Prosthetic Credibility

2005-09-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

To anyone still holding out that the US government is anything close to effective, competent, or benevolent:

The ~~Morality Police~~ FBI is initiating a War on Porn, and funding a road to nowhere. All the while losing a billion dollars of your money that was allotted for fixing up the Iraqi millitary. Which means we're hosed in the states, and they're hosed overseas.

Your US Government at work, people.

(Hat tip(s): The Agitator.)

-sam

2005-09-18T09:26:00.000-05:00

sam? is that you questioning the Faith? have the seeds of caring and human kindness that I so carefully tried to sow inside your head actually sprouted a fledgling doubt? sweeet.

self-interested action cannot be inherently good, for the obvious reason that it is self-interested. it could be inherently smart, productive, worthwhile, etc...but not good. the problem with capitalism par excellence is that it takes the concept of 'others' out of the equation. and sure, while in theory that system might work rather well--producing all sorts of shit i'd love to have--i don't think i'd really like the people it created, the state of mind. after all, the closest thing that's ever come to it is the system we've got right now, and i fucking hate everybody.

i'm sure we can come up with a way to encourage progress and productivity and efficiency and whatever else capitalism promises, while at the same time keeping in mind that the happiness of all is central to the happiness of each. at least it's something worthwhile to work toward.

so, you can keep waiting for someone to answer your call for help, or you could just start thinking a little harder about what i suspect is your gut instinct.

[daniel]

2005-09-15T16:05:00.000-05:00

It's apparently Crazy Week here in DC:

Bush actually accepted the blame for something (the Gov't failure in respect to handling Katrina, no less). To which I say: You could've picked a better god-damned time. The supply of heating oil's already gonna go down because of the damage to the gulf coast, and now the demand's gonna go up because the Devil's gonna have to heat Hell. Thanks a lot, Bush.

Not only that, but Tom DeLay actually said that there's no more fat to trim on the federal budget. I'm honestly shocked that Don "Fuck you, New Orleans, I want a bridge" Young didn't burst out into peals of laughter.

-sam

2005-09-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

I. I guess our "vacation" was a little longer than expected. But if it's good enough for the president, it's darn good enough for us! (Unless by "it" you mean "cocaine" or "living in Texas.")

II. Michael Brown, the Bill Buckner of national disaster management, resigned. On the one hand, hoo-friggin'-ray. The guy was fired from his last job, as Comissioner of Judges and Stewards for the (International) Arabian Horse Association, a group of people who breed horses. Yeah. I guess we're lucky a massive whirlwind of improperly credentialed fillies didn't consume Louisiana, or else we'd really be in trouble. On the other hand, there is always the question of whether changing horses in midstream (or, as it were, changing ex-horse-standards-enforcers in mid-faeces-and-corpses-filled-floodwater) is more trouble than it's worth. On the other other hand, the distinct possibility exists that the FedGov has simply fucked it up as badly as they possibly could, and that no more harm could be done. We, I suppose, will have to see.

III. Speaking of the FedGov fucking things up, they're still trying to get people out of their homes. This has proven more difficult than first imagined (I think that "More Difficult Than First Imagined" should be the official motto of the Bush administration), and, understandably, things have gotten ugly. But, come on, no law enforcement would tackle a 90-lb, crazy-looking old lady, surely? Well...maybe. (In the policemen's defense, the old woman was armed with what appeared to be a pocket knife and Captain Jack Sparrow's pistol's little brother, so, y'know, that's dangerous, and stuff.) (Shouts to his Radness for the link to the video.)

IV. One good thing that can be said about the relief situation so far is that, despite the aforementioned mix of dead bodies, sewage, downed power lines, and witchcraft and false religions, New Orleans remains, thankfully and bizarrely, entirely free of zombies...for now.

V. I need help, of a sort: as I'm willing to bet 99.997% of the people who read (or used to read, before we stopped updating for several weeks) this thing know, I attend the George Washington University in the belly of the beast, Washington DC. The thing is, GDub (as the kids call it) is a private industry, and is yet somehow totally evil and inefficient. They do things like charge people rediculous amounts of money for crap and build retail space and parking lots instead of science classrooms, despite the fact that there are way not enough classrooms anywhere on campus. The thing is, both of these aforementioned actions appear to be motivated purely by self-interest, i.e. they want to make money, so they build high-revenue stuff instead of more classrooms. And yet, it's totally evil. So I need someone to explain to me how this meshes with the inherent goodness (for lack of a better term) of self-interested action. I suspect it has something to do with being a university, or some sort of small-picture thinking on my part, or something, but I'm just not sure. Help me, Libertarian-Wan Kenobis, you're my only hopes!

"I will suprise you sometime, I'll come around..."

-sam

2005-08-26T00:09:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart: "If I had a nickel every time Bush mentioned 9/11...I could raise enough reward money to go after Bin Laden!"

Whatever Mike "Nobody can talk about politics without a graduate-level knowledge of economics" Myers says, JStew is genius.

-sam

2005-08-22T19:03:00.000-05:00

I don't really have anything to say, other than I've just read the last few posts on Radley Balko's Blog. It's really really disturbing. Not the blog itself, just the stuff in it. I watched most of the video where the drive-through girl is pepper-sprayed by a cop for supposedly short-changing him, and it makes me sad in the very core of my being.

Ughhhh...

-sam

(p.s.: Greg is in need of positive reinforcement. So go read his blog and say nice things about what he says, regardless of how you actually feel about the actual content.)

2005-08-20T18:36:00.000-05:00

Umm...I guess we're on vacation.

I know I'm on vacation, and I guess Daniel's just not posting. Or something.

Anyhoo, while you wait for a resurgence of witty, blistering, insightful critiques of all that you hold dear, get your geek on by going over to Labyrinth Books and scoring cheap used college-worthy books of all varieties. I had a field day in the classics section, I'll tell you what.

-sam

2005-08-10T12:06:00.000-05:00

really interesting article by simon baron-cohen of cambridge university, on the differences between the male and female brains, and on the possible connection to autism.

2005-08-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

another quick reply turned into another lengthy post. here you go:

commenting on my last post, seth pointed out:

-----------------------
we have to start with virtuous ideals and then apply the sum total of history and human wisdom. and once we've found a formula that we think will work we have to apply it with the force and drive of dogmatic extremism, shunning centrism and pacifism.
------------------------

The first part of that sentance i love and the second part scares me a little. As far as sams defeatist conclusion, a possible cause is this:

sams comment

Which i feel is just wrong. Rationality is not exhibited in humans either completely or not at all. The rational part of our brain is tacked on top of a larger reptillian (i think thats the term) brain which is more of a giant associative pattern matching machine (and thus not nesc rational). Humans can be rational, but most of the time are not (which is usually taught as a good thing).

i think you're right. humans have the capacity for objective rationality, but are not in any way forced to use it. interestingly, that might not have always been the case. in his 1970's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes asserts that human consciousness only developed around 3000 years ago, and prior to that, humans were basically automatons comparable to any other living creature. he suggests that one side of the human brain would have been devoted to decision making (the products of which, interestingly, would have manifested in hallucinations of 'gods' and voices, and whatnot).

the reason i bring this up is that it suggests why political systems were so long-lasting and cohesive for so long. and perhaps why they aren't anymore. in bicameral men, as he calls them, objective rationality is the only vehicle for assessing novel situations. basically it was just subconscious (or nonconscious) cost-benefit analyses conducted using nothing more than the 'associative pattern matching' mechanisms you mentioned -- those mechanisms which today likely constitute the basis for human 'understanding' but act in concert with other mental faculties (most importantly consciousness itself, which enables us to consider ourselves as entities distinct from the world around us; project ourselves into open-ended hypotheticals; and basically take into account a huge range of new variables that might be considered the framework for 'subjective rationality').

i think humans are inherently rational beings. current neuroscience and brain/mind theory suggest it. the associative pattern patching machine that is our mind, would allow for little else. i think what sam is looking for is that perhaps today we are encumbered by this subjective rationality (sorry for continuing to use these contrived terms, but i think they get the point across), when only objective rationality could ensure the political machine running smoothly.

how do we deal with that? i think what i suggested in my post is the most promising direction. we have to take everything we know about humans and incorporate that into the plan. philosophy and sociology can teach us a great deal that should be incorporated into a government. politics and economics are not (as some seem to think) the only relevant factors.

but we have so much information at our disposal! philosophy has come so far, as well as the social sciences! i'm optimistic about our chances of creating a successful political system because humans are incredibly clever creatures. i hope i'm right.

and the reason (to address your concern) i said in my post that once we have the solution we should 'apply it with the force and drive of dogmatic extremism, shunning centrism and pacifism' is that while i wholeheartedly agree that compromise is essential in developing any political system, once it's here we need to trust it (and by proxy, ourselves) and stop trying to patch up the holes by pacifying opposition. centrism is the reason this country has turned into such an ideological blackhole. it seems like today no one stands for anything more than a desire for power.

i don't really think that we should be extremists. i just think that we should be spending our time and energy working on novel solutions for novel situations. and we should do this by getting together with people who think radically different from ourselves and emphatically pushing our own convictions. we should take that time to nuance our own arguments by listening to the convictions of others, and then trust the conclusions; instead of just pandering and political backscratching. when ideas are discussed for the purpose of creating new, better ideas. that's what we get. when ideas clash and people give in a little here and there, for the purpose of getting some of their idea effectuated, we just end up with a hodgepodge of partially-good ideas.

