One Bad Apple

OK, I'm sticking with Macs for now, because I was a UNIX programmer, Mac OS X is UNIX, and I can work smoothly at the command-line interface.

Otherwise, I think Apple's user interface group has lost their minds. For instance, if I'm getting my Mac mail on the Web, my session will time out after 30 minutes. OK, cool, there's some security concern here. But what happens? I'm presented with a dialogue box that says my session has timed out, with an 'OK' button. I click 'OK,' and am brought to a screen that says "Your session has timed out," and presents me with a button that says "Log back in." I click on that, and finally get to the login screen. Yo, yo, Apple dudes, why not send the logged out user straight to the login screen? The two screens in between do nothing but require me to click 'OK' twice. What the hey?

In the Mac OS X native mail application, the up or down arrow at first moves you between messages. That's OK -- let's shift the focus by clicking in the window pane showing the text of the current message. Then hit the up or down arrow -- CRIKEY, MATE! It still moves between messages, not within the current message. Didn't Apple develop this idea of one part of the UI having the focus, and that all user actions should relate to that focused area? What in the world has gone wrong with their software developers?

Bear's Choice

So, I'm standing on my front porch in Pennsylvania, surveying the garden, when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I look in that direction, and see a 200-pound or so bear ambling down my driveway. He (she?) is about 150 feet from me. What to do?

I decide that bears are kind of Brooklyn critters, so the best thing to do is to go all Brooklyn on his ass.

"Yo, yo, wassup?" I shout up the driveway.

He turns slowly and looks at me for several seconds. Then, with no haste, he continues in the direction he was headed.

He begins walking slowly along my stonewall. "Yo, are we cool?" I shout out.

He again turns and stares at me. Very nonchalantly, he continues walking down the wall. He turns and looks back at me a couple of more times, and then heads into the woods.

The lesson to be learned: if you see a bear, go all Brooklyn on his ass. They're basically all from Brooklyn.

The Most Fundamental Human Right

Apparently, James Madison was collecting suggestions for inclusion in the Bill of Rights. (The lecturer I heard say this did not make it clear whether he was asking for them or just getting them anyway.) The Pennsylvania legislature wanted the following included in the Bill: "Every farmer has a right to be paid a bounty for every squirrel pelt he turns in to the government."

They said that one could easily deduce this right from the axiom of self-ownership.

(That last bit is the only part that's not true, btw.)

Gang Warfare

Another episode of, "The policeman is your friend." Just watch the first two minutes or so.

Food Prices: Big Oil or King Corn?

I and the rest of the IER team take on some particularly exaggerated claims by the corn growers.

Lohan Lohan

The NY Post just ran a story entitled "Lindsey Lohan Stole My Coat."

But Masha Markova, the complainant, has nothing on me: Masha, baby, Lindsey stole my virginity.

France II

A public square in Haguenau, France.



Adam makes a new, French friend. (Aren't they so artistic over there?



They actually spent millions of Euros to cover that lovely old train station with a giant glass bubble. Rudolph told me that party that did this was crushed in the next election.



A street in Haguenau.

Good Job, Ms. McArdle!

I have been critical of her in the past, but Megan McArdle does a good job explaining how you assess tax incidence. This is good too (HT2MR):

Hillary Clinton's proposal is particularly stupid, in my humble opinion, because it tries to get the money back from the oil companies with a windfall profits tax. Tax incidence is tax incidence: if the oil companies can make consumers pay most of the excise tax, then probably consumers [sic?] can stick them with your windfall profits tax too. Meanwhile, the instinct to mess with the oil companies every time prices rise is thoroughly counterproductive. We (at least, those of us who want cheaper oil) want the oil companies out foraging for more supply. If you lower the returns on finding new oil, you kill their incentive to do so--more importantly, you kill the incentive of investors to give them capital to do so. All her plan does is make us take the trouble to build new administrative capacity to collect the tax, while keeping all the old administrative capacity for collecting the excise tax (since, after all, it's not actually going away permanently), while scaring the bejeesus out of investors. It's lose-lose-lose.

I Don't Think He Liked the Book

Robert Zubrin reviews Robert Bryce's Gusher of Lies. You folks might have assumed that people writing for National Review oppose federal mandates for inefficient schemes that raise food prices. (I am referring to ethanol.) Nope, sometimes there's more at stake than abstract economic freedom. And Zubrin deals with that objection, too.

