Category Archives: Current events

Unionvergnügen

In the words of Bob King, President of the United Autoworkers Union (UAW), the UAW has no long-term future if they cannot expand their membership into Southern auto plants. And it looks like that day may come sooner than anyone expected: workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee recently voted by a margin of 53-47% against joining the UAW. The loss is even more stunning considering that VW welcomed and actively encouraged the UAW with open arms. Why were they so welcoming? Not only do labor interests make up half of the Germany based VW board, but VW was also keen to establish a German-style “works council” in their American plants. However, American labor law barred them from doing so – unless workers were unionized. Oh the irony; anti-union laws actually induced a company to invite unionization. Talk about unintended consequences!

But all is not lost. Perhaps if Bob King and the rest of the UAW were to adopt a more libertarian stance toward labor laws and thus began a push to have all such laws repealed, the UAW might actually have a fighting chance. Why do I say this? Consider the vote; 47% of the workers actually WANTED union representation, but, as with union voting and democracy the “majority rules” so the desires of the minority are simply squashed and ignored. But what if the 47% that wanted to join were simply allowed to join and the 53% that didn’t want to join did not? Would the sky fall? VW could deal with the 53% just the way they always have and then also deal with the newly unionized 47% however the union wished to proceed. If the union could accomplish those things it claimed for the workers then more workers would join of their own free will. And if the union failed to deliver, then workers would be free to leave as well. If VW wants to establish a “workers council” then let them. Why should some law stand in their way? But this law slashing cuts both ways. If the UAW approached say a Toyota plant but Toyota wanted nothing to do with the union then that is also their right. There should be no law forcing Toyota to negotiate with a union just as there should be no law forcing an employer to hire certain people. Freedom to choose with whom you associate is a fundamental natural right and it should not be abridged for wholly arbitrary and misguided notions of “fairness” implemented by sore losers that didn’t get their way.

Now some might say “oh that could never work, the non-unionized would “free-ride” off the non-exclusionary benefits of union backed negotiations.” Beyond better candy in the vending machine or more comfortable climate control settings I’m not really sure what these benefits could be, but even if that were the case, surely the value of the exclusionary benefits should vastly outweigh the trivial non-exclusionary fringe benefits of union proximity. One may derive some personal enjoyment benefit from viewing the country club’s grounds but such benefits pale in comparison to the amenities that the paying members may enjoy. If that is not the same situation with a union then that is one pathetic union.

In order for everyone to exercise their right of free association all laws relating to unions and labor must be repealed. Laws that compel union membership are as injurious to liberty as laws prohibiting it.

Defending the Undefendable? Walter Block addresses causes, not effects

On January 25, 2014 the New York Time’s published an article “Rand Paul’s Mixed Inheritance” in which they used highly edited and de-contextualized quotes from Dr. Walter Block (eminent and highly regarded libertarian scholar and economist at Loyola University) from an interview they had with Walter shortly before the article went to press. When The Daily Show makes light and distorts the words of Peter Schiff we understand they are mere clowns and it is their job to distort the truth in order to elicit a humorous response. However, when a publication such as the New York Times engages in such behavior we are slipping into the world of state-sponsored Pravda-esque media that deliberately distorts the truth in order to prop up the statist status quo by painting the picture that anyone who does not believe as they do must be “crazy” and if they do not appear to be “crazy” then it is perfectly acceptable to distort and misrepresent what they say in order to give that appearance (e.g. the Mises Institute comments in that article are so far off the mark it is laughable).

