply base our politics on, what exactly? Not ethics for that is a branch of philosophy? Not logic for that too is a branch of philosophy Nah let's just keep spewing out range of the moment, “pragmatic”, whatever seems to work right now politics, it worked so well for Weimer Germany. Oh no I've done the Godwin's law thing, oh well, at least I didn't start it.

“Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, “ What the hell does he mean here? Rand had nothing against socialising, and did it constantly. She had nothing against people being “socialised” in the sense of treating people decently either. Neither of these conclusions is in any way justified by AS.

“calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). “ I don't see how a sculptor and a musician count as part of the “industrial-financial-engineering elite”. Although the sculptor did run a foundry for a while. Again he uses the word “caste” to falsely imply that this group is both monolithic and permanent. Nothing in AS even remotely suggests this, in fact one of the main antagonists seem to regard themselves as having a right to be in an elite not the protangonists. Nowhere do any of the protagonists suggest being given the powers of a Big Brother, in fact John Galt specifically rejects the offer, considering it absurd even to command men to be free.

“When she calls 'productive achievement man's noblest activity,' she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. “ Actually she means and says she means whatever expands a man's life. That someone could be ignorant of this is startling but I guess when you're mining a work for things to slander it with it's easy to miss the little stuff. “She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. “ Yes she can object but we'll simply make a baseless assertion and that takes care of that.

“And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). “ How exactly is not using force against others going to lead to a dictatorship? The only restraint he talks of is the initiation of force, which yes, I do think it should be in practice criminal and in morals vicious. The idea that a group whose only demand was “stop stealing from us” is dictatorial is bizarre, but only if you don't consider the “conservatives” who make it. To them sacrifice to the “greater good” is a god, worshipped far more reverentially than the god they claim to worship. What, we can't extort money from you to enslave your sons to die on a distant field? You dictators!

“I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship. “ Wow, that's scummy even for him. Note how he goes from a claim (not supported by any textual evidence naturally) that she is for “an aristocracy of talent” and then sleazily transfers from that sort of “aristocracy” to a political one, which she never argued for. He is again trying to plant the seed of a group that controls all and that is difficult or impossible to get into if you aren't born into it. This despite 3 of the central characters being almost literally as different in backgrounds as It is possible to be. The origins of the Gulchers range from heirs to a multi-million dollar fortune, the son of an aristocratic bishop, left an impoverished home at 14 and son of a garage attendant (maybe). And those are the ones we know about. From this we can judge one of his early claims that this book is about a “class war”. This is literally true and yet a lie. There are “classes” of people in the philosophic sense at war in AS. But we know he meant us to take it in the sense of “Haves vs. Have-nots” “Aristos vs. the hoi polloi”. This is as untrue as it could possibly be. Brothers and sisters are born into the same class, but the only two sibling pairs mentioned end up on opposite sides of the “class war”.

“Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism are familiar. “ Actually she has “brooded” or rather thought about it. That's part of the reason why she suggests a system radically different from either. Of course to Chambers the fact that both systems are allegedly “materialistic” means there are no other relevant details.

“Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. “ This is said of a book in which the vast majority of the heroes resist the message and the resistance forms a large part of both the page count and the interest of the book. Without resistance to the message by characters presented as morally good AS would be a pamphlet. Seriously this guy is evil, through and through.

“There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!' “ Now you see what I mean about not being the first to invoke Godwin. Chambers is hearing voices. Unfortunately they aren't the voices of those slain by his former comrades, so I guess I was wrong about the whole being distracted by guilt thing. Let us look at what the characters in AS actually do about such wickedness. Nothing. Literally nothing. The closest they get to hostile action is blowing up their own property. Nobody is punished for obscene thefts and blackmails. They don't shoot anyone except in legitimate defence of others or to reclaim property that has been stolen (and only 1 named character does the latter). They don't even hold a grudge much, Hank Reardon being willing to forgive decades of emotional abuse, ingratitude and humiliation for less than a minute of actual fellowship. He doesn't even get that.

“mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. “ Maybe I'm wrong about this guy, maybe he's not lying maybe he just comprehensively missed the point of everything she wrote. Nope, he's evil. But here we see that he's stupid as well. What would be the point of AS toned down? If Rand isn't right that what she says is wrong with philosophy and society is disastrous then she's wrong that it's wrong. There is no middle ground and saying there is, that this plague that has killed millions (many of them while being cheered on by Chambers), would be seen as blatantly dishonest and brain-dead. What Chambers wants is for someone who believe something passionately to write as though she believed it somewhat. The only reason to want someone to do this is if you disagree with them.

“We struggle to be just. “ Always hard for a Trot, but really he doesn't. He struggles to be a lying sleazy, traducing scumbag, or rather he finds it easy.

* It should be noted here that the character development of “Non-absolute” is the most detailed and convincing in the entire work, yet it consumers at least an order of magnitude less words than other characters. What this says about Rand is significant, but I don't know what it is.

Quiggin does the zombie.

2010-11-10T00:07:00.000-08:00

Firstly I'd like to thank you for the conciseness of your piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, unfortunately I might not be able to be as concise as the errors in that piece require a great deal of debunking. My appologies.

The idea that the financial markets always make better decisions than governments is wrong (and irrelevant) but it has nothing to do with "imputing wisdom to the rich and powerful" or the efficient market hypothesis. Government in most countries (including the USA) is made up of the rich and in all countries of the powerful. The financial markets on the other hand are to a great extent made up of the middle class and the people who handle their money. If anything you impute far more wisdom to the rich and powerful than the EMH. The efficient market hypothesis is states that it is impossible to beat the market because the market always correctly incorporates and reflects all relevant information. This is saying much more than that the market can beat the government, it's saying that the market beats everyone.

You might actually be thinking of the Austrian School theories that say that "financial [and other] markets always make better judgements than governments", but I doubt you've heard of the Austrian School as it's criticisms of the EMH were not made "in the wake of the crisis" many years before. In fact it is theorectically possible for governments to make decisions that, on occasion, are better than that of markets, it's just not possible for them to make them consistently enough to deliver a net benefit because the information provided by a price mechanism. Look up "economic calculation problem" on wikipedia, it will give you the outline. It may sound patronising to tell a professional economist that he needs to look up wikipedia for basic facts but I can't help that, you do.

It should be noted that you more correctly summerise the EMH further down in your article, which makes it seem like either you're being deliberately deceptive about what it says or you're simply not putting any thought at all what you're writting. If you're going to construct a strawman you should avoid actually stating it's full implications.

Your claim that economic rationalism was the "dominant ideology of the time" is absurd. Throughout the period you discuss the dominant ideology of all Western nations called for a powerful central bank, tarriffs, minimum wage laws, restrictions of nonabusive and consensual child labour, medical. legal and countless other types of professional licensing and so on and so on. The fact that this ideology was dominant is demonstrated by the facts that it dominated (i.e. it's ideas were implemented) and made it's domination seen natural. If you can find any evidence that for instance the idea that we didn't need a central bank was "dominant" at any point during the last 100 years I will recant this. Or if anyone can read aloud all the regulations applicable to financial markets is less than an hour. Please don't try this yourself, Basel II might make your tounge explode (251 pages of just the INTERNATIONAL regulations, thousands more of national and god knows how much state).

Of course the EMT was indeed used to support this "dominant ideology" in that it supported the idea that there wasn't a central-bank-created bubble and that indeed there couldn't be. But this idea is directly opposite to what "economic rationalism" says about bubbles in general and the bubbles you talk about in particular. The "reforms" after the dotcom fiasco were no doubt an overreaction, reforms made is such circumstances always are, but they were also an underreaction. The main cause of the dotcom bubble was the central bank, that is to say government intervention in the market, which has been the cause of all financial bubbles that don't involve tulips.

Of course if the EMH was right then there wouldn't have been a bubble nothing would be overpriced and therefore Julian Robertson would not have been right to bet they were. He was doing exactly the opposite of what EMH said he should. That he failed doesn't mean it's right (it's not as the subsequent collapse shows), but that you don't understand what it says about investing says you're wrong. Not just about what you say but the idea that you are well-informed enough to comment at all.

Of course you made the usual claim that "booms and busts ... can only be curbed by external regulation" despite the comprehensive failure of regulation to do anything of the kind. There are thousands of pages of regulations and god knows how many pages of decisions by bureaucrats about how they are to be interpreted, is there any evidence that they work? In fact there is good reason to believe that they will never will and I've laid out the arguments in my blog post "Systematic risk, markets and the State". Simply put government regulations don't control the booms and busts they are part of it. http://credible.blogspot.com/2009/11/systematic-risk-market-and-state.html Regulations alternatively cripple markets when they are not needed and spur them on at the worst possible time. The simplest way to reduce booms and busts is to simply eliminate the central bank, which is known to have caused this and all previous (non-tulip) booms and subsequent busts.

There is considerable reason to believe the investment decisions generated by private firms, which are under less pressure to produce short term returns than government, will outperfom those governments. Governments have no incentive to produce value, only to reward interest groups. The government has no shareholders to satisfy, only voters, who practice "rational ignorance" about their policies, and who even if they didn't, would have no reason to systematically advance policies that are for the general good. Private firms on the other hand have people with large interests in whether or not they're creating value and for whom ignorance is therefore not rational. While some of these shareholders may value short term gains, they know that sacrificing the long term interests of the company devalues the shares right now as long term investors will not want them, nor will short term investors who plan to sell to long term investors later on.

Of course this has nothing to do with "the case for comprehensive privatisation" since that case depends on the people benefitting from selling the assets, not the financial markets benefitting (at least that's not ostensibly why it's being sought). The idea that there are bubbles and that assets sometimes getting enormously overvalued is in fact damn good evidence for privatisation, comprehensive or otherwise, properly timed. As I said to my father, you were against selling Telstra shares, I was against buying them, who was right? Not only will privatisation during a bubble benefit financially benefit the government and therefore you no doubt believe the people, but it will extract money from the bubble preventing the enormous new bad investments that often occur during them. Everyone's a winner. Of course this depends on governments investing at the correct time, but if you're right that should be easy. It's startling that you don't even get the implications of your own theories right.

I am unable to tell who you thought would be convinced by your article. The things you support are already the opinions of the unthinking majority, so it can't be them. Anyone who does the least bit of research would see the flaws in your piece so obviously they're not it's target. I can only assume that you wish to give people with no economic knowledge an excuse to believe as they do.

How to excuse a murder (copy of letter sent to "The Monthly".

2010-11-09T01:27:00.001-08:00

It's not often that journalistic bias in a piece that condemns it in it's subject is as obvious as in John Birmingham's hatchet job on Julian Assange. First there's the entirely irrelevant start that tries to blame him for an attack he had nothing to do with. Then there's the attempt to link greater efforts to not kill civilians with greater civilian deaths. I note that he wasn't quite brave enough to state claim causality, but without it what relevance does this bit have?

Finally after the ground has been fertilized there is the claim that wikileaks identified "hundreds - possibly thousands" of collaborators. I believe the actual number is three. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread598661/pg1 That's the only number I could get from any source that actually checked the facts, unlike you Mr. Birmingham. If there had indeed been hundreds let alone thousands of collaborators identified then of course that would "damage national security" in the mind of David Lapan. Since he specifically said there was nothing in them that could damage national security even your own piece implies that there were not these hundreds you claim.

Then there are the absurd attacks on the journalistic ethics of wikileaks. They have not to my knowledge published a single false fact in the affair (except what false facts were in official government documents). They have been substantially less biased than the average news report on TV, which is admittedly not saying much. If mainstream media hadn't been caught parroting lies over both wars the claims that journalistic ethics were important might have some crediblility, but they did and it doesn't. As an example of the "long-established ethics and standards of the reporting profession" when was the last time a report about a proposed law didn't assume that it's authors were telling the truth about what the law was for? For instance a law about searching knives is always presented as being intended as a way to crack down on criminals when we all know the police already have the power to search with probable cause. I see what you mean about a "compact with the state... authorities" though. Without such reporters might actually say what the laws were for.

Anyone who feels themselves wronged by anything that wikileaks says can of course reply, unless they're too stupid to operate a blog. The purpose of a story is not to give people time to excuse their bad behaviour. They did what they did, here's the evidence.

Finally we come to your pathetic and abominable excuse for the mass murders in the "Collateral Murder" video. You state that there is talk of weapons fire in the video yet nobody killed in the video fires a weapon or does anything that looks like they're about to. There is simply no action by any of those killed that would suggest an attempt to fire on anyone or the thought that they might have to. People who are about to fire on US forces take cover they don't stand around in the middle of the street. I have never been clearer about anything that I've seen in film than I am that these were not people about to engage in combat. Of course you can claim that I'm wise after the event, but that's just bullshit. Anyone can see they're not threatening. There is nothing that looks enough like a weapon to justify taking a life. The claim that weapons were later found merely makes it look like someone brought a throw-down, as is known to happen in Iraq. The video shows NO evidence of them and nobody has claimed it does. Not even you.

Naturally you refer to the graininess of the video to excuse the killers. But they knew of the quality of their equipment and choose to use it, badly, to determine whether someone lived or died. That was their moral decision and if they can't make moral decisions in combat they shouldn't be in it. If they gather and use information in a firefight in way that allows them to act like moral people then they were morally reprehensible for every getting in that chopper. This is not "naive" or "simplistic" or any of the other words horrible people use to describe people who are inconveniently decent. It's is simply the truth.

This didn't need to be leaked you claim, which is a lie and you know it. If the video showed only facts that were previously reported then why was it suppressed for years? I understand that someone who was embedded with the troops and sympathetic to them reported on it, but he didn't see the video did he? So he reported on reports by those involved, which is no substitute for the real facts. He explained "minute by minute" how the reporters came to be fired on. In that report did he mention that at the time NONE of the forces involved was being fired upon or believed that they would be fired upon between the firing and their reaching the site? Because that is obvious from the speed of their arrival and the fact that this non-threat was occupied the Apache's time. Did he leave that bit out or was that just you? I'm trying to pinpoint precisely who is making what excuses for murderers.

Murder, motive and militarism.

2010-04-13T23:15:00.001-07:00

Stefan Molyneux's comments on the video of two journalists and several others being killed is correct, but misses something. Sure nobody with even a basic understanding of how the State works is surprised that they murdered people, or that they murdered people that weren't the people they were “supposed” to be murdering. What the video showed to me was that the purposes of the murders was not what even the more cynical observers assumed. The theory that US and allied forces are there to make the world safe for oil corporations is shown to be fundamentally wrong as is the theory that they are there to maintain control of the Iraqi government for whatever purpose. There is only one credible motivation for the actions of US forces as depicted in this video and it's far scarier than anything Molyneux attributed to the politicians.

First of all let's think about the sequence of actions.
1)Helicopter crews observe things that don't look a lot like armed men and report that they are armed.
2)Crew requests permission to fire on these men.
3)Their commander at base gives permission to fire. This third action is the critical point, logically what should have been the third action, if the goal of these actions was as what is commonly claimed either by their supporters or detractors? What should have come between 2. and 3.?
4)Murder, bloody murder.

Ok so to put this in context, the US military has been in Iraq at this point for ~4 years and had examined the reasons for violent action against it using both information from guerrilla conflict and others with similar ethnic groups. From this a basic rule was deduced that killing civilians or even active guerrillas resulted in recruitment of additional opponents for revenge. This was not a secret, it was very well known by this stage of the war. Indeed this principle was well known to military theorists for decades, although of course it is possible that they weren't listened to by those actually in command. By this time however these facts were well known to all commanders in theatre. Additional fighters obviously caused additional casualties and prevented the accomplishment of tactical and through them strategic goals of the coalition. This is true even if the coalition has no clear idea what it's goals are, except if they are a certain set of goals which I will mention later.

So we have personnel acting against the supposed interests of the people they work for. They do so despite their employers being able to easily access audio-visual records that clearly show this behavior and show no concern that they might be fired for being amazingly bad at their jobs. This confidence is well-placed since there is no mention in this controversy of anyone being fired, demoted, redeployed or inconvenienced in the slightest by said bad actions. Numerous other incidents similar to this have been uncovered and yet nobody is getting fired. Nobody is even being warned that they will be fired if this continues. I'm not talking here about morality, only about efficiency in accomplishing things that are claimed to be goals of those involved. This is an own goal, yet the players are still out there next week as center forward and the coach isn't even telling people not to do that, what gives? Is it possible that there are other goals more important than achieving “victory”? Indeed is it possible that “victory” is not a goal at all for the people actually firing the weapons?

One clue to a particular goal is the calls to request firing clearance (or whatever they call it, I don't know the technical term). They consist of unsupported assertions that cannot be checked up on at the time followed by somebody giving permission if the facts reported fit a protocol that the asserter knows. Obviously if permission is wanted all the asserter has to do is concoct a story that fits the protocol for firing. How then is this useful? All it does is delay firing if permission is asked, which could be lethal if it is actually required. If the situation doesn't in fact fit the protocol it does not prevent firing since the assertion can't be checked. The punishment for lying about the situation is presumably no worse than for inappropriate firing if you didn't have to seek permission but simply obey the protocol. Indeed given that any real danger would result in firing without permission (hey would you ask if an RPG went past your head?) asking permission would tend to be positively correlated with bad shootings. So why do it? The answer is simple, CYA. The military needs to prove that it had procedures to avoid bad results and followed them, thus avoiding the criticism that it did nothing to prevent tragedy. The fact that what it did to prevent tragedy is ineffective or counterproductive is irrelevant since the goal is not to avoid tragedy but to look like one is trying to avoid it. Since few people are familiar enough with military procedures (particularly if these can be classified, as they are) to know how bad they are the military gets to say “We're trying our best, it's just really hard not to kill innocent people.”.