DISCLAIMER / interesting tidbit: Bryce used to be loosely associated with the Institute for Energy Research; Zubrin takes a shot at them too. I am doing a lot of work for IER lately. Hence I have a special reason to dislike this review.

The (Limited) Usefulness of Formal Economic Models

(This post is dedicated to Robert Wegner.)

As a graduate of New York University, I was forced to learn formal models of the economy, which would have horrified me when I was in college and hooked on Austrian economics. However, even though I never would have gone to NYU had I realized what I was getting into, after the fact I was glad that I had done it. There really are benefits of these formal modeling techniques. This isn't to say the benefits outweigh the opportunity costs; obviously graduate students could be doing something else with their time that might be much more valuable in terms of producing good economists. Nonetheless, in this blog post I want to give an example of the power of formal modeling.

The specific issue is whether a consumption or income tax is less distortionary. As usual, we are going to try to compare apples with apples by insisting on revenue neutrality, and we are also not going to worry about issues of privacy.

Following Rothbard, my intuition had always been that an income tax was better (on these limited grounds). I thought, "The government takes a certain amount out of your income, and then you're free to do what you want with it. If you want to invest it, go ahead. If you want to blow it at the racetrack, that's fine too. The government shouldn't be trying to encourage you to save more than your time preferences indicate."

If you ask me now, though, my answer would be the exact opposite. If we make enough assumptions to render the question meaningful, then it is clearly the case that a consumption tax respects people's intertemporal preferences, whereas an income tax penalizes savings. In this sense, then, a consumption tax is Pareto superior; a consumption tax leaves consumers with more utility than an income tax that yields the same (present value) in tax revenues.

In defense of Rothbard and my earlier self, a lot of proponents of consumption taxes aren't clear on this point. They either imply or explicitly claim that their plan "encourages savings and investment" above what would happen in the absence of any taxation, and that is clearly inefficient. (After all, it would be crazy to force everyone to save 99% at gunpoint, even though this would lead to very high GDP growth.)

But as I said, studying a really simple model led me to reverse my earlier position. Under reasonable assumptions, a consumption tax doesn't alter the consumption/savings tradeoff. Yes, people are obviously worse off because their consumption is lower in every period, but they are not hurt by distortions in the intertemporal tradeoffs they face.

Before continuing, let me give the caveat: Of course you can always come up with ways to disprove any sort of "rule" in these types of analyses. E.g. if people had religious views favoring income taxes, then they would obviously be worse off with a switch to consumption taxes. But if we assume people don't care about the tax system itself, that there are equivalent costs of compliance, etc., and just focus on the incentives on individuals' saving rates and preferences for consumption at different points in time, then the consumption tax is clearly superior.

So here's the verbal reasoning: From the individual's POV, the purpose of saving and investing is simply to consume in the future. So really the issue is consumption now versus consumption later. Without any taxes, people refrain from consumption today until the point at which the marginal utility of present consumption is higher than the present utility of the future consumption which that investment would yield.

Slapping on a consumption tax doesn't alter this tradeoff, it simply lowers the level of consumption in every period. Think of it this way: Suppose you were a farmer trying to decide how much corn to eat and how much to plant for next year's harvest. After you made your decision, what if you learned that the cook who makes your meals is a klutz, and so it takes 10% more corn to make a meal than you previously estimated. With this new information, that shouldn't alter how much of your harvest this year you devote to feeding your family, versus how much you plant again. Yes, the amount you set aside to eat right now yields fewer meals, but that is true of the amount you are planting.

In contrast, an income tax does give you an incentive to consume more in the present than you would have without any taxes. It's as if there are locusts that destroy 10% of the crops before you harvest them. Now that you've got the 90% in your possession, you can either eat them or plant them again, when they again will be subject to the locusts. So the technology for converting potential present meals into future meals has changed; now abstaining from one present meal yields a smaller amount of future meals than it did originally. Thus you consume a larger fraction of your harvest, and plant less for next year.

Let me address something that bothered me for a while, even though the above reasoning seemed impeccable. In intermediate micro, professors love to go over indifference curves to show that an income tax is better for the consumer than an excise tax on a particular good. E.g. if there are beer and donuts with their market prices, it is better to take $10 from the consumer and let him spend the remaining $90 however he wants, rather than placing a unit tax on beer (let's say) such that in equilibrium the consumer buys enough of that good to give $10 in tax revenue to the government. The intuition is that not only is the consumer $10 poorer, but under the excise tax beer is made artificially more expensive, and so the individual's options get a double-whammy from the government.