2005-08-09T14:14:00.000-05:00

I was doing actual work (shock!), aggregating booze-related articles on the Cato website, when I ran across this article about the National Highway Traffic Saftey Administration testing stoned driving in the Netherlands. Yep, the government got some europeans stoned and then made them drive around. USA! USA!

(Sorry to interrupt the deep-thinking politicophilisophical debate going on 'round here, but it was just too much not to share.)

"Drinking drinking drinking drinking coca coca cola..."

-sam

2005-08-09T10:58:00.000-05:00

[this started out as a response to the comments thread on sam's monday post, but turned into something of a sermon. since i haven't posted in so long, i thought i'd share...]

i think you're right, sam, in that the human factor inherently involved in any political system debilitates it from the very start. however, i don't think that political centrism and patchwork checks and balances are the solution. political extremism, if carefully devised, could certainly work. after all, a good idea is a good idea, and there's no reason to think that pacifying the whims of less intelligent (or less involved) people will steer a good idea in the right direction. smart people in the right state of mind (and, i suppose, given enough time) are capable of solving nearly any problem. people invented god and then killed him; discovered the universe and then mapped it; stumbled upon the atom and then harnessed its incredible power. while i think that seth's point about man not being able to create something as complex as a living organism (and the ensuing analogy to government) is very good, i don't think it's necessarily right.

though it's certainly true that man could not 'dream up' something as complex as a living organism, i think judging from recent leaps in scientific progress it is rather easy to imagine him ably mimicking such creation.

i don't see why the same logic can't be applied to political systems. the only way we will be able to devise a system that will work is if we look hard at the natural systems already in place (biological, ecological, and sociological systems), at everything we've learned about human nature and interaction (think neitzsche, arendt), and at the history of the last three thousand years of human political experimentation.

i'm not saying that it will be easy, or that we will be successful in the forseeable future. i am only suggesting that it is possible for human beings to devise a system that will work. we have to start with virtuous ideals and then apply the sum total of history and human wisdom. and once we've found a formula that we think will work we have to apply it with the force and drive of dogmatic extremism, shunning centrism and pacifism.

the reason american democracy was called the 'great experiment' is that the founding fathers decided to try a new system that they had come up with. it was unlike anything that had ever been tried before. yet they were confident in it because they had started with virtuous ideas (human rights. life. liberty. the pursuit of property / happiness.), and applied the wisdom they had gained after years under oppressive monarchies and ineffectual parliaments. they implemented the broadest framework of safeguards and caveats they could imagine, with the hope of future progress and future relevance. and, as we can see, they did a remarkable job. america is by far the most brilliantly successful political experiment ever undertaken.

that, however, should not be reason to prevent us from calling into question whether it is still working today. as seen on the pages of this post, in our readers' comments, and in the climate of dissent in our current political culture, a growing majority of americans are beginning to seriously doubt whether the system is still functioning in the best interest of its citizens. i (as you well know) personally think that it isn't. and yet i am not maligning the founding fathers! they were brilliant and i can only hope that men and women of our generation even have the intellectual curiosity to seek their breed of brilliance! the demise of american democracy is not a testament to the founders' incompetence, but rather their lack of clairvoyance. it is hard to believe they could have imagined the state of the human condition today. egalitarianism, widespread human rights, universal suffrage. these are not things they thought were on the horizon. the progress achieved in human morality and compassion and liberalism is astonishing. i don't think that our current social climate--what is commonly perceived as the decline of human integrity--is that at all. jon stewart, for instance, constantly makes the hugely valid point that we don't have slaves anymore! we're running around the world demanding fairness and equality and justice and human freedom! we've come a long way.

however, as a result, there has been a shift from one race trying to control another, to everyone trying to control everyone else. people seek money and power and that's it. fortunately it's not about race anymore, but now it's just about the rich and powerful vying for control of the poor and the weak. unfortunately, that is not the situation the founders were preparing for. their safeguards were against tyrannies of ideas, tyrannies of religion. the founders were rich and powerful! why should they have thought to safeguard against the rich and powerful??

so where does that leave us? i think we're left in a state of decline. we're left with a citizenry clinging to outdated ideas for reasons of nostalgia and indolence. we hold on to the founding fathers so tightly because we're afraid of trying to come up with something new for ourselves. a new social situation calls for a new social compact. and essentially that is what we need.

now, though it may not be obvious, i'm not crazy. i'm not calling for revolution. frankly, i don't think americans could handle it. i'm merely trying to suggest that the current attitude toward politics and government--the attitude of centrist reform and detente--is counterproductive. when something stops working, tinker with it a little bit. change a few parts. maybe even kick it. but don't pick at it until it's totally unrecognizable and hope that it will work like before, only better. doesn't anyone pay attention to the middle-aged women walking down the street with so much plastic surgery it looks as though at any moment the sun might beat down hard enough to actually melt their faces off? they're ugly! they tried too hard and what did they get? UGLY!

the same applies to government. as i professed so emphatically to sam yesterday, the ultimate reason for this post, and my final response to seth's comment mentioned above [yea, i know, sorry it's taken so long]:: we must not be defeatists! defeatism is the worst kind of laziness and cowardice. it is the ultimate limiter of human ingenuity. why shouldn't we think that we can come up with a system that will work? frankly, i know that we can. we have to be willing to start with good ideals, incorporate the things history has taught us, and take a stand. our politicians today are too weak and yellow to do that. money and power is more important to them than america idealized.

be brave enough to seek great things. otherwise you're forever doomed to the mediocrity we're seething in, well-deserved though it may be.

2005-08-09T08:13:00.000-05:00

i know it's been a long while since my last post, but worry not: as soon as i have time [?] will deliver the most emphatic of addresses on the path of human technological progress and why we must enslave the internet before it kills us. [this will, of course, be followed by a kickass party for my neo-luddite society, to be established soonly] .

in the meantime, john tierney takes the high road (no pun intended, seriously) in today's nytimes op-eds!.: debunking the drug war (link is fixed).

and!. PETER JENNINGS IS DEAD! i'm distraught! i'm dejected! peter's gone! who's next?? steven colbert? serena altschul? the humanity!

2005-08-08T12:45:00.000-05:00

Will Wilkinson just gave a really great research seminar about how to persuade people. Basically, the best way to get libertarian friends is to have libertarian friends. Failing that, you should try and match libertarian ideas to the ideas people already have (Will used the example of persuading someone with a strong egalitarian bent that libertarianism is the ultimate egalitarian philosophy). His basic point was that humans think in terms of teams, and tend not to make rational decisions about what they believe, and so therefore it pays to be a little underhanded when you're trying to persuade people to join your team. He's right. There's objective proof that indicates the success of these methods. That aside, it's fucking creepy. This led to a few thoughts on my part:

Will's comments really could've been generalized to just about any cult or cult-like orginization. He specifically mentioned tactics employed by the Moonies and Mormons. The question is: are we a cult?

I raised that question, and another question I raised was about the inherent value of "being right." It was dismissed out-of-hand, because, yes, obviously being right is good. Which is a fair point, I guess. But the thing is that there's really no way of determining who's "right" in a political debate. It's pretty easy to say that Russian Communism was a shitty way to run a country. But there's very little positive proof that your average political philosophy is "right." It is, more or less, the same as religion in this respect (remember in the South Park movie, when the people who've just gotten to hell are told that Mormonism is the true religion?) (Political philosophies are slightly more testable than religion, in the sense that you could just hand a country over to libertarians and see how it works out. That's never gonna happen, however). Therefore, the possibility exists that we, libertarians, are wrong. There's a chance that, were we to get our way, society would fail on a massive scale, millions would go hungry, people would die, etc. If that's the case, then there's a real chance that we're promoting an evil philosophy, and, as such, are evil people. This bothers me. I still think Libertarianism is the way to go, but I'm not sure I'm going to promote it as heavily as I have been.

The other thing I've been thinking about lately is the rationality question. The inherent rationality of the "average" person is a necessary condition for libertarianism to be successful (and, as such, even for it to be a good idea). The problem is, though, that I doubt that people (or, I suppose, The People) are sufficiently rational. Indeed, Will's whole talk was about how people aren't rational. (To be fair, the fact that people aren't rational about situation x does not necessarily mean that they're not "rational enough" for libertarianism.)

The real problem, however, is that, starting from the opposite assumption--that people can't really be counted on to make good decisions in aggregate--you end up in a kind of self-contradictory political morass. Democracy is right out, because if people aren't rational, a)they're not going to choose politicians wisely, and b)it would be ludicrous to assume off-hand that politicians are going to be rational, drawn as they are from the irrational populace. Practically every other political system fails also, largely as a consequence of objection b, above. How can you trust a king? A council? The only apparent way out of this is to remove the irrational component entirely by appealing to a Higher Authority (in the Hebrew National kinda way). But then you're right back where you started, at religion, which is the least empirical and most irrational system ever (indeed, one of the reasons I tend to like religion is because of its inherently irrational component.)