Now lets look at why the military isn't taking simple steps to avoid death or injury to it's members or damage to the strategic goals that are assumed important to the US government, from “liberating the Iraqi people” to “boosting oil company profits”. Remember two things, your boss is who can fire or promote you, your job is what you get fired for not doing or promoted for doing. If you can't be fired or not promoted for being a bad teacher but you can be fired for saying “nigger” you are not a teacher, you are a professional non-sayer of the word “nigger”, a pretty stupid job but hey there's a paycheck, someone will do it. If you can't be fired for not achieving victory but you can be fired for making it clear that military success is not in the long term interest of the voters you are not a soldier you're a professional obscurer of that particular truth.

Consider that for about 65 years the net effect of US military activities on the welfare of US citizens has been negative. If US entry into WWI is considered a cause of WWII then the period stretches back to 93 years at least. Yet the generals are still employed, the bases thrum with activity, people are refueling planes, repairing tanks, shooting journalists and otherwise “earning” a paycheck. If the perception of US military activities were to change to a realistic one they'd all get fired. Not immediately of course because the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) wants to protect their pork, but sooner or later other complexes (e.g. the Medical Industrial Complex) will promote a politician that proposes to take MICs pork and slough it in another trough. Said politician will get the votes of the disenchanted and the money of the competing thieves, an unbeatable combination. If you doubt that popularity plus loot can overcome powerful lobbyists I've got three words for you “State Tobacco Lawsuits”.

If a serious review of how the US military operates in Iraq and elsewhere and how this effects the strategic and political aims of the US government were to be undertaken and publicized most of the US military and almost all of it's high command would be fired. This need not occur because of any harm to the interests of the general US public, the harm to special interests is more than sufficient to have the generals canned if the government doesn't give a damn about it's constituents. Needless to say before any of the high command were fired they would certainly make sure anyone who caused the review to happen were taken down with them. Preferably in a manner that made it difficult or impossible for them to get another government job and severely limited their private employment opportunities too. So your job as a lieutenant, captain or other junior officer is to avoid serious examination of the performance of the US military in general and your unit in particular. Failing that allowing the performance revealed to become widely known and believed must be avoided. Whether this performance leads to attaining any goals of the government is irrelevant. While it is possible that non-performance in stated goals might lead to serious examination of the military and it's procedures this is extremely unlikely. This came close to happening after the Vietnam war, but nothing came of it, and nothing will come of it if both Iraq and Afghanistan are “lost”.

So what's the best way to avoid rational discussion of the US military's effects either happening or penetrating public consciousness? Well ironically being in a war helps. So does increasing the size of that war so as to turn as many voters and campaign contributors as possible into members of the MIC. Failure is not only an option for the military, it's the best option. When the military is actually in a war any complaints about it's performance or the cost are deemed “unpatriotic”. It's only in peace, where the activities of the military hardly matter, that it can be questioned. Once they stop performing brave self-sacrificing activities they lose the strange moral shield that self-sacrifice endows. So in the end what the military wants is to lose for a long time but not so badly that their paymasters lose patience with them and give up. Then they want to salvage something that their paymasters ( not their bosses) call victory. This avoiding a backlash for the paymasters that could cause them to come down on the military's masters. As long as those who control the government can be fooled into thinking that the military will serve the government's purposes and that the government's purposes are basically theirs the military will be allowed to do what it wants. That the corporations fall for this over and over again is partly due to the profits for being part of the MIC but mostly because they are run by people already invested in the strategy who would be fired if it's general failure became apparent. Ending the war in Iraq won't happen because people realise that it's unjust but because it's in their interests to oppose it. Telling the corporate elite that you believe they benefit from it won't help that.

The democratic restaurant

2010-02-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

Imagine you go to a restaurant and see on the menu two choices
each for apertizers, main course and desert. You order the salad
for starter, then the steak and finally the fruit cocktail, a
nice white would go well with that you think. The waiter tells
you that you can only have either the salad, lasagne and fruit
salad or the garlic bread, steak and ice cream. Only 2 choices
on the menu. You pick the first option figuring you can swap
your main course with someone.

Unfortunately you don't actually get to pick which menu option
you get, you just get to vote for it. If you win then everyone
has to eat what you're eating, if you lose then you have to eat
what the majority ordered. You try to explain that you're lactose
intolerant but the waiter is too busy tallying votes. He doesn't
seem too concerned that half the diners don't bother. After the
vote goes against you, you decide to leave. Security stops you
and insists that you pay for a meal you did not order and have
not eaten. They won't let you leave until you do.

Looking at people's bills you notice that some are larger
than others, although everyone ate the same type and amount of food.
You eat up and leave vowing never to eat there again. The
security guards tell you not to eat at any other restaurant, else
they'll break your legs and that if you eat at home, you still
have to pay for the food here.

This is democractic dining, with as much freedom as voting for the
government allows. Bon appettit.

Vogter2100 and moral stupidity.

2010-01-31T22:28:00.000-08:00

AngieAntiTheist has a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zURPZ6r_fUg in which she describes how she brings up her kid to be moral without religion. It's well thought out and clear both in terms of how she intends to raise a moral child and why.

Then the idiot Vogter chimes in with a response that calls the question stupid. He claims that morality is in our DNA and therefore we don't need to find out anything about it to be moral. As usual he accompanies his claims with insults to anyone who believes differently from him, in this case against their intelligence. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Rand, Russel, Molyneux they were all wasting their time according to him. All we have to do is let the instincts flow. Now I don't deny that we have a certain amount of morality encoded in our DNA but that this is sufficient to look after us without thinking. If that's the case Vogter, then how the hell did we get religion? Religion is against practically all the moral instincts that scientists have found to be inherited in our DNA, so how could it arise if simply allowing them full sway works? The fact is that the moral instincts like compassion don't answer often critical questions about morality well and sometimes they don't answer them at all.

For instance should we sterilise retarded people so that future generations aren't forced to take care of their subnormal offspring? Compassion tells us that burdening the poor of the future with the support of these people is bad. It also tells us that taking away the joy of raising a child from someone is also bad. Compassion tells us to help those in sweatshops in the third world, it does not tell us whether we do this better by boycotting sweatshops or by buying as much as possible from them so demand for and therefore the price of sweatshop labour goes up. Should we be compassionate for a whale killed to feed thousands of people or for the hundred of cows that would be slaughtered to feed them if it's spared? Is it better to spend one's time collecting money for Haitian earthquake victims or telling people why so many died in the first place? Because it looks like compassion would recommend the former, but without the later Haiti will continue it's present abysmal system and disasters will continue to kill Haitians in obscene numbers. As usual Vogter doesn't consider any non-obvious facts and even obvious facts that don't fit his viewpoint he ignores. In fact looking at any of Vogter's videos shows me why morality is never easy and what happens to you if you fail at it.

Systematic risk, market and the State.

2009-11-07T16:53:00.000-08:00

Market participants have taken taking system-threatening risks in the securities market. Many commentators have taken this to mean that government should intervene to prevent them doing so in the future. I explained previously why this won't work, but now I'd like to focus on how the State encourages and facilitates the taking of "systematic risk". First a definition, "systematic risk" is a risk that could rationally be considered to endanger the entire system it is taken within, necessitating a change to another system if a misfortune occurs. A system is "an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole" (http://dictionary.com).

The theory behind the call for more regulation is simple, market participants have a motive to protect themselves from risk, but no sufficient motive to protect the market from systematic risk. Because any prevention of systematic problems costs the person or institution, but they don't gain the full benefit. Their own risk goes down and that's a benefit, but it's small compared to the full cost of the risk across the market. So the preventer pays the full cost of prevention but doesn't gain the full benefit. It's like paying to purify a entire river so you can take a clean shower. Therefore people theorise that a "domino effect" could happen where one firm goes bust sending one or more of their creditors bust leading to the bankruptcies of their creditors and so on leading to too many bankruptcies for the system to handle.

This analysis ignores the fact risks that could result in defaults to your own creditors are more expensive. Naturally there are creditors out there who will loan to risky people or companies. Just as naturally they charge more than more conservative creditors so announcing that you are taking a risk likely to endanger repayments costs a firm money. This includes any exposure sufficient to destroy the firm no matter how apparently safe the firm you're exposed to. Passively concealing the nature of your risk-taking costs just as much since creditors and investors naturally assume that if what you were doing were safe you'd rush to tell them of it. Actively lying about what financial risks you're taking is called fraud and it's easier to detect and harder to actually profit by than you'd think. Investors and creditors (as well as potential short sellers) have an incentive to ferret out the lies. So any "domino effect" would have to overcome continual barriers to this like bulkheads in a well designed submarine.

A risk to an entire system is more likely if a single factor affects all participants directly, or at least a large number of participants directly and the rest through their connection to those directly affected. A risk is more likely to be systematic if could cause sudden problems, without time for participants to adjust their actions to minimize the problem. Government intervention is of course the most likely thing to create such risks due to the sudden and universal change it causes.

The most obvious government intervention in financial markets is the setting of the "risk free" interest rate by central banks. Since all economic processes include a delay between input and output this affects all economic processes. It also profoundly affects the prices of productive assets. Paying more than the return on an asset divided by the interest rate loses money. For instance if a factory had profits of $1M a year and you paid $10M for it, interest rates of 10% lose you money. So high interest rates mean low asset prices and sudden increases in interest rates mean sudden reductions in asset prices for all participants. This can lead to capital adequacy problems, i.e. a company not a big enough difference between the value of it's assets and it's liabilities. Financial institutions need this gap to be big to reassure investors, creditors and regulators that they're not about to go broke. The usual response to capital adequacy problems is to sell off assets to reduce debt. If many firms have the same problem of course the market is swamped with assets and a good price can't be got for them. This is because the opportunity cost to the buyer of buying your cheap assets is buying someone else's even cheaper assets. Since the government can subject everyone in the system to this same risk the government IS a systematic risk.

So called "credit ratings" were in effect licenses to commit fraud. Since by definition investors in funds lacked either the motivation or the knowledge to investigate individual investments. Therefore they hire someone to do so and get them the best combination of risk and return. Without the previously mentioned motivation or knowledge they had to rely on credit ratings as a proxy for risk. Fund managers delivered not the best combination of risk and return but the best combination of return and credit rating. To make a promise intending to deliver something entirely different is fraud. No fund manager will be prosecuted though because they will all say "But we invested in safe things, look they're all AAA rated.". Indeed the government required that some funds (especially retirement funds) invest only in things rated highly by it's designated defrauders, Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch.

Ratings agencies didn't rate unsafe firms or securities highly because the owners and issuers paid them. Although this seems like a good idea a little thought we show that's a bad strategy. If you label every piece of rubbish as caviar why would anyone want to eat in your restaurant? Ratings produced solely because someone pays you to say something are worth about as much as the paper they're printed on, that being how much competitors could produce them for. The only point in producing a rating is having people believe you, and over the long term saying things that aren't true doesn't help that. The reason that ratings agencies went the short term route of simply saying what others wanted them to say is that they have no competition. It's a government-enforced cartel that fund managers can't even refuse to deal with. If they had real competition then people who invest according to what the most credible firms said. But since they don't have to compete they can simply maintain the same low standards as the other two firms and rake in the cash.

Maturity and the State.

2009-05-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

I have recently [not so recently now, I left this post as a draft for a long time] been accused of "an impersonation of a spoiled brat" for refusing to take responsibility for the actions of my government. This is a common complaint about the enemies of the State, that they are not mature enough to accept things they ought to. So let us examine the accusation against me in particular and libertarians or anarchists in general.

The reason that "axiomiser" claimed I was immature was I would neither "shut the fuck up and accept the majority vote" or "make some effort to change peoples mind". I was under the impression that I was already doing the latter but let's examine whether this is a reason to accept responsibility for my government.

Let's assume that I can convince 100 people each in Australia, the UK and the US to vote for the candidate that most opposed the war in Iraq. Bear in mind I have NEVER convinced anywhere near this many people to do anything. This is what axiomiser was so upset that I would not accept responsibility for. Of these about half would have voted for that party anyway on other policies. Assuming a two party system and that each person has a 50/50 chance of voting for each party the chance of one vote changing the election is approximately 3/(number of voters). So basically bugger all chance of it EVER happening on a national level. Some chance perhaps that I could change one seat but that rarely changes who forms a government.

So given that I can't change the government, why must I accept responsibility for it? I can't change whether my mother's labor was painful should I accept responsibility for that? I can't change the mind of a terrorist, should I appologise for 9/11? I can't change my socks, should I be blamed if they stink? Oh wait I can change my socks, just a minute... Ok, that's better. But you see the difference, right? Socks, changable by me so I should accept them, or change them. Majority vote not acceptable by me so I need do neither. But the "axiomiser" can't accept this, because he's a spoiled brat. He thinks that he should be given what he wants and everyone should shut up about it. In fact that's what the State is, an attempt to get everyone to shut up about the rights and wrongs of giving the big boy what he wants. Maturity does not consist or resignation to the acts of bullies. It consists of acceptance of reality, and while reality says that the bullies win here, now, it also says that I don't like it. For those that don't wish to hear this, GROW UP!

Swine flu, inefficency and am I crazy again?

2009-04-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've been hearing about the swine flu, which naturally the MSM is declaring as a massive emergency that requires huge government action to prevent thousands of deaths etc. Now I'm not going to talk about the implict assumption that such actions is justified by "emergencies" or the responsbility of government for the rapid spread of such pandemics (given the persistent and large-scale subsidy of rapid transportation). Instead I'm going to make a case that government is seeking to maximise that amount of resources spent on these efforts rather than solve the problem.

This case depends on several things being true and if I'm wrong about any of them, please tell me.

The first is that I'm not an Einstein, a Linus Pauling or indeed the intellectual equal of any Noble prizewinner (with the exception of the "Peace" prize, I'll write something about that farce some other time). By this I don't mean I'm subnormal intellectually, merely that my intelligence is not such that it can routinely find implications of facts that nobody else in the world can. If I can see it, chances are other people can too if they want to.

The second is my understanding of the mathematics of epidemics/pandemics. Basically to be an epidemic the average number of people an infected person will in turn effect must be greater than one. If on average each new victim gives the virus to less than one person the total number of victims will be limited to n = a/(1-r) where a is the number of people infected at a particular time and r is the number of new victims each person infects. This is why schools, swimming pools, etc used to be closed, so that on average each person would interact with and have a chance to infect less people. If these measures reduced r below one then an epidemic could be nullifed without any effective treatment for the disease itself. Traditional responses to Ebola outbreaks (developed well before modern medicine) are an extreme example. Sufferers (or suspected suffereres) are simply left in their hut and food pushed in with a long stick. If the person doesn't collect the food for three days a torch is throw onto the thatched roof destroying the virus present in the victim's dead body.

Third is my understanding of what affects the how many people the average victim infects. One of the chief factors is how many people they come into contact with. This varies enormously over the population. Drivers, door-to-door salespeople, shop assistants and airport ticket personnel contact more people than housewives, computer programmers or carers, I will call the former group "high contact" and the latter "low contact" people. Anything that minimises the chances of high-contact people getting the disease is going to be doubly effective at reducing transmission. Firstly the chance of high-contact people getting the disease is higher because they obviously they have more opportunities to catch it. Once infected they similiarly tend to transmit the virus to more people for the same reason. The average number of people a person will infect during an epidemic is therefore increases with the square of his/her number of contacts minus the number of contacts*. If high contact people have a greater tendency to contact other high contact people (for instance if airports have large numbers of high contact people contacting each other) then the situation is worse, increasing with the cube at least of the number of contacts.

If this is true then it's obvious that a small investment in reducing average chance of transmission (either to or from) high contact people will have a large effect on total infections and therefore deaths. Reducing the chance of someone who contacts 10 times more people than the average person is close to 100 times more effective tranmission chances for the average person. What happens if his contacts are only a 10% more likely to be people like him (10 times as high contact) than the contacts of normal people? Well the average number of people infected by the people he infects goes up by close to 1000%, multiplied together this implies over a thousand times more infections from this person than the average person. All of this is an average which includes the possibility that he is never infected.

So clearly these sorts of people, if they exist, are a huge part of the epidemic pandemic problem, yet the targeting of vacinnes is generally towards the elderly, the young and other people who are likely to die if infected. Many of these people are low contact, in fact in the case of the elderly the lack of interaction is often a serious mental and physical health issue in itself. Now of course likelihood of death or serious illness if infected is rightly a factor in determining who should be protected. However isn't it true that the most effective protection of these people is the dramatic reduction in the transmission of the disease?

Now if I'm right about this then it logically follows that, not being a genius, other people could have also figured this out. This is particularly true of those who job is supposedly to prevent or reduce the death toll of epidemics/pandemics. So if they did so and ignored the implications, what other motive is there to do that but to continue wasting resources? The reason they'd want to do that is clear, so they can keep paying the politically influential drug companies and so that the UN's health employees have something to do.

* Because he can't infect the person who originally infected him, therefore the number of people who could infect him is c and the number of people he can infect is c-1.