But that's not what's happening here. Specifically, it's not true that you have a "given" amount of income, and then the government let's you spend it on present versus future consumption. If you save and invest, then your future income is higher than it otherwise would be. So that's one difference from the typical intermediate micro demonstration (with a fixed endowment of income that the consumer is allocating between two goods).

The other difference is that with a consumption tax, the government isn't slapping a tax on one possible good, while leaving the other untaxed. Again, the whole purpose of saving is to consume in the future (or to allow your heirs to consume). So there's no distortion, encouraging individuals to save more than they otherwise would (the way there was in an excise tax on beer, which would encourage spending on donuts).

========

Now why did I title this blog post the way I did? Because I was only led to the above realizations through working out a very simple model, with two periods and a consumer with utility function U = ln(C1) + ln(C2), and interest rate of 50%, and wage income in each period of $100. I slapped on a 50% income tax and had the consumer optimize, and calculated how much (in PDV in period 1) revenue the government would collect. Then I figured out what rate a consumption tax would have to be in each period to yield the same (PDV in period 1) revenue to the government. In the second approach, the consumer's utility (from the after-tax consumption) is higher than with the after-tax stream of consumption under the first setup. Also, in the consumption tax approach the gross amount of saving is unaffected by the tax; i.e. it is the same whether the consumption tax rate is 0 or positive. This isn't true with the income tax.

Another benefit of using the model: When I first tried to solve for the revenue neutral consumption tax rate, it came out to something like 116%. So I thought I had messed something up, because that was clearly crazy. But then I realized that no, there is nothing illogical (though grossly immoral of course!) about consumption tax rates being higher than 100%. If your wage income is $100, you can, say, save $10, consume $30, and pay $60 in taxes to the government, if the consumption tax rate is 200%. That would be awful, but it's not unsustainable the way a 200% income tax would be.

So the lesson for Austrian purists? I think that formal models allow us to check our intuitions on complex things, such as comparing different tax regimes. Of course you can't rest with the model results; if the results are surprising, you need to figure out whether it's because you made a bogus assumption, or because your intuition is wrong.

I know Rothbard has argued that this is superfluous at best; why translate economics into formal symbols, get a result, and then translate back into English? But the answer here is the same as for why they do this in symbolic logic: Because sometimes the argument is very complex, and you might make a mistake in your reasoning if you try to do it in English.

I never would have come to the understanding that I can now give in purely Austrian terms, had I not known how to create a very crude neoclassical model. I would still think that consumption taxes distort intertemporal decisions vis-a-vis consumer preferences.

One last thing: If I still haven't sold you, consider comparative advantage. If you haven't worked through a ridiculously crude two-good, two-country numerical example, then I submit you probably don't really "see" why free trade makes all countries richer. Sure, that Ricardian model doesn't prove anything, but a simple numerical example illustrates the principles very efficiently. And that's why everybody I've ever seen teach this--including people at Mises University--rely on simple numerical examples.

Economists and Their Frameworks

I go over some pitfalls when thinking about international trade. The article is unusual in that I discuss a mistake I had made.

Overly Literal Flies

OK, OK, I know it's in their name, but on April 30, I'm working in the yard and nothing is flying up my nose, but on May 1 dozens of mayflies are doing so. Guys, give iut a rest! You're not going to lose the name if you show up on the 4th or 5th.

Worst Theodicy Ever?

Theodicy, as you all know, is the term for reconciling the existence of God with that of evil. The word was coined by Leibniz, and actually generated enough confusion at the time that some French readers thought "Theodicy" was the name of the author.

The problem was first posed by Epicurus in the form, quoting from Nicholas Jolley's Leibniz:

1) God is omnipotent.
2) God is just and benevolent.
3) Evil exists in the world.

The full set of 1, 2, and 3 seem to conflict; the "problem of theodicy" is to show that they don't.

Father Malebranche, a Cartesian contemporary of Leibniz, posed a solution that I think would strike most people as making the problem worse rather than better. As I see it, the average person uninterested in theology and faced with this problem is actually likely to give up 1, and think something like "God is great and really powerful but just hasn't figured out a way to beat that Satan fellow yet -- but in the end he will." While this may be theologically unsatisfactory, it gets him through the day and, more importantly, his religious life.

