Positive Liberty

One of the things that distinguishes intellectual property from the more intuitively obvious tangible variety is that the very notion of intellectual property requires a justification in the sense that tangible property almost never does. Utopians of one variety or another have tried, almost always with disastrous consequences, to abolish the institution of private property, but as far as I know there has never been a society that has denied the existence or necessity of property rights of any sort at all. Typically, their alternative has been to assert some sort of collectivist or communitarian ownership; but while it may be that the clan or the tribe “own everything in common” or the “people (collectively) own the means of production,” woe be any rival clan or tribe or people who happen by and start asserting similar property rights in the same stuff. Wars have been known to start that way even in utopia.

The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc. Continue Reading »

Virginia, apparently affiliated with ServiceNation, writes in defense of her group’s activities:

Managing, training and maintaining volunteers takes a lot of work especially for non-profit organizations. Often an organization who needs or benefits from the efforts of volunteers such as some public schools or parks, do not have the labor to recruit, train, organize and coordinate volunteers leaving volunteers and those in the organization feeling frusterated. [sic] We all know people and at times we too want to help out and want to do good but it takes coordination to put us into a position that fits our strengths and gifts and contributes to the work of the organization. This is a vital piece that an coordinating [sic] organization provides.

Also, it can add to the experience of a volunteer to be connected with other volunteers while they are volunteerin. [sic]

Having served in the Peace Corps I know that this transformational experience would have been very difficult without a coordinating body to recruit, train, and connect me with the locals and my peers. I would not have done it and 20 years since my time in Peace Corps service, I am grateful every day for it. I bring the lessons I learned and the knowing I shared of myself and my culture to the Hondurans to my home, my work and my community. We are all richer for that.

All of this may well be true, but two standard caveats about market failure still apply. Continue Reading »

Leitmotif: It’s alright, we’ve told you what to dream.

Various dreams from here and there, below the fold. Continue Reading »

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already in August Mode, a frame of mind common among Washingtonians, New Yorkers and other pretentious pseudo-intellectuals of my ilk during which time unless, let’s say, Obama is caught in fishnet stockings chasing a sumo wrestler or McCain is discovered to actually have spent the Viet Nam war in Canada making macramé bongs while his twin brother Skippy was the real POW, I simply don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. Save it for after Labor Day.

So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.

This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.

Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.

By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.

I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.

Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.

Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.

Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.

Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tools over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor or worse. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?

[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]

I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.

Reader Chris Berez alerted me to the fact that the Watchmen trailer is up. It looks really good. Watchmen is the greatest comic book/graphic novel ever produced, certainly one day will be viewed as essential reading in the Western Canon. Comic book geeks rightly worry that the movie will ruin such a magnificent piece of literature. Based on the trailer, my hopes are up.

The best thing they could (similar to what was done in the movie adaptation of Frank Miller’s “Sin City”) is shoot right from the comic book and take as few artistic liberties as possible. Write Alan Moore’s dialog exactly into the actors’ mouths. What’s challenging is that Watchmen is a 12-part book and has too much content for even a 3 hour movie. So some artistic liberties are going to be inevitable. Hopefully the movie will be successful and then encourage more folks to read the graphic novel.

What can be said about Saint-Simon? He is little read today and even less appreciated, that much is true. And on reading the “Letter from an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries,” one is tempted to ask: Is this what they call socialism?

It is, it is. Continue Reading »

Several of the pieces we have read or will read, including Cordwainer Smith’s “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard,” make mention of free food and drink in the future: a sign, the authors suggest, of the vast economic growth between now and then. The same is true in the Star Trek universe and in so many others that I’ve basically lost count.

But it won’t happen that way, and here’s why. Continue Reading »

Will Wilkinson writes,

I had not-that-distant ancestors who spoke Norwegian, German, Lakota, et al, but I don’t really even know who they were, much less what they stood for. Maybe some natalist can convince the Taliban there is really no problem if they can just keep their birthrates up. But certain radical fundamentalist Muslims think they need to destroy liberal capitalist modernity for a very good reason. Unless they do, it really will destroy their creed and its culture.

I would only add that this disconnect from one’s ancestors is not the exception, but rather the rule for much of western history. Conservatives who set their hopes on reverence for lineage are trusting in something rather new to save something very old.

At least in the West, traditionalism came more of the slow pace of technological and cultural change than it did from a reverence for one’s lineal ancestors. Most people had no such reverence to speak of. They couldn’t, because they were illiterate, they had few possessions to pass down through the generations, and they often were the products of undocumented or illegitimate unions anyway. A typical peasant had only a vague recollection of his own birthday and year, and who his immediate living relatives were. The rest was entirely lost, except perhaps in ill-kept church records that he could not read.

The elaborate sense of connectedness to a lineage is a product of aristocratic, not popular culture. The rising bourgeoisie picked this up in the nineteenth century, like it did so many things from the old aristocracy, without realizing why they were doing so, and without realizing its comparatively low value as a cultural meme.