The Underbelly of the State or the drama comes to the airport.

2009-03-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start by offering my condolences to the family of Anthony Zervas, may you find peace and consolation. Mr Zervaswas murdered in full view of two police officers with guns and numerous security officers with clubs and pepper spray. Later his brother was shot and critically wounded outside his home. The police were waiting for backup, because having a gun against clubs isn't enough for them. Sure there were about 14 thugs, but 4 were fighting the other 10. All they'd have to do would be to scare someone who doesn't have a gun with their own guns, which is not usually difficult. The security officers weren't totally useless of course, they stopped other people from saving Mr Zervas. Now that may not sound useful, but it is. If the general public had stepped in and saved someone when the State, it's agents and those it licenses to protect people it would make the State look stupid. That would be far worse than someone dying. Of course the agents of the State could simply have yelled "Everyone start taking pictures" and the fight would have probably stopped. Not many murderers want their crimes in the holiday snaps of half of Asia. Even if they hadn't stopped at least we would have been able to identify all the attackers. Naturally you can't do this from airport security cameras because, 8 years into the "war on terror" security cameras still aren't good enough to identify anyone.

Of course the small-s state being New South Wales, our old friend Laura has to rear her ugly head. That's Laura Norder, the bitch of Macqurie Street. Every time politicians want to do something bad in Sydney they say it's for "Laura Norder". The murder and later shooting of the victim's brother were part of an ongoing bikie war. The worst kept secret in law enforcement is that this war is over methamphetaimes and hence the fault of the State. Even the mainstream media have said that the violence is the result of drug prohibition with the Sydney Morning Herald editorial openly saying so. The violence of the methamphetamine market was the subject of "Underbelly" the most popular series on australian television. So naturally Premier Rees says nothing about stopping prohibition, instead seeking to make bikie gangs illegal. The proposed law would allow the police to declare an organisation prohibited and not allow it's members to meet. They could also declare people part of these organisations. Of course the police don't have to say why they are making these declarations they just announce that from now on, if you see some of your mates you go to goal for 2 years. They don't have to prove that you and your mates were doing anything illegal, conspiring to do anything illegal or even that you were "consorting" with known criminals. Naturally laws against all these things are already on the books. Only those against whom a case cannot be made for any of these, or indeed anything else, will be caught by this law.

We are supposed to trust that people who let killers drive away in a taxi despite having 22 cops on the premises and cameras all over the place. These are the people who we're supposed to believe will handle their new powers competently and honestly. It's the same everywhere, when they don't have the competence to solve problems they want power to solve them without competence. Of course attempting to solve problems without competence simply creates more problems that the creator isn't competent to solve. Admitting incompetence to solve these new problems would lead to questions about the competence of their previous solutions so of course it doesn't happen. While people are allowed to use power, force in other words, to solve their problems this cycle will continue. While this cycle continues the people will continue to want their leaders to "get tough" because deep down, everyone knows them getting smart is not an option. And when it all goes horribly wrong, when the powers are used in ways that their supporters didn't expect, guys like me will say "I told you so.". When the lastest laws are used to crack down on antiwar protesters, unions, community groups that oppose whatever idiocy the government pushs on us, or bunchs of suspicious looking muslims, I want to be the first to say "No surprise". Because that's all the government ever gives you, the feeling of wisdom that comes with predicting what others wouldn't. Note not couldn't, they could all have predicted it. They just decided not to.

The murderless club basis for objective morality.

2009-03-19T22:17:00.001-07:00

It has been claimed by theists that without god it is impossible to have objectively-based morality. Leave aside that doing what someone else says you should do is not an objective morality, how hard is it to make a basis for morality that is objective? Well I thought I'd try and it took it less than 10 minutes.

Imagine a world without rules, no morality, no law, no binding customs (although they might have habits). Obviously you would be better off with some system of rules to limit undesirable behaviour. One of my friends comes up to me and says "I want to be able to trade without fear of being murdered and my cargo stolen. What can I do?". I say well let's form a club with only 1 rule, if you murder someone in the club you are expelled. The only bad thing about being expelled is that members of the club can then murder you without consequence just as they can murder people who never belonged to the club. This club would be very popular. So would a club that had as it's condition that you don't steal from the other members. It is objectively true that if any of these clubs were opened in such a rule-free world I'd join them. I know this objectively because I have sufficent knowledge of my own preferences. These preferences are subjective, but my knowledge of them is objective. So if I base my morality on not doing anything that would get me thrown out of a "rule club" that I join it's objective morality.

Like I said, less than ten minutes.

The regulatory cycle or why new rules aren't the answer.

2008-09-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

Deregulation has taken a lot of the blame for the current crisis. Most of the people saying that conclude that if deregulation caused the problem, regulation can solve it. They are wrong.

To understand why you must abandon the common, if largely unconscious assumptions about regulatiors and how they produce regulation. Generally people assume that wise, impartial regulators sit down, look objectively at the facts and, unswayed by intellectual fashion and the irrational exuberance or depression of the market and society, make wise, impartial, objectively based decisions. If that were true then why is it that such decisions are only made exactly when they are not needed, as is presently happening. Currently the US government is writing rules about overextending your company, investing too much in doubtful financial assets and everything nobody wants to do any more because it loses money. No doubt other governments are too. It's like making sure everyone has cleaned the leaves out of their gutters after a bushfire has demolished half the town. To understand why they're passing such laws and regulations now, you must understand the financial regulatory cycle and how it trails the monetary cycle.

Stage one of the regulatory cycle is Crisis, caused by the excesses of monetary expansion. Crisis creates a demand for immediate action to combat the cause of the present catastrophe. The cause is however the state of the regulatory cycle some time in the past so correcting it has no immediate effect.

Nevertheless the second stage, Action occurs. Regardless of the immediate effects of Action the monetary cycle moves on and things correct themselves. The Action may speed this up, slow it down, make it easier or harder, more expensive or cheaper.

This leads to the third stage, Inefficency. During Inefficency actions taken during more frantic times are observed to be hampering the markets efforts to create wealth. Since the market is still in recovering from a bust nobody there is little chance they are actually preventing bad behaviour anyway, since that only happens in the boom phase. Thus their effect is to impose large present costs for very small or nonexistant present gains.

This leads to the fourth stage, Circumvention. Firms in the financial market do two things. Lobbying to remove the restrictions placed in stage 2 occurs to the general appathy of the population. Few if any voters and political masters understand the present rules and why or even if they're important. Resistance to selective deregulation is low as the circumstances that led to the need for the regulation are gone. Firms also develop practices that go around the current rules while having largely the same effects as the practices forbidden. This makes the original regulations even less important, even counterproductive if they simply shift activity to less transparent or accountable sections of the economy. Circumvention accelerates when during times of monetary expansion because during those time the need for caution and restraint is weakest.

The combination of the monetary boom and Circumvention above leads back to Crisis.

You might ask, "Is this cycle inevitable?". Might we act appropriately and promptly to prevent such a destructive turn of events. The answer is "Why would we?". During the times when such action is neccesary by it's nature few people think it's warrented. If people were in general worried about the negative effects of asset price bubble then we would not have one, since a precondition of such a boom is that people don't think it's either happening or going to happen. To impose or keep regulations to prevent it happening regulators must go against the wishes of pretty much everyone who's paying attention to their activities. They must do this despite not being able to offer any evidence that their actions are warranted, predictions being notoriously difficult in economics. Those wanting to remove restrictions can point to solid evidence of costs in the here and now. In any case in many or even most cases they're right about the high costs and low benefits of regulation, because much of the regulation was passed in panic during stage 2 (Action) when it was felt there was little time to think through the costs and problems. A case could and will be made that the actions in the Action stage were hasty and ill-considered and possibly now out of date. A general mood of caution and pessimism will defeat this case, which is another way of saying regulation won't be abandoned until shortly before it's needed.

And yes, my blogposts are like buses, none for yonks then three come at once.

Dexter Morgan for President.

2008-09-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

Recently the TV show "Dexter" has won my heart. Something about the deeply flawed individuals struggling both make sense of mysteries and keep their own facinates me. For the uninitiated the title character (Dexter Morgan) is a serial killer who preys exclusively on murderers. His foster father taught him to direct his sadistic and depraved instincts to something approaching justice. He claims not to be able to resist these instincts, but there is little evidence that he tries. Dexter is a bad man, if he makes the world better or fairer, it is in spite of his nature, not because of it. Relief floods his face when he finds out the Ice Truck Killer has not been found and will be killing again. The deaths of the victims are nothing to him compared to the prospect of taping the killer to a table and cutting off his head. Evil dictates, directly or through his efforts to conceal it, almost every one of his actions.

Part of Dexter's appeal is of course revenge fantasy, the idea that there is someone to inflict misery, degradation and death on those who frighten us. Dexter is powerful in a way we cannot and will not be. We are unable to dedicate the time and energy needed to find those who scare us, he gives up almost all his free time for it. We lack the strength and skill to seize them, he has it down to a routine. We fear the consequences of pursuing monsters, he can't be dragged off their track. Our conscience makes us hesitate to wound, his is not a problem. Every angry thought summons up a wish for a tame Dexter, to give us the blood and yet keep it from us.

The State is our tame Dexter Morgan. We know the State is evil. We know of it's murders, it's enslavements, it's discrimination, it's lies, it's unjust imprisonments and inhumanities of every stripe. We excuse them like uncles who get a bit overenthusiastic with the bottle at times. They not alcoholics, not like the neighbour's addict black sheep. But deep down we know the truth, that the State will always come back to badness, to viciousness, to evil, to power. We want to know that we can unlease that badness against our enemies, crush them and yet remain untouched. People who wouldn't shoot a dying dog are willing to let the State commit all sorts of horrors in their name and at their behest, safe in the knowledge that they did nothing.

However Dexter, unlike the State, does not believe in his own goodness. He knows, and we know, that he is deeply evil. He does not contend that he does what he does for the common good, and we would not believe him if he did. We do not celebrate our dedication to helping his bloody work. We do not feel that attacks on his credibility or honour are attacks on our own. Yet with the State we do. We feel insulted by slurs on "our" countries honour, and react emotionally to them, sometimes regardless of the evidence. Yet we know that the State is a far less discriminating killer than Dexter. They get it wrong all the time. Indeed more innocent Americans were killed by American cops (by the State's own figures) than by terrorists in all but 2 of the last 16 years. And in one of those it was pretty close. In none of those years did terrorism kill more Americans than the direct and indirect effects of government violence*. Yet most people defend it and justify and minimise it's crimes. The true danger of the State is not it's evil but the willingness of people to call it good and thus not act against it.

Currently the American State is run by people who openly boast of extrajudicial killings. They are openly declaring themselves to be Dexters, but nobody thinks they have his precision, self-awareness or intellect. So why are we settling for second best? Why not get the real deal? Dexter Morgan for President, because lesser evils are for wimps.

*Even if you don't count terrorism as the indirect effect of government violence.

Counter-arguments to central bank supporters or why you're being given bad paper on this deal.

2008-09-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

This paper is written for Michelle, who couldn't think of a good reason why we need central banks but thought it was "silly" not to have them. So this is an attempt to anticipate the arguments for a central bank and counter them.

Firstly there is the argument that the government should determine the rate of interest. Why? Interest rates are a price, the price of future good and services relative to present goods and services. We don't let the government set the prices of petrol, shares, rice, sex, books or chocolate because they set it too high/low and cause shortages/surpluses.

Why would the correct price of getting something earlier be more suitable to government calculation than the price of anything else? The market-clearing price is the price at which as much is produced as is consumed. Interest rates are the same, the correct one is where as much money is availible to borrow as people want to borrow at that price. Any greater and more immediate satisfaction is provided for future reward than people want, any less and the opposite. The correct rate depends on people's personal preference for immediate versus future value. There is no way for the government to know personal preference. That's why they can't efficently decide how much petrol, shares, rice, sex, books or chocolate should cost.
Stability is a common argument for central banks, which is surprising considering that central bankers themselves have admitted to causing the greatest example of instability in economic history. Well perhaps that's unfair, perhaps the great depression wasn't as big as some of the many hyperinflations that central bankers have not admitted to causing. The problem is that central bankers caused all of those too. The extremes of financial and monetary variability are the direct product of the actions of central banks. To argue that they create stability you'd have to find more examples of financial crisis before the advent of central banking than after it. The trouble is that there's only been one real bubble where the government didn't have control of monetary policy and that's "Tulip Mania" (say it with massively overpriced assets). There's been more bubbles than that in America alone in one Fed chairman's reign.

Of course perhaps central bank is more stable but the instability comes in greater doses when it comes. The problem with that theory is 1) there's no evidence of it and 2) there's is good theorectical reasons to disbelieve it. Financial and monetary instability is based in part on perceptions of instabiility itself. If there is a perception that a central bank will lead to large instability then that will by itself cause small instability. We know that there certainly is a perception that central banks contribute to extreme inflationary instability (hyperinflation) because anyone who studies it notices that they're the only known cause of it. And financial markets are comprised of people of people who know at least that much economics. Since at least Bernake's admission that "We [the central bankers] caused it [the great depression] they know that central banks cause extreme deflation too. So why would market be more stable knowing that fundamental decisions are being made by an institution that, every so often, causes massive instaiblity?

Of course there is more to stability than perception. Individual shares, debts and assets values vary depending on individual factors, but the market as a whole varies according to underlying economic facts. So which monetary system would cause these facts to change unpredictably and quckly? The one where a stroke of the pen can increase or decrease money supply by an infinite amount or where it can only increase after years of searching and expensive extraction.

Keynesian theories of economic instability are based on "irrational exuberence" and systematic stupidity of market players. Such stupidity is extremely expensive so why would it persist? Those who resisted such insanity could simply sell assets during the expansionary phase, buy more during the contractionary phase, rinse, repeat. This process would stabilise the market by itself. These "countercyclical investors" might not be rich enough to significantly stabilise the market, but they get rich every cycle. They also get access to greater control of other people's funds as there successful record grows.

Assuming a 4 year cycle with alternative 10% over and under valuations makes a 5.5% return a year on top of normal investment returns. Anyone who gets those returns for say 8 years in a row can easily borrow more to leverage their money. Leverage of only $1 of debt to $1 of your own money gets you 11% p.a. return above market. Such a system working since say 1913 would pay 2,021,543% plus normal investment returns. In other words if you had invested in such a system when America founded it's central bank and borrowed a modest 50% of the funds, you would have 20,215 times your what the average investor would have. And that's assuming you actually buy and sell things, rather than derivatives, which reap higher rewards when you guess right*. The "Mystery of banking" would therefore be, why don't these people own everything? They have had the chance to use this strategy since the first stock exchanges, why weren't they rich enough to stabilise the market by the time America got it's central bank? There must be something actively working against stability. I contend the central bank is it.

It has been contended that central banks should try to set the inflation or interest rate for the common good. This is impossible because, as with all prices there is no common good. That which is good for buyers is bad for sellers. In the case of the inflation and interest rate any movement that is good for those that borrowed money (inflation up, real interest rate down) is bad for those that lent it.
Balancing the interests of these groups is essentially a political decision. In fact it's a class warfare decision since the richer you are after all the more money you usually borrow (the poor can't afford loans). Why would anyone expect that it would be make objectively, if that's even possible? Any government organisation that controls interest rates is either going to be democratically accountable or not. If not then it's going to be used to benefit the ruling class. If it is then it's going to be used to benefit that portion of the population that is most able to intimidate their representatives. In neither case is it likely the good of the country will be the deciding factor.

Without a central bank, who would print the money? Well anyone who wants to and can convince you to accept it. There is no particular reason why printing money should be a government activity, let alone a government monopoly. After all what do you want from your money that only government can provide?

Firstly you want it to be accepted as money worth a predictable amount. You don't want to go to the store and find it's worth less than you expected it would be when you got it. When that happens people's economic plans are thrown into chaos because they cannot properly value things over time. Similarly you don't want it to be worth more than you expected, otherwise those who owe $100,000 suddenly find they need to pay back with goods and services they thought were worth $105,000. Either way people simply can't operate efficently. When people hear that the metric standard for mass is losing micrograms of mass they're rightfully alarmed, they should be just as alarmed when the standard of value unexpectedly changes.

Note that this does not mean that the value of money can't change, just that it should be relatively easy to predict when and by how much. This is not the case in central banks, which even their supporters claim are secretive and operate under principals that most people don't understand (quick what's M3? Is it better than M1? Why?).

Commodity based currencies on the other hand are a constant relative to the difficulty of producing the commodity. If the $US is defined as worth 1/20th of an ounce of gold then any someone can produce an ounce of gold for less than $20 they will. The increased supply of money relative to other goods will push up prices until it costs $20 to produce it again. The only way there could be a change in the value of money is if it became a lot harder or easier to produce the commodity relative to other goods. This happens slower and more predictably than arbitrary decisions of government officials. If a currency is based on a basket of commodities, with each unit entitling them to set amounts of each commodity, it would move even slower and more predictably. I'm not sure the world's ready for the McDollar based on the Big Mac though. These currencies can be issued by anyone who people trust to actually fork over the underlying commodity.