Malebranche's solution is likely to make him pissed, though. What he contends is that God is morally obliged to act to maximize his own glory, and that a world obeying the sort of laws that permit evil does so to a greater extent than would one that does not. Yow! If Malebranche was seeking to "justifie the ways of God to Man," I think he missed the mark by a wee bit: "You mean I have leprosy so that you can have a little more glory?!"

Leibniz, on the other hand, offers a much more satisfactory solution to the problem, based on his metaphysics, which holds that everything is related to and reflects everything else, and in a way that makes each thing what it is. As Jolley puts it, it is not possible for there to be a world with Mother Teresa but without Hitler, since they are each, in a sense, a part of the existence of the other. So, a world in which the most possible minds achieve the most possible happiness may be one in which great evil exists as a necessary component.

It is also interesting to note that, in some other theistic religions, this problem does not really arise at all. For instance, in Vedic theology, every individual really is an aspect of the one supreme soul -- "that art thou" -- and thus, whatever evil experienced is always befalling God, and is not something He is imposing on creatures from the outside.

They Never Taught Us This in Grad School

OK I know someone who had bought some shares of IAU, an ETF that holds physical gold. (The point was to have some exposure to gold in case things got really bad, late-1970s style.)

With gold falling so much since early April, the person decided he would sell off his IAU shares if it ever hit $84. He had bought in at $93 or so, and so that cutoff would limit his losses to an amount that was acceptable. I pointed out that he should have a point at which he would get back in, in case this dip down was just a temporary thing and gold really did soar up to $2,000 / oz. as some alarmists are suggesting. He agreed this was a good idea, and so decided $95.

OK, so everyone gets the idea? He bought in at $93, it was tanking, and if it hit $84 he was getting out to limit his losses. If it kept falling, that was good he got out. And if it zoomed up to $250, he would have gotten back in at $95, so he would only be out from the zig-zag, and would still be protected in case things really went to heck with the economy.

Now here's the kicker: He was incommunicado yesterday, when IAU sank below the sell-point. So he obviously didn't sell. (He hadn't set up anything automatic with his broker.)

Now today, IAU is back up above the sell-point.

So should he sell or not? On the one hand, you could say, "Yes! He should have sold yesterday; the fact that it got so low was a warning that things weren't playing out the way the alarmists had said, and so now just be grateful it bumped up a buck right before you sell."

On the other hand, you could argue, "No, right now IAU is at a price that would not have warranted selling two days ago. So if your strategy was to hold it unless it dipped below $84, you shouldn't sell it now when it's trading at $84.50 or so."

BTW, I really am talking about another person. All of my savings are in cheese curls (.wav).

Phone Etiquette Innovation

You know how you're listening to a voice mail, and then the person starts giving you his or her number, and you rush to get a piece of paper?

And you thank the heavens if the person is cool and repeats the number, so that you are actually ready to write it down.

Well, I think from now on I'm going to start my message by saying something like, "Hi so-and-so, this is Bob Murphy from blah blah blah. I'm going to be leaving you my number if you want to start hunting for a pen. Anyway, I'm calling about..."

I think this will spare needless anxiety in the world. I estimate an increase in human lifespans of 1.2 years if everyone adopts my plan. It may also cut down on phone bills, because people on their cell won't have to play the message again. (Do you get charged minutes when checking your voicemail? Maybe not.)

Mysticism

As I said in a comment, I'm reading a book today, Why God Won't Go Away, by two neurologists who have shown that mystical states can be shown to be empirically real, and are like states involving the genuine perception of real things, and not at all like delusion or brain disease.

There are some sceptics whom, I believe, might be swayed by this -- as these neurologists were. But most will simply ignore it. Their resistance to any evidence on this issue is sometimes astonishing. Often, I feel I'm in a dialogue like the following. (The house and man metaphor aren't meant to be anything too profound -- I just happened to be looking at the path to my neighbors house as I was writing this.)

"There's a nice chap in the house at the end of that path through the woods."

"There's no house there, and there's certainly no chap!"

"No, I was just there -- there is a house, and a man lives in it."

"That's just a childish fantasy."

"Well, go down the path and look for yourself."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's a waste of time -- there's nothing there!"

