Quotulatiousness

June 16, 2010

You mean, the sky really isn’t falling?

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Greg Swann has some advice for the new libertarian who may be inclined to panic over the current state of the world:

I’ve seen the gravely-predicted collapse of the starry firmament before. More than once. More than twice. More than a dozen times. It does seem plausible to me that the-world-as-we-know-it will someday come to an end. But with every passing day, I become more resolved in the belief that that day will not be tomorrow, regardless of the breathless weather reports.

It’s like this: New libertarians can be excitable. You’ve lived your whole life in an eyes-glazed-over sleep-walking state, and then, all at once, you wake up. The precipitant cause might be Atlas Shrugged or a John Stossel TV special or a reading from Jefferson on a radio talk show. Doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that you suddenly see the world as if had just been made, as if you had never seen it before. And you become acutely aware of the many defects in the way the world has been assembled.

That much is good, but, even so, in this state you are more than unusually likely to conclude that things are so bad that they are beyond repair. The timeline in Atlas Shrugged is only 13 short years, after all. How could we have shambled this far down The Road to Serfdom without being in imminent danger of being immediately enserfed?

H/T to Kathy Shaidle.

Policing for Profit

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

June 15, 2010

Why “Ideas having sex” is a good idea

Filed under: Books, Economics, Environment, Health, Liberty — Tags: — Nicholas @ 16:31

June 11, 2010

What could possibly go wrong?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:

Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?

June 10, 2010

Penn Jillette wants more politicians like Rand Paul

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

June 8, 2010

Attention drivers: Ohio police can now just “estimate” your speed

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:33

. . . and then write you a ticket based on their estimate, no further proof needed:

Police don’t need radar to cite you for speeding.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled this morning that an officer trained to estimate speed by sight doesn’t need an electronic gauge to catch speeders.

The 5-1 ruling was a defeat for 27-year-old Akron-area motorist Mark W. Jenney and speeders across the state. Jenney had challenged a visual speed estimate by a Copley police officer, but a trial court and the 9th District Court of Appeals upheld his conviction.

So, Ohio drivers, expect to see your state assess a lot more speeding tickets (a nice form of revenue for the depleted state coffers), now that the police have been given carte blanche. There’s little reason for them not to treat this as a newly imposed tax on drivers: no evidence is required, other than the officer’s estimate, and the court clearly isn’t too worried about the legal implications of this.

As Eric Moretti says:

Hey “Supreme Court Justices” why don’t you guys get this part of what laws are supposed to do through your thick skulls. It’s safe to say that officers might be trained to identify speeds, and they might even be great at it — but it blasts the notion of burden of proof being on the state out of the water. You didn’t just blast it out, you nuked that fish to dry land. There is no factual evidence when officers have the ability to do this, “I think you were going 120 mph.”

Where is the public recourse for police officers who abuse their abilities? We have to take an officer’s (the state) word that we committed a crime? Did you guys even go to law school?

June 5, 2010

Happy Tax Freedom Day! Maybe that’s not the right word . . .

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:07

May 31, 2010

QotD: A lesson for today

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:03

Empires, indeed governments generally, tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. First they improve society’s ability to flourish by providing central services and removing impediments to trade and specialisation; thus, even Genghis Khan’s Pax Mongolica lubricated Asia’s overland trade by exterminating brigands along the Silk Road, thus lowering the cost of oriental goods in European parlours. But then, as Peter Turchin argues following the lead of the medieval geographer Ibn Khaldun, governments gradually employ more and more ambitious elites who capture a greater and greater share of the society’s income by interfering more and more in people’s lives as they give themselves more and more rules to enforce, until they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is a lesson for today. Economists are quick to speak of “market failure”, and rightly so, but a greater threat comes from “government failure”. Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of the customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time.

Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, p. 182

May 27, 2010

Canada’s positive experience of US Prohibition

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

I knew that individual Canadians did well out of supplying booze to thirsty Americans during the period of Prohibition, but I didn’t realize how well:

. . . Prohibition — perhaps the maddest of mad American dreams [NR: in a dead heat with the current War on Drugs, I think] — did pretty well by our nation from 1920 to 1933. As American writer Daniel Okrent points out in his fine social history of the era, Last Call, the rivers of Canadian booze that flowed south enriched not only the Bronfman liquor empire, but our federal government. Canadians did make and smuggle illegal liquor, evading both Canadian taxes and American law, but we also made millions of litres of the legal, taxed stuff, the ultimate destination of which was of no concern to Ottawa. The amount of alcohol subject to excise tax — most of which went south one way or another — went from 36,000 litres in 1920 to five million 10 years later, and the excise tax on it rose to a fifth of federal revenue, twice as much as income tax.

Few in Canada had the slightest inclination to aid the American government in cracking down on alcohol use. When a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in pursuit of a Lake Erie rum-runner ran aground near Port Colborne, Ont., locals looted the vessel, then filled its engines with sand. About the only Canadians Okrent could unearth who thought the Dominion should help Uncle Sam seal his border were those making a fortune selling alcohol to American visitors. One way or another, most Canadians agreed with the smug satisfaction of CNR president Sir Henry Thornton, whose railway was growing fat off liquor tourism: “The dryer the U.S. is,” opined Sir Henry, “the better it will be for us.”

If there was an upside to what was known — at first, without a trace of irony — as “The Noble Experiment” in the U.S. itself, Okrent is hard-pressed to find it. America had always been awash in alcohol. (Johnny Appleseed’s fruit was inedible, but Americans still embraced his trees — virtually every homestead kept a barrel of hard cider by the door for visitors.) During the sodden 19th century, adult Americans downed 27 litres of pure alcohol each annually. That kind of demand wasn’t going to disappear no matter what the law said.

And yet the lesson has been forgotten. When drug prohibition finally comes to an end, historians will have a field day drawing the obvious comparison between the War on Drugs and the “Noble Experiment”. The theses practically write themselves . . .

May 17, 2010

QotD: Standing up for freedom

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:19

The Drug Wars in general, and the case of Marc Emery in particular, are a litmus test for those who say they believe in freedom. Everyone is for freedom, their own. It’s everyone else’s that makes them uncomfortable. It is easy to be for low taxes and light government regulation, when you run a business. It is easy to be for freedom of speech, when your livelihood depends on your keypad and fingers. It is easy enough to feel sympathetic for those whose freedom is taken away, when they are like you, when you can see yourself in their position. There, but by grace, go I. But this is not advocacy of freedom. It is nothing more than special pleading. The businessman who demands low taxes, and government subsidies, is not for freedom. The journalist who cries out when some powerful politician tries to silence him, then turns around and supports the Human Rights Tribunals, is not for freedom. The ordinary citizen, who is also the member of a minority ethnic group, who becomes indignant when the rights of his group are threatened, but shrugs his shoulders when those of other groups are trampled upon, he is not for freedom.

Publius, “Martyr to Freedom”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-05-17

May 14, 2010

QotD: Western civilization – stick a fork in it

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:17

In the history of civilization — and that’s how old terrorism is, it wasn’t invented on Sept. 11, 2001 — terrorists have never, on their own, succeeded in destroying or significantly altering a culture. They utterly lack the resources to do so.

Where they have succeeded, terrorists have done so only by so frightening a society into abandoning its fundamental values.

That guy who tried to fly a plane into the White House? The one who failed to detonate an explosive device in an airplane approaching Metro Detroit International? The shoe bomber? The guy who just failed to set off a bomb in Times Square? The homegrown terrorists at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood?

The combined death toll from their acts is less than 100. The U.S., supposedly the world’s sole superpower, has a population of 308 million.

The distinction between a global superpower and a nation afraid of its own shadow is becoming more difficult to discern with every attack on the U.S. homeland. Each has been met with an over-reaction — in the media and among government officials — that would embarrass the Londoners who stoically endured the Blitz.

