Monthly Archives: January 2013

Resistance is Not Futile

This will be my last foray (part 1, part 2) into the whole gun debate issue and so I would like to address a common objection to “ordinary” citizens owning “military” grade weaponry. I received this question from a friend recently: “How do sovereign people adequately defend themselves from their government that has vastly superior weapons?” The assumed “gotcha” response is that such defense is obviously futile and thus having demonstrated such futility ipso facto there can be no legitimate reason for a citizen to posses such weapons. This was not my friend’s intent in asking this question though; he raised a legitimate question and was seeking a thoughtful answer.

To answer this we must first ask: What is the objective of such people defending themselves? Is it to achieve an outright resounding victory or is it to merely resist? Although the former objective may be the desire clearly the difference in weaponry would make that an unlikely immediate outcome. However, resistance is a different matter. Resistance does not require equivalent weaponry, merely minimally repulsive weaponry. The truth of this is found throughout a history replete with stories of rebelling forces that were vastly outgunned and outmanned resisting against superior forces for years on end. For example, the American Indian (various tribes) resisted the growing incursions of the United States into their various territories for decades. They did ultimately lose that battle, however there was resistance. Had they been completely disarmed the resistance of the Indians would have lasted days rather than decades.

There are also examples where resistance can ultimately translate into victory. If your goal is not to win but rather to simply wear your enemy down, then it is often possible for the “weaker” party to prevail. For examples of that look no further than our own American Revolution. An army of farmers armed with muskets defeated the mightiest military on the face of the earth. Likewise the tables were turned in Vietnam when we, with the mightiest military on the face of the earth, were defeated by a grass roots militia. Some might quibble over the details of these examples, but there are plenty of others and it does not detract from the underlying point, which is that a weaker party can overcome a stronger party even when they may only posses the most basic defensive weaponry. Don’t believe me, believe history.

So if resistance is a legitimate use of such weapons does that mean possession of such weapons by citizens should be legal? Yes. Does this mean then that everyone is going to rush out and buy their own bazooka and surface to air missile launchers? Of course not – those things are expensive! According to the Internet a bazooka costs around $50,000 and a single round costs $500. In other words the market already has a built in regulation of such weaponry as they are simply financially out of reach for 99% of the population. The 1% that can afford them have no interest in them and the 0.001% that can afford and do have an interest in them are not going to risk losing them by doing something stupid.

If our government were actually serious about restricting weapon sales they could do so today without passing any laws or regulations. Simply make it a condition of any purchasing contract with arms manufacturers that any weapon the military purchases may only be sold to them (e.g. an exclusivity contract). The arms manufacturer is free to sign such a contract or not. Violations of such a contract would entail loss of future multi-million dollar contracts and other damages. Additionally, the military should destroy all weapons when they are designated for retirement rather than selling them through “surplus” stores or to other governments that are not so careful about where they end up. This might not eliminate every instance of these types of weapons getting into the hands of citizens but even advocates of gun laws agree that gun laws won’t eliminate every instance either. So all things being equal it seems a contract based market approach coupled with common sense prevention (destroy, don’t sell, old weapons) will have greater success (today) in achieving the goal of reducing weapon supply. It would limit supply to both criminal and non-criminal alike whereas weapon laws restrict only non-criminal possession.

Breaking Bad (Rules)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week you’re probably aware of the confessional interview Lance Armstrong had with Oprah Winfrey in which he revealed that he had been “doping” in order to gain a competitive advantage (or perhaps simply leveling the playing field as it has been reported that 20 of 21 top-3 finishers from 1999 to 2005 were also doping). In another recent story HSBC was fined a record $1.9 billion by the US Justice Department due to violation of several anti-money laundering statutes .

What do these two stories have in common? Each contains an apparent villain that has been dutifully brought to light or justice. But upon closer inspection we find neither party has done anything “wrong” in the traditional Judeo-Christian morality sense. They did not kill anyone. They did not steal anything. Armstrong did lie and liars are generally not held up in our society as paragons of virtue, but consider the context. He lied about violating a policy that is irrational and thus is nearly universally ignored. Imagine that your employer established a new policy: all employees are prohibited from drinking soda at work or at home. You know this policy is just silly so you ignore it. If asked by your employer concerning your soda status what do you do? Do you tell the truth and lose your job or do you lie and keep your job? I suspect most would lie over a rule this inane. It is easy to lie when the policy in question is just plain silly, universally ignored, and enforcement is basically impossible. Is “dope” free sport a noble goal? Sure it is. And so is a world free of all weapons. But just like with guns, that genie is out of the bottle. The last guaranteed dope free sporting event took place sometime in the 18th century. Anti-doping policies are disingenuous at best insofar as they give a free pass to mechanical technologies that enhance performance (e.g. high tech bikes that cost more than your car). If anti-doping policies were truly driven by a concern about eliminating “unfair” advantages then every cyclist would be required to ride the exact same model of bike and the genetically less endowed athletes would be permitted to “dope up” to the same VO2 max as their more genetically endowed competitors. Then everyone could cross the finish line together holding hands. Cum by yah.