Of course, if no one else could walk the path and find the house and the man, there would be a good reason for me to start to suspect I'm a little off my rocker. But when I discover that thousands and thousands of other people have walked down the path, seen the house and the man, and described them in similar terms as me, and that those people otherwise seemed sane and intelligent, then the evidence is overwhelming: there is a house and a man down the path, it can be confirmed empirically, and atheists -- you just haven't gone down the path. If you're just not interested, or are still sceptical, fine -- we can still be friends. But isn't it a little arrogant to confidently declare to me that to "believe" in the house and man is nuts? ("Believe" is in quotes because I "believe" in God in the same way I "believe" in the tree outside my window.

See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.

Now some posters on Crash Landing don't see what the big fuss is about. How could anyone possibly take umbrage at the hard-hitting journalists over at Reason, who will stop at nothing to bring truth to their readers? Case in point: David Weigel's recent blog post about Ron Paul's book hitting #1 on Amazon.

So what is the point of Weigel's post? Does he note the amazing success Paul is having in getting his (geeky and boring, I would have thought) message out to average folks? Nope. Oh, I know! Maybe he doesn't agree with Paul's arguments, and so goes through and criticizes certain parts of the book? Nope.

Rather, what Weigel does is remind everyone that Lew Rockwell is a big fat racist, liar, and coward, and then ties this in to Paul's new book because Paul has the audacity to tell his readers to visit LRC. Then, Weigel further enlightens us by saying:

The Revolution is the best-selling book at Amazon.com today. I've read the book, though, and anyone expecting another bigot blow-up is going to be disappointed.

Aww, what a gip! Is it too late to cancel my order?

(Note: I too thought it was ridiculous that Paul said he had no idea who wrote those newsletters. But OK, he handled that poorly. Are we going to bring that up every time we discuss Ron Paul from now on?)

This Just Wasn't the Year for Jesus

When Zach Johnson won the Masters Golf Tournament last year, he credited the victory to his faith in Jesus. This year, that faith placed him well back in the pack. My goal in pointing this out is not to make fun of faith in Jesus, but of the heretical idea that this faith is a route to worldly success. Augustine trounced that view 1600 years ago -- isn't it time we gave it a rest?

What a Bunch of Liars

I know truth is the first casualty in war yada yada yada. I can't believe they're even saying this about the "Mission Accomplished" banner. Why can't they just say, "Yeah whoops"?

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq. Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

Yeah it's all the liberal media, Ms. Perino.

I Think Obama and Wright Are in Cahoots

I think Barack Obama asked Jeremiah Wright to say shocking things so that he (Obama) could then officially denounce them. Those two are extremely clever. Read this Slate analysis; the quips from Wright are priceless. (BTW I think Wright is awesome, the way I think Michael Savage is awesome.)

I'm just expanding on the Slate analysis now: Clearly the Republicans are going to use Wright against Obama. So better to get it out of the way now, so people can be sick of it during the general election. Sean Hannity interprets the latest events like this:

(1) Obama agrees with Wright and so doesn't denounce him in the beginning.
(2) Wright inexplicably goes on tour over the weekend, and says crazy stuff about AIDS at the National Press Club. He must be mad at Obama.
(3) Obama can't believe this treachery, and has no choice but to sever their relationship to save his presidential run.

I think the above interpretation is totally wrong. Wright would have to be one SERIOUSLY self-centered s.o.b. to sabotage Obama at this point, especially when Obama was incredibly, almost politically suicidally, understanding of Wright in his famous race speech. You can say a lot about Wright, but I don't get the sense that he would do everything he could to ruin Obama's run. (And for what, exactly? What did Obama do to anger Wright, Hannity?)

If I had more time I would get really into this and look at the primary schedule, when the Wright stuff first broke, etc. I mean look, Wright didn't give his crazy speech right before the Pennsylvania primary, right?

And you could say, "But if Wright is trying to help, why the crazy stuff? Why not be real moderate and say he got carried away in some of those sermons?"

Because (a) that would sound like BS and (b) Hannity et al. are saying Obama can't be president because he won't denounce Wright. Thus, the Obama camp must have decided very recently that the famous race speech wasn't enough, that the right-wing talk radio people were demanding Wright's head.

And so in order for it to make sense that Obama would give it to them, Wright had to say something "crazy," like the government was capable of giving AIDS to black people.

