Quotulatiousness

March 26, 2012

Court rules that prostitution is still legal in Canada, strikes down other parts of law

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Yes, prostitution is still legal … but some of the worst restrictions hedging it around have been declared unconstitutional:

The Court of Appeal for Ontario has swept aside some of the country’s anti-prostitution laws saying they place unconstitutional restrictions on prostitutes’ ability to protect themselves.

The landmark decision means sex workers will be able to hire drivers, bodyguards and support staff and work indoors in organized brothels or “bawdy houses,” while “exploitation” by pimps remains illegal.

However, openly soliciting customers on the street remains prohibited with the judges deeming that “a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression.”

The province’s highest court suspended the immediate implementation of striking the bawdy house law for a year to allow the government an opportunity to amend the Criminal Code.

[. . .]

The appeal stems from the legal oddity that while prostitution was not illegal, many activities surrounding it were, including running a brothel or bawdy house, communicating for the purpose of prostitution and living on money earned by a prostitute.

That disconnect led to a constitutional challenge mounted by three sex trade workers who say the laws prevented them from taking basic safety precautions, such as hiring a bodyguard, working indoors or spending time assessing potential clients in public.

March 25, 2012

Bryan Caplan: John Stuart Mill was over-rated

Filed under: Books, History, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Mill isn’t one of my favourite philosophers: I read On Liberty as a teenager, but most of it didn’t stick with me (probably more a reflection of my age than the work itself, I agree). Bryan Caplan makes a case for him being far more famous than he deserves:

One especially cringeworthy example: In the span of two pages in On Liberty, Mill names one “ultimate” principle and one “absolute” principle. His Ultimate Principle:

    It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions…

His Absolute Principle:

    The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion.

You might think that Mill would argue that his Ultimate Principle implies his Absolute Principle — or at least that that the two principles never conflict. That would be silly and dogmatic, but consistent.

[. . .]

Unfortunately for Mill, neither his Ultimate nor Absolute Principles leaves any role for mere “capability.” You could say, “If free and equal discussion will improve a person, you should respect his liberty.” When words work, there’s no reason to resort to beatings. But after free and equal discussion fails to open the eyes of a person capable of free and equal discussion, why not try coercion? No matter what a person’s “capabilities,” Mill’s Ultimate Principle commands coercion and his Absolute Principle forbids it.

Britain’s stealth decriminalization of marijuana

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

An interesting post at The Economist on the recent changes to law and police practices in Britain in regard to cannabis cultivation and consumption:

Small growers are squeezing out both importers and the well-connected, often Vietnamese, gangs that once dominated domestic production. The big cannabis factories set up by the latter, with their telltale heat hazes, are fairly easy to spot. Smaller operations are often uncovered only when the electric lights start fires, or when local teenagers mount a burglary.

The police and the courts can neither keep up with the surge in small-scale production, nor are they desperately keen to do so. Last month the government published new sentencing guidelines that advised judges to treat small cultivators less strictly. Attitudes to smokers are softening, too. The reclassification of cannabis in 2009, from class C to the more stringent class B, was oddly accompanied by a more liberal approach to policing consumption. Users caught on the street are rarely arrested; rather, they are issued “cannabis cautions” (a reprimand which doesn’t appear on a criminal record) or fined.

[. . .]

Strangely, this lackadaisical approach is not encouraging people to take up the reefer habit. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the proportion of people who admit to having used cannabis in Britain has fallen more quickly than in any other European country over the past few years. Just 6.8% of adults told another survey that they used cannabis in 2010, down from 10.9% eight years earlier. The herb is now ubiquitous and effectively tolerated — and, perhaps as a result, not all that alluring.

