Nolan's Corner - Government

Two Consequences In History

sneakin — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:55:01 -0700

I managed to follow a link to Frederic Bastiat's That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen and skimmed through a lot of it. It ended on a nice quote which I'd like to share since it applies extremely well to today:

Thus we learn, by the numerous subjects which I have treated, that, to be ignorant of political economy is to allow ourselves to be dazzled by the immediate effect of a phenomenon; to be acquainted with it is to embrace in thought and in forethought the whole compass of effects.

I might subject a host of other questions to the same test; but I shrink from the monotony of a constantly uniform demonstration, and I conclude by applying to political economy what Chateaubriand says of history:-

"There are," he says, "two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom, the latter, those of that wisdom which endures. The providential event appears after the human event. God rises up behind men. Deny, if you will, the supreme counsel; disown its action; dispute about words; designate, by the term, force of circumstances, or reason, what the vulgar call Providence; but look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it, if it was not established at first upon morality and justice."

- Chateaubriand's Posthumous Memoirs

Two Kinds of Corruption

sneakin — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:21:35 -0700

It looks like I wasn't to far off in Band-Aids Don't Cure the Wound. While scanning over Cato-at-liberty, I came across a post that described two kinds of corruption:

David Osterfeld discussed two kinds of corruption [in his book]. As John Mukum Mbaku explains, Osterfeld “argued that in a heavily regulated economy, one can find two distinct types of corruption: ‘expansive corruption,’ which involves activities that improve the competitiveness and flexibility of the market; and ‘restrictive corruption,’ which limits opportunities for productive and socially beneficial exchange.”

Those are basically two that I came up with. I did have a third: the hand-out.

Legislation: 200 Years Later

sneakin — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:21:31 -0700

One of my brother's passed along Joseph Sobran's The Commandments of Men. It's something that I agree with since I can't understand how liberty can be maintained after centuries of legislation. Mr. Sobran gets it right when he says:

...Keeping the Ten Commandments, or even all 613 commandments of the Torah (or Pentateuch), isn't enough to protect you from the wrath of the state, which is constantly adding thousands of new commandments of its own--"incessantly engaged in legislation", as C.S. Lewis once put it.

That's a lot of threats. At what point will we have enough of them? This question is seldom asked, since all parties agree that we need more threats (alias "laws") and the idea that we already have enough, or too many, and that some should be repealed, is inadmissible.

Though I disagree that the Commandments would make good laws, I do agree that having a single set of unchanging laws would be better at protecting liberty than any legislator. I only long for the day when the Rule of [Natural] Law prevails.

Letter to the Daily Journal About Smoking Bans

sneakin — Thu, 18 May 2006 02:00:02 -0700

Note: This was published a while back in the Daily Journal. John Auld, Jr. is the president of the Partnership for a Healthier Johnson County and had previously wrote a letter to the editor citing examples of how the definition of freedom has supposedly changed throughout time. His argument went through those examples, and then he took the leap that smoking bans are a new evolution of freedom. This is my reply:

John Auld, Jr. and the Partnership for a Healthier Johnson County have a single goal: to destroy Freedom. That should be apparent from the letter of his that was published on March 22nd. He employed one of the tools that all destroyers of Freedom have always used: redefining the word.

That's one of the observations of F.A. Hayek in his Road to Serfdom. He described the “new freedom” that the socialists of the early 20th century in Europe called for and achieved. Their “new freedom” was another name for the equal distribution of wealth, and not the definition known to the great apostles of political freedom: “...the word [freedom] meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the invidividual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.”

I'll leave it to the historians to describe the affects of the “new freedom” that swept Europe in the early 20th century. I will state that it gave the National Socialists and Fascists of Europe the tools and intellectual climate to commit the atrocities for which they are remembered.

Mr. Auld isn't calling for the “new freedom” of the socialists, but the consequences of his “new freedom” would end with the same result. Mr. Auld wants to be free from the responsibility of his choices, of his consciousness, of his free will, of his liberty. He and his fellow crusaders want to forfeit their liberty to other men in the name of safety and security. They have cloaked their hatred for liberty under the guise of the right to clean air.

They argue that they have a right to clean air, and that it's a violation of their life if they're “forced” to eat or work at a smokey restaurant. Nevermind that they chose to stay when they were asked for smoking or non-smoking. Nevermind that Mr. Auld's Partnership's web site links to a directory of smoke free restaurants. Nevermind that the coercive force of government was not standing on call to ensure that they did not leave. Nevermind that I would also have the right to eat a meal in a smoke filled restaurant.