This brings us to the issue of trust. How do we know that private issurers of currency will actually honour their promises? Well the same way we know that the mechanic won't steal our car and that the child minding centre won't sell your kids to white slavers. In any case it's a moot point since we don't know that government will honour it's promises. The American government had promised to provide 1/20th of an ounce of gold per dollar, it then decided to only provided 1/35th. That's better than the British though who only a few years previously had refused to provide anything of value at all for the pound. Various hyperinflations under fiat money make such thefts look like small potatoes.

Secondly money should be transferrable with the minimum of cost. This includes being acceptable in as many places in as wide an area as possible to reduce the costs of changing money into something acceptable to the seller. Governments only advantage here is that it can threaten people with violence if they do not accept their notes. This is somewhat unfortunate to those that don't want to accept them, often with good reason. There is no reason why the free market can't design widely accepted money just like they design widely accepted credit cards. If there is a demand for money that can be spent from Bagdad to Cordova the market will provide it**.

Attempts by governments to provide international currencies depend on unifying fiscal and monetary policy across many nations. That hasn't worked out as well as it should. In the mean time fiat currencies vary in value relative to each other making international trade needlessly risky and therefore expensive. When money was gold and silver people didn't care what country your coinage was from as long as it had the weight of metal***. Imagine getting off the plane anywhere in the world and not changing your money. Well actually you don't need to imagine it, credit card companies already provide that service.

Thirdly money should be hard to fake and easy to differentiate from fakes. That is not only should it be hard to make copies of the money, but when people do it should be relatively easy to detect them. Again there is no particular reason why governments should be better than private enterprise at doing this. It is possible that government monopoly would mean that money is more familiar (since you don't need to remember what several competing firms money looks like) remember there is only a monopoly within the territory. Free market provision of money could easily lead to less issuers of currency.

* Derivatives are financial instruments like puts and calls where you don't actually buy or sell things, you buy or sell the right to buy or sell things. For instance a put is the right but not the obligation to sell a thing at a certain price during a certain time period a call is the opposite, the right to buy. If you buy a put for say 20,000 tonnes of X at a price of $100/tonne and the price goes down to $90/tonne during that period you've got something worth $200,000. If the price is stays above $100/tonne you're not obliged to buy or sell anything, but you've wasted the money you paid for the put. Depending on how likely people thought the price was to go below $100/tonne it could be very cheap. Given that in the "irrationality' theory prices are quite likely to be much higher/lower the market thought they would be profitabe derivatives will often be cheap.
** Those that get the reference will should have a good profit. ;>
*** With some exceptions, the priests at the Jewish Temple insisted on shekels, hence the presence of money changers.

The Dark Knight is darker than you think {SPOILERS}

2008-08-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

In the latest Batman movie, the Dark Knight there is a scene with two ferries. Stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to spoil the suspense. The Joker plants bombs on each ferry and tells the passengers of each that they can save themselves by pressing a button that will blow up the other boat. One of the boats is filled with criminals that Harvey Dent has arrested under RICO statutes, basically most of organised crime in Gothan, plus guards. None of these have been convicted or tried yet. The other is filled with typical Gotham residents trying to get away.

On the "civilian" boat many people immediately cry out to press the button. Those in charge are intimidated into allowing a vote on whether to murder 500 people. Admittedly many of them have commited heinous crimes, but a deliberate killing without even an attempt at a trial is still a murder. The vote goes something like 350 - 150 in favour of brutal murder but those in charge refuse to push the button themselves. They then hand the button over to on of the passengers who also cannot bring themselves to personally kill 500 people.

I have heard it said that this is a hopeful and positive thing, that it lifts the moral stature of the typical Gotham citizen above the dregs. To me not tripping the switch when you voted for someone else to do so is nothing more than moral cowardice overwhelming physical cowardice. Think about it, why do you vote for something? So that if everyone else is tied on the issue it goes your way. There is no other purpose in voting. If you are on Socrates' jury and you vote for Socrates to be killed and it's not going to be a tie otherwise your vote changes nothing. If it would be a tie otherwise then kill him. To then say "Well I'm not going to do the thing that actually kills him." is a lie, since you already have. Three hundred of that boats passengers tried their best to blow up the other boat when nobody knew who was doing it. None of them had the guts to do it out in the open. To me that puts them beneath contempt. To be a multiple murderer is bad enough, but to be one who doesn't even have the guts to pull the trigger himself? To be willing to sacrifice 500 lives but not your reputation? I call them scum.

That said the reason I would have voted no would be that of course the Joker rigged the triggers to their own boats (remember his "information" on where Harvey and Rachel were?). Whether the convict who threw the trigger out did so because it was the right thing to do or because he realised this we'll never know.

Ron Paul is a conspiracy theorist, are you?

2008-01-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

There is a popular saying that if there are two explanations for an event, conspiracy and incompetence, go for the incompetence explanation every time. The problem with this idea is that it's obviously untrue. If a candidate you dislike had recieved political donations from a neo-nazi and failed to report them in accordance with the law, which explaination would you go for? I thought so. Welcome to the "conspiracy theorists" club then, meetings are rarely held and only attended by police spies.

Yet membership in this club is somehow looked down apon as unhealthy, even insane. It's as though no sane person would say that conspiracies happen, and yet every day we see people behaving as though they did. Do act as though everything your government says to be true or do you assume that some of it is lies and distortion? Of course you act as though they lie, which is why you like investigative reporting? How about other governments? Do you get your news about countries from their governments press office or do you prefer that someone digs deeper? Do you think that political parties are engaged in a quest to show you the truth or to spin it? Of course in all cases you answered "cynically" to all these questions. Your beliefs and behaviour were in all cases that of a "conspiracy theorist", yet you are ashamed of it! If asked you'll deny it why?

Well isn't the answer obvious? People have acted in concert to make you feel that way. And have the done so openly or claimed to be merely expressing "common sense"? Yep that's right, it's a
[post ended due to technical problems]

A moral election.

2007-11-20T21:31:00.000-08:00

Imagine if you will going to two job interviews on the same day and telling both that you had the other interview and take the best offer. Imagine also that both employers wanted you and sent you details of pay, conditions and how the company operates including the broad outline of it's business plans. One has a great dental plan, mediocre superannuation, excellent pay and highly successful strategy of firebombing the buisnesses of competitors and murdering their employees if they attempt to bid for the same contract. The other has no dental plan, reasonable superanuation, the opportunity to learn more valuable new skills and does not use violence in it's business. Would you spend any time at all wondering who to work for? Of course not unless you're a sociopath, yet this (Australian) election people are doing exactly that.

They are deciding that although they don't think the use of lethal force in Iraq is justified or rational they are going to vote on the basis of who can give them enough goodies. Free dental work, more free education (if it's worth it why don't people pay for it?), better hospitals, they think of everything that can be taken from someone else's pocket and given to them. In no other situation do people think like this. Only in politics is it OK to be this mercenary when issues of life and death are at stake. And yet people will claim they are voting on the basis of a "fair go" or "moral values". My arse they are.

They're not voting on the basis of common sense either. The latest war on drugs nonsense is proof. I can't fight the war on drugs because they're too expensive so I have to fight the war clean and sober. Anyway they're going to "quarantine" the welfare payments of people convicted but not jailed for drug offenses. The idea I suppose is that they can prevent drug takers spending money on drugs and get them to spend it on their kids, a new bible I don't know I lost interest. Of course this qualifies as the second easiest to dodge bad social security idea in history. The worst was that "work for the dole" scheme where all you had to do was claim to be doing $62 worth of work a fortnight to avoid the obligation. This isn't quite as easy. You actually go into the supermarket, buy things on someone else's shopping list and have them pay you for them later. So really less trouble than getting the drugs in the first place. Fuck I hat it when it takes longer for the government to explain the scheme than for me to figure out how it's fucked.

Oh and BTW remember those new "road safety" laws prohibiting P platers from taking passengers at night (or was it any time? DKDC)? Well it turns out that teenagers responded to said laws by carrying their friends in the boot (trunk) or lying down and thus unseatbelted. So another effort by the powers that be to make us safer through coercion failed. And I also have failed to predict that failure months beforehand. So from now on there's a competition. As soon as I mention an effort to make us safer everyone send in how they think it will bankfire. A special "No Prize" awarded to the first accurate prediction.

Andrew Johns a role model for our times.

2007-08-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

A lot of people will say that Andrew Johns has set a bad example to our kids. Those little nippers who looked up to him have been given the wrong lessons. On the contray his behaviour on all occasions taught exactly the right lessons for those who wish to succeed in modern society.

Lesson one; If you like to take drugs and can avoid negative consequences for doing so, take drugs. Specifically take drugs that won't show up on the deeply intrusive drug tests you're
made to take. And take them on the off season wherever possible.

Lesson two; Do not complain about the deeply intrusive drug tests you are made to take for your high paying job. Never mention the fact that it's none of your employers buisness what you do in your leisure time. Never mention the fact that it's none of your fans buisness what you do in your leisure time. If asked about drug tests say they are neccesary to keep the sport clean. Do not ask why we need clean athletes more than clean taxi drivers, politicians, or sports adminstrators. Never make clear the distinction between testing for performance enhancing drugs and recreational drugs. Go along with the claim that the testing is all about keeping the sport fair, even though testing for coke, ecstasy or marijuana has nothing to do with this.

Lesson three; If asked about effects on drugs be very much against them, even though the effects of drugs on you are overwhelmingly positive. Never imply that there would be any situation where taking drugs is the right thing. Unless of course a doctor orders it, and even then if some blowhard cop or administrator says otherwise immediately fold like a deck chair.

Lesson four; If caught doing something some people think of as bad do not defend your behaviour in a principled manner. Make excuses that clearly show remorse, even if the behaviour hurt no one and was none of anyone else's buisness. If there is no evidence of any harm in your case do not explore the implications of this. Specifically do not say that there are people who take drugs who benefit from it and they should not be punished for this. Instead invent negative consequences you have suffered so will be pitied and therefore excused. It doesn't matter if there is no evidence for said drawbacks or considerable evidence against them in your case. Claims of harm to family life are especially effective even when all evidence is that your family life is fine.

Lesson five; An ounce of acceptability is worth a tonne of credibility. For instance confessing that you like drugs because they are fun would be bad no matter how obvious. "Confessing" you needed drugs to handle the pressure of being a football star, even when you say in the same statement that you mostly used in the off season where the pressure is much less is much better. Remember, it doesn't matter if the statement is credible, it matters whether people will pretend to believe it.

Lesson six; Always present your interaction with drugs as a "battle", a "struggle" or some other noun that implies that you have a real problem with drugs. Do this even if it's clear from your own statement that you can quit using drugs for months at a time with no negative consequences.

Lesson seven; Reform. Reform totally and never sin again. Do this as often as is needed.

The big lesson that we learn from the Andrew Johns debacle is that sports stars making sports stars role models makes no sense. A good role model would have been honest with reporters and with their fans. They would have said "You know what? It's none of your buiness if I take drugs. It's none of my buisness if you do. You should stop assuming that just because someone takes illegal drugs their lives are worse for it. You should stop assuming that the messages sent by people paid by powerful sporting bodies and through them powerful media organisations are correct. You should think for yourselves about whether what I did was wrong. And if you come to a different conclusion than your teacher, your parents or the cops that's OK. If you see someone doing something illegal and you approve of it, that's OK too.". Of course nothing of the kind will be said by anyone who wants to keep the approval of the mob, as all celebrities do. So don't use sporting stars as your role models. Use those who act in principled ways.

The Unhealthy Obsession with enslaving me.

2007-07-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

Gerard Henderson (SMH july 3) has a right to be unhealthily obsessed with terrorism. It doesn't follow that those that aren't are committing non sequiturs. Nobody claimed that there was a causal link between AIDS and terrorism Mr. Henderson, but there is a causal link between AIDS deaths and the war on drugs. Deaths caused by government policy in the West outnumber deaths caused by terrorism even assuming only 10% of AIDS deaths resulted from policies that encouraged needle-sharing.
Governments do not have the right to be obsessed with terrorism or anything else because by definition obsession is excessive focus on a thing to the detriment of other things. The fact that a population was attacked does not give it's government a right to destroy it's people's freedoms. Historically the death toll from government limitations on freedoms dwarfs that from terrorism. September 11 added up to about 3 average days of Nazi murdering or 4 days of Soviet murdering. Clearly what we should be "obsessed" about is the limitation of government power, something Mr. Henderson used to be concerned about himself.
Nobody denies that islamic terrorists want to destoy our way of life, but why should we help them?

Another Pathetic Excuse for Coercion (APEC).

2007-06-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

There are types of laws, those designed to punish the guilty, those designed to hurt both the innocent and the guilty and those designed to hurt only the innocent. The new laws put in place for the APEC summit are the latter. Nobody who should legitimately be detained will be detained by these laws, nor will these laws serve any purpose other than to prevent the exercise of a persons rights. Nor is it the case that this is the result of ignorance or stupidity on the part of legislators, it is the sole consequence of malice. Put plainly these laws are acts of conscious evil.
When people are arrested under these laws they are detained for a period determined by politicians with no fair trial, either to determine guilt or an appropriate period of detainment. Judges will be required to have a presumption in favour of jailing people, who have not been convicted of anything. This is not only a blantant violation of their right to due process and presumption of innocence but wholy unneccesary for punishing the legally guilty. The legally guilty are by definition provably so, and therefore evidence of their wrongdoing can be put before a judge. Judges routinely remand defendents in custody if the benefit to the public interest outways the private interest in not being detained. Not only are the legally guilty detainable by this but those who the judge thinks are likely to be guilty and to reoffend while on bail. The new laws do not affect this, they only affect those a judge would not think are likely enough to offend that their remanding is justified. Only those the judge thinks are not a threat suffer. They suffer at the sole behest of the police, with no judical input whatsoever, contray to the Magna Carta. That’s happening a lot lately mostly (although not in this case) due to a ruler called John. Gee what happened the last time we had a ruler named John and our rights weren’t being respected? Could we do that again? Would that work?
The argument will be advanced that these measures are neccesary to protect the public, but as I’ve shown they only affect those who are no identifiable threat to it. So how do they protect anybody? Well perhaps they protect us against people who are a threat but can’t be proved as such even to the low standards of a bail hearing. This is a rediculous argument, the whole point of a bail hearing keep people in jail where the cost to the community of being free until trial is higher than the cost to them of letting them free until them. Therefore this law only results in detaining those who it is not worth detaining, thus costing the community through detention of it’s members. So the protection is evidently not worth the cost as judged even by those the state hires to make such judgements. Bear in mind these are people are paid by the government, not the community and responsible to the government not the community. So it’s asking for the power to lock people up when even people it pays won’t back it’s decision to lock them up without a required presumption (i.e. prejudice) against them!
However there’s one intelligent suggestion Iemma and co., random police searches. I’ve wanted to randomly search police for years. It’s amazing how often they’re carrying dangerous weapons. They claim they carry them to defend themselves and enforce the law. However I’ve checked and according to the new laws I’m not allowed to have guns for that purpose. Some people have suggested that the police randomly search people in the city, which makes no sense. It’s an admission that you have no idea how to stop terrorism and now you’re just guessing what might work. Even inveterate sociopaths do not generally have incriminating evidence right on them. The terrorist population is less than 1/100,000th of the population, unless there’s more than 40 terrorists in Sydney right now. So clearly if the aim is to catch terrorists the resources wasted will be massive. Since any terrorists will be aware of these searches they will have scouts out to guide them away from points where they might be search. Of course if the idea is to get the populace used to warrantless, unjustified searches and random police harrassment it’s brilliant.
Those who drafted and passed these law are not ignorant of the law, most of them are qualified lawyers and/or experienced legislators and those that aren’t have the advice of others that are. It is ludicrous to expect that legislation to could reach parliment without a lawyer examining and advising it’s proponents on it’s actual effect. This is particularly true regarding the NSW labour Right who excel in intelligence and knowledge, if not morality. So we cannot conclude that these laws were a mistake, they were a deliberate attempt to subvert our freedoms for political gain and thus a violation of the oaths of office of all the legislators who either voted for them or advanced them. Simply put they are immoral and somewhat treasonous and those who voted for them mostly knew it.

Why Labour's policies are the Liberals fault.

2007-04-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

The Labour Party's new labour policy has just been announced and from what I can tell it's a shocker. They openly boast about how they'll be an interfering busibody in every shopping centre ready to tell you how to relate to your workers. But I don't blame the Labour Party I blame John Howard, who was the one who usurped vast power over the labour market from the states. When labour relations were largely a state responsibility each state competed with the others to have a good investment enviroment. As much as the unions wanted them to screw over their employers and as much as the Labour Party wanted to oblige them they had to contend with the possibility the employers would flee. With the decisions being made at national level it is now far more expensive to flee their reach and so far more onerous burdens can be placed on the shoulders of employers or non-union employees with non-standard contracts. The new policy is an entirely predictable, and predicted outcome of the WorkChoices initiative. Of course few will actually blame Howard for it because his supporters will pretend to see no fault and his attackers will see no fault with the policy. I just wish I had predicted this earlier so I could claim to be a pundit.

If voters have to be registered, does that mean they're lethal weapons.