There are more than ten reasons to oppose bill C-10

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

But I guess we have to start somewhere. Trinda L. Ernst has an article in the Toronto Star which compiles the top ten reasons to oppose the Conservatives’ most recent “tough on crime” bill:

Bill C-10 is titled The Safe Streets and Communities Act — an ironic name, considering that Canada already has some of the safest streets and communities in the world and a declining crime rate. This bill will do nothing to improve that state of affairs but, through its overreach and overreaction to imaginary problems, Bill C-10 could easily make it worse. It could eventually create the very problems it’s supposed to solve.

Bill C-10 will require new prisons; mandate incarceration for minor, non-violent offences; justify poor treatment of inmates and make their reintegration into society more difficult. Texas and California, among other jurisdictions, have already started down this road before changing course, realizing it cost too much and made their justice system worse. Canada is poised to repeat their mistake.

[. . .]

Canadians deserve accurate information about Bill C-10, its costs and its effects. This bill will change our country’s entire approach to crime at every stage of the justice system. It represents a huge step backwards; rather than prioritizing public safety, it emphasizes retribution above all else. It’s an approach that will make us less safe, less secure, and ultimately, less Canadian.

H/T to Bren McKenna for sending me the link.

March 24, 2012

“When you change the meaning of words to suit your purposes, you can ‘prove’ anything”

Filed under: Britain, Health, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:17

Sam Bowman discusses the injustice of minimum alcohol pricing at the Adam Smith Institute blog:

I’ve struggled to write something about minimum alcohol pricing today. It’s a hugely important issue, and one I care deeply about. But I can’t help but be angry at the people who’ve proposed it, and the government made up of supposed “conservatives” and “liberals” who plan on implementing it. It’s anti-individualism at its worst.

The “evidence-based” arguments made for minimum alcohol pricing are, in fact, based on distortion and bad science. The policy is paternalistic, indiscriminate, and only hits people who are frugal or on lower incomes. Slippery slope arguments are common, for good reason. But they’re especially appropriate here.

The idea that there should be a price floor for alcohol is well-loved by public health types, and often supported unthinkingly by middle class voters, often due to the media coverage of “binge drinking” among the young. It disproportionally hurts the poor, by increasing the cost of buying the cheapest forms of alcohol (which the poor are more likely to buy). To many, this is seen as a feature rather than a bug, as they assume that it will act to decrease alcohol consumption. Instead, it’s more likely to force poor drinkers to pay less for other things (like food and clothing) and will not measurably decrease alcohol consumption — how is it compassionate to make poor people even more poor?

The politics of this are straightforward but effective: target the most marginal, “problem” group – in this case, binge drinkers – with a low minimum price to pass an apparently-trivial law.

[. . .]

The justifications for this are completely, utterly bogus. Britain does not have a drinking problem: as ASI fellow Chris Snowdon has pointed out, we drink less today than ten years ago, less than a hundred years ago, and far less than we did before that.

Internationally, we are in the middle of the table in the European rankings, behind France, Germany and Spain, and far behind the Czech Republic and Luxemburg.

But what about binge drinking? In fact, the definition of “binge drinking” has been warped beyond all recognition. Four pints in a day counts as a “binge” for an adult man, according to official definitions. A woman drinking three standard (175ml) glasses of wine is “binging” as well.

As Chris points out, the number of diseases defined as “alcohol related” has tripled in the last 25 years. When you change the meaning of words to suit your purposes, you can “prove” anything.

March 23, 2012

Millennial generation not following the script

Filed under: Economics, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

They’ve been subjected to more “sharing/caring” and “we are the world” propaganda than any group of youngsters since the Young Pioneers and the Hitler Youth, yet they appear to be shrugging off the programming in double-quick time:

Young Amer­i­cans care less and less about the the en­vi­ron­ment, pol­i­tics, and the world around them in gen­er­al, a study has found; even the idea of seek­ing a mean­ing­ful life is out of fash­ion.

In­stead, mon­ey, im­age and fame are the idols of our time.