Now, I personally can trace my ancestry back (if I recall correctly) to 1734, and a small town outside Stuttgart, where my mother’s earliest known ancestor — a clockmaker — was born. I’ve heard family stories and seen some secondhand documentation of a remarkable character on my father’s side who marched from France with Napoleon, made it to the outskirts of Moscow, fell of exhaustion on the way back through Poland, was rescued by a Polish family, married into it, and eventually had a child who became one of my direct ancestors. Some well-founded speculation suggests that my father’s family has converso Jewish roots, and that another branch of it is in direct descent from Genghis Kahn. Not that I’m unique in this.

My (same-sex!) spouse had an ancestor who fought under George Washington’s command. A distant uncle was a congressman from New York. From what little I can tell of the uncle, he was a term-limiting ,gold-standard, classical liberal Republican who got royally screwed by a state monopoly scheme. He has a Wikipedia entry, and his resemblance to Scott’s father is uncanny.

I’d even likely have voted for the guy, but lineage in the developed world is a hobby, not a destiny. My marriage prospects into the upper nobility aren’t much enhanced by my descent from the Great Kahn, nor are they harmed by my Jewish ancestry.

The larger point is this: Before the last few generations, much of this knowledge had in fact been lost. I had a great-aunt who traveled back to Poland and Germany to learn a lot of it on my side, and who scoured death and baptismal records to source it all. Without the Internet, I’d only have had Scott’s grandmother’s verbal recollection of a “Representative John Starin.” Today, I’ve got a jpeg of a ticket to the amusement park he owned, and that’s pretty cool, if I may say so.

For most of history, only the nobility had lineages. And they, as historians can tell you, generally fibbed about them. We’re liberal now not because we’ve stopped caring about our lineage, but because lineage is just one meme among so many others competing for our attention, and because so much else is happening in the modern world.

Today’s (UK) Independent Online runs a story entitled “Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits.” While noting that the now over 25 year old disease continues to kill “more than all wars and conflicts,” the far more newsworthy (in the sense of new and unusual) part of the story is as follows:

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organizations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalized epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

This is, to be sure, not good news for homosexuals or Africans; but it is, that sad fact notwithstanding, well past time the epidemiological realities of HIV/Aids risk were acknowledged. Just in case there is an outbreak of candor going on among public officials (yes, I know), perhaps someone could say the same thing about resources misspent through the generalized screening for possible terrorist suspects to avoid profiling. Continue Reading »

NEWSWEEK’s Daniel Stone recently interviewed Ron Paul, who has dropped off the event horizon lately. Well, it’s understandable, what with all the worldwide hoopla over the Libertarian Party’s nomination of Bob Barr and, let’s face it, the far more entertaining mini-series of the Democratic Party’s determination to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. (Speaking of which, let me take this opportunity to say there’s no truth whatsoever to the rumor Hillary Clinton will soon argue that, for the sake of constitutional historicity, Barack Obama’s African American delegates’ should only count 3/5ths each.)

Meanwhile, the “presumptive nominee,” John Barking Mad McCain is busying himself interviewing prospective lackeys, taking advice on how best to avoid mentioning either President Bush or the fact that they belong to the same party during the actual campaign and tending to various coronation nomination details. Not much of a story there. Oh sure, he got in a bit of trouble with an former minister, too, but it couldn’t really hurt him because no one seriously thinks John McCain believes in any power greater than himself.

My guess is that, viewing the Republican National Convention in purely entertainment terms — and how could you not? — Paul and his zany minions will provide most of the interesting sidebar stories. Aside from implicitly denying that unspent campaign money will be used on hookers and blow, other news from the interview includes the fact that Paul plans a major rally at some point during the convention to “present views and try to … get in on the committees to vote on platforms” and that he won’t endorse another candidate.

Paul has always been a mixed bag as far as being libertarianism’s poster boy goes, but that would necessarily be true of any flesh-and-blood national candidate. On balance, he’s been a positive force in what has otherwise been and continues to be an abysmally depressing election cycle. Better still, we haven’t heard the last of him yet.

I suppose I could just walk over to his office and tell him this, but then… it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and this is a bit of a teachable moment, so… Will Wilkinson writes,

I hate [haggling]. I am terrible at it. As a consequence, I bought nothing in Turkey other than tickets to various things, room, food, and a poster of Ataturk. And I overpaid for all of these things, I’m sure, which has left me a bit bitter about the place. Surely this is inefficient overall, no? I understand the price discrimination argument for haggling, especially in a country with a lot of poverty and tourism. But probably hundreds of my dollars stayed in my pocket because I didn’t have good information about the quality of products and I knew the retailer is better at bargaining over the surplus than I am, so… there was no transaction and no surplus.