I Quit

I have to stop arguing with this guy Alex on the Mises blog, before I take a hostage. Now let's be clear everyone, I am not upset because he is challenging my theory that recessions should lead to higher price inflation (other things equal). Rather, I am going crazy because he doesn't see why CPI growth spiking during a recession should be evidence in my favor. Rather, he thinks it should count against me, because it shows that inflation rates were rising going into the recession, and then fell after the recession.

I pointed out that his argument would also show that summer has a cooling effect, but he dealt with that observation by explaining how the sun and the angle of the earth's axis cause seasonal changes.

If someone can mediate our dispute, I would appreciate it. In his mind I am crazy. And if I continue arguing I soon will be.

France I

A public square in Haguenau, France.



The top linguists in France gather at the Institute Phonetique du Strasbourg: Adam, Rudolph, Fabrice, and Kofi.



OK, but why do you need them to do this?



Rudolph, Adam, and me -- Adam is polishing off a plate of frogs' legs.

My Plan to Make the World Safe for US Interests

I explain by way of criticizing Fred Kagan's halfhearted strategy.

Government Takes Kid Away for Drinking Hard Lemonade

This stuff is really getting ridiculous. (And by the way, I am aware that there was plenty of crazy cr*p going on with the FLDS sect, aided by local government.) This professor took his kid to a baseball game, ordered a "lemonade," and let his kid drink Mike's Hard Lemonade because he says he didn't know it was alcoholic.

A security guard saw it, and next thing you know the kid is in foster care for two days. The dad wasn't allowed to return home for a week. HT2LRC.

As always, what's truly sickening is how many of the posters at the story above support the action. I.e. this guy had it coming, letting his kid drink Hard Lemonade! Serves him right.

Amsterdam Images

Click on an image for a larger view:


Yes, the Dutch ride bikes a lot.


One of Amsterdam's 100 or so canals.


In MaxEuwePlein, the Dutch like their chess big.


Some houseboats, including one with a lawn on the roof.


Mr. Man works on a Dutch pancake.


At least the Dutch admit what their parks are for. (Remember the 'v' is pronounced as our 'f'.)


Adam with my friend Robert Hensgens.




Yes, it's true what you've heard about Amsterdam. (Adam and I did not make any purchases.)


Near the Riyks Museum.

Don't Make Me Pull Out a Chicago Price Theory Book, Buddy

A blog devoted to Bushwick real estate. The blogger has very cool political and economic views.

Why Fill the SPR?

At first I thought it was just to funnel more tax dollars into the hands of the oil companies.

But then it occurred to me that if you were going to start a war with Iran, it would be good to have extra stockpiles of crude oil.

Why I Fear a Clinton Presidency

No, it's not that I directly fear a woman with power. Rather, I fear what would happen if a Democratic woman were in power, and then something happened--heaven forbid, another attack on US soil. To prove how tough she was, Hillary Clinton would have to respond far more than Obama, and a million times more than McCain.

That has been my view for some time. It was reinforced when I read that she said she would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

However, in fairness to Clinton, the reports of her statement are a bit misleading. Below is the actual answer she gave. It's no Sermon on the Mount, I grant you, but it's not nearly as crazy as what you would have thought from my paragraph above.

A New Solution for High Gas Prices

I need to keep this idea in mind the next time I'm doing a radio show about windfall profits taxes.

California Dreamin'

Wouldn't it be nice to hop on a plane out to sunny California...and spend two hours listening to me give advice to the state on how to tax people?

Are Recessions Deflationary?

I say no.

Tres Bien Mr. Rockwell!

While Gene is on the lam, I'll give some props to Lew Rockwell's recent article, "Prison Nation." Did you folks realize that the U.S. has a higher rate of incarceration than Cuba? Did you know the U.S. government locks up more Americans than the Chinese communists lock up Chinese?

To deal with the objection that we need government prisons to keep crime down, Rockwell ends with this wonderful quote from Robert Ingersoll:

The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumb-screws and racks, with hangmen and headsmen – and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities and crimes have accomplished little for the preservation of property or life. It is safe to say that governments have committed far more crimes than they have prevented. As long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.

================

Back in grad school I embraced pacifism mostly for religious reasons. But now that I view the world from that viewpoint, I see all sorts of confirming evidence that a punitive "justice" system, especially when run by governments, is counterproductive.

This is a bit tangential, but let me share the following experience. When we lived in Brooklyn after I left teaching (and so I was in between jobs), my wife and I were trying to find a cheap apartment. We looked at a place way way uptown, I think it was actually in Harlem.