“Pop­u­lar views of the mil­len­ni­al genera­t­ion, born in the 1980s and 1990s, as more car­ing, com­mun­ity-oriented and pol­i­tic­ally en­gaged than pre­vi­ous genera­t­ions are largely in­cor­rect, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared to ba­by boomers and Genera­t­ion X at the same age,” said the stu­dy’s lead au­thor, Jean Twenge, a psy­chol­o­gist at San Die­go State Uni­vers­ity and au­thor of the book Genera­t­ion Me. “These da­ta show that re­cent genera­t­ions are less likely to em­brace com­mun­ity mind­ed­ness and are fo­cus­ing more on mon­ey, im­age and fame.”

[. . .]

The wish to save the en­vi­ron­ment, an ar­ea of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to mil­len­ni­als, showed some of the larg­est de­clines, with three times as many mil­len­ni­als as ba­by boomers at the same age say­ing they made no per­son­al ef­fort to help the en­vi­ron­ment. Fif­ty-one per­cent of mil­len­ni­als said they made an ef­fort to cut down on elec­tri­city use to save en­er­gy, com­pared to 68 per­cent of boomers in the 1970s.

[. . .]

In the Amer­i­can Fresh­man sur­vey, the pro­por­tion of stu­dents who said be­ing wealthy was very im­por­tant to them rose from 45 per­cent for ba­by boomers (sur­veyed be­tween 1966 and 1978) to 70 per­cent for Genera­t­ion Xers (sur­veyed be­tween 1979 and 1999) and 75 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als (sur­veyed be­tween 2000 and 2009).

The frac­tion who said it was im­por­tant to keep up to date with pol­i­tics dropped, from 50 per­cent for boomers to 39 per­cent for Genera­t­ion Xers and 35 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als. “Be­com­ing in­volved in pro­grams to clean up the en­vi­ron­ment” fell from 33 per­cent for boomers to 20 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als. “De­vel­op­ing a mean­ing­ful phi­los­o­phy of life” de­creased the most across genera­t­ions, from 73 per­cent for boomers to 45 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als.

QotD: Compassion

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:42

It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have government take money by force through taxes to give money to poor people is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self righteous, bullying laziness. People need to be fed, medicated, educated clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gun point.

Penn Jillette, God No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, 2011

March 21, 2012

“Euphemisms, like elevated temperature, are usually a sign of sickness”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

George Jonas on the redefinition game, as currently being played in the European Union:

The subject was the justice commissioner’s office beginning a 10-week period of “consultation” with Europe’s publicly listed companies about breaking the “glass ceiling.” That’s the invisible barrier that supposedly keeps women from Big Capital’s boardrooms. Not altogether, of course, but at only 13% not in the volume Ms. Reding thinks right. After 10 weeks, Europe’s companies will either comply “voluntarily” with Ms. Reding’s idea of the correct percentage, or she will start considering “legislative measures.”

[. . .]

After putting discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, etc., beyond the pale, the government introduces programs whose specific — indeed, only — aim is to compel discrimination on the very grounds it prohibits. The first casualty is the language; its first symptoms, a rash of euphemisms. Liberal-fascist societies break out in euphemisms faster than you can say “affirmative action.”

Doctors of the body politic — a.k.a. writers — react to euphemisms as medical doctors react to fever. Language strives for accuracy; it has a built-in bias for calling a spade a spade, so hearing something called something else shows up as a tick on the diagnostic chart. Euphemisms, like elevated temperature, are usually a sign of sickness.

This is Stage One. In Stage Two the interventionist state abandons all, or at least some pretense, and admits to doing what it’s doing. It’s feeling strong enough to feel its oats.

The EU is now a Stage Two tyranny. It still has lots of room to grow before it becomes a monster-state, but it has started coming clean.

March 20, 2012

Kathy Shaidle on the SPLC’s most recently discovered threat to national security

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

In her column at Taki’s Magazine, Kathy examines the Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent revelation:

The armchair Freedom Riders at the weirdly named Southern Poverty Law Center (or “$PLC” as one of its dogged critics prefers) have been courageously, er, browsing the Internet and have uncovered a potentially devastating threat to not only America’s females, but its national security:

Dudes trading tips on getting laid.

