Monthly Archives: October 2014

The Silent Majority

If one is a believer in the democracy and voting, then this demands at a minimum a respect for the concept of a quorum, that is, a minimum level of participation of those members (citizens) eligible to vote. Although the US constitution does not provide any specific requirements for a quorum with regards to voting by citizens, it does provide some insight into the minds of the founding fathers with respect to the importance of voter participation. Specifically, the 12th Amendment states that a quorum of at least two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives should be present if they are called upon to decide a presidential election (when the electoral college produces a tie). Given that voter turnout has never exceeded 67% in a presidential election it could be argued that none of our elected representatives are “legitimate”. Voter turnout in presidential election years hovers around 60% and 40% in off years. Therefore, 40-60% of the population found all options so distasteful they chose to abstain from casting a ballot. In other words, at last at the national or state level, no elected official has ever received majority support of those citizens eligible to vote. This inconvenient truth is ignored for the simple fact that were it respected it would be impossible for those “in power” to govern at any level greater than city council (and even that is in question). To truly respect the wishes of those not voting requires either providing a NOTA option on all ballots or to assume a tally of a vote for NOTA for each person not voting (NOTA= None Of The Above).

To the apathetic voter then I say take heed of the power you hold. If those of you who do not vote do so because you believe it won’t make a difference, then the fact that your constituency is 60% of the population should tell you otherwise. If you are tired of the status quo of the left and right wings of the officially sanctioned State Party – the party that stays in power no matter who “wins”, then seize this opportunity and vote Libertarian this election. Now I could write a book about why Libertarians are the better choice, but honestly, how could it be any worse? The two party duopoly has given us nothing but a soul crushing welfare-warfare state liberally sprinkled with either economic or civil rights violations. At least the libertarians are ideologically in alignment with the majority of Americans. That is to say, when people are polled on issues rather than candidates, they overwhelming choose libertarian positions (“I can’t believe this is instant coffee!”) Yes libertarians are the Folgers of politics. Try them, you’ll be surprised how much you like them.

In Georgia we have several libertarians running at the state level: Andrew Hunt for Governor, Amanda Swafford for Senate, Ted Metz for Insurance Commissioner. Some have tried to pin the “spoiler” label on them claiming that since no libertarian has ever won a high level office they have no chance and thus should not even bother. That’s a great message – if it’s never been done before then that means it can’t be done. Of course an actual election “spoiler” is someone who draws votes away from one or more candidates and thus alters the outcome of the election. But, since Georgia employs a run-off system it is mathematically impossible for additional candidates to play the role of spoiler; the top two vote getters (assuming no one got more than 50%) compete head to head in a run off. Some have said that third party candidates just waste public money by forcing expensive run-off elections. Well whose fault is that? Citizens exercising their constitutional right to run for elected office or lazy legislatures that refuse to implement Instant Runoff Voting. IRV not only eliminates additional costs with run off elections but it also negates the distasteful practice of “strategic” voting found in plurality voting. Such strategic voting only serves to further marginalize third party candidates so it’s hardly surprising why Republicans or Democrats would never promote such a system.

So to all of those in Georgia that have sat on the sidelines, now is your opportunity to send a message to our oligopolic status quo rulers: vote Libertarian and show the country that the “impossible” is possible. Vote Folgers.

Oconee Liquor Referendum: A Vote Less Traveled

“Shall the governing authority of Oconee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption only on the premises?”

 

This is a difficult question for the principled libertarian. It’s a bit like asking the antebellum electorate whether a law requiring slave-owners to not separate families should be passed. Obviously that would be an improvement but the very asking implies consent with the legitimacy of the immoral institution of slavery. Likewise allowing business owners slightly more flexibility in what they are permitted to offer to their voluntary, paying customers is a step in the right direction. But, one must also recognize that such approval implies acquiescence to the right of existence of a “governing authority” that can by decree or popular vote dictate what some people may or may not do with their own justly acquired private property within the invisible lines that define this particular segment of planet Earth as Oconee county. Ethically no such “governing authority” should exist.

To understand why this is so consider the following: People of different religious beliefs can all live side by side in the same community without any (well almost) desire to force their neighbor to conform to their particular set of beliefs. But when those beliefs are secular in nature suddenly it makes perfect sense that the beliefs of the majority are the ones that should govern not merely that majority, but all who live amongst that majority and within an arbitrary boundary. There is no logical basis as to why one type of belief should be respected and another type ignored when it comes to majoritarian impositions on one’s neighbors.