I guess the only guaranteeably good political system is one actively monitored by a super-human (and not in the Marvel sense) entity whose existence, rationality, AND benevolent intent toward humanity (or, if you were feeling generous, the planet) could be empirically proven. This, however, strikes me as a series of very difficult-to-meet conditions.

This realization, however, really only bumps us up to another level of difficulties. If what I'm saying is right (and I think it is, but it very well could be wrong), then the only rational political belief system would, in fact, be political nihilism. The problem with political nihilism is that it's hugely impractical, and also not very cool. People who claim to be without political beliefs really bother me, and I'm just not sure if I'm ready to take that leap yet.

"As long as I know right from wrong
I'll be OK, I'll sing my songs..."

-sam

2005-08-05T18:20:00.000-05:00

From those crazy Danes comes the intersection of booze and nerddom: open-source beer.

The article mentions that a local brewery is going to be brewing some up for sale soon. My question is, if the Linux analogy carries through, does this mean that the sold beer comes with tech support? Cause that'd be great.

-sam

(hat tip: H&R)

2005-08-04T10:44:00.000-05:00

Durch die gute menschen von Reason comes this recockulous story about the police shutting down the lemonade stands of a 9 year old and his 11 year old friend. Why? No permits.

"You cool with that? Cool, bang. You, cool? Hang. You no? Uh...bang. Cool. Sorry, dogg, rules is rules..."

-sam

2005-08-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

Via His Radness comes the best libertarian-themed folk song you'll hear all year. Favorite part: when he "takes a pilgramage to Cato."

Awesome.

I just hope our massive readership doesn't overload his bandwidth.

-sam

2005-08-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

Via Marginal Revolution, I was made aware of the British/American/Chinese/Malay Creole of Singapore, called, appropriately, Singlish. I think this stuff is fascinating. I love linguistics, especially dead ones and creoles. I also have a weakness for silly, made-up ones.

-sam

2005-08-01T10:24:00.000-05:00

Hic atque:

Apparently, the solar system is bigger, or at least different than we thought it was.

"And the universe is shaped exactly like the earth
If you keep on going straight you'll end up where you were..."

-sam

2005-08-01T10:16:00.000-05:00

Remember when I railed against moderates earlier? Well, it still bothers me to the point where I turned it into an op-ed. Mostly because I had to. Et nunc, vobis do putata me de eis in media:

On Friday, Senator Bill Frist reversed his position on stem cell research, breaking ranks with the President and with the well-oiled Republican political machine. Some called his move courageous, but most see it for the brazenly political calculation that it truly was.
On the other side of the aisle, Senator Hillary Clinton has been so successful in smoothing out her partisan edges as to garner praise from Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank. Criticism of the former first lady has largely been about her recent centrist leanings—as opposed to her actual ideas—with those on the left mourning her alliances with Newt Gingrich and those on the right refusing to let people forget her partisan past.
Ever since Senator Clinton’s husband turned 6 years of political gridlock into a highly regarded presidency by moving sharply toward the center, politicians in both parties of the aisle have become convinced that the middle is the way to go. For all the Red-state/Blue-state partisan chatter in Washington, blander is better when it comes down to the race for the White House. Last year, both President Bush and Senator Kerry cited the late Ronald Reagan (hardly a champion of inoffensive moderation) as an inspiration. This move, which at the time served only to give Ralph Nader fuel for another jeremiad, also seemed to turn off the voting public: less than two-thirds of eligible voters showed up last year, despite an overwhelming get-out-the-vote campaign from both parties. Despite the hype about the youth vote, less than half of voters between ages 18 and 24 came to the polls in November. So if centrism is what the people want, why don’t the people seem to want it?
The problem is that, once again, Washington has fallen out of touch with the average voter. The rise of ultraconservative radio stations and think tanks, not to mention corresponding liberal institutions like ANSWER and MoveOn, is a direct result of the populace being turned off by mediocre, moderate politicians. Fundamentalists of all political ideologies have been complaining about the Democrats and Republicans looking the same for years, but it’s never been truer.
The vast majority of Americans hold political beliefs, and yet almost half of them can’t seem to get up off their couch and vote. Politicians, like movie producers and pop musicians, have come to believe that offending the fewest people possible is the guaranteed path to success. Politicians have become like cars, devoid of sharp edges and able to withstand impacts from any angle, and the people are bored.
This is not to encourage a Dean-DeLay match-up in 2008. Blind ideology is no more the answer than bland centrism. America needs politicians who take risks, who are occasionally out of their rigorously prescribed comfort zones, who ask and answer difficult questions and put forth difficult ideas. The less the average American cares about who’s running for president, the more the race will be determined by those who care too much. And that’s the ultimate paradox, beyond Republicans supporting stem cells or Hillary getting complimented by neocons: ultimately, centrist politics only lead to the further partisan splintering of America.

Woo!

-sam

2005-07-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

Just in case anyone out there had any doubts about Google being absolutely amazing, vobis monstro Google on your phone. Send them a text message, get an answer. Never not know anything ever again!

(Hat tip Courtney Knapp)

"We came here to slit some throats
You came here to sniff some coke..."

-sam

2005-07-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

This shit is bananas. B A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A S. On the other hand, Maine is repping with very few people in jail. On the other other hand, what the hell is wrong with Georgia? They're CRAZY!

Also: We kicked Heritage's ass in the debates yesterday. While they didn't start crying or making out, it was still pretty decisive for us. They used the Maggie Gallagher "Gay people are bad for kids" argument (spiced with a pinch of Hayek), and we defeated them handily. We had a better resolution and a better issue (and by "better," I mean more easily morally defensible) than Team Drugs, and I'm sure it didn't hurt that, between Ghertner and myself, we had a much sexier team than Heritage.

Go Liberty!

Also Also: Go check out Greg's interview with Brooke "More than occasionally funny" Oberwetter about BtB.

-sam

2005-07-25T09:36:00.000-05:00

I've solved the war on terrorism.

First, I think it's only fair to accept two premises:
1. "Terrorism," as currently conceived, is essentially a-statist, politically motivated violence, carried out, like all political violence, by those dissatisfied by the current system.
2. "Terrorism," in name and reality, chiefly works by terror-izing people; that is, there is an assumption that terrorism causes widespread fear and anger, thus producing political change.

Thus, the Answer to the War on Terrorism:
Plug everyone we can get our hands on into the Bliss Machine. The Bliss Machine (at least according to Julian "Not Dirty" Sanchez) is a sort of logical ancestor of Nozick's Experience Machine, but one more akin to the first version of the Matrix: everybody's happy all the time. Since terrorism works by scaring people, drugging everyone in the Western World so that they're happy all the time effectively negates the efficacy of terrorism. We'd turn America into a slightly less-oppressive (in some senses) version of the world described in Vonnegut's (stunningly excellent) "Harrison Bergeron". And since terrorism is fomented by a combination of anger, ideology, and poverty, plugging in the Middle East will solve the problem AGAIN. That's two solutions for the price of one, two birds with one stone, and suprisingly one of the least morally reprehensible options out there.

Drugs, not Bombs!

"He just drifted away..."

-sam

2005-07-22T18:02:00.000-05:00

Aww yeah. I can dig it. (More shirts in a smilar vein here, hat-tip the Balkinator.)

The Che-shirt thing really does bother me. The whole merchandise-makes-you-lefty kinda thing bothers me. Luckily, it also bothers Rhys Southan, and, luckily for the world, he made a pro-capitalism commercial that addresses the very same issue. Mmm...capitalism.

-sam

2005-07-20T12:15:00.000-05:00

I was talking to Alison en route to Quizno's earlier today about how almost all of the considerable spleen being vented around the nomination of John Roberts to fill O'Connor's SCOTUS post has been rooted nearly completely in speculation, hearsay, and crazy speculation. There are basically 3 major cases that people are talking about:

1. The One where he "argued against Roe." Well, the thing is, he's a lawyer. When you're a lawyer, you argue in favor of whatever position your client has. That's the point. It doesn't mean you agree with it. Point two, he was one of six (count 'em) lawyers who wrote that brief. Six. Any one of the other lawyers could've added that bit, and all Roberts could've done was shrug. Not exactly the mark of a rabid choice-hater. And for everyone who says "He didn't have to take the case; the fact that he did means he agrees with it.": The thing is, he did have to take it. He was deputy Solicitor General. It's the equivalent of a secretary copying down a really stupid letter from dictation. Just because she did her job, doesn't mean she agrees with any of it.

2. The One where he supported arresting a 12-year-old for eating on the metro. "Oh Noes! He hates teh children!!!1" Well...no. If you read the decision, he says, basically, that it was a pretty stupid law, and was a fairly unreasonable thing to do, but it wasn't illegal. The arrest resulted from a combination of three factors: a "zero-tolerance" policy towards eating on the metro (that has since been changed), no way in which minors could be cited instead of arrested (which has since been fixed), and the fact that if you commit a crime in front of an undercover cop, he can arrest you (which is mildly annoying, but not really that bad). Was it shitty that this girl got arrested for eating a fry? Yes. Was it uncostitutional? No. Honestly, this decision, since it certainly seems like this guy has a distinction between shitty and illegal that is so desparately lacking in just about every citizen in America today.