Inefficient? Of course it is, if all you consider are the utility of the goods purchased and the sums of money involved. But I suspect that these markets still exist because people — tourists — want to haggle. It’s recreation to many of us who would otherwise shop at Wal-Mart.

Maybe knowing a little economics takes the fun out of it, since those of us in the know will realize that to one degree or another we’re getting a less than efficient price (or are we simply valuing the entertainment less, in a quest — misguided? — for sophistication?). But I don’t imagine that we’re the majority. Hagglers find it fascinating to be able to manipulate prices themselves, when usually this activity is done for them in a market. Meanwhile, the markets back home work even when most people don’t realize how or even that they are doing so.

Mark Skousen described the new book, “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics,” as, “A cock-eyed, frolicking hell of a read.”

Anyone familiar with William (Bill) Bonner’s work at The Daily Reckoning would expect no less. He and his co-author, Lila Rajiva, used poignant rhetoric, colorful analogies, and often surprising humor, to drive home the point that following the crowd or trusting modern day prophets is a recipe for human disaster.

Decades ago, Hayek taught us about the Knowledge Problem in dry prose. Bonner and Rajiva expound upon and apply the Knowledge Problem to current events, and the result is an instructive laugh-fest.

But Bonner and Rajiva aren’t contrarians for the sake of ideology or humor. They want to establish that the world we’re in and the events we’re witnessing are NOT rational. Therefore, they canNOT be scientifically managed or anticipated. Their primary concern is the investor looking to increase the value of his portfolio: Following the crowd or taking the guru too seriously, that same poor investor might lose it all.

Bonner and Rajiva warn people of the dangers of world improvers and self-professed experts. Once again, they use shocking questions and humorous tales to illustrate their points.

1. They openly question insanity — Continue Reading »

“I think our main problem is our unclear definition of value.”

I’d like to make a top-level reply to one of the most interesting comments we’ve gotten in weeks. Before we begin, readers should know that I’ve already laid my cards on the table in the global warming game: Several months ago I wrote that 1) global warming is apparently both real and manmade and 2) even so, the best option may still be to do nothing about it.

I argued that many people seem to become convinced on this issue — one way or the other — because they find a particular narrative appealing, even while discounting various possibilities that don’t line up neatly with the narrative they happen to like. “Scientists find a danger, stop it, and save the world” is a tremendously appealing story, even to me. “Scientists find a danger, try to stop it, spend enormous amounts of money, and we’re screwed anyway” — while not appealing — is also a possibility, and one that we should not dismiss. There’s even “Scientists find a danger, overcorrect it, and polar bears now rule the world,” which is a remote possibility, but then, the remote possibility of something horrible shouldn’t be discounted either.

The problem with seizing on a narrative is that it focuses our attention on one set of dangers and on one outcome only. This is unwise in the extreme, particularly when dealing with a system in which “we’ve warmed things up, but we don’t know how much” is the cutting edge of our knowledge. It might in fact be wisest to wait and see what new technologies — like cheap solar energy — may do to the question in the coming years.

Anyway, let’s get to Casey’s comment. I’ve interleaved my replies, so if you’d like to get the full effect of the comment before you see them, please do so now.

Continue Reading »

I am always interested in how other people do their jobs. Sometimes you can steal a good idea from another industry and use it to promote your own career or venture.

Chris Sligh was one of the American Idol, Top 10 contestants from last season. At his blog he weighed out-loud the pros and cons of signing with a major record label, or holding out and going “indie.” (I think he ultimately chose to go independent in Christian Contemporary Music).

At the beginning of Sligh’s post is a link to a short MTV News video on the Future of the Music Business, with more on the subject.

The Internet services many new, deeper niches. Yet how many industries are getting flattened by the Net? In the MTV news vid, one record promoter explains that they can now make a profit with 1% of the sales major labels need to break-even.

It seems to me that,for the new age we’re in, opportunity abounds (in a variety of industries) for many more people to get in on the lower rungs and do what it is that they enjoy doing as a part-time or full-time career (if it weren’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have my current jobs). But making it “big” may be harder than ever.

This context-plucked snippet of a phrase is from the ‘pen’ of David Mamet, surely one of the finest playwrights / screenwriters of our age. It is not, however, from any of his dialog overlapping, cynical 1.5 dimensional character cluttered literary efforts but from a longish essay in, of all places, the Village Voice. Herewith, Mamet the formerly “brain-dead liberal” (his phrase, folks, not mine) and still master wordsmith:

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

Good stuff (though not, by the way, all that much different from the slant one gets from P.J. O’Rourke’s brilliant Parliament Of Whores). Perhaps one shouldn’t be all that surprised to hear such comments from someone whose political sensibilities were sufficiently well honed to have written Oleanna back in 1992. Alas, there doesn’t appear to be a role here for Mamet perennial favorite, Ricky Jay. Even so, well worth a read.