Magnifisyncopathological

[Updates below.]

Texans for Texas ain't afraid to engage in political doublespeak:

What is the TUSF? The Texas Universal Fund was established by the PUC to help telephone companies keep rates affordable in high-cost rural areas. While often referred to as a "subsidy", the TUSF fund is not taxpayer funded, it is funded entirely from assessments on telecom customers' bills. The assessment comes in the form of a 5.65% surcharge on taxable intrastate telecommunications services. The surcharge rate will drop to 5% in October 2006. In addition to keeping local rates affordable in rural areas, the TUSF also funds lifeline service to the poor, service for the hearing impaired and other programs.

Ah, so an "assessment" on certain "intrastate telecommunications services" isn't a tax and therefore doesn't create an additional financial burden for people to pay? Are the people providing those services required by law to hand over that "assessment"? Do they face fines and jail time for not complying? I'll let the Public Utility Commission (PUC) speak on this:

The law requires all telecommunications companies including local, long distance and wireless companies to contribute to the fund. Beginning January 1, 2001 the rate is set at 3.60 percent. Companies are not required to collect this charge from customers, but most of them do.

So the "contribution" doesn't necessarily have to come from end-users, but the telecom companies have to pay it. A cursory scan through Chapter 56 in the Utilities Code didn't uncover specific penalties or punishments for noncompliance. However, when a law says "The commission shall adopt and enforce rules requiring local exchange companies to establish a universal service fund," I expect there to be regulatory and law enforcement threats to back up those requirements.

Here's how AT&T/SBC describe this "fee":

Texas Universal Service
Texas Universal Service: is a fund that allows affordable service to high-cost rural customers, funds the Relay Texas and Specialized Telecommunications Assistance program for the hearing-disabled, and funds telecommunications services discounts to low income customers (Tel-Assistance and Lifeline).

AT&T/SBC is my telephone provider and here is a snippet of my last bill from them.

I view this as essentially like a sales tax. Consumers are not "assessed" directly because that responsibility is imposed on the seller. However, retailers are highly unlikely to accept buyer payments that don't include sales tax. Similarly, if the payment I sent in for that last bill was $1.17 less than the total, the phone company would have kept that balance and transferred it to the next billing cycle. After a certain point, I'd be asked to pay the outstanding charge or face consequences such as termination of my account.

Let's be honest. This isn't an assessment or a fee or a charge. This is a tax.

Back to the TX4TX folks:

While the larger companies derive most of their revenues from the dense, lower-cost and business rich population centers, the small incumbent telephone companies get a much larger portion of their total revenues from the TUSF. For most of these small incumbents, the TUSF comprises twenty to sixty percent of their total revenues. A loss of these funds could literally put some companies out of business. A significant TUSF reduction could curtail the ability of others to invest in the critical infrastructure needed to support the types of services small-town Texas needs to conduct commerce and keep rural residents connected to the rest of the world. A reduction in the fund would most likely trigger local rate increases. As rural income levels trend lower than in urban areas, any rate increases will be more difficult for rural customers to absorb.

Moreover, while telephone service competition abounds in urban areas, the competitive landscape in rural Texas is more complex. Due to geography, much higher per-customer costs and fewer revenue-rich business customers, full-service telecom competitors often shun rural areas, leaving customers with fewer competitive options than their big city counterparts. While some competitive and wireless telecom competitors are certainly making inroads to selective rural markets, often the rural local phone company is the only reliable single source of affordable telephone, DSL and internet service.

"A loss of these funds could literally put some companies out of business."

And this is not a subsidy how?

Note the language here: it is identical in all essential aspects to the whole sordid Democrat/liberal argument for all manner of state economic interventions on behalf of the lower classes. Because poor and isolated people might be without some service, the state must force others to pay for the funds that underwrite their access to that service. Because there are fewer competitors in a specific area, the state must step in and help provide. Think of the rurals!

This is socialism. These are supposed to be conservative Republicans, supposedly advocates of limited government. Clearly, sympathy for their grandparents out in Roberts County and other low-population-density locations outweighs their commitment to principle.

Furthermore:

Finally, rural incumbent telephone companies cannot pick and choose which markets and customers to serve. As PUC-mandated providers of last resort, rural telephone companies must serve all customers within their franchise territory. And rates must be affordable.

The stupid fucking Texas government is helping to screw up the telecom market out there in the first place!!! How can you say or imply free markets failed when there wasn't one in the first place?

UPDATED 9/6/2006 9:50am
Corrected some grammatical problems.

Also, the Texans for Texas e-mail included a link to Coalition to Keep America Connected. From the front page:

When Congress updates our communications laws, we must ensure that a 'digital divide' does not emerge in America: Where some consumers have access to the latest technology, and others must rely on outdated systems. Where some have affordable rates, and others have to sacrifice necessities each month for service. Where some children experience the educational benefits of Internet access, and others are left behind. Every American deserves the same opportunity to enjoy the benefits that affordable technologies bring. The Coalition to Keep America Connected was created to ensure that affordability concerns never prevent Americans from being connected to one another. We believe that all consumers should have access to affordable telecommunications services and the latest technologies, no matter where they live.

This is feel-good politician-speak for asserting everyone has a right to telecommunications access. The assumption that people have a right to some service underlies most of the arguments made in favor of nearly every form of state intervention. It sucks to be without power; it sucks to not have reliable and safe running water; it sucks to have intermittent garbage pickup...and it sucks to be without a telephone. Because of this suckitude, people then leap to the conclusion people have a right to that service.

No.

What they either manifestly ignore or simply don't care about is that these services are not provided free of charge. They ultimately cannot be provided free of charge. The materials and the labor have to be purchased at some point. Imagine the complexity of a "basic" telephone connection:

1. plastic and circuit boards for the phone itself
   
2. wood, metal, and insulators for the telephone poles
   
3. miles and miles of wire for the lines
   
4. engineering and producing all three, as well as the switchboards to integrate it all together
   
5. hundreds of man-hours of labor to erect the poles and string the wires
   
6. knowledgeable, trained, and state-licensed electricians to supervise the connections
   
7. vehicles to transport the line and pole workers
   
8. support staff to keep them on task and working towards a coherent connectivity plan
   
9. funding up front to pay for all this before the very first bill (or subsidy) is even collected
   
10. agreements and standards-compliance with existing utility infrastructure to make sure everything works together

Now consider the additional weight placed upon these service providers: not only must they "keep America connected," but they also have to do so with a particular quality of connectivity and technology. Not just a ringer phone, but a wireless phone with Caller ID. Not just an Internet connection, but a broadband account.

I mention these providers must do this because the people asserting a right to a service imply the creation of a class of people who are forced to labor for the provision of that service. If I have a right to a DSL connection, local calls, and a cheap cell phone plan, then by the nature of a "right" it is a violation of my rights if I am not supplied with those services. People who take this stance are saying it is immoral and wrong for me to not have these services.