2007-03-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

So anyway I sucumbed to my basest instincts last Saturday and voted. Yeah I know, STR-readers www.strike-the-root.com, I'm scum. You'll be happy to know my depraved attempt to force others to live by my choices failed. Although given the choices they chose to live by that's no good thing. In the word's of the Sydney Morning Herald "the worst government in Australia just got reelected". Well arguably sending us to war on a lie makes the Feds worse but in terms of sheer incompetence the NSW government unquestionably takes the cake. They then sell the cake to a politically connected private firm and agree to close lines at other bakeries so you have to buy the cake from said private firm or starve half to death waiting for lunch. Then the former premier gets a $400,000 a year job advising on cake marketing.

There will perhaps be vicious rumours that I voted for Peter Debnam, the least competent opposition leader in NSW history. This is a lie. I voted against Iemma, see the difference? Ok, you got me there is none in effect. The choice was between a party that had failed in every major area I could think of. Roads, hospitals, police, urban planning, civil order, everything. With the singular exception of reducing the state debt (which will of course increase again when they spend money to fix the problems after the election) they have done nothing any sane person would vote for.

And the mistakes weren't understandable, average mistakes they were whoppers. I mean what sort of idiot has a roads policy that deliberately increases congesting on public roads to increase the revenue of a private road proprietor? Did they really think that wouldn't leak? And then they tried to get the private road operator to simply waive those clauses of the contract, a contract they had paid the State government about a hundred million to get. Even assuming the directors were incredibly generous (with other people's money) how in the hell did they figure the shareholders would let them? Go back to law school guys, it's called fiduciary responsbility to the owners. The directors are smart enough to know that, after all they were smart enough to hire guy who was premier at the time the deal was signed. I wish I could get a job at several times the average wage after doing my job as badly as he did his.

Then there's the planning power fiasco. Basically nobody owns any land really in the land of the long weekend we just own the right to have our development applications rejected. However at least they're rejected by a semi-accountable, semi-transparent council that has to obey certain rules and that we can take to court. That's not good enough for our lords and masters who wish to be able to inflict any abomination on our communities while retaining the power to forbid anything more offensive than a new veranda light. So Frank Sartor, minister for planning is given the power to override all development laws, including enviromental laws, regulations to do with traffic congestion, native title, the whole bit, to approve anything he thinks is important. Naturally whether or not the project is backed by a rich property developer with bags of cash to donate to NSW Labor has nothing to do with it. That's the sort of rubbish I expect from leftists like http://www.lewrockwell.com/ and their ilk. Mr. Sartor's new powers have been described as "modest", by Mr. Sartor. Mr. Sartor is very rarely so described.

The trains are a shambles due to persistent mismanagement for over a decade. The only way they could stop "on time" records being abysmal was to change the timetable so they say the trains will be later. Hence there are less trains and overcrowding is overwhelming. Freight management's no better with ships waiting for days because the investment hasn't been made in infrastructure.

We're in a drought by the way so naturally the government is trying to tell us what to do with our water. This from the guys who wasted more water than anyone else in Sydney due to poor maintaince of the pipes. So the question arises, should we go for the massively expensive, enviromentally destructive, desalination plant that residents already hate before a sod of earth is turned or the clean, cheap, energy efficent recycling. Iemma claimed that Sydney-siders wouldn't drink recycled sewerage, despite the fact that such is completely safe and already flows into our drinking water from Blue Mountains communities. Of course now the people changed their minds after watching "a current affair" or something but not our Morris. No he's wedded to the idea like Britney Spears after a bender in Vegas. Well actually the commitments lasted longer than that, indicating that Britney has smarter advisers.

But none of this is important. No, what's important is that the voters of NSW will vote against people who didn't bring in "Work Choices" but stands in front of the same banner as the guy who did. So policies are no longer important, it's sheer guilt by association now. The morons that gave Iemma a second chance to "get back to work" (given the job he did this is no promise it's a threat) bought the argument that Debnam was too inexperienced to run NSW. How much experience do you need to know that concentrating all power in Frank Sartor's hands is a stupid idea? How much experience do you need to know that ignoring infrastructure to make your financials look good is bad in the long run? Or that corrupt Private-Public Partnerships that include guarantees that the Private guys won't lose money mean that the Public guys will? I mean think about it, why would a private firm insist on guarantees that an enterprise wouldn't lose money if it was a good idea? If they thought it was a winner they'd be falling over themselves to sign on with no guarantees they wouldn't lose their shirt. They'd concentrate on getting better conditions or prices rather than the right to loot the treasury if it all went pear-shaped. Tell you what voters of New South Wales, elect me. I have experience blaming others for my mistakes, spending money I don't have for lacklustre results, pretending things are going fine and promising I'll change in the future, just like Iemma does. The difference is I'll work for much less than Iemma. Michael Price The Premier You Deserve! And not in a good way.

Wrong on Venezula

2007-03-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

Usually the source of a news story tells you much about it’s credibility. The New York Times is not at all credible, Fox news not very, and most of the mainstream media not much better. This has little to do with “left” or “right” bias, Lewrockwell.com and Counterpunch.com are equally excellent. Unfortunately the latter has let us down with the defence of Chávez’s destruction of what little press freedom there is in Venezuela (The Case of Venezuela's RCTV By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER).

His first defence of the villiany in Venezulan video is the entire thing has nothing to do with free speech. Of course this does not lead to him denying that the non-renewal of a “concession” worth millions of dollars is due to the statements made on behalf of the owners of that concession. Indeed he goes claim that they “endorsed” “organized rebellion and premeditated murder”. Gee what horrible people, presumably the people who did this are under arrest for such things? And of course there would have to be a trial given the seriousness of these allegations? Of course not, they just got their TV station taken away. Well that is to say some of the people ciccariello-mahar accuses did, since he accused all the Venezulan media and only RCTV actually got the axe. Of course the other media owners don’t need to be expropriated, they got the message already and will no longer be endorsing anything but the government. Of course George Washington endorsed rebellion, as did Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill are these all villians?

A series of “false” claims are trumpeted as the reason why people think that a government taking a TV station away from the legal owner and giving it to someone more pliable is an attack on free speech. Firstly of course it’s entirely false that the government is behaving abnormally. Just because you can’t remember the last time someone did anything like this who wasn’t a dictator siliencing his critics doesn’t mean that it’s abnormal. No it’s entirely normal, it happened at least once before*.

After all it’s all about “media responsibility”. Responsibility to their shareholders? Obviously not since they got ripped off. Their advertisers then? Again, no since they expressed no displeasure at RCTV and if they had they would not need the government’s help to punish them. How about their viewers? Again, no, they don’t seem at all upset with the station. No it’s the government that they are responsible to. And here was I thinking that the press were to keep the government responsible. The army is responsible to the government and the police as well, in a free society the media is not.

Of course “were this constitutional provision fully enforced and legislated, the private media might be able to claim that their existence is somehow more difficult than other media outlets the world over.” and in the case of RCTV they’d be right because he’s refering to a Bolivian constitutional provision which people in Caracus would be rightfully upset about being subject to. He refers to it in an attempt to persuade us that this is all normal, but of course immediately admits that it is not enforced. So having laws designed to be dictatorial on the books is pretty standard, but enforcing them isn’t, and Chavez isn’t just writting them. On the whole though I’d say that the existance of RCTV is more difficult than other media outlets the world over, because it’s now clearly at the whim of the government and no owner can count on investments in it unless assured the government won’t decide to give it the boot. Of course the owners aren’t the station, but they are by definition the ones that control it, that hire the workers, determine what goes on air etc. If they need to bend over for the govenrment so does the entire station.
But perhaps the new owners will be made of sterner stuff, maybe they’re the type to say “Hang the tens of millions of dollars in expense, we’ll tell the truth.”. So who are these new owners, because after all the ‘The government is "closing" a media outlet.’ is another one of those lies we’re being fed. The concession will be “granted to either another private corporation, a mixed public-private corporation, a collective of workers, or some other combination”. Well thank god, for a moment there I thought he’d be vague. The station will be run by either a) people who know that guys with guns can shut them down at any time, b) a combination of the above with the guys with guns that can shut them down, a collective or workers who are not at all connected with, beholden to, allied with or otherwise sympathetic to the guys with guns (they just happened to be passing outside the party room when someone threw out a license to print money) or d) someone else who knows which side his bread is buttered on.

But I’ve skipped ahead, like the ill-manner blogger I am, right over the justification Chavez was acting in accordance with high moral principals just like those of, wait for it, THE FCC! My god, a leftist is appealing for moral sanction from the putrid ethical sludge that slithered, decayed yet vibrant from what we will call the mind and soul of Herbert Hoover. Never mind that the FCC was designed solely for the purpose of controlling the airwaves for the monopoly benefit of the industry players and their corrupt lapdogs in Congress and the White House1. I mean for fuck’s sake pal read the manual, if you’re supporting Chavez you have to be a leftist, and if you’re a leftist you’re supposed to OPPOSE the backroom buggery by the bourgeoise and the beaurcrat of the consumer. It says it right here in “Partisan propaganda crap for dummies”, page 15, or were you too impatient to try out pages 1-14 to read that far? Of course appealing to the FCC for moral sanction has a few pitfalls, like it’s well known “content restrictions on broadcasting”, which are presumably different from censorship because the’re all about responsibility, they are “more strict, it should be mentioned, than in many European nations”. But perhaps I’m being unfair, after all the FCC did shut down a station in similar circumstances so perhaps the comparison is just. You see the owner was saying irresponsible things about how to cure cancer. The FCC acted entirely properly and in no way abused their massive powers to favour the politically powerful A.M.A., don’t listen to that Rothbard guy, he’s got a “conspiratorial veiw of history”.

The FCC licenses and the Chavez government “concessions”, but they are effectively the same thing, which according to incurious George are "the juridical means by which the administration cedes to a person the privative use of something in the public domain, or the management of a public service, for a determinate period of time and under certain conditions.". And what is it that is allegedly in the “public domain,” or consists of “the management of a public service”. Well I happen to have a copy of the TV license here “Youse guys can play send out your telley shows on frequency and we won’t kill you for doing it. Unless we got a really good reason or something.”. So that’s what RCTV has that is “in the public domain” a (nonenforcable) promise that if they do something the government break their heads, nothing more. Those who claim that RCTV owes something to somebody because they’re using a frequency should ask themselves “Who died and left that frequency to the govenrment?”. The government no more holds the spectrum just because it’s got guns than it has freehold on all land it hasn’t sold to some sucker. RCTV was there first and has every right to broadcast without interference as long as they are not interfering with anyone else’s broadcasts. It could only considered “use of a public good” if spectrum wasn’t excludable and rivalrous, which it is and has been since at least April, 1926 and the United States v. Zenith Radio Corp. That case said “first come first served” applying the same rule that applies to land and natural resources in every just land. In any case it can hardly be argued that the government can play around with RCTV because it’s “concession” is so valuable since the only reason it is that valuable is that the Venezulan government has so restricted the media market for the benefit of the oligopolies. Somehow the idea of hurting said oligopolies by actually abandoning the “concession” system and allowing free competition occurs to neither left or right.

Of course the whole “concession” system has been abused for centuries to monopolise things that ar ein no way either “in the public domain” or “management of a public serivce”. There is no real reason why oil is “the public domain” any more than any other resource is, to give an example Ciccariello-maher references. The granting of oil concessions on the basis of government favouritism as opposed to homesteading of well has led to enormous money earners being “traditionally and undemocratically granted to large corporations which have been given free rein to reap unlimited profits” in corrupt deals that encourages the coups, stagnation and violence that have plagued oil rich countries the world over. Of course you might ask what oil concessions, which concern something that run out, have to do with using a fequency which won’t. I don’t know either but somehow they’re all the same according to George. Basically George wants to end “the disgusting privileges of a communications oligarchy allied with international financiers.", or at least the disgusting privileges of that part of the oligarchy that pissed off the all powerful God-President.

That’s ok though because “What could be more democratic than handing Channel 2 over to the 63 percent of Venezuelans who voted for Chávez?”. Well handing over all the channels in America to Ronald Reagan in the 80s, and Margret Thatcher could grab ITV and Thames in merrie old England. Or Mr. Howard could... could... could fucking die if even tries it. I serious John any move to grab TV stations like Chavez did and you’re fucking history. I know where you live. Well so does everyone but still, I know. I mean Jesus H. Christ who is stupid enough to think that giving TV stations as electoral prizes is a good idea? This guy got a degree? All I got out of my cereal packet was a fucking plastic spaceman, no fair.

Here’s an idea what could be more democratic than handing over Channel 2 over to the 63% who voted for Chavez, how about you just ditch the idea that the government owns the airwaves for good? Any joe blow can just start broadcasting whatever he wants provided it doesn’t block an existing signal. That’s pluralism, that’s freedom, that’s “democracy” in the sense of a free society that freely selects it’s leaders by freely examining the issues and openly debating them. What George suggests is “democracy” in the sense of 51% can kill 49% because they say so.
I don’t understand why this crap got on conterpunch.com. Surely they’re leftists but they’re not normally idiots. Just because someone resists the West in general and the US in particular doesn’t make them a saint (you might remember a recently deceased arab who died well, if not soon enough).

The constitution is not a suicide pact, is it?

2006-11-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

The idea that the constitution should not be kept to at the cost of the destruction is a popular one. Is it right?

Thomas Sowell is the latest eminent person to insist that the 'The constitution is not a suicide pact.' and as usual the insistence is made to defend encroaching tyranny. There is good reason to believe that adhering the the constitution is not as suicidal as it's detractors imply. Indeed the main dangers to America come from it's violation and I believe that a similar pattern will be evident in all states with a constitution. However let us assume that it is true that survival and obedience to the constitution are incompossible, what then? Let's consider several definitions of 'survival' relevant to the question.

The first definition is 'political survival' or 'national survival' that is to say the survival of the particular State without regard to the survival of the people under it. Clearly if all people under a State die so does the State, but a State can die without a single one of it's people perishing. The death of a State means that the monopoly of force either dies or is exercised over a different geographical area. There is nothing inherently bad about this. Sentimental attachments aside plenty of people live in States that either did not exist when they first moved there or did not rule the territory they live in. While it is true that the new State may be worse it may also be better, I know of no real evidence that changing soveriegnties makes you worse off on average. Indeed if that were the case then where did the better States that people were living in prior to such changes come from?

It clearly states in the Declaration of Independence that 'That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'. Note that this is the sole reason that governments are instituted, there is no other. If a government does not achieve these goals then it is obselete and must be discarded. Certainly many prefer that the laws not change and changing soveriegnties does that, but so does ignoring the constitution. The consitution is the law, and nullifying it is an immense legal change, affecting all other laws. All judges and politicians swear to protect the constituion. They do not swear to protect the State. Now you might think that what they swear to doesn't matter, and the Bush1 administration seems to agree. This doesn't make the State any safer however, the danger of being managed by oathbreakers is far greater than the danger of being bound to the constitution. If you doubt this consider how few people were lynched because blacks could vote as opposed to how many were lynched because they had been disarmed. Consider how many were killed in the USSR, Nazi Germany or even South Africa because of violations by government of people's rights and how few killed because they were enforced.

Secondly 'survival' might mean the physical survival of some number of it's citizens. The idea that the constitution should be put above the survival of a small number of it's citizens is frankly treasonous. If it were true then an attempt to invade the country would have to be met with total surrender. After all if your life is worth abandoning the legal system then so is the life of soldiers and therefore the imposition of a foreign legal code should not be resisted by their deaths. Now you might ask 'What if all the people might be killed if the constitution is not abandoned?', well if there is such a danger (and so far there has never been such a danger that could be prevent by unconstitutional action) people may avoid it simply by emigration. If you donÕt want to live in a country were your life can be sacrificed to freedom then go somewhere where that won't happen. This will not probably make you safer as I have previously stated.
Thirdly 'survival' might mean the survival of the consitution itself, however violating the constitution to prevent it's violation makes no sense. It would be like killing your child to ensure they don't get harmed. If it is possible to violate the constitution any time it is in 'danger' then the constitution is never safe and it's provisions are no longer the highest law of the land, that is to say it is no longer the constitution and has practically died.

So under all the definitions of 'survival' that apply none qualify as worth killing the constitution for. The constitution is not a suicide pact but, flawed as it is, it is something worth the death of a man, or a State for.

1 And to be fair the Clinton administration and most others as well.

A threat to our most sacred freedoms!

2006-10-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Stop reading about the trivial threat "control orders" have to our liberty, forget about the fact that the US can lock up anyone it wants, whereever they find them, for as long as they want without trial. No the real threat to our sacred freedoms has been revealed, THE RIGHT TO FREE SPORT IS UNDER THREAT! That's right soon if you want to view something on TV like the rugby league final, the olympics, events requiring the intense effort of many talented and dedicated people, the organisational skills of others and the capital of still others to transmit you may actually have to PAY said people. The NERVE! Imagine asking people to pay for something just because it cost effort and capital to produce and people want it. Next they'll be asking us to pay for our food, electricity and transport. I mean don't they realise that we're "we the people" and can demand anything we want from anybody for whatever price (including nothing) we want? Don't they realise that there are no possesions that aren't ours if we want them. Don't they realise that the rights of producers as far as we're concerned are just the same as the rights of medieval serfs with regard to their masters? Why are they not bowing before us and making appologies for even suggesting that payment might be required? Let our servants in Canberra go forth and beat them about the head with the speakers make.

2006-08-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Dick Meyer commenting on the Great Fluid Ban says "... I am mystified by our tolerance for the incompetent, politicized and inefficient charade that is now masquerading as transportation security. Apparently the illusion of security is enough."