3. The One where he screwed over some toads. "Oh noes!! He hates the environment!!!1one!" Blargh. He argued that a non-commercial frog that only lives in one state somehow didn't constitute "interstate commerce" and thus shouldn't be regulated. Boy, that sure is some radical Judicial Activism. Uh-huh.

"Alex took over for Alex van Halen, after his major surgery..."

-sam

2005-07-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

So apparently this guy is Bush's SC nom. Honestly, he wasn't really in the running when I left work today, and I haven't been keeping up with it, etc, so I don't really have an opinion of my own per se. On the other hand, as Greg's friend said, if it's good enough for Volokh, it's good enough for me.

Apparently there's some (fairly predictable, I'd say) "He'll overturn Roe v Wade" fear-mongering hoo-hah over at Drudge Report, but, once again, if the Volokh folks say he's cool, than I can dig it.

And if you're absolutely dead-set on getting your panties in a twist, just think of him as the least of all evils.

Now, the real questions are, Is he gonna make it, and Is this just another diversion?

(John Gianola [sp?], among others of my fellow-interns, theorized that Bush might send out someone unviable the first time, let the dems work themselves into a tizzy, and then, after they've spent their mojo, sail his actual nominee to victory. I dunno, I guess we'll see.)

-sam

[EDIT: apparently, Blogger can't handle trackbacks, so I de-trackbacked the links in the post. They should actually work, now.]

2005-07-19T00:23:00.000-05:00

For Daniel:

A selection from David Friedman's Booknotes interview:

So it isn’t specific to our system. I mean, I think the same problems would exist with England or France or Germany or whatever, that if you think about ordinary democracy, the problem is rational ignorance. The problem is that an individual voter would have to know a great deal to do a good job of deciding who should be Congressman or President, knowing that great deal would take him a lot of time and effort. The individual voter gets no payoff other than whatever his own feeling of having done his duty is from that time and effort, and thus, most people don’t do it.
Let me give you an analogy that I find striking. Suppose the way we bought automobiles was you create a group of 10,000 people and you say, “Alright. In two weeks, we’re going to have an election. Whichever model of car wins, you all get one.” In that system, you would not spend the next two weekends test driving because you would say to yourself, “With 10,000 people out there, even if I figure out what’s the right car for me, which is going to take quite a lot of time and effort, reading Consumer Reports, test driving and so forth, my vote is very unlikely to decide it. I’m going to get what the rest of them want anyway.” So none of us are going to make much effort to figure out what car we want and we’ll get whatever car we happen to have seen an ad for recently, something of that sort.

Well, same thing in the political system, except the number is much larger than 10,000. And I think that’s really an inherent problem, and you may or may not be – people can argue about whether there are some things that have to be done that way. But I think even if you believe there are some things that have to be done by the political system, you should assume they will then be done badly, because I don’t think we have good mechanisms for getting political systems to work.

(emphasis mine)

(annexed, sudatenland-style, from catallarchy)

-sam

2005-07-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

alas, the time has come for me to rain on sam's bigbusiness-loving government-hating parade. that's right. it's time for my own parade! a bigbusiness-hating government-weary parade! because after all, it's the corporations that are really screwing everyone over. it just seems like it's the government, because the two have become such irresponsibly inseparable institutions.

why, one might ask, is it so problematic that business and government work hand-in-hand? is politico-economic harmony not, in fact, the best grease for the machinery of capitalism and the free market? well, frankly, yes. the smooth cooperation of business and government in running our lives is, without a doubt, the premium insurer of capitalism par excellence. but, if you take a look at what exactly the parameters are that decide the successes and failures of capitalist systems and then an equally long (or short) moment to consider the way big businesses actually work today, it becomes fairly obvious why all but the richest people are getting the shaft.

for capitalism to work optimally--that is, where the system produces the best products at prices accessible to the greatest number of people--the age-old tale tells us that business must be left out in the open, untouched, susceptible to the sum total of every human whim and responsible to no one but itself. in other words: business flourishes in the free market. but what is the free market? and what is it that makes it free?

in the truest sense of the term, the free market describes some laizzes-faire utopian scenario where industrial production levels are regulated only by demand; research and development is directed by and toward consumer interest; and profit is accumulated at the bureaucratic top, and trickles down. government keeps its dirty hands off, and left in an economic state of nature, business thrives and everyone wins.

yet, unfortunately, this rosy portrait hardly depicts the economic situation we find ourselves in. the global market that exists today is anything but free. sure, government regulation is kept to a minimum (we'll get to that later). the real regulation comes, of course, from the corporations themselves! really, it's true. i promise.

the current global economy is filled with nothing but a (relatively) few gargantuan multinational corporations whose work forces, sources of raw materials, and customer bases extend across the world. the corporations that sell materials to these corporations, as well as those that buy the finished products are, in many cases, these same corporations. as william greider mentions in the nytimes today,

Nearly half of American exports and imports are not traded in open markets--the price auction idealized by neoclassical economics--but within the companies themselves, moving materials and components back and forth among their far-flung factories.

thus, the "free market" is actually the "market regulated by the variables in multinational corporations' cost-benefit analyses." which means that prices and production levels are not set by our preferences or in our interest, but rather by corporate profit projections. now, those of you yelling at me profanely inside your heads are probably mumbling something about how those corporate profit projections are ultimately determined by our preferences and interests! if you don't like it, don't buy it! well, frankly, i think you're naive. the idea behind capitalism and the free market (or at least its ostensible benefit that trumps all its evils) is that it produces the best products! technological innovation and consumer satisfaction are always at their peaks because the consumer is in control. but that is simply not the case in the real world. corporations look at what needs to be produced and then figure out the cheapest way to produce it. if the cheapest way involves using dangerously toxic materials, they determine whether it would be cheaper to use a different material or cheapter to lie about it. if the cheapest way involves moving thousands of jobs from one country to another, it's no sweat off the corporations' backs, because they exist outside (over and above, even) political boundaries.

so the products produced today are by no means the best products, and are at most the cheapest. what's more (returning to the original problem), the people running the corporations are the same people running the governments! so whatever hope we had for even minimal corporate regulation is in vain. greider claims,

Every sovereign nation, the United States included, uses its vast arsenal of policies to pursue its national interest...Washington defines "national interest" primarily in terms of advancing the global reach of our multinational enterprises.

which, of course, is true. [though not without its embarassing hypocrisies]. the united states government, likely moreso than any other country in the world, has been pursuing international free markets for as long as i (personally) can rememeber. they wanted to open up asia, then south america, europe. and as the founders of this concept, we have also played protector to the idea. but now that is proving detrimental to our economy. greider yet again,

The American predicament is shaped by operating dynamics grounded in the global system, singularly embraced by Washington because Washington originated most of them. At the outset, these practices were both virtuous and self-interested for the United States - encouraging industrialization in poor countries, binding cold war allies together with trade and investment, furthering the global advance of American business and finance. With its wide-open market, America played - and still plays - buyer of last resort for world exports. Its leading companies and banks gained access to developing new markets, often by sharing jobs, production and technology with others. American policymakers also got to run the world. The utopian expectations behind this arrangement turned out to be wrong, judging by empirical evidence rather than theory. But why wrong? American political debate is enveloped by the ideology of free trade, but "free trade" does not actually describe the global economic system. A more accurate description would be "managed trade" - a dense web of bargaining and deal-making among governments and multinational corporations, all with self-interested objectives that the marketplace doesn't determine or deliver.

yes, capitalism is a great idea. the best idea. and likely (at least in part) responsible for the changes in the social fabric of our world's societies that have brought an end to countless ancient evils and inequalities. moreover, the free market is a wonderful theoretical foundation upon which capitalism might stand. but frankly, the reality we live in is not some utopian ideal. it is a cold place run by evil people. those who run the businesses and governments that control our world are human beings governed by the same trust in their own reason, lust for self-preservation and wealth, and ultimately fallible moral compasses as the rest of us. they will do what is best for them, not what is best for you and me. the "free market" does not exist and only an idiot would trust it to protect us from the corporate bottom line.

[note:. sorry all my quotes are from the same nytimes article. thats what got me pissed off this morning and i haven't had time to do outside research yet. will update later.]

2005-07-13T13:47:00.000-05:00

And now for something completely different:

Idealogues Exchange Inane Remarks!

Weeeee!

-sam

(hat tip: To the People)

2005-07-13T11:26:00.000-05:00

Since it's my lunch-break, I'll take this time to advance a non-political theory, one which I've been considering for some time. Quite simply put, it is this: Monotheism is bad for society.