If you don’t want to imbibe a real tequila based margarita, then don’t, but you have no more of a right to tell someone else that they cannot than does an old school Catholic have the right to tell you that you can’t eat meat on Fridays or the Jew to tell you that you must power down all electrical devices for the Sabbath. Indeed it is curious that one extreme segment of the Christian community is so vociferous in their opposition to this referendum. Setting aside the ecclesiastical distortions that lead some to the opinion that alcohol is evil; there is no evidence Jesus ever said his teachings were best enforced by state decree. Following His word willingly is the only gift we can give Him. But a gift given under duress is no gift at all. Such laws rob others of the opportunity to make that willing gift. But, I digress.

Although on the one hand most Americans will espouse support for the ideas of liberty, respecting the rights of the individual and generally minding our own business, when they go into the voting booth those same Americans will engage in a process that is the antithesis of those concepts. Consequentialism, utilitarianism, call it what you will, but that is the thought process that drives many. Rights are important, but if people exercise the right to do X then that might result in Y, therefore WE can’t allow this. The ends justify the means and our rights are trimmed on the altar of Might Be. Recognizing possible deleterious scenarios and working to minimize them is fine – as long as the methods employed do not resort to aggression, that is, the initiation of violence against another. That is what law, ordinances and licenses are – implied aggression. Implied aggression becomes actual aggression if the ordinance or license is ignored.

“But without ordinances and licenses there would be chaos” is the usual rejoinder. No, there would not be chaos. There would simply be a different outcome. Different does not equal chaos. Chaos is simply code for “not the outcome I personally want to see.” But the individual is not powerless to prevent that which they fear in a world of voluntary societies free of coercive “governing authorities”. If you don’t want to see certain kinds of businesses or land use patterns within a certain distance from your residence then you can join like-minded people and put your money where your mouth is. Buy up all the land around you, and then you are free to decide how it is used. If that is too expensive then this is society’ way of telling you that it values other uses for that land more highly than you value it for the purpose you desire. Who are you to argue with society? After all, the people have spoken.

Come Fly with Me

Media bias is often subtle. Those that know the whole story are aware when a slanted viewpoint arises from omitted information. Then again, there are times the “reporter” simply is unable to contain his zeal and so takes aim at his subject with all the adjectival and adverbial firepower he can muster. I don’t normally do this but I came across just such a hyperbolically biased story this week and can only perform a proper critique in blow-by-blow style. The editorial, err, I mean news story concerns a Democrat congressman Alan Grayson (Florida, 9th district) who is hell bent on tilting his lance at the proverbial windmill that is airline frequent-flier programs. Good to know our elected representatives devote their energies to solving the most pressing of ills in the world. The article, penned by a Christopher Elliott, appears in the Washington Post and by the fourth word the author is well on his way to making his opinion known. According to him such programs are “rigged to favor airlines, deceive passengers and cost consumers billions of dollars.” Rigged? Deceived? Yeah, no judgment calls there. And “cost consumers” – I’m still scratching my head on that one. How does giving consumers free stuff “cost” them billions? Next we have a quote from the good Congressman:

“Frequent flyer programs are prone to manipulation by the airlines that control them,” he wrote, likening the estimated $700 billion worth of miles to an unregulated currency. “Airlines establish the rules, the terms, the value, expiration dates, and the sales pitches.” To earn more money, airlines are constantly devaluing this de facto currency, which is “profitable for the airlines, and costly for the consumer,” wrote Grayson.”

An unregulated currency! Say it isn’t so! Every decent God-fearing person knows that unregulated = pure evil. How dare those airlines establish rules, terms and values for a VOLUNTARY PROGRAM THAT GIVES THEIR CUSTOMERS FREE GOODS? What’s next, regulating the toys in a happy meal (oh, right, that already happened). But the final bit is the height of hypocrisy. The congressman bemoans airlines devaluing the FREE STUFF they give their customers while oblivious that his employer (the Federal Government) purposefully devalues (through inflation) the US dollar every year. Such inflation (devaluing) is profitable for the government and costly for the consumer because each dollar buys less each year. Wait a minute, no, could it be? Could it be that this inflation is the proximate cause of the decreasing value of miles and other consumer complaints (fees for baggage, narrowing seats, etc.)? When inflation affects the value of money there are two ways for businesses to respond: raise the money price of the goods, or lower the goods price of the money, that is, less stuff for the same nominal money price. No one wants to be the one to raise money prices as that “seen” figure is obvious, but, decreasing the goods received is relatively “unseen” because people normally pay attention to the price of the can, not how much is in it.