But who is the rights-violator in this instance? Let's say I live out in BFE. Are the executives in AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Sprint, Comcast, T-Mobile, and other telecommunications companies violating my rights by deciding to not extend their service plans to my region? Are they violating my rights by extending their service plans to my region, but at an increased price relative to the prices they charge in urban areas? Did these executives and the people who own the companies infringe upon my natural (and hell, even "Constitutional") rights?

This is as nonsensical as asserting I have a right to a car wash. It posits a claim on someone else's private property based on something so empty as need and national trend. I mentioned above that this is socialism; hell, it's positively Marxist once you strip away the fancy posturing. These people have a need; therefore, other people must be forced into alleviating that need.

It is possible to conceive of a purely voluntary system whereby telecommunications companies tell their normal customers something akin to the following:

We have decided, in the interests of expanding the cohesiveness and connectivity of the American community, to expand our services to those rural areas to which we currently do not offer service and reduce the price we charge to those people who qualify as not making enough money to afford our current plans. However, this is going to be an expensive, multi-year endeavor that, if all other considerations are left as they are, will eat into our profit margins and may complicate existing plans to upgrade our existing services.

Therefore, starting in a few months will be a small change to your bills. We will add a spot where you can elect to pay above and beyond what you owe to us. This donation will go towards paying the costs of achieving of the above goals.

You can donate as much as you want or nothing at all. We have chosen this route because we don't want to drive you away or impose an additional economic burden on your shoulders. Of course, this does not offer the same guarantee as a specific additional charge required of all our customers, but we will explain this to the people to which these new services will extend. If they agree to sign up with us, they will understand their service may depend on your generosity.

If you object to paying this additional fee, you are welcome to break your relationship with our company. If you have existing contracts with us, we will agree to waive the agreement so you will be free to close your account(s) and find another service provider.

To those staying with us, we will provide a monthly accounting of this additional charge to keep you abreast of events and show how this money is being spent or saved. Should you grow tired of paying the extra charge or think we are misallocating the funds, you can end our business relationship whenever you want.

Thank you for your consideration.

Or, in a different format:

We have decided, in the interests of expanding the cohesiveness and connectivity of the American community, to expand our services to those rural areas to which we currently do not offer service and reduce the price we charge to those people who qualify as not making enough money to afford our current plans. However, this is going to be an expensive, multi-year endeavor that, if all other considerations are left as they are, will eat into our profit margins and may complicate existing plans to upgrade our existing services.

Therefore, starting in a few months will be a small addition to your bills. This extra charge, estimated to be no more than a few dollars, will go towards the cost of expanding our rural coverage. It will also go towards underwriting the expenses of our poor clients. We've opted for this path because a voluntary donations system would not ensure a steady stream of revenue for the project and we think most of our customers will understand why we are doing this.

If you object to paying this additional fee, you are welcome to break your relationship with our company. If you have existing contracts with us, we will agree to waive the agreement so you will be free to close your account(s) and find another service provider.

To those staying with us, we will provide a monthly accounting of this additional charge to keep you abreast of events and show how this money is being spent or saved. Should you grow tired of paying the extra charge or think we are misallocating the funds, you can end our business relationship whenever you want.

Thank you for your consideration.

Regardless of the exact method, this would be the honest way to go about this. Intimidating and forcing people to be generous is hardly the right thing to do, whether or not the "average Texan living in a rural area would pay an additional $151.01 each year to receive telecommunications services."

Posted by drizzten at 01:22 PM | Permalink

The Courier: Even GPS has Louisiana’s coast wrong

The issue: Even state-of-the-art GPS devices can't keep track of our quickly eroding coast.

[...]

There is a potential fix, but it will cost an estimated $14 billion. Local residents and other Louisianians are coughing up dollars as fast as we can, but we won't be able to staunch the flow of marsh into the sea by ourselves. We need help from the rest of the nation, too.

"help"

It sure sounds like a pleasant word. Conjures up visions of resolute volunteers aiding their fellow humans in a time of need. We picture a bucket brigade fighting a neighborhood fire; a tall man offering to get a box down from the top shelf for a smiling old lady; a friend going out of her way to pick you up from the car repair shop. Help is a wonderful thing. Why? Because it is done willingly by the volunteer as a service to someone the volunteer thinks deserves it.

But what The Courier's editorial board is asking for is not help. What they want is a bigger chunk of the federal taxes collected from offshore oil production (otherwise known as "royalties") to be diverted to Louisiana to address the state's receding and eroding coastline. Why do those oil producers make those payments? Out of the sheer magnanimity of their humanitarian hearts, desirous only of seeing some of their wealth spread around the country to fund crucial government projects? Suuure.

Are they "helping" the country? No, those funds are paid because oil producers want the licenses issued by the government that grant them the privilege to produce oil. They don't want to lose the licenses because without them the government will send in the police to stop them. It is also worth noting that existing oil producers gain an advantage over those who want to enter the market because the licensing process is a barrier to entry.

But, essentially, the "royalties" are paid primarily because the oil producers are afraid of the police violence involved in the arrests, jailings, and asset seizures the government imposes on those whom it catches breaking the law. The Courier editorial board isn't seeking the oil companies' help. It is seeking a greater portion of their wealth as taken against their will.

When someone points a gun at you and says, "pay up or else," what results is not help, but a form of slavery. Making this worse is the board's assumption the oil royalties extorted from these companies belong to "the rest of the nation." This sets up their declaration that Louisiana deserves the help of the whole nation, rather than making it clear what they really want is the oil producers' wealth. This is a good example of the extent and grip of the rhetorical and intellectual sloppiness that I see all over the place.

Posted by drizzten at 01:25 PM | Permalink

[Updates below.]

More accurately, did the actual victims of 9/11 deserve what happened to them? Well, that depends on your theory of justice. Here's mine.

I believe that it is within your right to personally respond to crimes committed against you when that response is directed at those who are responsible for the crime. If I catch a thief running off with my car stereo, I'm going to respond to his act right there by at the very least taking my property back. If I find the person who killed my parents and have evidence that proves such, I'm likely to seek blood. I'm not someone who thinks such things should be the sole province of a government legal system.

Therefore, I also believe others have the same right to seek justice for themselves.

So, why did the hijackers do what they did? There seems to be a few general lines of justification for their actions, variously mixed with each other:

1. raw expression of proto-Maxist anger against a perceived imperialist America, the global economic hegemon
   
2. raw expression of racialist/nationalist/sectarian anger at the low global stature of their race/nationality/religion, which they blame the US for denigrating/insulting/belitting
   
3. a desire to strike back against an infidel country that deployed military forces on uber-holy Saudi Arabian soil
   
4. a desire to strike back at a country they perceive as irrevocably tied to Israel and Jews
   
5. a symbolic attack on the people who are responsible for the sanctions and, by extension, a great deal of the economic depredation in Iraq after the Gulf War

1. It is true economic interests in the US have pushed for and generally gotten unfair privileges in the realm of international trade at the expense of foreign businesses. International trade is not done in a truly free market; as a result, there are perverse incentives and politically-motivated exceptions that distort the economic system.

