Laissez Faire - by Don Boudreaux

I have struggled, and failed, for the last 5 years to express what Don Boudreaux says here in just three paragraphs. 
Why in the hell would anyone opposed to The Religious Right or The Ultra-Secular Left want a larger, more intrusive government? 

If you are a modern “Progressive” and cannot abide the notion of conservatives, Christian or otherwise, having a say in who you sleep with and who you may marry, when and why you may get an abortion, what sorts of scientific research and artistic projects should be funded, what school curricula should and shouldn’t include, or when and why Uncle Sam goes on world-policing ventures, then why do you wish to expand the scope of government authority? Doing so in a society with a wide franchise, such as the U.S., inevitably invites those rubes to intrude their antediluvian superstitions and dogmas onto you and onto all that you hold dear and sacred.


If you are a modern conservative, Christian or otherwise, and cannot abide the notion of “Progressives” having a say in how you school your children, what your tax rates are, what size Big Gulps you may buy, or whether or not you may fill in ditches and water puddles on your land, then why do you tolerate – indeed, frequently applaud – activities such as government’s ‘war on drugs,’ Uncle Sam’s interventionist foreign policies, strict immigration restrictions, and tariffs on imports? Doing so – by creating a large and discretionary state – only encourages those obnoxious know-it-alls to use government against you and against all that you hold dear and sacred.

Here’s why I ask the above questions: every time I’m in a supermarket check-out lane and catch the headlines of the reading materials on sale there – soap-opera digests, magazines featuring Oprah and other entertainment celebrities, and the like – I literally get a bit of a queazy feeling in the pit of my stomach. It somewhat sickens me that people care who Jennifer Anniston is dating, what Oprah is eating, or why male hunk du jour just ditched female sex-goddess du jour for some other equally vacuous if va-va-va-voom!-inducing babe. I don’t wish to prevent anyone from reading about or caring deeply about these matters about which I truly couldn’t care less. But it scares me that people who read that nonsense – because they care about that nonsense - have a say in how my life is conducted. I resent the fact that such people, if only through the ballot box, have influence how government orders me about.

The more expansive is the scope of government authority, the more my life is subject to commands issued in part under the influence of people who read Us magazine.

Scary.

Not just scary.  Terrifying.  But people vote for more of it every 2 years. 

The Tale Of The Slave - by Robert Nozick

From the Duke University Educational Society.  Robert Nozick's "Tale Of The Slave".  Think of this as a progression for one slave to experience.   
The last question is a zinger. 

"The Tale of the Slave"
from Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292.

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.
3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.
4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.
5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him three-sevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.
   
   Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.
   
7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.
8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.

The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?

Thank You

Many thanks to the Libertarian Party candidates, door-knockers, sign-posters, phone-callers, Facebook-sharers, forum-attenders and other supporters !! 

This was our best year ever. 

Check out the Tarrant County Elections website when time permits.  Then head over to the Texas site.   A staggering number of Republicans and Democrats voted "straight ticket".  Even so, a lot of Dems and Independents selected our folks when there was a two-candidate race between the LP candidate and a Republican. 

We had a respectable showing in many of the 3-party races. 

If I'm disappointed in anything, it's Gary Johnson's total.  Yes, he doubled the 2008 number, but I would've put money on a 3x performance. 

But dang it, we didn't win anything. 

There's always 2014. 

Why the tornadoes hit Alabama and not Canada

I knew that the Global Warmists would pile on to the tornadoes and storms that recently hit Alabama and Mississippi, but I wanted to find the perfect example before posting anything about it. 

As all right-thinking people know, Jehovah/Yahweh/Zuul/Gaia doesn't like it when we tolerate gays and lesbians.  So He/She/It sent a hurricane to New Orleans to punish the offending parties. 

If our crops fail, it's because there are witches in our midst.  After we burn a few of them, the Gods are appeased and prosperity returns. 

I'll never forget going to my uncle's house in the early 1970's and hearing a farmer question whether or not our space travel was causing an uptick in hurricanes. 

Well, guess why we had tornadoes in the South last week? 

Bad legislative karma.  Yep.  Certain regions have legislators that don't bow at the foot of Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City, Tennessee.  The Gods sent the tornadoes to those exact places as payback. 

Here's Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress:

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”
The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

So there you have it.  If the congressional delegations of 'Bama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Georgia, Virginny, and Ol' Kentuck had just voted to let Al Gore buy Carbon Credits from himself, if we had just started using CFL bulbs a little sooner, if we had just built a few more idiotic windmills in West Texas, if we had implemented an economy-destroying carbon tax, if we had carpooled, starved a few more brown people by using grain as ethanol, used a push mower, minimized packaging, put on a sweater, bought a bracelet, air dried our clothes, and done other things to conform to some bureaucrat's Luddite fantasy.....

If we had turned our lives over to the government, crucified the evil Koch brothers, voted Democrat, and listened to the warnings from totally disinterested scientists whose research funding and prestige doesn't depend on government funding at all....

Then the earth-goddess Gaia would have been pleased.  Alabama would have been spared.  The tornadoes would have hit Canada, where the natives are well known for violating the Christian Sabbath.  And consuming alcohol.  And wearing clothing made of blended fabrics.  And not wearing Burkhas.   

Or it's possible that ThinkProgress needs to learn that correlation is not causation.  

Libertarian Party positions on proposed amendments to Texas Constitution

Here are the Texas Libertarian Party positions on the proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution. One thing to remember.... even if some of these pro-tax amendments fail, you can still give the state more of your money. Hit the link, and read away.


One brief word on #11, the Eminent Domain amendment....

The proposed amendment would appear on the ballot as follows: "The constitutional amendment to prohibit the taking, damaging, or destroying of private property for public use unless the action is for the ownership, use, and enjoyment of the property by the State, a political subdivision of the State, the public at large, or entities granted the power of eminent domain under law or for the elimination of urban blight on a particular parcel of property, but not for certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes, and to limit the legislature's authority to grant the power of eminent domain to an entity."

This one is so poorly worded that it defies logic. On the one hand, it claims to prohibit the taking of private property. On the other hand it allows "a political subdivision of the State", meaning "damn near anybody" to take away your house and give you less than you want for it. Or it allows them to take land because of "Urban Blight". They would call The Bass Hall in downtown Fort Worth "Urban Blight" if doing so would help them get their grubby little hands on the land beneath it. What a horribly worded piece of junk. If this bill passes, we'll think we have an anti-Eminent Domain bill, and that whatever the State steals in the future is justified. If it doesn't pass, it gives the impression that Texas voters support land theft by the State. What a horribly worded piece of junk.

Please vote. Flip a coin on #11. You're damned if it passes, and damned if it doesn't.