Why? What's wrong with God, that isn't with gods? Three (for now, when I turn this into a book there might be more) reasons:
1. Monotheism encourages absolutist, anti-intellectual thinking
2. Monotheism demands the conversion of non-believers
3. Monotheism discourages individuals from taking control of their lives

The first point can really be reduced to this: The Greeks built the Library of Alexandria, and the Christians burnt it to the ground. The defining factor of Monotheism, which separates it from polytheism, pantheism, and henotheism (the belief that one god is the "most powerful") is that there is ONLY ONE God, and ONLY ONE interpretation of his will. All other belief systems are heretical and must, by divine command, must be punished. No questions. The Bible explicitly states that nonbelievers must be killed, man, woman, child, and livestock, their village burned to the ground, and salt sprinkled on the ground to prevent anything from growing there ever again. Just because they don't agree with you. (The argument that nobody really does this anymore, along with similar non-observance based arguments, are hooey. Socially positive effects [or less-socially-negative effects] based on widespread rejection of a given belief system does not mean that that belief system is inherently good; in fact, I would argue it indicates quite the opposite.) In addition, because God makes the rules, what he says, goes. Therefore, any argument with the official doctrine (otherwise known as "scientific inquiry") is heresy, and must be punished. So, basically, don't ask questions, and kill anyone who disagrees with you.

In addition to the punishment of heretics, Monotheism demands conversion. Of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the least offensive in this regard, but that doesn't mean the entire system isn't deeply flawed. Christians and Muslims both regard it as their mission to convert the unbelieving, by force if necessary. There was no religious persecution under the Roman Empire, and no religiously-motivated violence, either. No peoples were conquered by the Romans for not believing in the State Religion. Not only were conquered peoples allowed to keep their own gods, but it was a well-documented practice to attempt to "woo" a city-state's protective deities to the Roman side in order to make a seige earlier. Pat Robertson and the Christian Right may decry Muslim extremists for their goals and their tactics, but the bottom line is that the only reason there isn't widespread Christian religious violence is because they got that out of the way already. It's pretty easy to decry people killing for their religious beliefs when you don't agree with them, and when your side has already conquered the world.

The third, and perhaps most pernicious, problem with Monotheism is what I refer to as the "Locus of Control Problem." The Locus of Control is a psychological measurement of the degree of control a given person feels they have over events in their life. Monotheism implicitly and, often, explicitly, demands individuals hand control over their life to God. Submission to God is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and even in monotheistic religions without such obvious demands, because God controls the universe and everything in it, the obvious conclusion is that he also, to varying degrees, controls you, and even if he doesn't, you should still go along with what he says, for he is omniscient, as well as omnipotent. Similarly, since there is only one force in charge of the universe and everything within it, and since that force is inherently good, everything that happens must happen for a "reason." This leads to people spending their entire lives struggling with the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" as well as an ever-widening definition of sin (and its corollary, that misfortune indicates misdeeds). People are cowed into submissive acceptance of whatever God throws in their way. The much-discussed story of Job is a good example of this. God basically throws as much shit as he can at Job, who basically suffers in relative silence until the point of near-collapse. God then appears in a whirlwind to the poor guy, and informs him that you should never question what God does, because you don't know what it's like to be the omnipotent ruler of the Universe. The end. Moral: Shut up and take it, because you don't know what's going on. Combine this with the almost-contradictory "Misfortune is for sinners" belief, and you end up with things like the Bubonic plague going largely unadressed because it was God's will.

Now, do these problems stem from fundamental aspects of Monotheism, or are they inherent in any religious system? Clearly, it is the former. There was no such thing as Greek or Roman dogma. There was no "Bible" of Polytheism. The gods were clearly fallible, as well as bribable and decievable. If you and your neighbor disagreed on a theological issue, it wasn't a big deal. The Christians were persecuted because they raised trouble (there was fear of a Jesus-led Jewish revolt; hence the "Rex Iudeorum" part of "Iesus Nazarinus Rex Iudeorum" on the cross) and claimed that everyone around them was going to hell, not because they didn't toe the party line. If something bad happened to you, it meant you either weren't sacraficing enough, or someone who had a thing against you was sacraficing more. Deities were approached in a contractual way, and if they didn't honor your conditions, you didn't have to honor yours. And while I would be a fool to argue that the average Roman felt more in control of his or her life than the average American, those restrictions came from society and the State, not from theology and the Church.

I'm not saying that Classical Polytheism, in any of its varied forms, is the Right Way to Go. I'm not even saying that Monotheism is wrong. I will fully admit that the truth may be that there is a God, and He espouses one of the prevailing Monotheistic viewpoints, or perhaps even one to be revealed later. But until more substantial proof for that is provided, I will continue to argue that the empirical effects of Monotheism are pernicious for believers and non-believers alike.

-sam

2005-07-13T10:40:00.000-05:00

This just in:

There is apparently a street called "Boulevard of the Allies" in Pittsburgh.

Wacky.

-sam

2005-07-12T17:58:00.000-05:00

I like reading the Examiner, cause it's very similar to Express, but, you know, different. Express, while a great paper, gives the impression of being a little too...softball, sometime. The Examiner's not quite like that. Plus, it's slightly more right-wing (/partisan in any way at all, which Express tends to stay out of pretty well) and that's good, because it gives me things to get mad about. Like, for instance, this piece of garbage. For those of you who won't click the link, the basic gist of the article is that since the Federal Government, in its wisdom, has given people jobs, it shouldn't take those jobs away just because someone figured out that perhaps we don't need to be spending all this money on the Strategic Federal Helium Reserve or what have you.

It's a shockingly dumb argument, in a shockingly dumb article. Saying that the government owes people jobs, or even that the existence of government jobs are a good in and of themselves, is ludicrous. The guy clearly has not read his Bastiat. People who are working in the public sector fall into one of two categories, the way I see it: either they're smart enough to get work in the private sector, and are thus wasting their time and our money; or they're not smart enough to get a real job, in which case they're just wasting our money. And arguing that someone has to be the Third Assistant Sub-Manager in Charge of Appropriations at the Bureau of Blah Blah Blah is only valid as long as there is such a bureau. And most of the time, there doesn't need to be.

But my favorite (and by "my favorite," I mean "the most egregious") line of the article is this:

And government workers have a special stake because, as taxpayers, they are also shareholders.

That's just rediculous. NOBODY is a "shareholder" in the Federal Government. That's like saying, "Peasants had a special stake in the prosperity of their Feudal Lord, because as serfs, they were also shareholders." You CHOOSE to invest in a stock. Stocks MAKE money (or at least they're supposed to). You can sell your shares of a stock at any time, and get on with your life. If a company makes a certain amount of money, they will give a dividend to their shareholders.

If a company treated its shareholders the way the federal government treats its citizens, it would be bankrupt within a month. Same with the profit margin on the government. So what's the difference? Why is this "stock," the federal government, different from all other stocks?

Force. "Government is not reason, it is not persuasion; it is force." -George Washington.
Taxes are armed robbery. If you don't pay your taxes, you have to pay fines. If you don't pay the fines, you go to jail. If you try and escape from jail, you will be killed. We are no more "shareholders" in the federal government than the Anglo-Saxons were "shareholders" in the Vikings.

And what's worse, far from generating money for themselves, as normal shareholder-employees do, federal employees are actually costing themselves money. If, and I'm being charitable, your average federal employee is not a monkeybrained moron, then he would most likely be making more money on the outside. Combine this with the fact that the very existence of his job is costing himself money (through taxes), and all of a sudden, federal jobs don't really look like they're helping anybody anymore. That's cause they're not.

Since I'm running short on time, I won't even get into the blatant ad misericordium (appeal to pity) and, most startlingly, ad baculum (appeal to force; my favorite fallacy because it literally means "to the stick") fallacies he commits in the rest of the article, nor the fact that he indicts reformers from the "Carter, Reagan, Clinton, [and] Bush II administrations," and doesn't even pause to think that something endorsed by 2 democrats and 2 republicans each might not actually be a bad idea (nevermind the fact that none of the mentioned presidents really did much of anything to reduce federal spending in any meaningful way [and Reaganites should be warned that I consider Defense spending worse than just about any other kind of spending, and so any arguments that Reagan would've lowered the budget were he not cannily out-spending the soviets to spread Democracy will be met with forceful, mocking rebuke).

I hate the government.

-sam

2005-07-12T12:18:00.000-05:00

I'm really trying not to get too riled up about this whole Karl Rove thing, because nothing's going to happen. Rove isn't going to jail, he's not going to get fired, nothing is going to happen. An administration that flat-out lies about their reasons for declaring war on a sovereign nation and then brushes it off like it ain't no thang is not going to freak out about some senior official "accidentally" leaking the identity of a not-really-undercover CIA operative. So there's really no reason to get riled up. And besides, a lot of other people are plenty pissed about it anyway, so they can be mad for me. On the other hand, it's kind of difficult not to get mad when you hear about stuff like the stupidest WH Press Conference ever. Ugh. I hate politicians.

"The absence of God will bring you comfort, baby..."

-sam

2005-07-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

What do you get when you mix 19th-century thinkers and 20th-century fads? Philosophomon!. I dig it.

Also: People you probably don't know making fun of some other guy you've probably never heard of! Hooray!

-sam

2005-07-11T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have a strong interest in philology and meta-studies. Libertarianism is great and all, but way not as much fun as two libertarians arguing on a thread or a brief history of Libertarianism in America.

Screw "Liberty," accusations of prostitution and drug-dealing are awesome.

Further proof it was all better before we were born.

"Park your bets
Sharks or jets
These bark-mark targets bear a barnacle's nest..."