I think it is safe to assume some of the people who died on 9/11 worked for a few of those companies or the governments that enacted and defended the barriers to free trade. However, it would take a truly extreme example of oppression via economic means to justify killing those responsible (in the worst cases I can think of at the top of my head, the "white collar" criminal is almost always getting a third party to do the dirty things, attempting to space him- or herself from the raw immorality of the criminal act)...it would take something like intentionally buying up all the local resources, preventing new or outside resources from falling into their hands, and thereby nutritionally, financially, socially starving people to death.

Such business people are as evil as any third-world despot...but only those business people responsible. Delineating responsibility in multinational corporations and regulatory agencies with constantly changing workforces in one of the most mobile societies on the planet isn't a duty to be brushed away lightly by those intending to inflict physical harm on the guilty, yet that's what the hijackers did. The odds are very, very much stacked against the chance every targeted person (dozens of airline employees, hundreds of airline passengers, tens of thousands of New Yorkers, the people living around Washington, D.C., etc.) was guilty of such monstrosity. If the hijackers were responding to alleged economic oppression, all they did was collectivize guilt over general populations and murder (not avenge for) far, far more than they could possibly prove to be the criminals they wanted to kill.

2. Mass killing in the name of reputation? Nope, not nearly good enough, even if you could solve the tricky question of who is responsible for saying mean things about you, let alone slanderous, libelous lies. That's the kind of monumental insecurity a psychopath entertains. Demeaning someone or the group to which they belong (or in which the think they belong) is flimsy ground indeed to justify slaughter on a historic scale. Such a morality would have us engaged in warfare every time someone got pissed off.

3. I am similarly not at all sympathetic towards the asserted justification that it is blasphemous to station non-Muslim troops on or near Mecca. Allowing my general distaste for religion to show for a second, such a silly justification could theoretically apply to anything. Any nut can come up with a religion, its assorted religious symbols, and its locations of significance, crippling society by evicting people at will from their rightful homes and creating zones of authoritarianism.

However, to the extent those would-be evictionist zealots are the rightful owner of the property upon which someone is standing, I do think they would be justified in asking that someone to leave. Peacefully, at first...but violently if necessary. Just as you have the right to demand an unwelcome intruder to leave and the related right to expel him forcefully if he or she refuses, some crazy imam who owns a mosque in Medina has the right to do the same to whomever he (and it's usually a man) wants. Even if it's motivated by bigotry.

Still, the obligation persists in identifying those specific people who are trespassing and see them off your property. Killing civilians thousands of miles away (even excluding the military and political agents behind the soldiers' deployment), utterly fails to discriminate between the guilty and the innocent.

4. Guilt by semitic association? Vicious and absurd. I have no doubt that Jewish and Israeli criminals exist. Those individuals have victims who deserve justice. Creating additional victims adds to and does not subtract from the injustice. See above paragraphs for the rest.

5. This is essentially the first case scaled to deliberate international policy. And again, while it is conceivable there are victims for criminals to atone for, separating them from the rest of us is something I think is required in order to ultimately justify the response.

So did America deserve 9/11? No, because "America" wasn't responsible for any of the alleged crimes. Certain people may have been, however, and whatever grievances the hijackers and their associates had ought to have been addressed to those and only those people.

There is the argument that as taxpayers, voters, and people who haven't attempted to revolt and overthrow the current allegedly evil system we are therefore responsible to some degree for these criminals. Without the billions of dollars the state gets in revenue, it could not afford the military expenditures to send troops overseas, let along to reside at length in other lands. Without the positive consent of the vast majority of the population, a democratic government and the prevailing economic system would not be allowed to function.

Taxes do not necessarily count as consent to government action, however. Taxes are not truly voluntary because taxes are either taken at the point of a gun or the threat of it. I'm of the mind that being the victim of aggression at least partially absolves you of some of the moral judgement that declares you an accessory to far-away societal collapse (I'd say it almost entirely absolves you) caused by they money basically stolen from you. It only makes sense to judge someone based on those actions they've chosen for themselves. Of those rare cases where I'd agree this analysis applies is to the situation of the individuals who clearly want their tax money to go towards imposing economic sanctions on entire societies and who knowingly help elect politicians who claim such crime - and worse - as their official policy.

Unfortunately, the number of Americans who belong in that club is nontrivial. I'd say easily more than 10% of the population would qualify if you asked them a few questions and were able to verify their answers. But this does not justify lashing out at what is essentially a random sample of people, let alone attempting to kill as many of them as possible.

I concede it is possible the people responsible for 9/11 could have had legitimate intention to kill some people to punish them for vile things those people did, but the vileness of those Americans' (and, honestly, people from other countries) acts is their stench and their problem, not the rest of the building, block, Borough, or 'burg. The people responsible for 9/11 are soaked in naked malignance and deserve no sympathy or support.

UPDATED 9/11/2006 2:36pm
Rethinking September 11, 2001

Posted by drizzten at 11:23 PM | Permalink

But the president, any president, shouldn't have more free time than you and I.

- No Way In Hell President Bush Has Read 60 Books

I, for one, am quite happy to reverse the standard condemnation of "idle hands" when those hands belong to those in the government. Mr. Cesca goes through no doubt a deeply truncated list of current events that should have occupied Bush's time. Interestingly, he closes with this:

...I'd rather that he simply keep reading instead of thinking of new ways to screw us all...

He and I might not be too far apart, for at least a few seconds of conversation.

The context of this is the report that Bush has read 60 books since the beginning of 2006, even though it seems impossible for Mr. Cesca (and myself) to think an American president sitting through the events of 2006 could possibly have the time to read - and absorb to any practical effect - more than 8,000 pages. The skepticism isn't limited to Mr. Cesca. The US News and World Report article was posted August 20th, so let's say Bush has been reading for 32 weeks (January 1st through August 12th). That's more than a book and a half a week.

Shit, I might need reading lessons from this guy! My backlog is ridiculous: A Weakness for Socio-Political Literature, Bookaholic, My Only Experience with Loompanics..., von Mises Book Bonanza!, etc. I've hardly cracked any of those yet.

Of note within those books Bush allegedly read...get a load of this: Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 by Walter McDougall. Here is part of the Amazon review:

Beginning with the original intentions of the Founding Fathers and the various interpretations of those ideals over the years, he deconstructs the role of the U.S. in global affairs, questioning both the logic and motives of how the nation deals with friend and foe. One of McDougall's major contentions centers on efforts to affect other countries' policies and governments by projecting U.S. standards or choices on them. He is particularly concerned with what he views as an overextension of resources and wisdom, and the glaring hypocrisy such efforts reveal. He points to several examples of how time and energy was wasted trying to change those who were uninterested or unwilling. As McDougall points out lucidly and convincingly in Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776, one nation cannot cure the major ills of another, and the price of such an attempt is too great to risk.

Were there snickers, sighs, snorts, or smiles in the Presidential Bedroom when that book was read?

Posted by drizzten at 11:36 AM | Permalink

From Somasoul regarding The Borrower Is the Slave to the Lender?:

Man, I almost always agree with you but this week I think you're off the mark. And not just because I'm a Christian but because, like in all things, we should be wary of trusting forces larger than ourselves.