If private organizations like UCI (International Cycling Union) want to ban doping that is their prerogative (although international treaties banning the practice (such as the US ratified “International Convention against Doping in Sport”, attempt to remove all such discretion from athletes and their athletic organizations). Perhaps the only place where Armstrong and others like him did err is that they did agree to the rules of that private organization when they joined. The most proper way to have proceeded would have been to have not joined any anti-doping organizations but rather to have formed a new entity that did permit doping. Athletes that dope can join that group, those that don’t are free to join any of the others. However I suspect the aforementioned treaty makes “doping permitted” groups illegal. In which case government again short-circuits market based solutions.

HSBC behaved similarly to Armstrong. They simply ignored all of the silly anti-money laundering rules and regulations. To understand why money laundering is considered “bad” consider who is leveling the claim: government. Money laundering can only occur in connection with illegal activities, however it is government that defines what is illegal. It is actually easy to end all money laundering; simply make such associated activities legal. If drug prohibition were ended there would be no drug money to launder. If governments ceased their interventionist policies or did not force people to remain part of their respective unions (Northern Ireland, Palestine, Chechnya, Serbia, Kurdistan, Basques, etc) all terrorism would end (and thus the associated laundering of money toward those ends). In other words, governments (or sometimes private groups) often create the very problems they then proclaim only they can remedy. When they eventually ensnare a violator they parade it around for all to see as both a sign of their effectiveness and as a warning. But we should be skeptical of any hunter who demonstrates his prowess by bagging a Holstein on his own property.

Vaccination Cures Gun Epidemic

Those that are opposed to gun control frequently resort to the tactic of citing some statistic that demonstrates how some ordinary object (e.g. a hammer, a fist) is used far more frequently to kill someone than is a “rifle.” This approach is not particularly constructive to the debate. While it is true that hammers are used to kill more people than “rifles”, “guns” are used to kill far more than all other methods combined. Since the real debate is on gun control and not rifle control, it is a bit dangerous to argue such control is unnecessary owing to relatively low death totals. If your opponent switches from “rifle” control to “gun” control your argument will fail.

An adjunct to this argument is an appeal to common sense. Most intuitively accept the premise that that it would be silly to ban things because they might be misused (which taken to its logical conclusion would involve banning everything). However, people generally go along with banning something if it has no apparent “legitimate” use (e.g. drugs, high capacity guns, cigarettes) but bristle at banning objects that are predominantly used for “legitimate” purposes, particularly if the loss of that legitimate use would present a substantial hardship. The main problem anti-gun control advocates have is that the legitimate use and illegitimate use of a gun have the same result: death. The difference between the legitimate and illegitimate use of a hammer is obvious, not so much with guns. How does one overcome this hurdle? Always forthrightly confront any questions of the “why do you need a gun that does X?” variety. If asked why does one need more than 6 rounds, explain real life is not like the movies and one bullet does not kill someone instantly (recently a mother in Loganville, Georgia shot an intruder 6 times and he still walked away!

a disarmed population is as unprotected as an un-vaccinated child

 

The current approach of gun control advocates is equally counterproductive toward their cause. They seek to regulate the weapon and not the individual. Even the 2nd Amendment says “a well regulated militia” not a “well regulated arsenal”. So while I am no fan of the state deciding who may or may not own a weapon (by what subjective metric will it make that determination?), this approach resonates with the reasonable notion that we don’t want “crazy people” to have weapons. If the state determines I am safe and sane (how they will do that I have no idea and is unsettling prospect) what difference does it make what type of weapons I own? Similarly, if you have a driver’s license you can drive a Mini or a Ford F350 Dually. Nobody asks “why do you need that F350?” – so why do they ask “why do you need that AR-15?”. But since this is so commonly asked, allow me to answer. Those best able to answer that would be the following: Jews in pre-war Germany, civilians in Stalinist Russia, civilians in the Cambodian killing fields, or civilians in Maoist China. Guns are not merely for self-defense; they are also for defense of the sovereign people against their own (illegitimate) government when such government would seek to violate their sovereign rights. All of the 20th century genocides occurred on populations that were entirely unarmed and unable to resist. I do not believe there is some “master plan” to commit such atrocities in the US. However, a disarmed population is as unprotected as an un-vaccinated child. The first exposure to a dangerous element will be impossible to resist. Democracy is no prophylactic against tyranny: Hitler was elected through a democratic process. Those that genuinely do wish to disarm everyone (probably) have their heart in the right place. Any one of us would, if we could, wave a magic wand and eliminate every weapon on the face of the planet. Sadly that is nothing but a utopian fantasy. Once man creates technology it can never be made “unknown”. The only way to resist the misuse of technology is to maintain a level playing field so that all can access it and thereby mankind keeps mankind in check.