David Olive, “The terrorists win”, Toronto Star, 2010-05-14

May 13, 2010

To the drug warriors, this isn’t a bug: it’s a feature

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Jacob Sullum urges against the adoption of DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) laws:

Under these laws, a driver who has marijuana metabolites in his urine is automatically considered impaired, even though he probably isn’t. Because marijuana metabolites can be detected in urine long after the drug’s effects have worn off (up to two weeks for occasional users, months for frequent users), a “zero tolerance” DUID standard punishes pot smokers who have not harmed or endangered anyone. It is a way of imposing an extra punishment for marijuana use under the guise of traffic safety, sending unimpaired drivers to jail as public menaces because they smoked pot days or weeks before getting behind the wheel. It’s like arresting someone for drunk driving on a Wednesday because he drank a few beers the previous Saturday. And it is completely unnecessary, since a standard based on THC in the blood (analogous to the standard for DUI) would be a much better indicator of impairment.

All this is sensible, logical, and totally irrelevant to the mentality of most “drug warriors”: they love the idea of being able to punish drug users out of proportion to any harm they cause (or, in the vast majority of THC-intoxicated users, total lack of harm to the public).

May 12, 2010

QotD: National Post goes full Anarchist

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:14

Speaking of Queen Victoria, the Calgary Herald‘s editorialists are disappointed that Banff National Park is banning alcohol at its campgrounds on the 24th of May weekend. Better enforcement would take care of “the young rowdies in the tents,” they insist, without denying “the family out for the weekend in the motorhome” a glass of wine with dinner. We suggest such families do as we did when we were young rowdies in tents on the 24th of May weekend at parks where alcohol was banned: Ignore it. This land is your land, this land is my land, pass me another Big Rock.

Chris Selley, “Full Pundit: Jesus comes to Ottawa”, National Post, 2010-05-12

Welcome to the new British PM: “Dick Clameron”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

The Register‘s guide to the new British government:

The people have spoken — and party leaders Nick Clegg and David Cameron, henceforth to be known as Dick Clameron, have filled in the details.

A document released this afternoon reveals what Lib Dems and Tories have been talking about for the last four days, and what our new coalition overlords have in store for us over the next four years.

As with every political stitch-up, it’s going to be a Curate’s Egg, but there are some positive things being promised:

On civil liberties, there is much to please (most) Reg readers, including

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill

* The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database
* Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission
* The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act
* Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database
* A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech
* Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation
* Further regulation of CCTV
* An end to storing internet and email records without good reason
* A mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences

As with any coalition, there’s no guarantee that any of their announced plans will be carried through, but this list of improvements would be a very good thing.

The full text of the agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is at The Times. On reading through the document I’m actually rather pleasantly surprised: more of the sensible policies from each party appears to have slipped into the mix and rather fewer of the authoritarian (Tory) or redistributionist (Lib-Dem) ideas. Yes, it’s only a temporary agreement, but it’s better than I expected.

May 6, 2010

That “no fly list” keeps getting worse

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:42

It’s not bad enough that the list is filled with names of people who should never have been added, and that it’s incredibly difficult to get off the list, but now it’s proposed to restrict the rights of those people even more:

Seems Bloomberg (and Keith Olbermann, more about that in a moment) are on board with the idea the government should be able to take away people’s rights simply by putting them on a list. I don’t think they’d like that idea if say, George W. Bush were president and it was a right they liked. Hey maybe people on the list shouldn’t be able to exercise their First Amendment rights and post to Youtube. Why no Youtube? It’s a jihadi recruitment tool. Surely that’s a danger too.

Now, I’m not a legal expert but I’m pretty sure the 14th Amendment mentions something about “due process” before taking away a person’s rights. Again, not a legal expert but I’m thinking the mere act of the government putting your name on a list is not in fact “due process”.

Notice that Bloomberg calls people on the list “suspects”. Again, I wasn’t aware that rights could be taken away from people simply because the government “suspects” you’ve done something wrong without any notice or opportunity for redress.

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