-sam

2005-07-09T02:00:00.000-05:00

oh busy week! you've left such little time for blogging.

has anyone else been keeping an eye on this china-buying-unocal situation? or to be more precise, this --congress threatening china because they think they're in a position to do that-- situation? if not, let me fill you in.:

unocal, an american oil company, is currently up for grabs and other-american-oil-company chevron announced a $16.7 billion bid for it. then suddently out of left-field (or asia) comes chinese energy company cnooc (china national offshore oil corporation) with an $18.5 billion bid.

er, yea. that's pretty much it. seems pretty straight forward, no? one company bid. then another company bid just shy of $2 billion more. in normal, day-to-day multi-billion dollar corporate acquisitions, that's usually the end of the story. with, of course, the company with the highest bid taking the cake. however, that is not the case this time. of all people, the u.s. fucking congress has decided to throw in their 2 cents. who, you might be asking, asked for their opinion? um, well, no one. they just figured we'd want it because they're always looking out for us. and just what did they have to say? representative joe barton said that this "poses a clear threat to the energy and national security of the united states."

give me a fucking break!

now don't get me wrong, i'm scared of china. and frankly, you should be too. but not because they want to buy some negligible goddamn oil company! unocal provides the u.s. with less than one percent of the oil we consume. now let's say, for joey's sake, that china decided to withhold that oil from us the minute it took control of unocal. what would happen? um, NOTHING! if china, in an attempt to satiate its own growing appetite for oil, decided to keep all the oil unocal produces for america for itself, all that could possibly happen is that some of the competitive burden that appetite has placed on the international oil markets would be alleviated. possibly even lowering the cost of oil for us!! [or, at the very least, it would give china a reason to value or energy stability.]

but even more aggravating than congress' lack of fucking common sense, is their moronic hypocrisy. because, after all, this is an economics issue and not, as we've just established, an issue of national security. and economically speaking, having china buy a u.s. oil company would be precisely what our wonderful government has been working toward for at least the last 10 years. as james surowiecki points out in this week's new yorker,

allowing chinese companies into the american market makes both economic and strategic sense. it makes economic sense because markets work best when assets flow, without the interference of governments, to the people who value them most highly. (currently, cnooc values unocal more than chevron, the other bidder, does) that's why the united states has so strenuously persuaded other countries to abandon protectionist policies and open their markets to foreign investment. in the past few years, the bush administration has pushed the russian government to open its energy industry to foreign investment. and the united states has exerted tremendous pressure on china (albeit with limited success) to get it to improve its trading policies and allow foreign companies to run their own businesses free of state intervention. blocking the unocal deal would make it a lot harder down the road for the united states to get foreign countries to open up.

so, it's not threatening to u.s. national security and its not offensive to u.s. economic policy, so what, again, is the problem with it? right.

yet, is that the end? nope. because what is threatening to both u.s. national security and u.s. economic policy is congress [which for u.s. international p.r. purposes speaks for all americans] making empty threats toward a growing global superpower that happens to also be the second largest owner of u.s. foreign debt (after japan)!! i mean, c'mon you morally condescending, dense mother fuckers! they can tank the dollar! they own the money we're using to buy their cheap labor!! china is the country closest in military strength to our own, has a population three to four times the size of ours, and they own our money! does congress really think it wise to talk down to them?

be scared of china.
be even more scared of congress provoking them.

2005-07-06T16:11:00.000-05:00

If stupid people didn't exist, I might have to do actual work.

I just wandered into this lovely article about the practice known as "cutting." And how does this Michelle Malkin character characterize it? As a fad. She blames Christina Ricci, the internet, and...emo?

Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses" and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as "Thirteen"). There is even a new genre of music -- "emo" -- associated with promoting the cutting culture.

I happen to know two people who did this, and neither of them indicated that they did it cause it was cool. And while I'm not denying the possibility of some sort of self-mutilation subculture, or even trend, Malkin seems to attribute the entire phenomenon to a teen's lust for acceptance. Saying that people cut themselves because Courtney Love did it is like saying that people become anorexic because they wanna be more like Paris Hilton. It's stupid, it's mean, it's reductionistic, and it's pernicious. The last fucking thing people who practice self-mutilation need is to feel ridiculed, minimized, or rejected by greater society. Telling someone who harms themselves because they're depressed that they're just being trend whores is right up there with telling depressed kids that, in fact, yes, there is something wrong with them, and that nobody has ever felt the way they had. Ugh.

"I am the farmer
I work in the fields all day
Don't mean to alarm her
But I know it was meant to be this way"

-sam

2005-07-06T12:26:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a Research Seminar with David Boaz, Cato's 2nd-in-command. He talked about Think Tanks and their role in DC/politics-in-general, and specifically the role of Cato etc. One of my fellow-interns (possibly Micha) asked a question about the tendency for Libertarians to end up allied with the right, either through stereotyping or by choice. Boaz, in his wisdom, in essence said that since Capitalism is the dominant social force, basically, in western society, economic issues (particularly the whole private-property thing) were going to be the primary focus of debate. This made me remember what I was thinking about last night about moderates, and why they bug me. (The thoughts were inspired by the fact that my new roommate is working for Sen. Joe Biden [D-Del], who is described in a Wikipedia article as a "centrist democrat")

The way I see it, Moderates/Centrists can be classified into two large groups, which can be further broken down into two subgroups each. You have people without ideals, and then you have people who place a greater emphasis on the Libertarian-Authoritarian axis of the political spectrum than on the "Left"-"Right" axis. In the first group, you find people who don't stand for anything because they don't really have a cohesive political philosophy. While there is something to be said for "intuitive," "do-what-feels-right," ideology-free governance, ultimately I think that if you're in politics and can't formulate a coherent philosophy, you have no business being in politics. (This could stem partly from my inherently agonistic ideal of government, wherein the person appointed to the head of the EPA is not someone who agrees with the sitting President about the EPA, but someone who thinks the EPA is a really good idea and will fight for it at all costs, against the people who think that the EPA sucks and that we should increase defense spending, vs people who think we should screw defense and the damn EPA and just cut taxes instead, etc.) The other subgroup in the "no-ideals" group, besides people who just don't stand for anything, are the opportunists, who will stand for anything, as long as it's politically expedient. The tragic thing is that this is the most common variety of Centrist, the variety that runs for president every 4 years. The whole "Republicans and Democrats are the Same!" line is one most often heard from those accursed Naderites and similar extremists, but since I more or less just tacitly endorsed extremism above, I can trot it out without chagrin. Plus, it's kinda true.

Actually, I would argue that your average Republicrat (now I sound like a kook! It's fun!) falls somewhere between the opportunist camp and the Statist camp, which brings me to group 2: people focused more on the Authoritarian-Libertarian axis. The A-L axis is really the ignored dimension of politics, precisely because of what David Boaz was talking about. All everyone ever thinks about is economics, economics, economics, to the point where nobody really focuses on the net effects a given bill will have on average personal Liberty. I like to think of it in these terms: Imagine, if you will, a model ship. If you stand above said ship, say, 8 feet in the air, a point at the base of the mast and at the top of the mast seem fairly close to each other (provided the dots or whatever used to indicate the points were sized appropriately to compensate for our inherent distance perception), even though they aren't. In much the same way, two people, one who favored free markets and few personal liberties, and one who favored free markets and many personal liberties would seem "pretty close" in the myopic spectrum of American politics. Much in this same way, many people who are "Centrists" are just "Middlers," I guess, because they don't care about economics as much as other stuff. And, again, they fall into two groups: Statists and Libertarians. "But Sam," you're probably saying to yourself, much to the confusion and/or amusement of your friends or coworkers, "you said you don't like Centrists, and you clearly like Libertarians, or else you wouldn't be working at Cato, you tool." Well, hypothetical (and probably non-existent) reader, I do like Libertarians, but I don't like people who think that just because they never read Murray Rothbard, or F.A. Hayek, or Mises (or Larry Elder, or whoever) means their "Republicans out of our bedrooms, Democrats out of our wallets" thinking is anything new. Either their stupid, so I hate them, or they're too sissy to acknowledge the fact they're libertarians, so I hate them. Real, intelligent Libertarians know better than to call themselves "Centrists" anyway. And then, the last subgroup is the opposite of the Libertarians, the Statists. Just because they don't really have a well-formed opinion about how you should be spending your money doesn't mean they don't want to run your life. Remember that.

So remember, kids: 9 times out of 10, someone claiming to be a "Moderate" or a "Centrist" is either an idiot, a sellout, a Statist, or a closet Libertarian who deserves no respect.

"I am alive
I am here
I am now
I acknowledge the fact of my life"

-Sam

(I really wanted to link that "Mises" thing to a Trixie and Dixie fanpage or something, but you get bupkiss as far as Trixie & Dixie love on the internets. It's sad, really)

2005-07-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

Read the last paragraph + line of this ny times editorial by Thomas Friedman.

"God created American secretaries of state for this kind of moment."? Really? Yahweh, in his benificence, specifically established the post of Secretary of State of the United States of America specifically so we can meddle in the middle east? Unlike many of my ideological fellows, I like Thomas Friedman. But this? Really? Haven't we learned that meddling in the Middle East is like swimming in nitro glycerin? Don't we just totally fuck it up pretty much every chance we get? Shouldn't we trust the damn Palestinians and Israelis already?