You have to admit: wariness of trusting forces larger than ourselves is a little ironic coming from a Christian. :)

However, I do think you are right to be skeptical by default of entrenched power structures, whether they are entities of the state or the free market.

I'm an anarchist and I don't just barge in with an attitude like other Anarcho-Capitalists who trust business' whole-heartedly without question. I think we need to not march to their beat, at least not so quickly.

Thankfully, I'm not an apologist for businesses and don't trust them blindly. From my studies, it's clear to me business motives and interests are far too frequently at odds with libertarianism.

First, I think you missed the boat in your assumption on the quote altogether.

The borrower is totally a servant to the lender. Because in most agreements the borrower agrees to work for the lender in exchange for money up front. The lender lends $100 but gets $150 in return. This might be a profit, yes, but it's profit based off someone else's labor, not your own. Therefore, whether right or wrong (I haven't delved into assesing such moral quandrys yet), the borrower is totally a servant to the lender until the debt is paid.

The agreement between lender and borrower is for the lender to repay what was borrowed plus an additional amount to which the two parties consent. The only way for the borrower to fulfill his or her end of the agreement is to give the lender money that legitimately belongs to the borrower (assuming a society that frowns upon stealing from others to pay for your own debts). How does a person legitimately come to possess money?

1. a gift from someone else's legitimate wealth
   
2. exchanging a service they provide or a good they produce for someone else's money

The generous owner of existing wealth who gives cash gifts with no strings attached had to have created his wealth at some point; even it if was inherited, someone had to create it. Which means that, ultimately, someone had to work for it and labor in production. Which means there is no way to pay any debt (whether burdened by an interest rate and miscellaneous fees or not) without someone laboring to create the money wealth used to pay back the amount borrowed.

Money must come from somewhere. Funds used for loan repayment, wages, cash gifts, and in exchange for goods and services rest upon the productive labor of others. Do all these activities create a master-servant relationship?

A few years ago I reached an agreement with a company to buy a bed. Seven and a half years later I paid off the balance of just under $2,000..........all for a bed that cost under $600 to begin with. I think, in the end, that I paid over $6,000 for that mattress. Now, if that ain't being someone else's "servant" or "slave"...............

I don't know your specific financial situation and would rather not delve too much into personal matters. However, surely you knew going into the deal that if you stretched the payment schedule out long enough, the total cost of upholding your end of the deal could exceed the floor price of the mattress. You helped lengthen and strengthen your debt.

Wells Fargo sent me an unsolicited loan check in 2000. It was a full-fledged offer for two grand with all the details and fine print in the envelope. Endorsing the check and cashing it means I consent to the terms and contract with the bank for the loan. It had an original term of something like seven years, the interest rate and total cost of fees were not burdensome, and it just so happened I really wanted to build a new computer. I agreed to the loan and began making monthly payments of a few dozen bucks. By the middle of 2005, I had whittled my principle down to less than $400. During a period of unexpectedly high earnings, I decided to get it over with and pay off the loan in one final check, many months early. I mistakenly forgot to deduct the interest I would have paid on the principle and a week later, Wells Fargo sent me a refund check.

It works both ways, dude. If I had done nothing but made minimum payments, I probably would have paid more than 18% in total interest. However, I made sure to stick in twenty or forty extra dollars with each payment and it made a difference after a few years.

Remember, slavery can be entered into willingly.

Sure, anyone can sign a contract that says from that point until their death they are at the total disposal of the other party. I, however, don't think such contracts are valid or legitimately enforceable. You cannot alienate your will from your body in such a way to hand over title to it. The purpose of such contracts is to supplant your will with the master's and that isn't possible.

Many people sold themselves or their children into slavery. Therefore, slavery does not necessarily require "force", though it often does. Your assumptions on this passage lead me to believe that you think slavery is only entered into unwillingly and I challenge you that any man can enter slavery upon his own will. Free exchange it may be but free exchange does not trump serfdom.

Can we agree that a contract that sells your children into slavery is immoral and void?

I don't dispute that there are examples of people choosing to enter into slavery. However, under what conditions were those choices made? I submit to you that if the consequences of slavery were known to the slave-to-be, very few would take the "offer" unless they were coerced some way, such as with threats or demonstrations of violence or destruction. Clearly such "contracts" are invalid. Even more important is the inner contradiction within the very concept of a slave contract.

Murray Rothbard, in The Ethics of Liberty:

...the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party. In short, a contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property. But this can only be true if we hold that validly enforceable contracts only exist where title to property has already been transferred, and therefore where the failure to abide by the contract means that the other party's property is retained by the delinquent party, without the consent of the former (implicit theft). Hence, this proper libertarian theory of enforceable contracts has been termed the "title-transfer" theory of contracts.

[...]

...the only valid transfer of title of ownership in the free society is the case where the property is, in fact and in the nature of man, alienable by man. All physical property owned by a person is alienable, i.e., in natural fact it can be given or transferred to the ownership and control of another party. I can give away or sell to another person my shoes, my house, my car, my money, etc. But there are certain vital things which, in natural fact and in the nature of man, are inalienable, i.e., they cannot in fact be alienated, even voluntarily. Specifically, a person cannot alienate his will, more particularly his control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own will and person, and he is, if you wish, "stuck" with that inherent and inalienable ownership. Since his will and control over his own person are inalienable, then so also are his rights to control that person and will. That is the ground for the famous position of the Declaration of Independence that man's natural rights are inalienable; that is, they cannot be surrendered, even if the person wishes to do so.

[...]

Hence, the unenforceability, in libertarian theory, of voluntary slave contracts. Suppose that Smith makes the following agreement with the Jones Corporation: Smith, for the rest of his life, will obey all orders, under whatever conditions, that the Jones Corporation wishes to lay down. Now, in libertarian theory there is nothing to prevent Smith from making this agreement, and from serving the Jones Corporation and from obeying the latter's orders indefinitely. The problem comes when, at some later date, Smith changes his mind and decides to leave. Shall he be held to his former voluntary promise? Our contention - and one that is fortunately upheld under present law - is that Smith's promise was not a valid (i.e., not an enforceable) contract. There is no transfer of title in Smith's agreement, because Smith's control over his own body and will are inalienable. Since that control cannot be alienated, the agreement was not a valid contract, and therefore should not be enforceable. Smith's agreement was a mere promise, which it might be held he is morally obligated to keep, but which should not be legally obligatory.

Emphasis in the original.

A slave contract is a contract to transfer ownership of your will to someone else. I do not believe such a contract is valid because such a transfer cannot occur. Now, I am aware of Walter Block's criticism of this position in A Libertarian Theory of Inalienability (PDF), but haven't analyzed it yet. He thinks that as long as it is voluntarily sold, any free market private property exchange is valid.

Remember too the context of the passage and the time period. A poor family might enter into an agreement for a field or farm. One drought, flood, infestation and everything you own, perhaps even your children, were carted off by the lender when those passages were written.

While you do have a point in mentioning the additional vulnerability faced by the vast majority of people living in antiquity, I'm not moved by it.