Well yeah, Dick, where have you been? The terrorism risk aboard an airplane, even in the "post 9/11 world" is probably less than the chance of having a heart attack from the sheer stress of airline stupidity so actual security is not all that valuable. On the other hand the Great Unwashed have been assured that there is a danger. They don't like to think of a danger they and their protectors can't do anything about. The fact that such a danger is trivial is not the point, it's the degree of control the public have. By inflicting various inconveniences and annoyances on the public the government demonstrates that it is capable of doing someone*. Thus they establish a degree of control and through them the public feel a degree of control. This is what they were after, not genuine security, which in practice they already have to a great extent.

He also opines: "Are we to imagine there aren’t great minds at Homeland Security who spend their time thinking of all the possible ways evil-doers could blow up planes? Of course there are. Are we to imagine they never thought about making bombs with stuff in spray cans? Sure they did. And they surely made rational, practical assessments of the risk."

I don't know why he thinks this. In the wake of 9/11 Condeleesa Rice claimed that nobody foresaw that planes could be used as weapons. However they had. In fact it was the subject of a roleplaying game scenario "Fly to heaven" http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_2156.html. So the entire Pentagon could not anticipate an event but 4 guys with a few word processors (which is what Atlas games is really) could. I find it extremely unlikely the security forces have any group tasked with imagining ways the terrorists might strike. They tried something like that with "Seal Team Six" and they embarrassed the high command so much they were disbanded. A contingency planning team can only cause problems for the security services and armed forces forcing to acknowledge the inevitable gaps in security, far to numerous to all plug. The last thing they need is for someone to remove their excuse of ignorance.

* I just noticed that I wrote "someone", where I meant to write "something" but perhaps it's a freudian slip.

Internal matters, good for me but not for thee.

2006-06-26T23:37:00.001-07:00

The Indonesian government has recently got all upset over John Howard expressing "concern and distress" over Abu Bakir Bashir's release. They say it's an "internal matter" when someone who promoted the murder of Australians is released after only two years. Where was all this concern over internal matters when they protested about the 42 Papuans being granted asylum? The decision to grant asylum is a finding of fact by Australian government officials and is not and cannot legally be subject to Australia's foreign policy. Constitutionally under the doctrine of "Seperation of Powers" John Howard had no more right to change the determination of the proper tribunerals and courts than he has to have the courts find someone guilty they acquited. The response to Indonesia's arrogant and insulting actions was to kowtow and change policy to make asylum seekers, both legitimate and not, more miserable for longer at a cost of millions to the Australian taxpayer. Needless to say the Indonesians were not so accommodating when our government commented on their system.

In a facile and stupid article in the SMH Gerald Henderson took aim at those that support West Papuan independence. Yes, Gerald it is racist to oppose the breakup of the Indonesian state, considering how much people supported the breakup of the Yugoslavian state for far less oppressive actions. If the West Papuans were white you would have no problem with their independence. Mr. Henderson claims that the asylum seekers "engaging in public debate" is counterproductive? Why? Because "to imply that this policy [of the ALP and the coalition not supporting independence] will change is misleading]. The problem is that nobody implied that. The Papuans simply talked about the bad things the Indonesian government is doing and why independence is a good thing, not surprising behaviour from seccessionists. It got him talking about Papua and civil rights violations there, so at least it's raising awareness.

On the subject of rights violations Mr. Henderson was disingenous saying "The extent of human rights violations in Papua is a matter of contention.". No doubt it is, but then so is whether the holocaust happened*. The only evidence he presents is a statement by someone on Lateline that there is no contemporary evidence [note, contemporary, so presumably there is historical evidence for this] that Indonesian special forces or inteliigence are systemactically going after Papuan independence activists for assasination. This is pretty weak tea. All it says is that a particular type of abuse isn't happening right now to a particular type of people in a particular way (systematically) by two particular groups. The actions of Indonesian backed militias are removed from the equation as are non-"systematic" murders or murders of non-activists. Nobody would write this unless they had nothing better to write in defence of the indefensible. It was perhaps the most hypocritical thing I've read in the Herald. To describe the proposed changes in asylum seeker policy as "reform" is the final insulting icing on a putrid cake.

* It did.

Government shoots self in foot, soldier didn't shoot himself anywhere.

2006-06-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

Well they're still trying to figure out how poor private Kovco got a bullet in his head. The official story version 4 is "we don't know". That would be fine if it had been official story version 1, nobody expects instant omniscence from our fearless leaders. Instead we got "it went off while he was cleaning it", an unlikely story given Kovco was a qualified sniper, which indicates both high intelligence and respect for weapons. I initially suspected suicide for that very reason, but it turns out there were no powder burns on the body,<1> meaning it was fired from at least 4 foot away. So story number one was rubbish, and anyone who had any information about the events should have known it, particularly highly qualified officers.

Then there was official story number 2 that he had moved the gun and somehow it went off. Again this is contradicted by the powder residue evidence.

Then there was official statement number 3 that he had somehow dropped his laptop computer on to it and it had discharged. This was perhaps the weakest explanation. For a start how does a laptop falling onto a properly designed and maintained pistol, in it's holster cause it to go off? Simply having the corner of it wedge between the trigger and trigger guard won't do, there has to be pressure on the back of the butt. This safety feature prevents discharge if nobody is actually holding the pistol to shoot. Then there's the question of how the bullet ends up in his temple if it came from underneath. Finally this version as all the other versions before it did, contradicts the powder burn evidence or rather lack thereof.

Now this is more than just guessing 3 times and getting it wrong, as callous as that is to Shelly, Tyrie and Alana Kovco. The government knew all along that there were two people in the room when it happened and either of them could have told them none of these versions were true. So what's going on? Guns just don't go off. Particularly not guns bought by one of the most professional militaries in the world and maintained by a qualified sniper. The government gave information that it ought to have known was bad at least 3 times. Either the military is consistently handing them rumours instead of confirmed fact or the government is trying to spin something. But what? Were the other two soldiers in the room "skylarking" with Kovco's gun? If so what efforts were made to investigate what they were doing? A simple GunShot Residue should confirm or disprove their firing the gun. If this test was done what are the results? If not why was this simple investigative step not taken. I can think of no reason why you would not test someone in the room of a suspicious gunshot death for GSR. Not doing so is arguably deriliction of duty. Perhaps that's the extent of the spin, simply covering up for shoddy investigation. I hope so, but knowning the Howard government we won't get the truth until we drag it kicking and screaming into the light, preserably after next election.

Oh yeah and they've lost the bullet. That should be a firing offense all by itself but don't hold your breathe.

<1> In fact this was an error, apparently there were such burns when the coroner examined the body, or at least burns "consistent" with powder burns. There just wasn't any powder. So either the powder was washed off, as apparently happened or something weird is going on. Of course this means even more evidence was compromised than previously suspected.

Another Whacking Bribe.

2006-03-03T00:55:00.000-08:00

For those of you that are either not Australian or have been living under a rock, the Australian Wheat Board has been caught giving backhanders to Saddam's cronies. This happened back when it was worth being Saddam's crony in 2000 and the Australia government only recently found out about it. Well that's their story anyway, and by GOD they are sticking to it. I don't know which I'd prefer, having a government so corrupt it would turn a blind eye to kickbacks that funded weapons aimed at it's troops or one so stupid it didn't know that the trucking deal was corrupt. I mean requiring vendors to use a particular firm for transportation, storage etc. and getting a backhander from your friend who owns it, surely that's the oldest trick in the book? I mean the Babylonian government has been using that one since before the Code of Hammurabi.

You might remember than "Honest John" Howard backed the invasion with all his might, all the way with LBJ-style. I can't think of a good ryhme for GWB, so all you frustrated lefty lyricists start working on it. Well after the invasion the Yanks started looking into the oil-for-food thing, hoping to find corruption. In somewhere other than Halliburton I mean. Now at this point you have to wonder, what the hell was Johnny thinking? I mean he was warned 6 years before by the Canadians that the deal stunk, and we know that he believed them because he didn't try to find out if it was true. Mr. Howard has become rather good at not knowing things that his senior civil servants knew and thus not being blamed for it. So why didn't he have a quiet word with George and Dick and the gang, over a barbeque (not a hunting trip as he is very anti-gun) and tell them to call off the dogs a bit? I mean what's the point of having friends in high places if you can't give the nod to the investigating officer? I mean is this man an Australian at all? He's a disgrace to the traditions of the New South Wales colony.

Instead John actually starts an inquiry into what happened. Lord, love us and save us we know what happened. Saddam wanted wheat, the farmers (a powerful lobby but not much subsidised down under) wanted to sell him wheat through the "single desk" wheat monopoly and Saddam wanted a kickback for doing it. Blind freddy could have told you what happened, why start a bloody inquiry? I mean asking questions is fine for fun, in university halls, and internet chatrooms but it shouldn't be mixed with politics. If it is it can only lead to answers, and who wants that? One government spokesman said that the AWB had looked after the interests of Australian farmers well. Well yeah, that's the point, a little too well. The whole thing is so stressful that many of the AWB officers like Trevor Fluge, the Chairman and the Middle East Manager Mark Emons are suffering amnesia. This serious condition can affect their ability to earn income for years. I just hope they get a good golden handshake to make up for it.

So anyway the AWB looks like it might have to disolve, or not, it seems to change each week. The Iraqis are refusing to deal with them because they were once bent. Apparently being muslim Challabi, Allawi and Sistani haven't heard the story about throwing the first stone. I mean pot calling kettle, come in kettle.

In the meantime Kim Beazely, who was narrowly avoiding arrest for impersonating an opposition leader is doing well complaining about someone doing exactly what he would have done at the time. It's sorta like the Democrats complaining about the NSA phone-tapping. You know they should but you can't imagine they're doing it honestly.
I mean after forcing the telcos to install stuff that let the government tap half a percent of all phone calls at once what did they think it would be used for? Oh well it's all part of life's rich tapestry.

Alternate meanings of AWB;
Amnesiacs With Booty.
Always With Bucks.
Australia's Wonderful Briefcases.

Leaving the Iraqis high and dry.

2006-03-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

Jeremy Sapienza responded* to a claim on tomgpalmer.com** by Greg that "the rest of us grapple with the serious issues about how to ... bring the troops home without leaving the Iraqis high and dry," with the claim that " 'leaving the iraqis high and dry' is so obviously the absolute best possible thing that could happen to Iraqis since they got the electric lightbulb". Neither of these claims can be taken seriously. The issue of how to bring the troops home without leaving the Iraqis high and dry is not serious. It will not be serious until someone figures out a way to keep the troops there without leaving the Iraqis high and dry. That is a subject that Greg would "grapple" with if he really thought about not leaving the Iraqis high and dry, which he doesn't. So far no hawk "libertarian" or otherwise has figured out how to do it. The Iraqis are stratospheric and absolutely dessicated now, and sorry Jeremy but it's far from the "best thing since ... the electric lightbulb".

Let's start by defining our terms. "High and dry" means without protection from vicious Jihadis, sociopathically ambitions powermongers, nationalist terrorists, criminals, personal enemies, random pyschos, foriegn agents provocateurs, government death squads and last and probably least mistaken revenge attacks. At the moment outside the Green Zone Iraqis don't get that from the US government or it's Iraqi puppet. If someone wants to kill you they basically can unless you have connections to a private militia and even then it's no "cakewalk". Every day we hear of civilians being killed, far less often we hear of their killers being called to account. When was the last time someone who murdered for political or religious reasons was actually charged in Iraq? Convicted? Or even just summarily executed?

So how did this happen? How did a country with over 1 fully armed, highly trained, relatively competently led***, soldier for every 140 people manage to be totally without effective armed protection? Especially considering that they have what 50 Iraqi regiments backing them up? Well here's the thing, the occupation forces aren't there to protect the Iraqis but to protect the Iraqi government. If the form and content of the Iraqi State can't change without Washington's say so they have succeeded, if they can it has failed. Violent deaths of civilians have nothing to do with their objectives and indeed sometimes favour them. The troops simply have no reason to prevent violence, other than against themselves or other servants of the masters. Protecting those that are useful to the occupation however is top priority, even when they are ruthless killers who brutalise other groups, for example the Shia "Wolf Brigade" or the Kurdish peshmerga. These groups have local knowledge and advantages that the occupationm sorely needs and so cannot be alienatied just becaues they did a few murders, most of which they would argue serve coalition purposes. Like a 1960s sheriff's department in the deep south did not provide protection to their black citizens but to their oppressors the occupation forces protect those who violate Iraqi rights from those they target. Of course only those percieved to be useful to the occupation get protection from the just wrath of their victims but this policy also benefits the regimes enemies.

Without knowing who is responsible for a given attack victims and their relatives cannot effectively investigate it by themselves. To do so would invite further attacks if the offenders turned out to be working with the coalition or had more influence with them than the victims. If the offenders have such a relationship or influence any questions may lead to a dank cell in one the many Iraqi government torture centres. Government investigations are also difficult because nobody trusts the coalition forces or their puppet police. Many people feel that cooperation with the "legitimate" authorities is betraying the cause of the resistence, and to an extent they're right. If the "legitimate" authorities delivered protection they would be secure and would probably never leave. Any information will also be used to try to track down insurgents that may have the informers sympathy. In addition it is well known that various violent groups have infiltrated both the police and the army and so giving information may not be safe.

It should be noted also that violence is being rewarded even if it is directed at coalition troops. Muqtada al-Sadr raised an army against the occupation that could only be defeated by destroying large parts of Bagdad. The US baulked at that (despite having already done similar things several times) and allowed him to gain a political role. He is now in the Iraqi parliment and being consulted on everything from the new constitution to who should be in the Iraqi army. My bet is he thinks his boys should be. He has ensured his own political relevance, a cushy job and the ability to distribute patronage all by simply killing a few foreign infidels. He didn't even have to murder them since he acted in legitimate defence of his rights. Later we heard denials (from both sides) that the US was negotiating with the insurgents. Predictably these denials were false. The US was negotiating with Sunnis for their support and needed most of the Sunni insurgency on side for it to work. So again the process goes, shoot Americans, destablise regime, wait the regime to negotiate, walk off with big cash and prizes. This is hardly the sort of thing that will discourage violence.

In the absence of foreign troops of course much violence will continue, but one thing will change. Thugs will have to both protect themselves and pay their own way. There will be no US funds to relieve them of their day job or foreign arms to protect them from retaliation. The "Wolf Brigade" will have to either stop killing people or protect themselves from their relatives, without picking up the phone to Big Red One. History suggests when the violent have to pay for their own violence, they buy less of it. If you really don't want to leave the civilians high and dry, get the troops out.

*http://anti-state.com/blog/2005/11/12/i-believe-in-peace-bitch/
** http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/026869.php
*** While the top leadership is amazingly incompetent the lieutenants, captains
etc. are better than those of most armies.

Does the “fair share” law violate due process?

2006-02-15T01:08:00.000-08:00

In the hillarious series “Fat Pizza” Habib sees a “Police now targetting” sign which usaully has “speeding”, “drunk driving”, etc inserted at the end. However this sign states “Police now targeting _Lebanese_”. Later on sees another sign that announces they are now targeting him! The shareholders of a certain large cheap retail chain may now be empathising with the poor Habib.
Health care “reformers” passed a “fair share law” in Maryland designed to force retailers that employ over 10,000 workers to spend at least 8% of their payroll in that State for health benefits. Normally I’d dismiss this as another know-nothing interference in the market that overrides the desires of those it intends to benefit and damages firms that try to provide jobs and products that Marylanders want. But there is a more sinister implication this time because the plural is inappropriate, only 4 firms employ that many Marylanders and three of them already contribute more than that, leaving only one firm affected Walmart. This raises the question is this bill designed to punish Walmart for alleged bad behaviour, and if so does the fact that it was passed in legislature rather than tried in court mean that Walmart’s due process rights have been violated?
Walmart (or if you don’t believe in corporate rights, it’s shareholders) have the right to a fair trial before punishment in the form of reduced profits is inflicted. Laws that affect multiple parties are not punishment for a particular party in themselves because those affected regardless of whether they did anything to encourage the law’s passing. For instance say that logging of old growth forests was banned, affecting ABC timber, DEF Lumber, GHI forestry and the XYZ building (materials) inc., logically nobody would pass such a bill solely to punish XYZ. The present bill could and indeed to some extent probably was pased for exactly that reason. If such a procedure is allowed then government could control any firm by threatening it with tailored legislation that damages only that firm. This would constitute an unconstitutional de facto control of private property. In effect the mere capacity to inflict such harm would be a partial taking of private property without compensation, illegal under the 5th amendment.
I am not saying by this that firms can’t be punished for behaviour that is deemed to be against the public good. If Walmart or any other firm breaks the law then a trail and punishment if convicted is appropriate. Unless of course it’s not which happens*. If the “public” decide that certain behaviour that wasn’t illegal before should be now then any firm continuing that behaviour also should be tried for that behaviour and if the behaviour is proven punishment should be inflicted. However the passing of a law that disadvantages Wal-Mart is itself a punishment and one that predates any trial, indictment, or even legal investigation of the alleged wrongdoing. Various people have for some time accused Walmart of various evils at times validly (e.g. using eminent domain) at times speciously (the accusation that it doesn’t pay “enough” to it’s workers). Whether or not you agree that it did these things or that they deserve punishment is beside the point. If the government wishes to punish people for such behaviour they can pass a law that allows for charges and trials of those found doing it. They may not simply form a plan to punish those they see as committing these evils and implement it the due process of law.
For example, suppose that someone owned the only two storey house in the village. Suppose also that this person gave loud late night parties that disturbed the rest of the village. If their villagers were to inflict a fourfold tax increase for multiple storey buldings that would be an inappropriate way to punish the wrongdoer. The correct way would be to ask the police to investigate the noise or to take accurate sound readings and thereby enable a prosecution if the parties actually broke the law.
A problem with this approach is that it may depend on the legislation being passed for the purpose of punishing the firm, rather than from desire to improve public policy. This raises the question, “Whose purpose?”. The legislators? The lobbyists who pushed for it? The members of the public that supported it? Who’s intent is relevent here? I will argue that it is illogical to conclude that the purpose of this legislation is improving public policy. The alleged problem that the legislation was supposed to fix is firms not helping relieve the burden of free health care. However there is no good public policy reason why they should, or given that they should that it should be through providing health insurance for their workers. Indeed it makes little sense to have a system where provision of free health care for the uninsured raises the premiums for the insured. The increase in premiums causes people who otherwise would have insured to not do so. This causes loss of profits from the insurance company, increasing costs for the State system and loss of benefits to the individual or family. The reduced numbers of insured and increased number of recipients of free care mean that less policyholders have to pay the costs of more uninsured, accelerating the process. If there were a genuine wish to make companies pay their “fair share” for providing free health care the State could introduce a sales tax, company tax etc. and use the proceeds to reduce the amount that free health care impacts on the insured. This would result in lower premiums, more policyholders and less aid recipients. The fact that this is not tried shows that the “fair share” law is actually an “unfair steal” law.