Yep. The biggest threat since David Duke and the rabid Klansmen are … pick-up artists.

Woodland white supremacists? Old and tired. New hotness? According to the SPLC’s most recent “Intelligence Report,” the latest “hate group” plaguing the United States is the online “pickup artist” “community,” AKA the “manosphere.”

[. . .]

“Roissy” — he took his nom de poon from a character in the S&M classic The Story of O — is the Tolkien of pickup artist Middle Earth, having invented or refined the manosphere’s glossary: alpha male, game, wingman, the “anti-slut defense” (“I don’t usually do this sort of thing…”), and negging (offering attractive women teasing insults instead of compliments: “You have really big ears. Don’t worry, I think it’s cute, kind of like a bunny.”).

Speaking of “Roissy” (who now uses the name “Heartiste” for his online activities), here is his take on Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of a Politically Acceptable Bell Curve:

I don’t have an argument with his economic numbers, although I think he probably understates the role automation, immigration and skill prerequisite inflation have had in the gutting of working class men’s job prospects and ability to merge seamlessly into functional family formation.

Murray is closer to the truth than a lot of his critics are when he blames cultural factors and bad policy for the dysfunction of the left side of the bell curve.

[. . .]

How absolutely brave… brave, I say! …of Murray to apportion most of the blame for the current state of affairs to men. Or, in this case, white men. This will surely win him lots of enemies amongst the feminists and social elites whose cocktail party invitations he haughtily throws in the trash in righteous, principled fury.

Look, I have no problem with shaming men who don’t want to work, or who can’t muster the motivation to at least try to find work. It’s not like the existence of self-destructive male bums is unheard of. But Murray DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS his proposed shaming solution with his explanation for the bleak male employment scenario just a few paragraphs above in the very same article! Once more:

    Simplifying somewhat, here’s my reading of the relevant causes: Whether because of support from the state or earned income, women became much better able to support a child without a husband over the period of 1960 to 2010. As women needed men less, the social status that working-class men enjoyed if they supported families began to disappear.

Where, pray tell, in that explanation does it follow that men are primarily to blame for their poor employment numbers? Doesn’t the exact opposite conclusion — that women’s mate choices are to blame for men dropping out — seem more obvious? Shouldn’t it be the case then, that single working women on the fast track to single motherhood and alpha cock carouseling are the ones deserving of shame?

Suppressing one shoot of the Arab Spring, with British and American help

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

Tim Black talks about the oddly different reaction to the Bahrain “Arab Spring” protests:

For decades, the people of this Middle Eastern state have lived under what is effectively a hereditary dictatorship. In spring last year, however, it looked like things might finally change. A long-repressed people began to feel emboldened. Protests gathered momentum. At last, it seemed, a more democratic, more open future beckoned. And then, the crackdown. The troops moved in, the shooting (and killing) started, and the summary arrest, detention and torture commenced in earnest.

Now, you could be forgiven for guessing Syria. But you’d be wrong. The place I’m describing here is the small Gulf state of Bahrain, just off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Still, given the brutal repression, given the popular unrest, you would expect the West to have responded to events in Bahrain much as it responded to events elsewhere in the region. After all, Bahraini troops effectively began firing on their own people; and a disenfranchised majority struggling for some degree of political sovereignty, long withheld by Bahrain’s decidedly unconstitutional monarchy, is still being repressed.

[. . .]

As I have written before, Bahrain is the point at which the hypocrisy of the West’s attitude to the Arab uprisings is writ large. While America, the UK and France were happy to pose, posture and bomb when it came to a pantomime villain like Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, the far more problematic state of Bahrain offers no such easy moral capital.

[. . .]