 

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

It has recently come to my attention (thank you George Warren) that the economist Steve Keen has proposed a solution to our economic woes: the government should give people money to pay off their debts. According to Keen it is the high level of private debt (about three times that of annual US GDP ) that is causing the economy to move so sluggishly. While enormous artificial debt creation did indeed foster the previous boom and our current bust, Keen has erred in both identifying the root cause of this debt explosion as well as an appropriate solution.

It is revealing that Keen does not ask the most pertinent question: he blames the banks for the debt explosion yet he does not address how is it possible banks could collectively lend out five times the amount of money in existence ($50 trillion in private debt vs a $10 trillion monetary base (M2))? He then decries “bad lending” – lending for purely financial market speculation, but again fails to ask why it would be in a lender’s interest to make such “gambling” loans – loans that more often than not would default (hint: moral hazard).  What is the answer to these unasked questions? Government. Government interference in the market (legal tender laws, legalization of fractional reserve lending, a central bank, implied bail outs, etc) resulted in the distorted outcomes Keen identifies. Being apparently unaware that government is the root cause of the problems he cites, he then unwittingly invokes that same entity as our savior: he proposes that “government created money” (through deficits) will solve the problem of too much bank created money (loans). But government is the sole reason banks can (legally) create money out of thin air to begin with! The legality of a central bank and fractional reserve lending makes phony debt possible. In a truly free, hard money economy (where the lending of demand deposits would constitute the actual theft that it is) credit expansion and unproductive loans to gamblers would cease to exist (because loan defaults will not be bailed out.) Only time deposits are eligible to be loaned out, thus naturally regulating the debt load in an economy.

Keen falls into the trap of blaming those capitalizing on the fruits of the government created circus (speculators, brokers) with causing the circus. That’s like blaming the existence of slavery on slave traders; slave traders capitalized on a situation made possible only by governmental enforcement of the legality of slavery. It’s the same old story: government creates an artificial scenario that some other group takes advantage of and then that group is subsequently piously vilified while the root cause is ignored.

As the intricacies of lending and finance are rather opaque I shall attempt to distill what has occurred and what Keen proposes to a simple narrative. Let us imagine three friends, Dave, Bob and Gary. Dave needs $800 to buy a house. Nobody has money to lend to Dave. Gary has a solution. Gary prints money ($1000) and gives it to Bob (because Gary doesn’t want Dave to know he is the source of the money). Bob loans the money ($800) to Dave and Bob keeps $200. Dave has his house built which provides builders with money. When the house is done Dave begins paying Bob back. All the builders are sad because Dave is not paying them anymore. Others are sad because Dave buys fewer goods because he has to repay Bob. When Bob gets money from Dave he gives it to Gary who promptly burns it (to hide what he has done). Because Gary is burning the money it is not being spent and so all the sad people ask Gary to print more money (so they won’t have to lower their prices) and to give it directly to Dave so Dave does not have to pay Bob anymore. So Gary prints more money and gives it to Dave to pay Bob, who then gives it to Gary who burns it. So what is the end result here? Dave got a free house and Bob got $200 for handling the money. Seems like everyone came out ahead here, right? Almost makes counterfeiting seem noble – I wonder why it is illegal? Oh, that’s right, because it is theft. It is theft from those not mentioned in the story. It is theft from every other person who holds and is paid in dollars as their dollars become worth less (because there are now more dollars) or worthless – take your pick!

When people propose “solutions” to our economic woes that involve government bailing out some group know that it is nothing more than calls to legally do what would otherwise land any one of us in jail were we to do so individually. It is theft. To have government take from unfavored groups and give to favored groups is theft. It was wrong to bail out the banks and it is wrong to bail out individuals. The only solution is to remove all authority government has over fiscal and monetary concerns. All unfairness in our current system is attributable to crony-capitalism fostered by big government colluding with big business. Dismantle big government and you’ll dismantle the inequity it fosters.