Subsequent to the Times article being published several members of the Loyola faculty as well as its President published open letters denouncing Dr. Block’s words. Tom Wood’s has built an excellent resource page giving all the relevant background for those interested in learning more. As a part of this effort to right the wrong against Dr. Block I submitted my own letter in response to the original knee-jerk finger pointing going on at Loyola. Here is my submission (with some slight style editing here):

15 February 2014

To: President, Faculty and Staff of Loyola University

The fact that you are so aghast at Walter Block’s recent remarks in the New York Times and elsewhere only serves to underscore why it is so important he continues to make the same point again and again. You are not simply missing the point – you are not even aware there was a point. Your indignation is wholly predicated on your (quite correct) disdain for the effects of slavery (violence, exploitation, horrendous living conditions, etc.) But that is not at all what his remarks pertained to. He was addressing the root cause and propagator of slavery: force. And how is such force made manifest both then and now? Government. Government (pre- and post- US revolution) protected, condoned, supported and legalized slavery. All the things you decry in your response were a RESULT of the very thing (force) he was denouncing.

Do you or do you not agree with the following sentence?: “<X> is good, but if <X> is forced upon the individual then it becomes <forced-X> which is bad.” If presumably you agree with this sentiment, then you must agree that by inserting the word “labor” for “X” we are left with nothing other than the very message Dr. Block was conveying. That is all.

Now, with respect to his characterization of slavery (i.e. the effects of slavery) being not “so bad” all I can say is that you clearly have never met the man, read his books or listened to any of his lectures. Were that the case you would realize he was merely engaging in pedagogical hyperbole in order to provoke a response that seizes the attention of the listener. To elicit thoughtful reflection from a student/listener, the deft lecturer will sometimes employ (obvious) exaggeration to invoke an [transitory] emotional response. Your decision to [remain mired in emotionalism] engage in a knee-jerk emotional response rather than [moving on to] thoughtful contemplation says more about your own intellectual intransigence than it does about your mistaken presumptions regarding Dr. Block’s beliefs. His provocation was meant solely to compel the listener to acknowledge the sheer futility of being angered by effects whilst simultaneously ignoring their very cause. Your response has only served to unwittingly demonstrate how correct he is in his efforts to spread this message.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gregory T. Morin

Life, Liberty and Oligopoly for All!

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: the protection of these rights is the bedrock upon which any legitimate government is founded (if such an oxymoron is possible). However, apparently somewhere along the way “oligopoly” was added to the list of inalienable rights. To wit, the latest example of such protectionist behavior was filed in the Georgia House of Representatives on February 5. A bill (HB907) was introduced that would expand the onerous taxicab and limousine regulations in order that they encompass the activities of internet based ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft. For those unfamiliar with these services, they use a smartphone app based system to connect people that need transportation with those willing to provide it. Like the Internet it is peer-to-peer interaction with the host company merely maintaining the communication backend. It is a lean and efficient system that translates lower operational overhead into lower consumer costs. All drivers undergo a background check and vehicle inspection before they can sign up. To weed out both undesirable drivers as well as passengers these services employ a self-regulating Ebay-style reputation/feedback system.

These services are faster, often cheaper and can quickly respond to increases in demand, so it should come as no surprise that they’ve been having an impact on the bottom line of the traditional taxi services – many of which still don’t even accept credit cards in the cab. Taxi companies don’t like competition. So what do they do? Do they turn to government and ask “Why don’t you remove all your burdensome regulations so we too can operate more efficiently and at lower costs?” No. Instead they demand that if they must drag a 100-lb boulder everywhere they go, then so too must everyone else. In reality they never would ask for regulations to be repealed. Many had a hand in crafting them. These regulations artificially suppress the supply of service (oligopoly) so as to maintain elevated prices. As an industry, taxis operate nationwide under a byzantine set of rules that permit the local government (and often competitors as well) to determine, in their sole discretion, the precise perfect quantity of taxis needed in their jurisdiction. Once that is determined, taxi owners are allowed to purchase from the government that quintessential symbol of their “public necessity” role – the taxi medallion. The medallion is nothing more than a glorified business license, albeit an artificially limited license. To imagine how limiting the quantity of licenses issued for a service might affect prices paid by the consumer, imagine if, say, another occupation that is also bizarrely licensed by the state – barbers – (really? we really need government to ensure we get a good haircut?) were restricted to just one barber per town. Sure that one barber earns more, but everyone else loses. In the same way, the taxis that already have their medallion stand to benefit by using government to artificially limit who can participate in the taxi market.