The police there were not the friends of the residents. They were quite literally an occupying force. The ones patrolling on foot looked at passersby with threat assessment, rather than, "How can I be your public servant today, Mr. Employer?" Of course the cops who work in that area could tell you horrifying stories to explain that attitude, but the fact remains that that was the attitude.

We were crossing a major street and a cop car zoomed past. It pulled a really quick U turn and got into the other lane, going the other way. It was an incredibly dangerous maneuver; there were pedestrians all over the place. They didn't even bother turning their lights on.

The people knew to get the hell out of the way. One older guy just sort of whistled, "Wheeeew!" when the car flew by.

Some people reading this might think, "What the heck is your point? They didn't hit anyone, right?" I'm telling you, if a cop car had done that in the suburb where I grew up, in a comparably crowded street littered with pedestrians, somebody's outraged mom would have called the sheriff and bitten his head off. I'm not saying anybody would have been formally disciplined, but I bet the driver would've had a talking-to.

I don't think anybody in Harlem bothered complaining about unsafe officer driving.

Tyler Bashing, Installment #34

It seems Tyler Cowen, my good friend Megan McArdle, and some others were pontificating on the drug war. I don't know if Tyler held this view, but one school of thought (or "model" in this apparently stuffy party) argued that legalization wouldn't do much:

Under one model, local gangs have a more or less fixed ability to terrorize a neighborhood....In this model, legalizing drugs doesn't do much good. The local gang either shifts its monopoly to another area (milk and sugar, if need be), or de facto the gang's local monopoly on the drug trade continues. The gang busts you if you try to get your supply of crack cocaine from Merck. I call this the Rio de Janeiro model; no, drugs are not formally legal there but I don't think it would much matter if they were.

Now I've never been to Brazil, so I was giving Tyler the benefit of the doubt. Surely, I thought, if he's going to test whether the drug war affects drug gangs, and one of his data points is a place where "drugs are not formally legal there but I don't think it would much matter if they were," then he must be talking about a place where the drug laws aren't actually enforced.

So I set out to show Tyler et al. how much the police must be doing in Rio to enforce drug laws. I thought I would spend 10 minutes or so trying to find their drug budgets, maybe look at number of arrests, etc.

I simply googled "Rio de Janeiro" and the first hit was a news story titled, "Brazil police kill 11 in Rio de Janeiro slum raid."

Here's the short article:

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Police killed at least 11 people in a raid on Friday in the Cidade de Deus (City of God) slum, made famous in a hit film of the same name about Rio drug gangs.

Law enforcement officials said 10 of the people killed were suspected drug traffickers and one was a woman who lived in the neighborhood.

Two women were also wounded during the shootout between police and the suspected traffickers, who had taken refuge in a house in the slum after fleeing from authorities.

Police seized six automatic rifles, five grenades and drugs during the raid. Authorities also sent reinforcements after the raid to prevent retaliation from drug gangs or protests from residents of the neighborhood.

Rio police are notorious for rough tactics against drug gangs that control many of the city's shantytowns.

I wonder if U.S. foreign policy came up at this party. One school of thought might say that foreign occupations don't affect the amount of violence in a country, and point to Iraq as evidence. Sure, formally speaking Iraq has an occupying force there, but I don't think it would matter one way or the other if US troops left. So I will point to present-day Iraq as evidence of what happens when the U.S. military leaves people alone.

Are These Criminals Going to Start Another War Before They Leave?

I don't know, but they sure are leaving their options open. And hey, that's not conspiracy talk; it's what the chair of the Joint Chiefs says.

These weekly updates serve two purposes, it seems to me. First, it desensitizes Americans to the subject, so that if and when they wake up to hear, "The U.S. last night began bombing key Iranian weapons depots," they won't be shocked.

Second, these little trial balloons give the government more information about the likely reaction should they start bombing. I think libertarians sometimes overrate the power of the government. For all their guns and money, let's remember that there are a at most a few hundred key people in Washington running the show, and really you could whittle that number down to under 50 if you wanted to raise the threshold on your definition of "power."

Their control of millions of Americans and (less) control of billions of Earthlings rests on widespread perceptions of not only legitimacy but also obedience from everybody else. If the 50 people running the show in DC really overstepped, the jig could quickly unravel. That's why they spend so much time manipulating public opinion; it is crucial to their efforts.