The idea that America exists to deal with everyone else's problems is dangerous, both for them and for us. It assumes both that we have some sort of moral obligation to meddle, with is rediculous, and it also asserts that we somehow have the discerning moral judgment necessary to make those kinds of decisions. It's Big Government in the worst way. The U.S. government has no more business "advising" the Israelis on the Gaza pullout (or on anything else, for that matter) than D.C. government has telling bar owners they can't let people smoke in their bars. It's obnoxious, really, and dangerous.

-sam

2005-07-06T08:04:00.000-05:00

have you seen super-size me? have you read don't eat this book? do you dislike morgan spurlock for being a specious, fact-distorting demagogue? maybe you should.

-sam

2005-07-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

remember the hoopla about the journalists from Time refusing to reveal their sources? remember that the SCOTUS told them they had to, because the identity of a CIA operative was compromised? remember how they're now revealing their sources?

yeah, apparently, it could be karl rove.

yep. that's pretty fucked up, huh. the chief strategist for the president of the united states of america, the commander-in-chief's second-in-command, may have been the one (and probably was) who blew the cover of a cia operative.

pretty shitty, i'd say.

at least he might be going to jail for perjury. maybe he and lil' kim can collaborate on a album. MC K-Rove in da house!

-sam

(via his radness)

2005-07-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

in the latest bit of capitol hill teabagg ing, the house of representatives has passed (and the senate proposed) legislation that blocks federal funding from development projects that use the kelo ruling to secure its land. now for me, as well as for many of you i imagine, this presents a spectacular dilemma. i despise the kelo ruling for its spitting on my right to own property and its rank stench of big business, BUT should congress be allowed to simply overturn the court's rulings by way of backdoor funds-withholding technical trickery? after all, they clearly have the power of the purse, and thus the unambiguous authority to do whatever they please with the government's money. yet, we already have a system in place for dealing with supreme court rulings that don't align with public opinion. its called the amendment process.

so what to do? do we simply overlook congress' usurpation of the supreme court's time-honored role as constitutional interpreter this once, because we hate the ruling? if the public at large truly disagrees with the decision, why not get together and pass an amendment? property rights, as i see it, are certainly reason enough!

moreover, as we look to the future -- a future furnished with a new supreme court, sans o'connor -- what kind of relationship do we work to establish between the court, the other two branches, and the people? it is not farfetched to talk about a stacked conservative court overturning roe v. wade or outlawing gay marriages. if that happens, we might appreciate a well-established precedent of congress giving the court the finger and the people pushing on at the status quo. but what's to say congress will accurately reflect public opinion then? what's to say it does now? with a 99% incumbency rate, rampant corruption, and the infiltration of big business, in all likelihood it won't and it doesn't.

so--as you've probably guessed--i don't have an answer to this conundrum. on the one hand, the kelo decision disgusts me and i'm glad that a predominantly-republican congress has the moral aptitude to, for once, stare down big business and work to protect arguably the most sacred right this country was founded on. but on the other, the democrats working to maintain the court's relevance should be heard as well.

either way, its a precarious situation that is worth keeping an eye on. for on top of everything i've already said, it is hugely interesting to watch the republicans fight to diminish the power of a court they are about to take complete control of, as the democrats work to maintain its sway despite the inevitable decades ahead of decisions they will oppose.

2005-07-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

alison doesn't like it when i just post links to things without explaining them, but this is just too...something:

indoctrination is awesome!

tragic. read the comments, too, i guess.

"bleed out onto the big streets and bleed out onto the highways..."

-sam

(via the corner, by way of dirty sanchez.)

2005-07-01T00:36:00.000-05:00

brilliant analysis of the kelo and raich rulings by julian sanchez at reason. involves an ancient greek thought experiment and doesn't use the word "fucking" :: thus, is much better than my own.

2005-06-30T13:15:00.000-05:00

while i agree, sam, that the idea of using intent as a parameter for deciding the legality or constitutionality of a given case is both subjective and 'thought-policey,' it would be problematic to try and do otherwise. the difference between the legal definitions (and therefore repercussions) of 'murder' and 'manslaughter,' for instance, lies wholly in the idea of intent. and while i may not agree with the scourt's decisions as of late, i would be hesitant to forfeit my safeguard against going to jail for the rest of my life for accidentally killing someone. besides, if you think about it, the ten commandments decisions weren't all that bad (especially in light of the rest of the rightstomping horseshit that's come out of the court recently). while issuing those two rulings basically at the same time was an incredibly stupid move that evaded the scourt's duty to clearly define the law by just confusing everyone even more; i believe that the display in texas truly was a legitimate display of the historical precedents that influenced the creation of our own legal system. and even though i still think they should have ruled them down (better safe than sorry, i always say), perhaps their intent wasn't all that misguided.

2005-06-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

i've just returned from a field trip to the national press club to watch the supreme court review. it was...well, not having gone to lawschool, i basically only understood 20% of what was going on. and i slept through the first hour, basically. but the comments on raich were pretty good, as were the comments on the grokster and ten commandments rulings.

i was thinking about those rulings, and the thing they all have in common is intent. basically, grokster lost the case because of evidence furnished that they were purposefully profiting off of copywrite infringement. there was a concerted attempt by grokster to compare their service to vhs machines, which were the subject of a similar trial many a year ago. the difference, apparently, is that grokster in at least some capacity acknowledged the infringement capacity of their service.
and then there are the two commandments rulings, which have generally been taken together the times they've been discussed in my presence (including at the press club). the apparent distinction between the two is that in the texas case, the display of the commandments was incorporated into a kind of historical monument featuring a lot of other things, whereas in the kentucky case, it was displayed by itself on a wall. therefore, ruled the SCOTUS, texas intended the display of the commandments to be historical in nature, whereas the kentucky judges intended it to be religious, thus violating the much-mentioned "establishment clause." (the fact that much of the study of law, like much of the study of medicine, is largely a matter of learning a code, has been really reinforced in my brain as of late. especially after going to this pressclub thing, where they dropped case names and clause names and all kindsa shit you would not have known without a grounding in constitutional law. it was kind of annoying.)

this really bothers me. i have a very hard time with the idea that intent is not only a pertinent issue in deciding a legal case, but can also be the entire point. does anyone else see what i'm getting at? what you were thinking when you did something can mean the difference between a legal and illegal (or constitutional and unconstitutional) act. not only is this thought-policey, it's also far too subjective and...unobjective (you know what i mean?) for my tastes. you can find a gun in some guy's house that matches the bullets found in some other guy's torso, and convict him of a crime. but the idea that you can somehow draw out the contents of someone's brain at a previous date, and have that be legally sound evidence, is very bothersome.

i mean, i've probably misinterpreted this somehow, but that's just how it struck me.

"i think i'll call you
virginia woolf..."

-sam

2005-06-29T20:58:00.000-05:00

hooray! the senate passed an energy bill! now let's all get drunk and drive around because the oil crisis has been solved!

oh wait, no it hasn't. while i applaud the senate for not succombing to the same sort of shameless pandering as the house's display of deep pockets and small testicles, by not including MTBE legislation in the bill [legislation that would protect oil companies from being prosecuted by towns that have been poisoned by the chemical MTBE that has leaked into groundwater because of their reckless refining practices], i fart in their general direction for failing to actually do anything.

the bill the senate has just passed conveniently sidesteps the actual issue of american oil dependence by directing all the dollars (dollars that after budget cuts will never actually be spent, at least not on things called for by the energy bill) toward developing new technologies., instead of COMMERCIALIZING ALL (or just one, even) OF THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEVELOPED AND REALISTICALLY REDUCING OIL USE! oh, right. that would make it a little harder for the government to continue giving huge tax breaks ($18 billion worth, to be exact) to companies that already own the technologies capable of parting our lips from their oil-bearing nipples.

oh, how i hate their nipples!

but, then again, i guess what's really important is, as pete domenici -- chairman of the senate energy & natural resources committee -- put it,

"We have matters that are in disagreement, but I can say they are far less in importance than the matter before us, which is to get an energy bill."

silly me. to think i had almost forgotten that the senate's job is to pass bills. i wholeheartedly agree that it would be too much to ask of that room full of self-serving morons that they pass meaningful legislation that actually does things that help people and country.

well, at least they weren't out killing prostitutes.

2005-06-29T14:55:00.000-05:00

my perpetual quest for targets of vituperative, virulent invective was largely stymied today by an apparently lack of outrageous stupidity. i read through both the examiner and express and got nada, at least, nada que hasn't been already more or less summed up.

i guess i could rail about newspapers and their horribly set-up websites that prevent me from double-checking circulation numbers, but that's pretty boring, even for me.

-sam

2005-06-29T09:44:00.000-05:00

while we're talking funny news:

Enterprising friends of Liberty want to take Justice Souter's house and turn the property into "Hotel Lost Liberty."

Take that, ya bastard.

-sam

2005-06-29T08:53:00.000-05:00

this i think is pretty funny. my favorite part:

"Miss Bullock, would it be fair to say you like to shop?" Assistant U.S. Attorney James Cooper asked.