When discussing this bill in public the taxi companies are not foolish enough to divulge it’s all about protecting their oligopolistic profits; no, they claim, (as do all politicians looking for an excuse to control our lives), it is about “public safety.” Yes, because clearly when someone is paying you for a lift you lose all ability to competently operate an automobile. Cars function completely differently when a paying passenger is in them as opposed to a non-paying passenger. Yes, how stupid of me to not realize this fact.

It’s a good thing we have government, otherwise how else would we be protected from the evils of innovative businesses attempting to compete with ossified fascist oligopolies.

President’s Ponzi Pontifications: MyRA

Amongst the expected ideologically partisan propaganda trotted out by President Obama during his recent state of the union address was a rather interesting proposal: MyRA. It reveals something we knew and something we didn’t know. We knew the President is so hopelessly ignorant of basic economics that he can’t possibly understand why people are insufficiently saving for retirement. What we didn’t know, however, is how perilously close we are to a federal government implosion (this is actually good news!).

In his address he says, “Let’s do more to help Americans save for retirement. Today, most workers don’t have a pension.”  So, his proposal is to create what is essentially a new kind of retirement account (cleverly dubbed “MyRA”) as though a lack of IRA options currently presents a barrier to retirement savings. Please. Saving (for anything) necessitates a deferment of present gratification. That is a hard sell since basic human instinct is to “live for today” (just ask a child to wait to open their presents). As adults we understand that the future is uncertain and therefore saving is prudent, but we never completely shed our preference for present goods versus future goods. So with the deck already stacked against us, is it any wonder that an incentive-distorting program such as Social Security would decrease rather than increase rates of saving? Under the (false) assumption that we are “guaranteed” Social Security for retirement the natural instinct then is to save less. Even if one is still inclined to save in spite of Social Security promises, the ability to do so is made that much more difficult by virtue of Social Security & Medicare’s 8% confiscation of gross income. This of course ignores all the other federal, state and local taxes we pay on top of that. To put it bluntly Mr. President, there just isn’t that much left to save thanks to government interference.

Even setting aside the adulteration of normal incentives, as a retirement option the MyRA is a terrible choice. Given the multiple flavors of privately managed, tax-favored IRA plans already in existence, why exactly do we need a government managed plan? What benefit(s) does this government plan offer the consumer? None. Conversely though it offers one key benefit to the government: instantaneous use of the “invested” funds (please note mechanistic parallel to a Ponzi scheme). The retirement investment market is measured in trillions of dollars and the government would like nothing more than to divert some of that their way. But even beyond the ideological choice of not lending money to a bankrupt regime this investment fails. It is not a real investment. You are simply loaning money to the government. They do not create anything of value from it; they simply consume it (rather inefficiently). On top of that they only promise a paltry 2% return (that doesn’t even keep up with inflation). In order for you to get your money back the government has to pick the pockets of everyone else through taxation and/or inflation. The MyRA program amounts to nothing more than a voluntary (for now) extension of Social Security. Social Security funds are exchanged for treasury notes and immediately spent. MyRA funds too will be exchanged for treasury notes and immediately spent. A MyRA owner and Social Security recipients are left with but a handful of paper treasury notes whose only value is derived from the fact that the US government has the military might to extract those resources out of its citizens in a demographically collapsing Ponzi scheme.

This desperate act is good news though. This penultimate plea to the public to lend them money is the death rattle of a dying, amoral, bankrupt regime. As history has shown, all empires ultimately collapse due to financial, not military, plundering. Death always comes from within, not without.