(If you have never read it before, I strongly encourage you to read at least the first 5 pages of Rothbard's Introduction to Etienne de La Boetie's The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.)

So what does this mean, folks? It means that if you don't want your "representatives" to give the green light to blow up some more foreigners, then you should let that opinion be known. I'm not saying write a letter to your congressperson (though you can do that if you want). I'm more saying, let your friends and neighbors know that you think it's a nutjob idea. If you don't want to sound like a wuss, couch your objection in terms of the marooned U.S. troops in Iraq who could be really screwed if all the countries in that region said, "Oh, so that's how it's going to be, eh?"

(BTW I'm not just making stuff up. I've heard pro-military people speculating about supply lines being cut off etc. if Iran really declared all-out war with the U.S.)

Seasteading Institute

Courtesy of MR, I learned of the intriguing Seasteading Institute. Cool stuff. One of the principals is Patri Friedman, son of David, son of Milton...son of Abraham. I haven't had time to look this over very carefully, but I think it's great that things are this far along. Once it becomes profitable to produce a platform capable of housing, say, 1000 or more people anywhere in the world, I think you'll see the average amount of human liberty (whatever that means) explode.

My only objection so far is Patri's overzealous use of apostrophes. On the Institute's front page, he talks of a Twain quote from the "1800's," and then on his personal website he talks of "100's of pages" and talks of the Institute, "who's mission..."

Finally, his personal website features a cycle of pictures, some of which concern my prudish sensibilities. I attach the link below, but as I say, he has rigged it so that the picture changes very often. Try refreshing your browser to see if it changes. I am not sure if this type of hooliganism would be legal on Hans Hoppe's sea platform.

Bradley Explains Enron as CSR Poster Child

I explain here.

The Brain and Free Will

Here's Roderick Long on why recent brain studies say nothing about free will.

On a similar topic: When I read some dogmatic materialist asserting, "While we donùt know how brains create consciousness, it is obvious that somehow they do," it brings to my mind the image of some primitive tribe coming upon a working radio. After studying it for some time, the tribe's shamans proclaim, "We don't know how radios compose music and write news programs, but it is obvious that somehow they do."

Sean Bell Case

I need to learn more facts before I make any definitive assertions (after all, that's what I do) about this case. In the meantime, check out this ridiculous piece by Susan Filan, Esq., on the The Man Network, er, MSNBC. How could (a) someone possibly write this with a straight face and (b) an editor sign off on it? Just look at this:

And I believe that even though the officers cannot yet express their remorse, they are saddened by this incident and by Sean Bell’s death. No officer ever wants to take a life, even when the shooting is justified. Clearly, even if mistakes were made, the officers did not engage in deliberate and intentional misconduct. I know they grieve.

How the hell do you know that, Ms. Filan? I'm not saying they aren't grieving--though only one of them apologized according to the article I read. (If you were legitimately scared for your life, and ended up killing an unarmed guy the day before his wedding, don't you think you might, um, apologize to the family after the trial?!)

And what is this, "No officer ever wants to take a life"? What kind of asinine, we-live-in-a-great-country-so-turn-off-your-brain line is that? Does any dentist ever want to take a life? What about firefighters? What about plumbers? How does anyone ever get murdered in this country, anyway?

Oh wait, I forgot about drug dealers, polygamists, Mexican immigrants, homeschoolers, and oil speculators. Those characters are shady. They must be responsible for all of the murders every year.

Alsace

My son Adam and I now are relaxing in Haguenau, Alsace with my old friend Rudolph Sock, eating pizzas made with cream instead of cheese, and Alsatian sauerkraut. Alsace is lovely. The section I am in is a valley of fertile farmland set between two mountain ranges. It is so nice, in fact, that I told Rudolph that, on my next visit, I am bringing an army.

By the way here's how to make sauerkrut at home -- it's supposed to be tastier and better for you than the store-bought variety.

Le Cafe Bizzare

I just found a loaf of "Le Cake Anglais" on my host's counter, a cake I never saw while living in England. And that reminded me of something I did see there: Le Cafe Anglais. Now I can see the point of naming your London cafe, if it is French-style, "Le Cafe Francais," to add an extra dash of "authenticity." But what in the world is the point of naming your English cafe, sitting in the heart of England, in French? However, that naming absurdity was topped by the "New Jersey Fried Chicken" just up the street.

UPDATE: A photo, and a whole thread on weird chicken-shack names.