It would be trivial to find examples from the beginning of human history all the way to this very moment where people bury themselves in debt to the point where they are in danger of losing all their valuable assets to creditors and collection agencies. I believe today is different in only two respects. First, the state steps in to a far greater extent to provide the welfare safety net to the debtor before, during, and after the debtor's financial collapse in an effort to stave off complete destitution. Second, the general degree of wealth today allows for both a relatively rich standard of living for a significantly lower cost and greater private charity to come to the assistance of the needy.

Remember too that laws regarding interest rates were not in place. People could impose all sorts of fanatical demands on families that did not pay. And the classism that existed when those passages were written were so rampant, the "courts" so injust, that the poor were literally at the mercy of the rich.

Again, I won't deny that unscrupulous lenders existed and royally screwed innocent borrowers. But, as an anarchist, you know state laws don't necessarily result in just or effective outcomes. Making it illegal for lenders to ask for high interest rates (arbitrarily-defined, of course) may stop some mini-tyrants and fraudsters from ruining lives, but it also limits the ability of legitimate lenders to deal with risky borrowers through market exchange. A transient with a P.O. box, a sparse job history, and little capital to put up as collateral is going to raise honest concerns in the mind of the lender and that lender is entirely within his or her right to increase the cost of lending to that person relative to the rate someone with a steady job and plenty fungible assets.

You mention the other thing: there simply wasn't a good justice system back then. Without the checks of a robust litigative process and with the privilege granted to the elites, it isn't surprising to see the poor under the thumb of powerful economic interests. However, that is not a slap against lending in principle, that's a slap against the times and the prevailing political economy. I have little doubt that the economic regulations we face today have precursors in the past that did the same thing they do today: drive people into the arms of authorized/favored bankers and lenders.

Remember that I have not even suggested that interest rates are somehow morally abhorent, yet. All I've suggested, and the conclusion I've given, is that borrowers are "servants", which they are and will continue to be.

I will concede that the essence of a lending contract is for the borrower to perform at least one act in accordance with the lender's wishes, typically the repayment of the loan plus interest and fees. This is fundamentally no different from any other type of economic exchange. Hiring someone involves mutual promises from the employer and the employee. Buying a good involves similar arrangements.

Really, a loan is the conditional sale of present money in exchange for more than that amount in the future. I once again ask you if the spectrum of peaceful exchange that also resembles (if not outright stands in for) creates a master-servant relationship with the dark shades you've drawn in your remarks. Clearly, the authors of the Bible wish to portray lenders as a class, lending as an institution, and interest as an economic tool in a strongly negative light. I disagree on each count because it is the action of individuals that matter and the abuse of their property and reason does not condemn others who engage in their market.

I suppose a good deal of my disagreement with the borrower is servant to the lender is the choice of "servant" to describe borrowers. If a bank required I perform specific activities at certain times or otherwise attempted to micro-manage even a part of my day, I'd consider that worthy of the word. Asking me to pay them $150 next month in exchange for $100 now hardly seems to qualify. I must labor in some manner to pay the full debt, sure, but I've chosen to endure that because I value present money more than future money.

That's the contract, it's in nearly every contract:

"I'll give you $200,000. In exchange you give me a portion of your labor unequal to the cost of doing business."

Why is it crucial to price the service at the cost of doing business? It wouldn't make economic sense to ignore or reject the parties' time preference. Someone convinced the world is about to end will probably be willing to take on a loan with a crushing interest rate. I've already mentioned the constantly varying degrees of risk lenders are willing to endure.

Who is to determine the cost of doing business? From the sense I gather from your comments below, I doubt you (and many others) would trust the lender to be this arbiter. On the other hand, I have a hard time believing the lender will trust the borrower. If neither party in the loan agreement is to judge, by what right does the third party judge and what happens when the parties disagree with that third person's judgment and move on ahead with the contract?

In nearly every business contract the buyer has the upper hand because the seller wants to sell but the buyer doesn't need to buy. In situations with lending it's a bit different because the buyer wants a house, not a loan. That gives the loan officer the upper hand, one of the few situations where the buyer is at a disadvatage.

This also isn't a very moving argument. If the problem is the existence of an "upper hand" when a buyer and a seller meet to exchange, then do you have any criticism for these other business contracts you mention? According to your theory, it seems in those cases the seller is the one being harmed, screwed, or whatever. It seems that you prefer buyers to have an advantage over sellers. If so, what is your justification for that? I'm not advocating one side possessing an advantage over another, but I'm curious to know why you apparently do.

Borrowing money leaves you in a predicament that isn't easy to escape from.

No, not per se. People can blindly enter into loan contracts that seem designed to bankrupt the borrower, but if that happened all the time, people would stop borrowing because the consequences suck so much.

Keep in mind, of course, than I'm speaking of the hypothetical ideal: a free market in banking, finance, loans, etc. The competition would be exposed to the unrestricted forces of supply and demand and the individuals in the loan market would benefit accordingly. Obviously, what we see in front of us today and generally throughout history are not examples of free markets but collectivized restricted markets where state intervention has distorted things to funnel business down privileged paths.

The Bible warns against it. In fact, Jews were not allowed to charge interest to other Jews. It was seen as "evil". Muslims follow the same code.

I'm an atheist so these concerns don't really bother me. But, in support of what you're saying, my parents warned me to be extra diligent when thinking of and signing a loan due to the fact that you can get into serious trouble if not prudent.

I'm not oppossed to interest or lenders but I'm wary.

I'm glad you say this because up until now you could forgive me for thinking you thought otherwise.

The contract is never in my favor.

If you truly thought the loan would be more of an expensive burden than a useful financial bump, then why would you enter into the agreement? Weighing the cost to repay the loan against the utility of the principle to be spent immediately is the whole enchilada, the responsibility of the individual trying to decide his or her course of action.

Two, your argument that loans are never in your favor just isn't convincing.

In nearly every business contract the buyer has the upper hand because the seller wants to sell but the buyer doesn't need to buy. In situations with lending it's a bit different because the buyer wants a house, not a loan. That gives the loan officer the upper hand, one of the few situations where the buyer is at a disadvatage.

We don't eat our money. Money has little practical, direct use. We have cash because we can trade it for the things we want. So when you are hired, your goal really isn't to earn money. Your goal is to earn money in order to buy goods and services, such as a house.

Does your theory apply to the employer-employee relationship? Just as with many loans, the person giving you the money (the boss and the lender) is not giving you the ultimate good or service you want; rather, what is given is a means to acquire that good or service. The boss and the lender don't really care if you spend it on a boat, a pistol, a wedding ring, a fancy dinner, or a computer. Both people are giving the money to you on a conditional basis; the boss gives on condition of you doing your work per his or her instructions and the lender on condition of you paying the agreed amount back through the agreed schedule.

I don't see how these middlemen are inherently disadvantageous to borrowers and buyers.

When assessing risk vs. reward in these things I can see I'm clearly at a distinct disadvantage. Sometimes it pays off. I bought a house a couple months ago and I thank my lender for allowing me to do so. But I don't charge TVs or Rings or Clothes.........I'm wary to ring up debt. I think it absurd to commit my own labor to buy something for more than it's worth.