Cookie Jar Policy

President Obama recently gave a speech (January 17) at the Justice Department outlining a variety of procedural changes to some of the NSA spying programs. Why the changes? The government got caught with their hand in the cookie jar when Edward Snowden revealed that these programs not only spy on potential security threats, they also “unwittingly” can and do spy on Americans. And not simply a little here or there by accident; they vacuum up petabytes of phone and Internet data every day about you and me. Oddly enough most Americans don’t take too kindly to this invasion of privacy and so after months of soul searching Obama has decided to placate the natives by establishing a new cookie retrieval procedure. Ah! We have a procedure now; that will definitely prevent abuse.

In order to justify these spying programs Mr. Obama cites historical precedent for the benefits derived from such spying during wartime. The rather troubling message here is that if wartime practices (spying) are permissible upon your own citizens during peacetime, what other wartime practices might also be justified in order to advance the cause of protecting the homeland? Kidnapping? Murder? Would the justifications used today for spying be that different from the justifications for drone strikes on US soil to “take out” a suspected terrorist (along with any unfortunate innocents in the vicinity)? Make no mistake; we are “at peace” now, we are not “at war.” A mere pronouncement by blowhards of us being at war on a concept (terror) does not magically justify the use of wartime methods.

We are told terrorism changes the rules of the game. In the past it was easy to define our enemy. “They” were on that side of that line, and “we” were on this side of the line. But today, with terrorism, the enemy hides among us in plain site, like a melanoma masquerading as a freckle. If the enemy can be anywhere or anyone among us, then that necessarily means from an enforcement or prevention standpoint we are all presumed to be the enemy, that is, we are guilty until proven innocent. Listening to your phone conversations or reading your emails is the only way to exonerate you dear reader!

Our leaders would have us believe the infiltrative-sniper-like threat of the terrorist is something new, a 21st century phenomena that requires a 21st century response. But this enemy-among-us mindset is no different than the McCarthyism of the 1950’s – where a fever of paranoia gripped the nation into thinking the “commies” were everywhere, ready to unleash their fury at a moments notice. During this cold war we were indeed infiltrated by enemies (spies) in exactly the same manner we are infiltrated by terrorists today. The difference was back then the technology was so limited it necessitated that we do actual work to identify the actual individual threat in order to devote our limited and scarce resources to monitoring that threat. However advances in technology have facilitated laziness. Why devote energy to identifying specific threats when you can just monitor EVERYONE instead. Today’s technology allows spies to achieve what their predecessors only dreamt of: the complete and wholesale monitoring of the movement, actions and communications of every digitally connected human being on the planet. Unfortunately this information overload has ironically led to less effective results. This vacuuming of data has not resulted in a single instance of attack prevention.

Before Edward Snowden’s revelations we didn’t know what we didn’t know. The “people” can’t act as a check on government abuse if we aren’t even aware of the abuse. Thankfully Edward Snowden made us aware. Absent that revelation you can be sure Obama would not have been laying out these “reforms.” But make no mistake; these proposed changes mean nothing. If the US Constitution can be ignored by the majority of Congress, why should we have any hope that a few policy guidelines or oversight committees will have any impact on how government governs it own actions. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies

Energy Independence (Autarky) Makes Us All Poor

If you enjoy the soft warm glow of an incandescent light bulb then you might want to head over to your local hardware store and stock up. As of January 1, the manufacture or importation of 40- and 60- watt light bulbs has been outlawed (100-watt bulbs were banned in 2012 and 75-watt in 2013).  This ban was mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 – a monstrosity of a bill passed with bipartisan and industry support and signed into law by a Republican president (so much for the “Republicans are for small government” myth). It is, like all such bills, predicated on irrational fears and willful ignorance of human nature. The very title betrays adherence to an economically self-destructive goal: market independence. Such independence not only makes us poorer (paying more for less) it actually encourages belligerent behavior. Withdrawing ourselves as a country from the global market (becoming “market isolationists”) by striving for independence or erecting trade barriers makes us more, not less, likely to go to war. Equating energy independence with security is 21st century doublespeak that permits the political class to con the country into following their lead. A country that depends on acquiring its goods through a global network of trade is unlikely to foul that network by killing its participants. But a country that is “independent” has free reign to attack its neighbors if it in fact relies on those neighbors for nothing.