"No, that's not fair," Bullock said. "I love to shop."

perhaps my sister has a future in school-boarding...

(found through gene healy)

"don't look now, it ain't you or me..."

-sam

2005-06-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

for my first foray into the world of 'politblogging,' as swizzard has so delightfully deemed it, and in light of all the judicial rightsfucking that has been going on over the last week or so, i believe a brief recap is in order:

june6 | gonzales v. raich

in the now (in)famous 'pot ruling,' the justices of the supreme court -- in their infinite, untouchable, and forward-thinking wisdom -- ruled that the federal government indeed has the constitutional authority to regulate intrastate commerce under the auspices of the interstate commerce clause. well, at least they do now.

june23 | kelo v. city of new london

here, (only 17 days after the gonzales decision, please note) the court decided to uphold the supreme court of connecticut's ruling that the city of new london has the authority to invoke the right of eminent domain because a "carefully considered development plan" claims that new jobs, higher tax revenues, and aesthetic improvements will result from it.
of course, that's all just friggin dandy. the problem is that -- as justice o'connor described in her dissenting opinion -- this ruling leaves the door wide open for the government to take your fucking house any time it feels like it. all it needs to show is that the new strip mall or "public" prada store will generate higher taxes.

If legislative prognostications about the secondary public benefits of a new use can legitimate a taking, there is nothing in the Court's rule or in Justice Kennedy's gloss on that rule to prohibit property transfers generated with less care, that are less comprehensive, that happen to result from less elaborate process, whose only projected advantage is the incidence of highertaxes, or that hope to transform an already prosperous city into an even more prosperous one.

even more mindfucking is the unrelenting gall of the carefully chosen wording of the majority opinion, where they defended their decision by writing,

Viewed as a whole, our jurisprudence has recognized that the needs of society have varied between different parts of the Nation, just as they have evolved over time in response to changed circumstances. Our earliest cases in particular embodied a strong theme of federalism, emphasizing the "great respect" that we owe to state legislatures and state courts in discerning local public needs...For more than a century, our public use jurisprudence has wisely eschewed rigid formulas and intrusive scrutiny in favor of affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power.

would it be patronizing to remind you of the previous decision mentioned in this here little list? the one where the same fucking justices OVERRULED THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA'S RIGHT TO REGULATE POT BEING GROWN (not bought or sold, mind you) WITHIN THEIR OWN FUCKING BORDERS?

june27 | nat'l cable assoc. v. brand x internet

finally, in this victory for the three companies that own everything we do, buy, and eat, the court upheld the federal communication commission's decision that broadband cable modem companies are exempt from common-carrier regulations. in people-talk: the companies that own the country's broadband cable lines don't have to lease them to the smaller providers that can't afford their own (can you guess why they can't afford their own?), in the same way that they have to fairly lease telephone lines, for instance. er, ok. you might be thinking. who gives a shit? well, let's just say that you will when your broadband cable bill triples and the customer service people (in india) caller-id block your calls because comcast doesn't have to deal with pesky competitors like earthlink. i realize that stifling competition while flamboyantly waving the free-market capitalism marquee has become the stock and trade of american politics, but seeing the supreme court sell out like the rest of 'em really stings.

the point i'm trying to make by bringing up these recent spectacles of judicial activity is this: i'm scared. oh, and i'm pissed off. i'm scared and i'm fucking pissed off. the supposed last-stop before tyranny, the final word for the commonweal, the one goddamn branch of government whose ultimate power is vested entirely in nine old, cancer-ridden, and ostensibly wise individuals has chosen three times in the last three weeks to fuck the people. fuck us and tell us its for our own good. it's not even an issue of partisanship anymore! back in the day i was at least able to trick myself into thinking the democrats would protect me, but that's not the case anymore. the supreme court has apparently finally gotten the memo from the rest of the government. the one that says "just screw 'em all. they're stupid and apathetic and probably won't notice. so just go ahead and do it. you might even make a few bucks." and the worst part? they're probably right.

2005-06-28T15:23:00.000-05:00

i was going to write about the utter idiocy of the anti-smoking cabal and their various free-market-hating, facts-misstating, intellectually bankrupt ways, but i figured i'd about this nonsense instead, because it's important to be somewhat time-sensitive in your politiblogging, and reason just did a piece on it. because most congresspeople apparently feel that a sawed-off shotgun is the most effective way to deal with moquitos, the hizzouse passed a proposed amendment to ban flag-burning. "so what," you may be saying, "if i had a dollar for every time the government passed stupid, rights-infringing legislation simply for an easy increase in political capital, i'd buy out george soros." well, yeah. in and of itself, the anti-flag-burning amendment (hereby occasionally refered to as 'the afba') isn't significantly more frustrating and stupid than your average piece of government crap. the real kicker, though, the thing that truly bothers me, and, i suspect, most right-thinking human beings, is this splentacularly fucktarded piece of quotation, courtesy of california republican (they DO exist!) randy "i want to remind people of a former kkk member who ran for president so i'm going to use my nickname of 'duke'" cunningham:

"Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment."

yup. just read it again. i would advise against reading it a third time without a bottle of bayer close at hand, because such pure, unbridled, shameless, exploitative shittiness has been known to cause unpredictable rises in blood pressure.

actually, what i would imagine the "men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center" would tell you would be something along the lines of: "thanks a fucking lot for totally ignoring osama and wasting our resources in iraq, while simultaneously treating our civil liberties similarly to how Edgar Ray Killen would have treated black people many years ago." maybe. i dunno, those theoretical people may not have been as bitterly sarcastic as i, and perhaps at least a few of them may or may not have agreed with all the crap they were used to promote. but i will bet you very good money that they probably don't care all that much about tactless dipshits burning the stars & stripes.

ughhh.

"you know you gotta help me out, yeah yeah"

-sam

(p.s: is anyone else mildly worried/confused/annoyed that the first 2-3 pages of material turned up in most averagely successful google news is horribly, and obviously biased 'opinion'-type stuff?)

2005-06-28T13:01:00.000-05:00

I suppose that for my first post, I'll share my feelings in quasi-response to the Liberty Belles' post about why more libertarians seem to self-identify more with republicans than with dems.

i, personally, disagree. i feel much closer to the dems than to the republicans. this can be attributed to a variety of influences, chief among them my upbringing. my dad, and his family, are about as close to the platonic ideal of New York Jewish Democrats as you can get (my relatives moreso than my dad, actually. my dad would cannonize regan if he could/were catholic.) so being around a lot of democrats obviously had an effect. but i think an equally important influence is that i'm part of the clinton generation. love him or hate him, slick willie was the president during most of my childhood. and, as well, newt "pill addict" gingrich and his fellow class of '92 republicans controlled the legislature. so, for my entire childhood, the republicans basically just maligned and abused the democrats, a tendency which continues to this day, not just unabated, but, like, superbated, or something.

i saw it in terms of personality, basically. the Democratic Party, were it to be incarnated into some sort of blue-tinted, well-meaning yet basically clueless avatar, were you to give it a hard time and "back it into a corner," as it were, would probably basically just start crying. pathetically. like a little girl. the Republican Avatar, in its smug, overbearing self-glory, would, in the same situation, kick you in the testicles, and then, while you were down, kick you in the stomach, punch you in the teeth, and then probably hit you again, especially if you were gay. this is, obviously, a bit of a silly situation, but it gets at my point: i would much rather side with sissies than with assholes, and i think that's really what it comes down to.

(the thing is, tragically, that this state of affairs has progressed to the point where the Democratic Avatar would probably start crying if you looked at it the wrong way. it's one thing for a political party to advocate for a culture of victimhood, it's quite another for the party itself to be perpetually victimized. between the whole dick durbin thing, and everone giving howard "why are you even listening to him?" dean endless rafts of shit for claiming that republicans were [gasp!] mostly white christians [how libellous, right? i mean, there's like...a few jews...and colin powell {even though they stopped listening to him}], every time a democrat dares to say anything that even comes close to approximating the sheer vitriol of the mid-90s republicans, they get ripped to shreds for it, and duly apologize. ugh.)

the other aspect to my identify-more-with-dems-ness, is that i do think liberals are honestly trying to help people. i mean, sure, they're COMPLETELY WRONG about how to get it done, but i think, at some fundamental level, they do want the best for people. republicans want to stop you from getting married to your same-sex partner and then bulldoze your house to build a starbucks. yes, i realize that's a fairly reductionistic viewpoint, but this is the INTERNET! if i can't be irrational and unfactual, then the terrorists have won.

so that's basically why i like democrats more.

(p.s: I <3 GETTING FLAMED!)

"nothing says circus fun quite like nuclear holocaust over breakfast on the terrace
hashbrowns and peril"

-sam

2005-06-28T11:14:00.000-05:00

be forwarned, america. we are terrified and/or infuriated by quite a few things. things that will be explained, at length, right here.

expect some griping after i read the paper while sitting at the cato front desk in a bit.

-sam

2005-06-28T00:04:00.000-05:00

just wait. its coming. the finest in sweet vitriol and smart nihilism is on its way.

check back for more.,

daniel | sam