The article then moves onto what irritates all progressives: inequality, even voluntary inequality. The fact that we are not all clones of each other with the exact same skills, drive, desires and tastes induces apoplexy in the progressive. For it is only in just such a world could their utopian ideal of equality not of negative rights, but of outcomes, be realized. The author states:

“Thanks to loyalty programs, airlines have completely separated their most valued customers from the rest. They lavish top spenders with perks while forcing the less valuable passengers to sit in shrinking seats and pay fees for services that should come with every ticket, such as a seat reservation and the ability to check one bag without paying extra for the privilege. Frequent-flier programs have widened the airborne caste system to the point where it’s hard to believe everyone’s on the same plane. They’re making air travel worse for all but a few privileged elites, according to critics.”

Allow me to parse this. Is he honestly saying that businesses should not be able to “discriminate” amongst their clientele by rewarding their biggest customers in a way that incentives those customers to remain their customers? Words like “lavish” and “forcing” leave the reader with the impression airlines are an aristocratic institution that “lavishes” perks on totally random people they just happen to like for no reason at all and then “force” the rest of us to ride their planes at gunpoint… after forcibly removing money from our wallet for the ticket. Oh, wait, only the state can force people to buy a product at gunpoint.

You know what Mr. Elliott, you can be part of that caste too if you like, no revolution necessary. It’s totally voluntary; just pay for the level of service you desire. No “force” involved – and in case you forgot “force” means weapons, which is what the state has and the airlines don’t.

I’ve got a tip that will change your life…

Last week I touched on a handful of stories concerning police and civilian interaction that ended in tragedy. This week I’d like to focus on a story that should serve as a wake up call to anyone who has ever thought “not my problem” because “that stuff only happens to shady characters or people who hang around shady characters.”

David Hooks, 59, of East Dublin, Georgia was the poster-boy for least likely to be associated with a criminal element. He owned a construction company that routinely worked on military bases. Such work required numerous background checks at both the state and federal level (Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Short of being vetted by the CIA you couldn’t ask for anyone with a cleaner background. This is not to suggest that those with “clean records” are incapable of committing crimes but rather that such people are statistically as likely to commit a crime as any of us are (I presume my readers also have clean records!).

So what irresponsible action on his part resulted in him becoming yet another casualty of Prohibition (the war on drugs)? Why he allowed his truck, sitting in his driveway, to be broken into and his SUV to be stolen. It turns out the guy who stole the truck, Rodney Garrett, (a self-described thief and meth addict) turned himself in to the cops claiming he found a bag of methamphetamine in the truck and thus “became scared for his safety.” So, based solely on this hearsay of a tip, a warrant was issued to search Hook’s home. Now, if the cops had executed this warrant the way the 4th Amendment intended (and the way it used to be done) there would have been no problem. They would have sent one or two squad cars over to the house, politely knocked on the door, served and then executed the warrant. They would have found nothing, hopefully apologized for the trouble, cleaned up after themselves and left.

But that is not what happened. Those accused of drug crimes, even mere possession, are presumed to be clones of Al Pacino’s “Scarface”, AK-47 at the ready 24/7. So, under a presumption of Hook’s guilt, the Laurens County Drug Task Force silently rolled up his driveway around 11 pm with no flashing lights, jumped out of their vehicles and rapidly approached the back door of the house. David’s wife, seeing dark shadowy figures moving about their house late at night logically concluded that the burglars had returned to possibly steal more vehicles or enter the house. It had only been two days since the first theft and being unaware the thief was in custody they had no reason not to suspect a repeat event.