If market independence enhanced one’s security then the state should hold the hermit in highest regard. The hermit produces all for himself and thus relies on no one. But such independence has a cost. It is not money that enhances our standard of living; it is other humans interacting freely with one another. Money is merely a ledger entry, simple bookkeeping to measure the balance of subjective value between such voluntary exchanges if we so choose (e.g. friendship is valuable, but we don’t track that valuable exchange in terms of money). If human interactions add value to our lives, then it follows that limiting those interactions will suppress such value. Government intervention in the market arbitrarily limits these potential interactions by limiting choice. Selecting only from the approved options is no choice at all. So, if government intervention always limits choice, it follows that this will always leaves us all with less value in our lives – even those that appear to benefit from such interventions are harmed, for they too exist in a world with fewer goods because of their legally permitted decreased output.

Now one might have imagined that this “bulb ban” was vociferously objected to by the evil bulb manufacturers (who just wanted to keep foisting cheap bulbs on America in order to preserve their profits at the expense of our “energy independence”). The exact opposite was the case. Industry had been trying for years to entice consumers into switching to the higher margin CFL bulbs with promises of bulb longevity (that never materialized in practice) to offset the exorbitantly higher cost (20-fold in some cases). Once industry realized they could get government to do what the free-market would not (compel consumers to buy their product by leaving them no other choice), they quickly formed a coalition with environmental groups and pushed for crony-capitalist legislation under the cloak of eco-friendliness.

What are the results so far? The consumer has less money, the bulb manufactures have more, and the public, having been sold on the idea of greater bulb efficiency, now leave their bulbs on longer, thus entirely negating one of the primary goals of the bill. That greater efficiency would lead to greater usage should have been easily predicted by anyone who has observed the human penchant to double up on a low calorie meal. Try as they might, Congress cannot legislate away human nature.

The Rule of Men

This past Thursday regulators overseeing the US school lunch program graciously decided to “permanently” ease restrictions added to the school lunch program only 4 years ago. The changes initiated in 2010 were a part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was crafted with the laudable goal of solving childhood obesity. Fat and salt were cut, fruits and vegetables increased, portion sizes and overall calories reduced. Clearly this singular approach from a singular agency imposed upon an entire nation was destined to succeed because if history has taught us anything, it is that humans always solve a problem upon the first attempt and that monopolistic one-size-fits-all solutions are an ideal mechanism for societal improvement.

But our wise overlords were thwarted in their attempts at showing us peons how to feed our kids. Rebellious local school systems bristled at the new rules; they were vociferous in their objections but ultimately powerless to ignore the rules. Failure to obey would have resulted in a loss of all of their school lunch funding. Federalization of our local school systems via monetary assistance has transformed these systems into the dependent servants of the federal state we see today. Federalization was meant to help, but just as a young bird who is “helped” in its hatching process will be weaker, so too have the school systems grown weak and dependent. Once one accepts the help of the state it is all too easy to become dependent upon it. Once dependency weakens you, it is difficult to find the strength to object to the hand that feeds you. The lion tamer subdues his charge not with the stick but with the carrot of dependency (notice how quickly the lion is fed after each trick). Fortunately our overlords at the U.S. Department of Agriculture deigned to listen to the peasants and in their sole discretion (which could change at any moment) have decided to let a little slack upon the reigns… for now.

However what is interesting here is not so much this federalized flailing over the school lunch program but rather the fact that the federal government can’t even implement this one simple program (feed children a healthy diet) without controversy.  Yet we are supposed to accept credulously that this same federal government can manage something an order of magnitude more complicated (healthcare) and all will be fine. Move along, nothing to see here.