Why Achmed doesn't phone.

2006-01-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

Torture is said to be neccesary to the "war on terror", as is locking suspects up for long periods without benefit of a trial or even a hearing. To be neccesary however a thing needs to be helpful to the purpose in question and obviously to be helpful it must not be counterproductive. So are such measures counterproductive? I believe they are, for they keep interogators from the one thing they need for a successful interogation. That is of course someone who knows something to reveal.

To understand why that is understand what starts most investigations off. While in the movies of course vigilant police and spies spot bad guys doing something bad and pursue, in fact this is fairly rare. In fact most cops don't come across a robbery or murder EVER in their careers. Almost all criminal and anti-terrorism investigation starts with someone in the public telling the police of something suspicious. Now obviously most of the people that give such information have some relationship the suspect. After all how else do they know of the things they find suspicious? They might be relatives, neighbours, friends, coworkers or even lovers. They will therefore have a natural sympathy for the suspect, as they have some relationship to him. They obviously don't want to have him sent away for two weeks on nothing but a suspicion, or tortured or otherwise subjected to humiliation, pain or loss of liberty. If the alternatives are these or letting him continue with suspicious behaviour they will tend to do the latter. There is always a plausible explanation for suspicious behaviour. The man buying diesel fuel might have a friend with a tractor or an emergency generator. He might be buying fertiliser for his back garden etc. The potential informant will make his excuses for not acting. Over 90% of the time these excuses willl be right. Far more people buy diesel feul to feul things than to blow things but. Most for Capability Brown purposes not Guy Faux purposes. But a tiny percentage of the time the suspicions will be right. Those that suspect but not enough to potentially subject their friend to torture will end up saying "I shoulda..." which is no help to the widows of their brothers victims.

This is not their fault though. Most would gladly have reported their suspicious if the result would have been a civilised investigation that didn't torture the suspect or ruin their life by "disappearing" them for a fortnight and not letting them tell people where they are. The fault for the lack of information is the government's for substituting brute force and illegality for allowing the community to trust them. This effect is even more powerful if no one person has enough information to trigger an investigation. If Achmed knows that Mohammed, his coworker, is do something alarming, and his sister Fatima knows something else susicipious, and his neighbour is aware of a third suspicious thing, it might take all three pieces of information to justify an interview, search etc. that would avoid catastrophe. So the probability of preventing it is a power in this case 3 of the probability that each person would report him. This second probability will go down sharply with each increase in arbitary power the suspect is subject to and thus the first probability will go down even faster.

Violating the rights of the accused only serves to reduce the number of people who will be accused, save by people who bear them ill-will. Accusations based on honest suspicion of a person's actions, the only reliable guide to possible wrongdoing, will decline. This is a blow at the heart of our ability to conduct the War on Terror.

The defence of neccesity.

2005-12-20T06:15:00.000-08:00

So George Bush has been using the NSA to spy on Americans. This is shocking but not exactly surprising, and so is his justification for it. He claims that it's his duty to do what is necessary to protect Americans from terrorism. But is it and is that what he's doing? It stands to reason that no job can impose a duty that exceeds it's authority. Nobody can be given a responsibility to do what they are forbidden to do. If they were they would be in a position where there was no legally acceptable choice and that's a mockery of law. So clearly since warrantless wiretaps are not allowed the president cannot have a duty to authorise them.

But what of the other claim, that he is doing what is neccesary to protect American's from terrorism? I submit that not only is this claim false but it can be proven so from publically available sources. Firstly if he was doing what was necessary to protect against terrorism he would obviously move against their main source of funding, the War On (Some) Drugs. It has been well known for years that Islamic terror groups finance themselves through drugs. This is true not just of al-Quaeda affiliates but also the PLO and Hezbollah. Non-islamic terrorists in South America are so involved in the drug trade it's hard to tell whether some are political terrorists financing themselves with drugs or drug dealers who use to terrorism to bolster their justification of being political groups. Clearly if the war on drugs was ended this would be a major blow to terrorism worldwide, yet it is not. Why? It's not like Americans aren't prepared to make political sacrifices to win the WO(S)T*. Sure some will bleat a bit and predict the world will come to an end if people get high with a different chemical than usual. However all GWB would have to do is say something about how 9-ll "changed everything" and how this is essential to preserving the lives of our brave men and women overseas yadda, yadda and it would fly. So why the reluctance?

The answer lies in what GWB believes is "necessary". It is not necessary to actually minimise violent deaths by terrorist action. Although this would be nice it's not a critical objective. To be fair I feel the same way, there are plenty of other problems that kill more people and cause more suffering than terrorism and it's rightfully a low priority for the government. What is "necessary" is to preserve the belief that the State is the answer to the problem of terrorism. If people were to come to the conclusion that terrorism is best dealt with via non-State action they might come to the conclusion that most other things are too. This would lead to a gradual unravelling of the entire concept that most of what the State does is beneficial.

This would pretty much end the gravy train for Georgie-boy. While most people would say that this would deprive him of an undeserved income this is not the important thing. It would deprive him of an undeserved social respect and respectability. At the moment people assume that people in government are both good and important. They may quibble with the occasional emphasis, like thinking the Bill Clinton is Satan's spawn because he only spends 20 times what America needs to defend itself instead of 100 times, but generally they are impressed with the government appartachiks, politicians and technocrats. They do not regard them as they do say, drug dealers, prostitutes and purveyors of phony baldness cures. If the actual effectiveness of government were to become known then people might think of them as much less. Imagine if for years you went to a doctor that believed in bleeding and vomiting his patients for all ills and perscibed lambs blood intravenously for violent mood swings. How would you feel about him after you found out that his treatments all did serious harm to the patients health and had no beneficial effects**? This is exactly the sort of reaction that the architects and builders of government efforts hope to avoid.

To prevent this it's not only "neccesary" to avoid the apperance that no government intervention is the answer. It's also "neccesary" to avoid the appearance that _less_ government intervention might be the answer. If people began to think the the government intervening less might help solve terrorism they would apply pressure to achieve this. Eventually this pressure would result in some limited reduction in some government interference with people's lives. This would likely be successful in reducing terrorism, at least to some extent. Once one positive of reform is found people will push for others. Eventually the whole edifice would dissolve.

Another reason to make sure that no reduced intervention solutions (RIS) are tried is that the government has presented it's increased intervention solutions (IIS) as necessary which they are not if there exist RISs. Since the IISs are very unpopular in certain circles the government cannot afford to have the made to look unneccesary. People are prepared to forgive the problems caused by IISs if there is no alternative, so no alternative must be found. This explains why "crises" always increase government power, because to reduce it would be to admit that the government has been submitting people to needless bother with the previous IISs. For instance suppose there was a wave of terror bombings in the UK that the police had no idea was going to happen. Now suppose someone were to suggest an end to preventive detention under laws designed to fight the IRA. The reasoning is that without the fear that their friends and relatives would be locked up without a fair trial people would be more likely to come forward with information against them. This leads to more good leads and police possibly catching the terrorists before they can strike. The government would not do this because then they'd have to admit that they locked people up unfairly not only without a good reason but without a good result. So instead a solution that increases intervention would be suggested and been implemented, and it has.

The object of the State is not in fact to do what is necessary but to make necessary thing that would otherwise not be. For instance it would not be "necessary" to conduct the WO(S)T* if the policies of various governments didn't give people reasons to try change that policy and good reason to doubt that anything but violence would do that. The State is not there to find solutions to but to avoid the solutions that would have occured without it. Without Social Security people would look after their parents, invest for their retirement or otherwise take care of the entirely predictable problem of old age. Without unemployment benefits workers would either look after each other or accept lower wages to retain employment. Without government protection people would form alliances with their neighbours to defend their persons and property. All these are what the State is designed to avoid. If such solutions take off anyone with a connection to the State will see the value of their work degraded by the comparative efficiency of these solutions. Eventually their work will be a social and even economic negative. This is what government find "necessary" to avoid.

* War On (Some) Terror
** Other calming the lamb's blood recipient by making him so sick he can't be violent.

Ways to abuse the new Australian Terror legislation, or just abuse New Australians.

2005-10-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

Well according to Media Watch the attorney general's staff, believe that "These offences are not designed to prevent journalists from reporting in good faith.". That's great, and guns are not designed to go off accidentally and blow the users head off, but they do. So rather than consider what the new "anti-terror" laws are supposed designed to do, let's look at what they can do. Rather than consider what a government of saints would use them for let's look at what they might do in the hands of rather more human governors, to journalists who "report in good faith" or indeed to anyone else.
http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/docs/B05PG201_v281.pdf

The following restrictions and requirements can be implemented under section 104.4, without a trial, subject only to a judge being satisfied that "on the balance of probabilities" that the restriction "is reasonably neccesary" to prevent a terrorist act, this judgement being made solely on the basis of what the police and the AG tell the court, without the person being informed beforehand of the possibility of restrictions and without his lawyer being able to challenge these restrictions until after the judgement is made:

Fingerprint the suspect, despite the fact that clearly there is not enough evidence to arrest him or get a warrant for his fingerprints (if there was why would they police need to use the new powers?). There doesn't seem to be any mechanism for the destruction of the fingerprints once they're in the system, so presumably the cops keep them. Your fingerprints "must only be used for the purpose of ensuring compliance with the order" as though you wouldn't wear gloves when you violated it after getting your prints taken. It's good to know that the cops won't use my fingerprints to, say figure out whether I touched the gun that killed somebody, even if they think I did it. It's also good to know that Santa Claus is bringing lots of presents for being a good boy, and it's about as credible. Even assuming the cops don't use your prints on the sly (and consider we're talking New South Wales cops here, amoung others) does anyone really believe that in a year's time they won't amend this so that the cops can use the prints any way they like? After all you've got the prints right there, why bother the courts with another application since we know he's someone who might contribute to a terrorist act, maybe.

Require that a person remain at "specified premises" between specified times of the day, or on specified days. In other words they can be subject to weekend (or weekday) detention without trial. Alternatively they could be required to stay in specified premises for 23 1/2 hours a day. The "premises" could be anywhere. It doesn't even say they have to be in Australia. Hello Guantanamo. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" like getting sent to my room without any opportunity to give a defence.

Require that a person wear a tracking device. 'Nuff said.

Prohibit or restrict a person from "accessing or using specified forms of telecommunication", that's right your phone priveleges have been revoked. I'm feeling more and more like a teenager unjustly accused of necking with the neighbour girl with each subsection. So be a good boy, give the cops what they want, sell out who they want you to sell out, tell the lies they want you to tell, and maybe they'll let you ring your dying mother. Or maybe not. Don't fuck with the fuzz, punk. And don't try competing for someone's affections with a cop. He can shut you down faster than the SEC in Martha Stewart's kitchen. You can't neccesarily call your lawyer, but you can get in touch with him by other means, just not "specified forms of telecommunication" like the internet, mail, carrier-fucking pigeon. Well that's is to say you can get in touch with _a_ lawyer. Not neccesarily your lawyer or anyone you know with a law degree. See below.

You see they can prohibit you talking to or communicating with "specified individuals" including your lawyer, even if there is no evidence that any of these individuals ever committed, planned, funded, planed to fund or in any way contributed to a terrorist act. Of course the order must "state that the person's lawyer may attend a specified place in order to obtain a copy". That specified place could theorectically be the North Pole, the dark side of the moon or perhaps we're back to Guantanamo Bay again. I don't know where a lawyer can get the order but I know where any good one will want to stick it. In between the time you recieve the order and the time your lawyer gets to where he can get his copy presumably he has to let you rot. There's no guarantee that where they send you will be any easier to get to than where the order is lying patiently for his arrival. Nor is there any requirement for the court to actually send the letter to him let alone in a timely manner.

All this might get you down, so perhaps you should bury yourself in your work. If they let you. You see they can prohibit you from "carrying out specified activities" including those you usually use to earn a living. I'm betting after a few times when you can't do your job for a week your employer will let you go. Of course that's assuming they don't just call up missing persons after you're forbidden from going to your workplace in the first place or calling the boss.

After all this you might want to talk to somebody, a consellor, phychiatrist maybe?
Well they can make a person do that, "if a person consents"? Well if it's a requirement (and that's what they call it) how can there be an opportunity to refuse consent? This one's past my above average abilities at reason. They're logic is not like our earth logic, it's more advanced (thank you Joss Whedon for that one).

I think I've shown that despite it not being "designed" for such purposes this new law can fuck up your life something chronic on no evidence that would stand up to even a mediocre lawyers challenge. They don't need enough evidence to charge you. They don't need to show that you ever did anything bad. All they need is to be satisfied on "the balance of probabilities". One day you'll look back and remember when we were a free country, and only civil matters were decided that way.

I could write on sections other than 104.4 but I can't be bothered. That chunk of obesenity allone is more than enough to justify... well I was going to say something dramatic and revolutionary, but I don't want to spend 7 years inside or whatever it says. This legislation is loaded with ways to abuse the people for the greater glory of the government, and the AG's plan is that when they do he'll swear he didn't know they were loaded. This is makes him a very bad Attorney General if he's lying, and an abominable one if he's telling the truth.

The government acts in our interest.

2005-10-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

Well it's there in black and white, in the Herald no less (SMH 4/10/2005), "National ID system in pipeline to prevent repeat of Rau case". Thank god. All this time I feared a national ID system would be put in place to help infringe our civil liberties but now it's being proposed to prevent a repeat of the Rau case. For those of you that either aren't Australian or have been hiding under a rock for months the Rau case involved the deportation of Cornelia Rau from Australia as an illegal immigrant although she was a legal permanent resident. Throughout the affair DIMIA (the Department of Immigration, and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, because of course being here 40 minutes and being here 40,000 years* are pretty much the same thing) acted without a hint of concern for Ms. Rau's welfare. They ignored evidence that she was mentally ill, a fact obvious to everyone but government employees and/or contractors. They made no effort to establish her true identity, merely taking the word of an obviously disturbed woman. Clearly some change is needed to prevent the stress, worry and emotional damage to Ms. Rau and her family (who had no idea where she was and suspected she might be dead in a ditch somewhere). I left this blog entry for a while and in the meantime there are reports that people were held illegally by DIMIA for SEVEN YEARS. Christ even most of the Guantanamo Bay guys will have gotten out by then.

Now if DIMIA was a private organisation they would (in between court appearances for their numerous acts of bastardry) not have acted in the humane and generous way they now propose to act. Because government cares and private businesses do not. No, private businesses are cruel and heartless and would have only pasted the phone and fax number of the police missing persons bureau on the phone and fax and made damn sure that it's employees actually checked that their detainees were illegal immigrants rather than missing persons, lest they get sued off the face of the earth. They would have only done their job in the least costly way possible consistent with getting it done.

But not our DIMIA, no they want to set up a massive and intrusive database system that doubtless be extended over the years in ways that the present ministers swear it will not be used in. All this will of course cost a fortune, which will be spent because, I repeat, the government cares. They have our interests at heart. They are concerned with our welfare. Good on you John Howard for caring enough to violate my privacy and make me feel a little less of a free man, or a man at all, with every action you and your government take.

* Low esimate.

The unspeakable oath.