So what of the situation now? With ‘human rights-trained’ police out on the beat, it must be hunky dory, right? Well, given that around 200,000 people (about a third of Bahrain’s population) gathered to protest in a suburb of Manama a few weeks ago, and given the near nightly explosions of tear-gassed violence in the villages and districts around the capital, it all seems far from hunky dory. As one activist put it last week, ‘This is a war’. And it is a war which officials from Saudi Arabia, America and Britain are fighting in — on the anti-democratic, liberty-crushing side.

March 19, 2012

Illinois railfan photographer threatened with being added to terror watch list

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

Photography within 550 feet of a railway line is illegal in Illinois, according to a police deputy who likes to make up his own laws:

A man who was taking pictures near a train track in Illinois was confronted by a sheriff’s deputy who informed him that he was breaking the law, so therefore he had no choice but to report the photographer to Homeland Security.

The photographer, who describes himself as a disabled war veteran and former state worker, was left wondering if the deputy had any legal basis for adding him to a terrorist watch list.

[. . .]

RustyBug, who never states which sheriff’s department harassed him, said the deputy told him it was against the law to shoot within 550 feet from train tracks, which is complete hogwash.

RustyBug said he really wasn’t buying it, but he wasn’t sure either, which shows us the importance of knowing the law when it comes to photography because too many cops don’t know the law.

March 18, 2012

Reason.tv: Why The Future Is Better Than You Think

Filed under: Economics, Health, History, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:06

“Santorum’s own web site suggests that seeing this turned between 15 and 25% of the crowd insta-gay”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:31

Title courtesy of Popehat’s Twitter feed. Article at Gawker:

Santorum’s virgin eyes have been tarnished by sin — as a protest against the Republican presidential candidate’s vehemently anti-gay policies, two men got the attention of the crowd at an Illinois rally and kissed each other. Guards removed the men from the gym as the crowd chanted “U-S-A.” Because nothing is more American than repression.

March 17, 2012

P.J. O’Rourke on the Cato-Koch shootout

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

His latest column is on the infighting over control of the libertarian Cato Institute:

The Koch brothers’ motive seems clear, to the extent there’s clarity in human motivation. They want to rid the Oval Office of a pest and Congress of the pestilence’s plague-carriers. In their battle against statist disease, the Kochs seem to regard Cato’s individualism as too individualistic. They want a more collective effort to cure collectivism.

Current Cato board chairman Bob Levy met with David Koch and some of Koch’s political advisers last November. According to Levy, “They said that a principal goal was to defeat Barack Obama. The way David put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato’s work to advance their electoral goals.”

Of course, if David Koch had bothered to read the Cato trove of books, articles, policy analysis, and research on the Obama administration’s bunk and boners, he would have found six-shooter ammunition enough to burst through the swinging doors of the Electoral Goals Saloon and make every sarsaparilla-drinking tenderfoot in the Democratic party dance.

[. . .]

And Cato couldn’t be involved in partisan politics. Everyone there is a libertarian. You might as well command your cat to bring you your pajamas as tell a bunch of libertarians to get on the same political platform. I know these people. Ron Paul is a bien-pensant by comparison. Cato scholars prize contentious thought. Get in a debate with one and you’ll find out he doesn’t even agree with himself.

[. . .]

It can be said, with some justice, that libertarians apply only one measure to every issue. But what a sublime yardstick it is. Libertarians ask, about each thing they encounter in public life, “Does this promote the liberty, responsibility, and dignity of the individual?” Libertarianism can have political implications, but politics is, by definition, mass action. And libertarians don’t believe in the masses. They believe in the individuals huddled in those masses. A pure libertarian is opposed to politics down to the soles of his shoes (or, libertarians being libertarians, down to the bottom of his sandals worn with socks). Libertarianism is contra-political, an emetic dose to be given to politics. As we’ve seen lately, all politics needs one sometimes.

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

March 15, 2012

Santorum vows to eliminate online porn

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:26

As if he wasn’t already socially conservative enough, Rick Santorum is now promising a moral crusade to clean up the internet:

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.

The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

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