I wish most people would have half your apprehension for racking up debt. Individuals who aren't going to start their own business and who do a great deal more saving than your average person are not as likely to need loans as other people.

One last thing. Your labor isn't permanently fixed at a certain value. It changes over time regarding your circumstances. My hourly asking price has gone up since I left high school, yet I'm not at all opposed to helping a friend or family member for five bucks an hour one weekend. Many people have professional jobs and do volunteer work. After an eight hour shift at work, I often place an escalating price on my leisure time.

Most people prefer present things over future things so it takes more of a unit to equal the value placed on a given amount of that unit. From this perspective, you aren't really getting less for your labor than you'd otherwise. Perhaps it's small consolation, but there it is.

All offered in the spirit of clear and friendly dialogue, Sir.

Posted by drizzten at 01:42 AM | Permalink

The AP via News8Austin: Willie Nelson joins campaign against horse slaughter

Texas singer and songwriter Willie Nelson is raising his voice in defense of a symbol of the West - wild horses.

Should all symbols of the West be protected by force of law? How about a ban on desecrating the American flag, Willie? I see you like to wrap your head in Old Glory...

Nelson has joined an effort to ban the slaughter of horses in the U.S. for consumption of their meat abroad. Two of the nation's three horse slaughter plants are in Texas and one is in Illinois.

The House is scheduled to vote Sept. 7 on HR 503 aimed at ending horse slaughter. Although it's illegal to sell horsemeat for human consumption within the United States, the companies sell millions of pounds a year abroad.

According to this article, the two Texas companies doing the slaughtering, Dallas Crown Packing and Beltex Corp., employed approximately 150 people in 2002. What do you think will happen to those people and their companies if a portion of their business is prohibited by law? What do you think will happen to the second-tier businesses that rely on these workers and these companies for revenue? Jobs, wealth, and lives will be destroyed because that's what prohibition does.

There's no reason to believe the demand for horse meat will go away, so resources that would not normally go towards its production will likely go towards meeting that demand. In other words, not only will domestic wealth and jobs be eliminated, but capital and labor that could have been used for other activities will instead be utilized for the production of horse meat. This is what libertarian economists mean when they mention "market distortion": the normalized system is upset when state intervention occurs.

Nelson told The Associated Press Tuesday, "If you've ever been around horses a lot, especially wild horses, you know they're part of the American heritage. I don't think its right that we kill them and eat them.'"

Copyright 2006 Associated Press, All rights reserved.

Even if I accepted this line of argument - and I totally don't - I think it's ironic he's arguing American heritage deserves protectionist measures to preserve it. I'd say there isn't anything more American than the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and they matter far more than romantic attachments to equestrians.

I don't presume to tell Willie what he ought to eat. Keep that in mind the next time you hear him talk about freedom.

Posted by drizzten at 04:28 PM | Permalink

National Review editorial: Surveilling Injustice:

Once upon a time, the courts of the United States acted in the interests of the United States. They knew that international affairs, the conduct of war, and the protection of Americans from foreign threats stood far beyond the judicial ken. As Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1948, sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security involve "decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and which has long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry."

Enter Anna Diggs Taylor, chief judge of the federal district court in Detroit. She has just purported to find unconstitutional the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) - an early-warning system crucial to protecting the nation from attack. In so doing, she has become the latest jurist to illustrate how far we have strayed from Justice Jackson's wisdom.

See also: The Unitary Executive

Posted by drizzten at 10:52 AM | Permalink

You will seldom see goldfish show off.

Why?

Because they are koi.

Posted by drizzten at 10:31 AM | Permalink

War may be the answer to a very specific question, but what about the other implication in The Objective Historian's comment?

The fundamental disconnect with reality that so many Regressive-Democrats have is the concept that "war is not the answer." In fact, that is sometimes true; but in the vast majority of cases, it is the answer. E.g., why do you, as an American have freedom of speech? War. Why do we have elections to determine those in authority? War. Etc. Pacifism is ridiculous on its face as are inanities like an eye for an eye makes both sides blind. No, at some point one side surrenders qua surrenders and a resolution exists just as by any other means of diplomacy.

-The Objective Historian

Pacifism is the belief that violence should never be used to resolve disputes. It is a doctrine that says conflicting parties ought to expend every effort to avoid physical fighting. It holds out the hope that every disagreement has a peaceful resolution and every participant is capable of and willing to compromise. A pacifist who seriously adheres to the absolute version of the creed will neither physically fight with anyone nor condone others who do.

So, are Democrats pacifists? Is there something fundamental in Democratic ideology that endorses pacifism?

I think it is reasonable to assume there are pacifists who politically reside near the Democratic Party. I think it is reasonable to assume there are actual pacifists working within the organization attempting to make its outlook, policies, and candidates more pacifist. It is also, I think, reasonable to say Democrats proclaim an overall preference for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. However, it is in this third generalization that the justification for this post's title arises.

Democrats, like just about every other political party, seek to use government power to solve problems. They propose taxes to redistribute wealth from those who don't need it as much to those who do. They want regulatory agencies to restrain how companies do business. They think it is perfectly acceptable for the state to govern and shape the local, regional, and national economies towards a particular direction; price stability, low interest rates, unobtrusive inflation, full employment, and so on. Most have no objection in principle to government defining the limits of acceptable speech. Most have no objection in principle to universal health care coverage.

In this, Democrats are really no different from Republicans. They both seek to use the state to tackle social and economic problems. A plane of even greater agreement, one which they rarely hesitate to join together on, is in the realm of order and peace. Both parties heartily endorse using the state to protect us and our property from murders and thieves. Neither have any serious principled objection to the current triad of government lawmakers, government law enforcement, and government courts of adjudication.

This is why no Democrat could ever truly be a pacifist. To endorse all those positions is to endorse the direct use of violence or the threat of direct violence against those who won't obey the state's commands. The procedure in America is roughly as follows:

1. If the objector isn't arrested outright on the spot, the state sends warnings of its intention to levy fines and/or arrest the objector if compliance isn't met.
   
2. These warnings continue and escalate if the objector continues to resist.
   
3. In some cases, a warrant is issued and law enforcement is allowed to arrest the objector when they come into contact.
   
4. Eventually, law enforcement begins hunting for the objector.
   
5. At some point, private property such as bank accounts and homes are seized.
   
6. Public denunciations, if not already communicated, are made.

Even if the objector is in fact a criminal and has committed a genuine crime, the above process of law enforcement not only acts as violence against the criminal, but also against entirely innocent third parties: the distributed network of individuals who've been taxed to supply the state the resources to provide the law enforcement service as well as those people who would have otherwise gone into business as private law enforcement but would not due to both the state's licensing process and general prohibition against competition in the realm of securing peace and justice.

An honest pacifist who takes nonviolence seriously and steps back to fairly appraise the above system couldn't endorse it. He or she may think crime should be opposed in a variety of nonviolent ways, but such a person couldn't support a state system to do it because the state must engage in violence in order to stay in power and enforce its laws. There may be laws on the books right now that technically don't call for police violence, things like simple executive proclamations and congressional resolutions. Even those legal documents, however, could not have been made without the existing tax structure to pay for the land, offices, supplies, and labor that went into their creation.