2005-09-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

"We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
No you don't. You're a child without the right or ability to pledge allegiance. Allegiance to a flag is a promise to enter into military conflict on it's behalf should that be neccesary. It is not as Barbara Dietrich pretends in http://www.jaredstory.com/pledge.html a promise "to be a good friend.". This might be it's meaning in a social context. We are however talking about a political context because the pledge is to a flag. In a political context allegiance means exactly that. It means that if the entity you pledged allegiance to is in a fight then you have to join in. No ifs, ands or buts. That's what it means, a promise to murder the State's enermies, regardless of wether said enemies are acting against you or even in a way you admire and/or benefit from. To require children to do this is both impractical and horrifyingly immoral. Does anyone believe that any of the 12 years olds that are forced to recite this pledge would make effective killers? Does anyone doubt they'd be dosed to the eyeballs with Ritalin if they showed any sign they would be?*
In addition to being stupid it's also rubbish as an oath. No judge would hold a child liable for a contract to buy a car, rent a house or procure the services of a prostitute, but the State wants them to swear to kill somebody. Why would anyone wish someone to swear an oath they did not expect to keep? At least not until they become adults.
When they mature this puts the swearer in a strange situation. If they've sworn as a child do they publically renounce their oath? If they do they face official suspicion and the condemnation of their neighbours. If they do not they are faced with the official and public presumption that they intend to keep the oath. But the oath was non-binding and obliges them to do things that may be against their conscience. On the other hand it is also (hopefully) against their conscience to go against their sworn oath. Either way they are forced to do something that they feel morally uncomfortable with.
Nor is this solely a problem with people who reject military service in general or a specific conflict in particular. By extracting the oath before their majority the State has removed from people the ability to make the committment when they are morally capable of doing so. Like someone forced to pay $100 to relieve the victims of Hurricane Katrina they no longer have the option to do so by their own free will.
Many people praise the oath on the grounds that it is a promise to do something that is noble and good. If that were so why extract such a promise before it can be legitimately made? If the cause is worth defending why not rely on the free will of the nation's citizens to defend it? If a cause does not to attract enough volunteers to defend it then might it be a bad cause to begin with? If it is a good cause and it does not attract enough volunteers to defend it is that not a sign the nation is doomed anyway? Either way a good cause doesn't need or cannot use the forced extraction of oaths, forced by violence or by preying on the vulnerability of children.
Even if the cause in which children swore was good it would still not be good to make them swear to do so. A child by definition doesn't have the capacity to swear binding oaths. They are not mature enough to realise the consequences of their actions. If someone told you that a six year old sold one of their kidneys for a years supply of ice-cream and chocolate you'd be horrified. You would think (rightly) that an adult took advantage of a child's ignorance and shortsightedness in an immoral fashion. So much more so for a child that sells his whole life potentially in this oath of "allegiance", for nothing more than a teacher's approval. Moral adults (by which I mean those whose morals have achieved maturity and also adults who are moral) don't trick children into making promises.
Now on to the practical aspects of taking the oath. A child of Ayn Rand (spiritiually of course) might ask "What's in it for me?". Only a fool gives their alliegance without something in return. But the State gives nothing to these children. Not even a promise they don't intend to keep. A medieval lord, arrogant in his power and ruthless in it's exercise, would not dare to make someone swear allegiance without offering protection in return. A vassal's oath was always accompanied by a lord's. Each promised to protect the other. But the State promises nothing. It's not "selfish" to insist on something from the State in response to the State getting you to swear to commit the most foul murders and take the greatest risks. It's entirely reasonable and neccesary if you are to look to your families interest. Most people regard looking to such interest as not only morally allowable but morally imperative. If you die in a foreign field that will be forever (fill in nation) without getting some benefit for your family to compensate for the risk and/or loss then you've let done your kin and should be ashamed.
Then there's the obscene assertion "one nation, indivisible". It is self-evident crap. A nation is made up of people associated, and what is formed by agreement can be disolved by agreement. This is obvious legally and morally because each member has the right of self-ownership. This right includes the right to leave associations subject only to the insistance of others that you keep contracts. If each self-owner withdraws his insistance the association has nothing left in it that can legally or morally compel you to stay. Of course the United States was not actually formed by agreement. So much the better for my argument, for to argue that those forced into an association can't leave it but those who chose it can is rediculous. Those forced into an association have all the rights to leave of willing participants, and more. If the "form of government" becomes a hinderance rather than a help to exercising your rights you have every right to abolish it. If you do not then the United States of America ought not to exist and pledging to it is both wrong and futile. If the "form" of the government is that it stretches over a large geographical area and that makes it harder to exercise your rights you are just as right to break it up into a number of smaller governments as you are to change anything else about it.
The pledge of alligance is not a morally uplifting and harmless exercise. It is a deceptively gained promise to defend regardless of the worth of that being defended. A promise to violate the rights of one's fellow citizens to seccession. A promise to do so in causes you have no idea you might have to support and which would horrify you if you did. It's wrong to do this to your children.

* Not that that would neccesarily hinder them in becoming such.
http://add.about.com/health/add/library/weekly/aa052599.htm
http://www.drugawareness.org/washtimes.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/april99/antisocial04299.htm

Security and why to reject it.

2005-09-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

We are often told that various government actions, laws, policies etc. are neccesary for security. Whenever this justification is heard it's a signal that the proposed action is morally wrong and probably counterproductive. This essay explains why.
When a policy is justified on the grounds that it will deliver a tangible benefit, e.g. better phone service for the bush, greater economic egalitarianism, better education, reduced budget deficiets, the outcome can be judged. It's not always easy to do so but it's always potentially possible. "Security" however consists of things not happening that might not happen anyway. The difference between an excellent security system that is never challenged and a horrible one that is never challenged is almost impossible to detect. A consequence of this is that changes that increase security and decrease it are almost indistinguishable. Therefore each change in policy for "security" must simulate visible significantly increased security. This means that the changes must be dramatic and even radical even when the actual solution is inconspicuous and incremental. In addition because of the difficulty of identifying changes that increase security a lot of changes bad for security have been passed. To avoid these changes being seen as bad for security any further changes must be in the same direction, even if that is the wrong direction.
But security laws always seem to decrease freeedom. This is not explained by the above rationales. If new laws to increase security have to be dramatic and highly visible, why can't they be dramatically and visibly pro-freedom? The reason is simple, every security law needs not just a justification of it's existance but a justification of it's timing. Why wasn't the law passed before the horrible thing that made it apparently neccesary? Due to the fundamental nature of security in justifying the State the usual excuses (cost, difficulty of implementation, the previous government etc.) won't wash. Security is supposedly the primary reason why we have a State. It's not like prosperity or "freedom" an alleged side benefit, it's the main game. So to justify not previously bringing in these neccesary changes the government must find an artificial barrier, something that stopped them before but that they are gamely now trying to overcome. The most obvious scapegoats are "civil libertarians" by which they mean everyone who thinks that something less than absolute slavery is desireable. By opposing previous and proposed increases in government power they allow the government to point to them and say "We wanted to do the neccesary thing but were constrained by these namby-pamby weak on terrorist types.". They may even make the conflict seem internal; "I would have pushed through these neccesary laws but was contrained by civil liberty concerns", concerns that they now abandon when convenient.
Since every "security" law must be justified by a process like this every security" law is a blow against liberty. And a blow against liberty is in the end a
blow against security. Because only the free can have the information, the arms and the adaptability of action to ensure their own security. Only they will have the strength of character to protect themselves.

The compulsorary community.

2005-09-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

This entry is a response to the Ross Gittins article "Let's not turn unis into shopping centres"

"Well we could start with the question of whether a university constitutes a 'community' with obligations to correct disadvantage for particular members - we could but we're not going to appearantly. In your entire article you don't provide a single iota of evidence that universities in general or in a particular case are, were or ought to be communities with such obligations. Since the implication they should is a large part of your article this ommission is either stupid or dishonest and you're not stupid. In fact there are several reasons why they shouldn't be.

1) Very few people in universities are related by blood, adoption or even marriage so one powerful aid to strong communities is missing.
2) Secondly universities have high turnover rates and thus few people with the ability to form long term relationships and trust neccessary for communities to function. It's true that relationships formed in university can last for decades and help form a community, but it's one that forms _outside_ the university.
3) Thirdly university students don't live in the same place thus making it harder to organise community events.
4) Universities have far more people in them than an individual could know. Even with an excellent memory and social skills one could have a moderately close relationship with only small percentage of the university staff and students.
5) Students already have large demands on their time and resources because they are heavily investing in human capital and thus have little left either to form a community or to provide for the "disadvantaged". Universities are supposed to encourage diversity because differing viewpoints are vital to developing new ideas and differing backgrounds help provide this. This diversity makes it harder to form relationships and agreements or get people to help each other since people are both more willing to and better at helping people like themselves. For agreements where diversity is sought the additional difficulty is a worthwhile expense. But I don't see any evidence that childcare is one of those, nor counselling. For I could not advise a Catholic who was having a crisis of faith, because I have no idea what a crisis of religious faith implies. I could learn but why should I when there are plenty of catholics who already know and are both willing and able to help? It's a bad use of resources even though the goal is worthwhile.
6) Universities are engaged in a complex task requiring specialist skills. Such tasks are usually best handled by organisations dedicated to those tasks alone to allow division of labour. This is not always the case but often. Pediatric Cardic units don't generally also perform earthquake relief.
7) The biggest argument against regarding universtities as being "communities" in your sense is the simpliest one, if they had to pay for it, people wouldn't do it. I;m not arguing that people won't provide counselling or child-care to the "disadvantaged" if given the choice, I'm arguing that they wouldn't do it through their universtity. Free market economics applies just as much to the production of communities as it does to the production of cheese, Nintendo machines, economics articles in the Sydney Morning Herald. If people want a community they are more than capable of constructing one without government coercion. Why it should suddenly be neccesary to give them free tertiary education to get them to do something they did for free for 5,000 years is beyond me. As is why a free counselling service availible only to students would have a comparative advantage over other free counselling services. Why discriminate on the basis of university entrance? From the point of view of "helping the disadvantaged" this doesn't make a lot of sense. The most in need of counselling are farmers and other people in professions with a high risk of suicide. It should be noted they are mostly male and university students mostly female. I don't say this is evidence of sexism in the provision of counselling services, but reading "The myth of male power" got me thinking in that direction.

You stated that "We happily define countries, states and council areas as communities and give them the power to tax.". Everything in that sentence is untrue. First of all I hate to speak for a minority I'm not a member of but "Who's we white man?". Before Australia was "defined as a community" there were plenty of people quite happily living in the communities they defined. They were far from happy with being included in the new institution without their foreknowledge or consent. By the way the institution is a nation-state not a community. There's an easy test, if a group is formed and maintained by violence then it's a State (capital s) if it's formed and maintained by consent it's a community. I would not be at all happy to define something as a State even if I had the opportunity (which neither I nor anyone I know ever will). Drawing a line on one side of which one group of thugs rules and on the other another is not work for which I have the talent or taste. Of course since the State was defined decades prior to my birth the point is moot. Then there's the phrase "give them the power to tax". It was given? That's strange I thought William the Bastard and his heirs and successors just took the damn thing. My memory of history is vague but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Consultation of Hastings in 1066.

You ask if what universities do is "all that different" from what employers do. It is. Employers don't do it with my money but with their own. Employers bear the economic consequences of their economic decisions. Universities bear the economy consequences of the governments political decisions. Students don't choose universities on the basis of the student union but on how good the taxpayer funded education is. In effect taxpayers who never set foot in the universtity subsidise student union activities over which they have zero democratic control. Students not taxpayers in general decide how much is spent on maintaining "campus life" but taxpayers fund the benefit sold below cost to provide it. If government wants to fund some bizare, amoral, wasteful, homicidal and/or counterproductive enterprise* I can vote against them next election (and that's the plan). I cannot do the same for student unions.

You argue for "Ramsey pricing" but that's not what universities are doing.
The claim that voluntary student unionism will push up costs assumes that, by some economic miracle unknown in the history of the science government policy hit on exactly the right economics of scale. We don't and can't know what the results of free choice are. If we could we'd have exploited it and be millionaires, until we tried to do it again and stuffed up. As for reducing the choices availible that's what all taxes do. The difference between what is seen and unseen is that while the decrease in choice due to tax is invisible in this context the choices provided by the tax are not. To assert that there is a net loss of positive externalities is simply to assume away theose that would arise from students persuing the same goals different ways. Why is it that only goals persued with other people's money are said to have positive externalities? The arguement "the market will always undersupply positive externailities" is irrevelent unless someone else will do a better job of supplying them. It's also hardly a proven point. Markets have plenty of ways of supplying positive externalities, for instance mutual societies, charities, social pressure, business sponsorship of sporting teams etc. To argue that the market "always" undersupplies them is brave. Want to bet I can find a case where they don't? It is the statists who have a primitive, reductionist economic theory that ignores how positive externalities operate. In any case if university administrators believed that funding such activities would provide more benefits to their students or attract more full fee payers they can continue to fund them out of general revenue. This opposed by students because they have little faith that the benefits really justify the cost.

The arguement that universtities ought to be centres of "informal" learning is perhaps the weakest argument for CSU. Everywhere ought to be a centre for infromal learning, that doesn''t mean that taking money from another accomplishes that goal. In fact the net effect of subsiding such activiteis is to take away time (from people who have to workharder to pay taxes ) and people who are interested in these activities from the non-university sector. These are the two things most needed for informal learning. You haven't shown any increase in "informal learning" merely a transfer of such learning from most people to university students.

This explains why so many are fighting so that government by the uni students, of the uni students, for the uni students shall not perish from this land. It's an elitist fantasy that what is good for the chosen few benefit all. It's another that only people with degrees have something to contribute. Centreing the informal learning in university student societies feeds both myths and they feed it and all feed an elitist and centralist agenda. It is no coincidence that student societies are generally pro-centralisation. Even the so called "free market" advocates are the sort that suggest a freer market can best achieve government goals. Ironically however if I were to believe your contentions that a) university students gain most from extraciricula activities and b) most won't fund them I would have to believe they were kinda thick. Which demolishes the idea that it's a good thing to spend money teaching them anything. I do not believe that this is true (in general).

Of course the idea that we should thank CSU for all the poiticians, activists and sports stars depends on their services being worth of thanks. In the case of sports stars (you thought I was going for politicians didn't you?) I say it sin't. National sporting success creates national unity and identity, very bad and dangerous things. A collection of honest rational people is neither identical nor unified. Such qualities are only useful to tie us all to the same yoke. If you truly love your country you must prey for the defeat of it's athletes not just it's soldiers. If however you just like your sport then arranging sponsorship is (as I said previously) not hard.

The results of newspapermen being disproportionately from universities might be even more dangerous. Diversity of opinon is vital to democracy, so how many of these student editors or journos will come out for VSU? Or anything that tends to undermine the power of universities? Please don't misunderstand me, I suggest no conspiracy. I just think they (you) will act to secure that which helped them (you) , thinking that since it helped them it is generally helpful. It is impossible to know if it is without knowing what use would have been made of resources if they didn't go to universities. That which is seen and unseen agains comes into view.
The same thing that I've said about journos goes for actiivists and politicians too. Having them disproportionately come from taxpayer funded institutions distorts the debate on those institutions and probably all other taxpayer funded institutions as well.

There is a myth invented by arrogant thugs to perpetuate their rule that communities needs government help. In fact it's not even clear they need a government to exist. The ide athat the individualist philosophy is a threat to community ignores the fact that individuals created the communities in the first place for individualistic purposes. What these purposes is hazy, varied and diverse, but they had goals best satsified by the creation of a community so they made one. Groups formed by government don't tend to become communities to any great extent. Walk through a housing estate if you doubt me. To limit individual freedom for the sake of the community is self-defeating because the community interest is only a collection of private itnerests so limiting the freedom of members arbitrarily cannot serve it. It is of course possible for a net benefit to arise out of some limitations (e.g. prohibitions on alcohol in muslim communities or "dry camps", prohibitions on having girlfriends in a monastry). There is no reason to expect that government or other outside planners are better at spotting such opportunites than the community members themselves. They certainly has less motive to do so. The free market is better at creating communities just like it's better at creating for-profit firms, and for the same reason. We are better at judging our own interests than government.

* I am not refering here to the war in Iraq. Why would you think I was?

On sympathy for the bombing victims.

2005-07-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

My sympathy for the Londoners in the wake of the bombings was deep, it was heartfelt, it was genuine and it was sorrowful. It was that, but now it's over. It's gone, never to arise again. Why am I no longer mourning for their pain? Because you can't mourn for your own bombing dead one week and celebrate somebody else's the next and that's exactly what London did. Four days after their own were viciously and immorally attacked they commemerated their victory in WWII. Nothing wrong with that I'm glad they won too. But one of the planes flying over the crowd and dropping poppy's (given the current Bush/Blair attitude to Afghan druglords it's appropriate that RAF planes deliver such flowers) was a Lancaster. The plane that did most of the genocidal bombing of German cities that killed over 600,000 people overwhelmingly civilians. So London if you want my tears now or the next time Osama or the IRA use fertliser for non-agricultural purposes, stop glorifying your own terror campaigns.

The age of credibility.

2004-05-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

The 21st century is not the age of technology because everyone has technology. It is not the age of information because (barring some 3rd world inhabitants) everyone has information. What everyone does not have is credibility, so credibility is power. Don't believe me? Then obviously you won't do anything about what I said, won't protest,
won't buy stocks or sell them, won't change your school your life, your job. So my use of technology and your receipt of information changed nothing. But if you believed me you might change your job, your life, even your country. So my power is nothing, but if I had credibility it might be everything. If I had credibility, I could stop wars or start them, feed the hungry or make them go without, get beautiful women or men, anything. One day they might realise that I was right to say this, and then I will have credibility. Hope it happens before I die.