So David grabbed a shotgun and prepared for a confrontation. What happened next is unclear because there are conflicting stories. The official version is that the police did approach with sirens and lights, they did loudly knock on the door and that when no one answered they broke the door down, saw David holding a shotgun and thus had no choice but to unload their weapons. David’s widow (and the physical evidence) beg to differ with that narrative. There were no lights, sirens or knocking. David was not shot near the back door but rather through an interior wall. In other words, they blindly shot at a wall not knowing what was behind it. Brilliant. Good thing his grandchildren weren’t visiting that night. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. His grieving widow and family had to endure a 44-hour search of the residence. The result? Not even a trace of narcotics was found. Oops.

So, the next time you think you are safe from brutal police actions, just remember, you are just one blame-shifting-meth-head’s “tip” or wrong address away from having black-helmeted thugs appearing in your doorway unannounced and unloading an entire clip into you or a loved one because they moved their hand the wrong way or came around the corner too quickly. No one is safe if everyone is just an utterance away from a weapons-drawn raid on his or her home. Due process is not the Gestapo breaking down your door in the middle of the night and claiming procedure was followed because they left a warrant on your corpse. This is not America. But if this is what America has become, then there is nothing exceptional about it. Prohibition must end. Again.

Details sourced from: http://goo.gl/dxTD1F and http://goo.gl/XX8Nz9

Lifting the Veil

“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.” Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica (Season 1, Episode 2)

Although the source of this quote is fictional, its perspicacious message is grounded in reality. The only twist is that it is the police who are becoming more military-like. The end result, however, is the same – civilian casualties.

I shouldn’t have to provide examples, but I will as a courtesy for those reading this a few years hence when I suspect recent events will have been lost down the rabbit hole of collective amnesia: the shooting death of Michael Brown in Missouri, the shooting death of John Crawford in an Ohio Wal-Mart, a toddler in Georgia critically injured by a flash grenade, David Hooks shot dead in his home by police in Georgia and so on. If you’d like to read more there is a website dedicated to memorializing these horrific stories. The take home message here is that if cops are going to put their safety above all other considerations, then perhaps they should find a different line of work. “Officer safety” is the oft-cited excuse for the use of deadly force, however the myth that police work is the most dangerous profession just doesn’t line up with reality. In fact in 2013 it didn’t even make the top 10 of most dangerous professions (garbage collector and roofer actually rank higher).

Now I’d like to engage you in a thought experiment. Suppose that instead of the headlines being “local police shoot man dead” they instead read “employee of private security firm at local mall shoots man dead.” What kind of response would we expect in that situation? Would we expect that the employee be given a few days off from work, found to have done nothing wrong and be back on the job within a month or two? If an employee of ANY company did such a thing there would be lawsuits galore. The security company, the employee and the mall would all be sued. The message of a lawsuit is this: someone is accountable.

But what happens when a public police force is involved? The police department can’t be sued. The individual cop can’t be sued. This is qualified and sovereign immunity at work. The municipality involved is sometimes sued in rare situations. Even if they lose the suit there is zero incentive to change. Those “in charge” are not personally held financially accountable. Instead the cost of the suit or settlement is diffused among the taxpayers in pieces so small it is hardly noticed. The normal feedback mechanism that a lawsuit provides (personal financial loss) is thus short-circuited and nothing changes.

Now imagine a world where policing is entirely in the domain of private companies. This is not at all far fetched. Many municipalities (like Sandy Springs, Georgia) now outsource a range of traditional municipal services. In this hypothetical scenario private police companies would carry liability insurance just like all companies do today. Private police companies likewise would require their employee (the cops) to carry their own liability insurance. The cost of this insurance would be directly related to the cop’s training and work history (just as auto insurance rates are related to a driver’s history). Insurers would have an incentive to regulate such police forces in order to minimize the likelihood of paying claims. Reckless cops and poorly managed policing companies would either lose coverage or find their insurance rates so high they couldn’t afford to operate anymore. No municipality would contract a company lacking insurance. The self-correcting feedback mechanism of blatant self-interested profit seeking keeps everyone in line. Insurers regulate out the bad firms so they don’t lose money paying out claims. Police firms regulate out the bad cops so they don’t suffer increased insurance rates. The public sues those firms or cops that manage to slip through. There’s nothing magical here, it works like this everyday throughout the market (when not otherwise distorted through government interventions).

This would be trivial to implement nationwide. Municipalities already utilize a bid process for many other projects; there is no reason why it could not be done for policing as well. True accountability can only happen once the veil of qualified and sovereign immunity is lifted and the self-correction of self-interest found in the market is permitted to function.