This is, to be clear, not normally the focus of those who call Democrats pacifists. The more common complaint is a pacifistic foreign policy where the United States only engages in warfare when the threat of war is imminent or has been fulfilled. Obviously, a government that responds to violence with violence stands in contradiction to pacifism's doctrine of negotiation, endurance, surrender, or retreat. I doubt very much that any Democratic government elected in America would take such a foreign policy stance given the need to win votes from so many people who have a weaker threshold for justifying war.

But even considering that, the same underlying violence that keeps the police, courts, and legislature going is the same underlying violence that pays for the people, services, and physical resources that would write and discuss the hypothetical pacifist policy of negotiate, endure, surrender, and retreat. Who would pay for the army of diplomats these alleged Democrats would need to deploy? How would these foreign service officers, consular officials, and ambassadors get from place to place or communicate among thousands of contacts? Who would pay for the buildings, office supplies, and assistants these people would need to occupy to get their work done?

I'll tell you: millions of individual wage-earners who would have held on to 10-35% of their rightful wealth if it were not for the IRS's threats to harass (send warnings, "audit"), fine, and arrest you...threats that are not empty, despite the general incompetence of state organs. These folks are presented with a choice: either follow our orders or face escalating state violence up to and including your death at the hands of a law enforcement officer if you resist enough.

How could a conscientious pacifist accept that system, so permeated with credible threats of violence and its widespread usage?

No, Democrats are not pacifists. Republicans are not pacifists. This is because statists are not pacifists.

Posted by drizzten at 05:15 PM | Permalink

The fundamental disconnect with reality that so many Regressive-Democrats have is the concept that "war is not the answer." In fact, that is sometimes true; but in the vast majority of cases, it is the answer. E.g., why do you, as an American have freedom of speech? War. Why do we have elections to determine those in authority? War. Etc. Pacifism is ridiculous on its face as are inanities like an eye for an eye makes both sides blind. No, at some point one side surrenders qua surrenders and a resolution exists just as by any other means of diplomacy.

-"The Objective Historian" commenting on Kevin Drum's blog

I'm a picky eater and a great deal of my pickiness comes from wanting all the parts of my meal too work with each other. Diced onions tucked away in excellent meatloaf (Mom, I'm watching you!), mayonnaise snuck in under the bun of a superior buffalo cheeseburger (all you damn "authentic" burger joints!), and weird shit like green peppers mixed in with a salad (nearly every fancy restaurant)...these are instances where an otherwise perfectly serviceable dish suffers from the inclusion of elements that are so awful they distract my attention to them rather than on the good parts.

The above comment is an example of this happening in the realm of political analysis.

I'm not a pacifist. There are clear-cut cases where it is not only justified but proper to employ violence as a means to a goal, self-defense being the most important and most common of those. War, in the sense of organized individuals fighting to physically defeat other organized individuals, is therefore not something I oppose in principle. It is possible for a war to be waged for both good reasons and with proper means. It just doesn't happen very often and I'd lay most of the blame for that at the feet of the institution that engages in it most frequently: the state.

"The Objective Historian" has a nugget of truth in there and it is worth recognizing it as such. Consistent pacifism is suicide because thugs who don't share your values will destroy you. However, that morsel's flavor is overwhelmed by other ingredients.

The individual right to freedom of speech exists whether thousands of G.I.s are killed in combat or not. The fact that Americans have fought English, Spanish, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and other assorted people over the last century does not change this. Rights are not contingent upon the outcome of battles. Rights are not privileges granted by others (they are, in fact, the total opposite) and I have no doubt The Objective Historian would implicitly confirm this if I asked him or her to state whether Americans would still have the right to freedom of speech if we were on the losing side of WWII. I'd also ask him or her if the citizen-prisoners of Warsaw Pact nations had the same rights as everyone else during the Communist rule of their governments.

No, rights are not created by war. They are defended and upheld by war, and not even in most historic cases. Even when the rights of some are unshackled by a standard state war (say, the citizens of Europe occupied by the Axis powers), the states conducting the war to liberate those people inevitably engage in action back home that cannot be anything but a open slap at individual rights. Examples such as increased taxation, war economy planning boards, price controls, and restrictions on the press are not hard to find.

There is the argument that our ability to enjoy and flex our rights is contingent upon a peaceful society. If that were the extent of the argument, I wouldn't have an objection. However, those making it take a giant leap from there to the next step: state war and only state war can ultimately secure that peace. There is no justification for this aside from pointing to the historical record; a record, I must remind you, that has been and still is largely written by the victors.

War is the answer to only one specific question: Have such-and-such people aggressed against me and others to the point where myself and those others should respond to the aggressors' bloodshed with combat of our own, to right the wrongs they have committed? I don't think there are other applications that can conform to objective standards of justice. Just wars are fought to end oppression. We can fight wars to free ourselves from oppressors (the British monarchy, the multi-dimensional American demon) and we can fight wars to free others from oppression...but we cannot, in the course of fighting oppression, engage in it ourselves. Unfortunately, it needs to be stressed that mere violence doesn't qualify as oppression; violence must be used against the innocent before it counts as that.

We do not need a state to secure peace. Credible deterrents do not have to wear government uniforms. Effective warriors are not the exclusive realm of the coercive collectivism of the Sovereign. There is nothing in principle that prohibits free markets in defense services from working.

The Objective Historian's criticism isn't aimed at this, of course. He or she is claiming the Democratic Party is gripped by pacifism. This is clearly not true.

Posted by drizzten at 05:10 PM | Permalink

[Updates below.]

Gettin' e-mail spam with that in the title and body. Seems like line that originates from the Bible:

The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7, New International Version

The King James Version is only slightly different: The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Today's New International Version has it as The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

The Message version translates it to The poor are always ruled over by the rich, so don't borrow and put yourself under their power.

In the New American Standard Bible, the passage is The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender's slave.

The New Living Translation writes Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender.

The award for the most explicit goes to the New International Reader's Version: Rich people rule over those who are poor. Borrowers are slaves to lenders.

Hmmm.

I wonder how much this kind of anti-economic thinking hindered growth over the centuries. Biblical shame aimed at lenders (and borrowers, who apparently choose to become "slaves" in defiance of gawd's desire) had to have placed a terrible burden on some people who tried to take the Bible seriously and run a business. I can imagine children who've read this chapter and verse for the first time wondering in horror what they've been doing to their friends and what their friends have been doing to them the whole time.

Oh no - I lent my pencil to Robert yesterday! How did I make him my servant? All I did was ask him to return it to me when he was finished. I've seen how black people were treated, but I've never whipped or humiliated Robert for not doing what I wanted. I wasn't using my pencil at the time and if he promised to bring it back in a few hours, I wasn't going to hurt him or push him around. If he was forgetful I would just remind him to bring it over the next chance he gets. Even if he broke it by accident I wasn't going to punch him or something. Maybe just ask him to get me a new one. But now I feel terrible! Have I committed a sin? Am I going to Hell? I better not tell my parents in case they punish me...and I'm not going to share my things again because I don't want to be a bad boy.