The failure of these new school lunch mandates is a visceral metaphor for the failure of Obamacare. The pattern is the same. Both Obamacare and the HHFKA are predicated upon a naive understanding of a problem which results in misdiagnosis and an ineffective solution. The putative goal of the changes to the school lunch program was to “cure” childhood obesity.  Because, you know, if kids are known for anything it is for their love of the school lunch! Clearly overeating at schools is the proximate cause for childhood obesity. Likewise those foisting Obamacare upon this country labor under the delusion that health care costs are high not because of decades of government interference in the health care market, but rather because the uninsured are unfairly driving costs up by not paying premiums and then getting “free” care at emergency rooms (which I must point out, this latter scenario has been shown to add only 2% to total health care spending in this country (as reported by the left leaning Urban Institute in a 2008 study)).

 

When the top down approach of these mandates is foisted upon an unwilling public how do those in charge respond when the serfs don’t take too kindly to it? The same in both cases: a temporary and discretionary choice to ignore the law (at least while it is politically expedient to do so). With such actions we slide invariably toward a country run by the rule of men, not the rule of law, where it is the individual in charge that decides upon whim how we may live our lives. If the law is bad then repeal it, but these half-hearted “temporary” suspensions of enforcement are the acts of a cowardly and tyrannical government.

Minority Report

This past Friday (December 27) a federal judge ruled that it is perfectly fine for the NSA to collect and review your phone and Internet records . Why is that? Well, those records don’t actually belong to you. This ruling is consistent with an interpretation of the 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure known as the “3rd party doctrine.” Under this doctrine anything you disclose to a third party is no longer yours and therefore loses all expectation of privacy. Since it is no longer private the government has free reign to sink their teeth into it without any of those annoying justice-impeding anachronisms known as search warrants.

Innocent until proven guilty will soon be replaced by harassed until proven innocent.

As with all government propaganda there is a thin veneer of truth that shamelessly attempts to obscure the larger lie – but these truths are about as effective in that goal as Miley Cyrus’s underwear are in making her appear demure in her Wrecking Ball video. Yes, if you disclose something about yourself to a third party that information is technically no longer strictly private (private meaning known only to yourself). However what eludes this judge and those before him is that it is possible to convey private information to a third party under the protection of a contract. The privacy policies of some companies inform their customers how the company will and will not use information collected in the course of the business relationship. This establishes a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning any information stipulated to remain private. Therefore the 3rd party doctrine does not apply (even though the government wishes otherwise) in those situations where the consumer has a reasonable expectation of privacy per agreement with the third party. It would appear the mantra of the government is that expediency in catching the “bad guys” trumps all other concerns.

The judgment in this case is moving this country backward. Back to the 18th century that is. Back then the use of the “general warrant” by the British rulers was commonplace. A general warrant is distinguished from other types of warrants (i.e. arrest warrant, search warrant, etc.) in that it permits the holder of such warrant to pretty much do anything they want. They can search anything, anytime, anywhere and arrest anyone for any reason. If the principle of the 3rd party doctrine is applied consistently in future cases then it means the federal government has a general warrant to search anything not in your house. There is therefore no barrier to the government demanding the bulk disclosure of: patient records from doctors, purchase records from credit card companies, banks or other businesses, or school records from universities. This data could then be placed into a massive database and “mined” in order to uncover patterns and connections in a futile attempt to flush out the “bad guys.” Today the bad guys are the terrorists, the drug dealers or organized crime (ironically all entities created as a result of government interference). Perhaps tomorrow the enemies will be anyone who dissents from the approved public opinion of his or her masters, that is, The State. Someday soon the world’s mightiest super computers will employ predictive algorithms upon this ocean of data as they attempt to predict undesirable future behavior. Department of Pre-Crime at your service.

Perhaps the above sounds a bit far-fetched, but remember, there is nothing in the arguments currently employed to justify mass collection of data that would preclude these alternative forms of data collection. Just ten years ago the currently revealed mass collection of data would have seemed far-fetched. Just imagine what they can do ten years from now.