Yes! If people have a right to breath clean air out in public then I also have a right to breath smokey, carcinogen, tar filled air out in public as well. I was not forced to breath one or the other, until now.
The fundamental right that gives me that choice is liberty, and I had the liberty to determine what kind of air I wanted to breath. Apparently that responsibility was to great for Mr. Auld and his fellow crusaders.

They obviously do not possess the integrity to choose between clean air or a mouth watering steak at the local pub so they went running to our governments. The same governments that pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisble, with liberty and justice for all.

Copying Contracts

sneakin — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:51:28 -0800

Originally posted in response to Prohibiting the Useful Arts?.

Coincidently I was thinking about copyright earlier tonight. Before any government codified copyright we had contracts. That appeals to me at one level, but I noted a problem with that tonight. The typical copying contract would prevent you from copying a work or invention forever. The creator would have no incentive to do otherwise, and that sounds a lot like today’s copyright law.

In light of that, the reason why government would want to codify copyrights would be to prevent the creator from placing his work under lock and key forever. I’m not a legal expert, but doesn’t law trump a contract?

Here in the US it was invested in Congress to strike a balance between the creators and their fellows. It is a door way for the government to allow unlimited copying of a creation which would have been prevented under your typical copying contract.

Privacy

sneakin — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:06:37 -0800

In response to a a comment left about Exception Expands Domestic Surveillance, I give you:

If the US was in fact the model of freedom that it dreams to be, then who cares about privacy. Truth be told, the US is not 100% free. It has laws that protect people from themselves. If the government stuck to the job of protecting people form other people, then let them know all about everyone. Only the people who are out killing, kidnapping, and stealing would have problems with the government snooping. Sadly, that's the main reason why I'll argue that we need privacy laws.

The secondary reason is that the government has no right to force me to alter my behavior so that I'm forced to share information about myself, my customers, my neighbors, or anyone else. A practical example would be if I were an ISP. An ultimatum such as, "Sniff your customer's packets or goto jail", is morally wrong for the same reason something like "Tell me where your grandmother is or you'll get one to the head" is wrong. No body has the right to demand information because such a right would violate my rights. And that's what laws such as the above are.

Until the US gives up on protecting people from themselves, keep the government off my back.

Do We Have a Consensus About Consensus?

sneakin — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:53:16 -0800

I just read the story about the man who will save/destroy the Internet. I'm still unsure if his job is even worthwhile, but this quote is worth commending:

"We won’t have any voting here, we will work by consensus. If there is a split, it will not make the final agreement. Where there is no agreement, the effort will have to be to convince each other."
-- Masood Khan

Suppose an actual government worked that way. No law gets passed without 100% yay votes from everyone. I can only guess what laws would be the result: no killing, no stealing, and no kidnapping? Even with those I'm sure some people would vote no, and they would then end up getting killed (null vote), their ballot stolen (it now says yay, here), or kidnapped so they can't vote (we'll let you go if you vote yay).

If only governments actually worked that way, and this system might scale up extremely well.

By Executive Order You Must Collect Data

sneakin — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:59:05 -0700

I was applying for a job and got this (emphasis mine):

Under Executive Order 11246, the federal government requires [company name] to report the sex and race/ethnic origin of its applicants for employment. Your submission of any of the information requested is voluntary, and your decision not to provide it will not subject you to any adverse treatment. Your cooperation is appreciated.

It then goes on how they don't discriminate. My question is why does the federal government want this information? My only guess is that it's to make the companies provide the data that could be used against them if they don't meet some quota.

A Laissez Faire Corollary

sneakin — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:23:20 -0700

Here's a laizze-fare corollary:

It is wrong for the government to interfere with business, thus it is also wrong for business to interfere with government.

I believe that's logically sound. If not I think it has merits anyway and is worth further thought. It would also be some sort of ideal too, since government will most likely keep putting its hand into business forcing business to interfere with government. My that's grand!

Washington, We Have a Problem

sneakin — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 05:17:00 -0700

I just read a speech Benjamin Powell gave titled Immigration, Economic Growth, and the Welfare State. The entire transcript is a good and easy read, but I have to copy a quote from it that only shows that government fixes problems with even more problems:

Milton Friedman has said, “It’s just obvious, that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” Conservatives and classical liberals should agree with a resounding “here, here,” and it’s time to abolish the welfare state.

I doubt there are many supporters of the welfare state in this room. But it is a mistake to take the welfare state’s existence for granted and use it as an excuse to condone government interventions in immigration. This is the problem Ludwig Von Mises famously pointed out in his book The Dynamics of Interventionism. One government intervention in the economy produces undesirable and unintended results and planners are confronted with the choice of making further interventions or repealing prior ones. All too often, government chooses the former. [emphasis mine]