And vice versa:

What? I needed a dollar from Carol to buy candy last week and she said she'd give it to me buy only if I gave her a dollar-twenty-five by tomorrow. I knew that I'd get my allowance yesterday and I'd have plenty of money to pay her back. I really wanted a snack last week. I was going to give her the dollar back anyway; she told me she wanted the extra twenty-five cents to get something this week. Carol had mentioned she was just a few cents away from enough money to get her mom a birthday present, so I guess the twenty-five cents is going towards that. But I'm still free, aren't I? She didn't ask me to jump through hoops or anything. I promised to pay her the dollar-twenty-five and I didn't know you could promise yourself into being a slave.

What total absurdity. Think of all the proud Christian men "enslaving" their neighbors when they let them borrow lawn mowers and the millions of "enslaved" pious women who're temporarily using Tupperware from their mothers. A loan isn't a slave contract. It is a voluntary agreement between people to do certain things at certain times. Well-written contracts have clauses in them that explain the peaceful procedures the parties are to take in the event of a breach of contract. Poorly-written contracts may lack these things and may specify harsh penalties in case of failure to fulfill one's obligations, but the parties to the contract agreed to those penalties at the time of signing and with the exception of contracts explicitly

Asking someone to do something in exchange for you doing something isn't a servant-master relationship. It is the foundation of a normal, prosperous society.

UPDATED 8/24/2006 1:44am
Debt and Voluntary Servitude

Posted by drizzten at 01:35 PM | Permalink

Sometimes, we come across someone extraordinary.

So much so, that even simply finding the end to a kiss becomes an adventure.

This one's for you, babe.

Posted by drizzten at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Euphemism, hear me roar.

News8Austin: Animal ID program faces stiff opposition

The agriculture department would like to see 100 percent of livestock owners voluntarily tag all their animals going to market with similar tracking devices.

The Texas Animal Health Commission is responsible for making sure it gets done locally.

"Clearly, we've got to start voluntarily. If we don't get sufficient participation, I would anticipate that at some point it's going to have to go beyond voluntary to have an effective animal identification system for disease control," [Texas Animal Health Commission Executive Director Dr. Bob Hillman] said.

Copyright ©2006TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin

it's going to have to go beyond voluntary

It's going to have to ultimately involve people with locked and loaded guns screaming at you to comply.

Posted by drizzten at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Just don't try and build as you see fit, in accordance with your rights as a property owner.

"This ordinance will allow for vibrant mix of uses along those corridors that are currently not doing well, visually, they are economically not doing well," urban planning consultant Alice Glasco said.

Is anyone else struck by the absurdity of a regulation that allows someone to do something?

Posted by drizzten at 10:39 PM | Permalink

Dude, I can verify that not only is that NPR story accurate, but it's already too late to stop the data collection: they came to my house last year.

Posted by drizzten at 01:07 PM | Permalink

Policy Review: War-Torn Democrats

[P]rogressives [...] affirm the universal application of the principles of individual freedom.

This is utterly untrue.

Where is the progressives' universal concern for the principles of individual freedom when applied to, for example, the business owner who honestly thinks the labor of an employee is not worth paying a mandated minimum wage and who would otherwise earn less if it wasn't for the state's threat to violently take away that business owner's freedom?

Where is the progressives' universal concern for the principle of individual freedom when applied to, for example, the parents who honestly think they will do a superior job of educating their children and yet who still pay for the public educations of other children because the state has threatened to violently take away their freedom if they do not "contribute"?

I could list examples for days because the thousands of concrete issues at stake boil down to the myriad ways the federal, state, and local governments habitually, ritually, repeatedly, consistently, and openly violate the principle of individual freedom...ways that are championed by progressives on grounds that habitually, ritually, repeatedly, consistently, and openly set aside that principle in order to accomplish some goal.

If this was a man who could think straight, he'd realize the total insanity in making the above statement and then saying later:

The centerpiece of [Peter Beinart]'s prescriptions, as it was for the contributors to [Will Marshall]'s book, is the call for extensive new programs for the economic and political development of the Middle East. Beinart wants the U.S. to fund these programs generously while carrying them out in cooperation with our European allies, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Arab Muslim nations for whom the programs are intended. In theory this is appealing.

Not a single word about from where the resources for these generous programs would come: the taxpayer, who would otherwise overwhelmingly not voluntarily donate such sums of his or her wealth if it were not for the threat of police aggression and its occasional follow-through. The billions currently available to the states' treasuries would never have left the possession of individuals without that system of aggression.

Such robbery would be decried as a violation of individual freedom in the context of the street, but progressives are constitutionally incapable of carrying that abstraction to greater levels once "the community" or "the common good" is invoked.

Similarly, see John Kerry's clarion call for the wholesale forced collectivization of the remaining marking in American health care:

Here's my bottom line - these are the four principles I'm going to go to the mat to make real:

FIRST - Every American, and I mean everybody, must have health coverage by 2012.

SECOND - To get there, we start with kids first. They're born; they're enrolled in health care. They go to child care, they're enrolled. They go to school, they're enrolled. No "ifs," "ands," or "buts," every child gets health care - automatically, immediately, every child in America gets health care now.

THIRD - We must and will control the skyrocketing premiums, co-pays, and exclusions that make a mockery of the insurance hard-working families pay for month after month. No longer will families be pushed into bankruptcy by medical bills they can't pay -- no longer will sons and daughters have to choose between paying for a doctor's bill for one child or college tuition for another -- it is time to finally guarantee that as health care costs are held down, Americans get the health care they need and deserve.

FOURTH - and finally, instead of telling tens of millions to wait until they are sick enough to go to an emergency room, we must and will assure high quality and preventive care for every American.

Holdouts - those exercising their individual freedom to abstain for their own reasons - get no consideration. They'll get escalatingly unpleasant notices that finally cumulate in a visit from law enforcement, an audience with a court, and a relocation to prison. Your desire to retain the parental prerogative in your child's well-being, as well as the child's own rightful degree of individual liberty in making these decisions, are irrelevant. The state knows and judges better than you. If progressives cared about individual freedom, they'd recognize that concept for the fantastic danger it is, for it undermines all promises to respect individual freedom and opens the door to actual rights violations rather than imagined. Once you admit individuals are not capable or responsible enough, in principle, to act in their own interests, you've kick-started the slave mentality.

When Kerry asks of progressives, "what are you willing to fight for to make health care work for everyone?" he wants to know how much of their tolerance for individual freedom they are willing to set aside. Doctors who set their own prices...not acceptable. Insurance companies following the terms of their contracts and denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions...not acceptable. People who choose to shoulder the full risk of potential medical expenses down the road...not acceptable.

You will change their ways, or face people who can hurt, kidnap, and steal from you because they have state-granted immunities to do so.

Kerry wants to dictate what our health care options are and how those services are rendered. Kerry - and everyone who doesn't flatly reject his "principles" on their face as a result of the tyranny they imply - sees individuals as means to an end.

This is why I'll never be a "progressive."

Posted by drizzten at 02:55 PM | Permalink