In this brave new world that is fast approaching our freedom will be instantly curtailed at the pleasure of any investigatory bureaucrat who doesn’t quite like our answers as they relate to our algorithmically questionable activities. If you become ensnared in this trap then you’d better hope you have an alibi. Innocent until proven guilty will soon be replaced by harassed until proven innocent.

Popular science?

If you were ever looking for proof that climate science is based more on consensus than actual experimentation, you need look no further than the IPCC’s recent “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis” report in which the report’s “Summary for Policymakers” states it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Really? Extremely likely? You sure that isn’t just “very likely”? Is climate science based on nothing more than subjective opinions of probability?  There is no possible way to isolate this one variable (human actions) from the ocean of factors that may influence global temperatures and state with near absolutely certainty that this one variable is not just a cause, but the dominant cause. Unless of course they have a time machine stashed away we don’t know about in which to explore the outcome of alternate timelines. Popular opinion is an illegitimate means to finding truth. The pronouncements of scientists are not endowed with scientific certainty by virtue of them having been made by a scientist. Truth is determined by the evidence, not by the credentials of the messenger. The scientific method (observation, hypothesis, confirmation, prediction) is the only objective means we have to uncovering truth about the physical world. We must understand what science is and is not in order to recognize those who would claim to stand for science but in fact have adulterated the method in order to serve their own interests. Oh, and for those wondering where I get off discussing the scientific method, I have a Ph.D. in organic chemistry – so I know a little something about the scientific method.

 Popular opinion is an illegitimate means to finding truth.

 

It is one thing to make observations and conclude the earth is warming, however it is quite another to leap from that observation and conclude there is one and only one possible cause. It is the height of cognitive dissonance to accept that local weather patterns are far too chaotic to predict beyond a few days but that global long term weather is a vastly simpler system, so simple in fact that we can say with high confidence it is a function of only one variable: carbon dioxide. We can’t predict next month’s weather, but somehow we can say that in one hundred years the temperature will be X. Properly conducted climate science could only be done if we held godlike powers over all activity on the planet (in the same way the chemist can control the conditions of his experiments in the lab). Obviously we do not posses godlike powers. So to get around this lack of omniscience we build an environment in which we can be omniscient: the computer model. But models are imperfect; they rely on both empirical evidence and assumptions. Computer models work well over very short time spans but are inherently flawed at making long-term predictions. The difficulty arises out of the attempt to predict unpredictable quantum level events. Just as we can make reasonable short term predictions about what the traffic around us will do we will utterly fail to predict what that same traffic will be doing 30 minutes later.

And then there is the problem of the unknown unknowns that plague even simple models. For example, if one knew nothing about humans and tried to build growth models based on the first five years of life one would predict that by age 20 humans should be 20 feet tall and weigh 400 lbs. Climate models are now bearing this truth out. In the journal “Nature Climate Change” (that wellhead of conspiracy nuts) a study was published that showed during the last 20 years observed warming was half of what the models predicted and only one quarter of what those same models predicted over the last 15 years. The power of science is prediction, but when the predictions do not pan out one must reevaluate their hypothesis.

Even those demanding “something be done” about climate change should call for a reevaluation of what we think we know. It would be quite disastrous indeed if we made drastic changes in society that resulted in the deaths of billions (due to higher energy costs resulting in decreased food output) only to find out that while global warming is indeed real – it turns out humans have actually played little to no role. We could waste decades prescribing aspirin for the patient’s headache while remaining blissfully ignorant of the brain tumor.

Ignore the Cause and Suffer the Effects

The Washington Post recently published  a retrospective account of the deaths of 91 children in 2012 to highlight the one year anniversary of the senseless shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in December 2012. Clearly this article was intended to strike an emotional chord that would resonate with any sane person. The media revels in painting emotionally charged landscapes in the hopes that it will rouse the public to call on their saviors in government to save us from ourselves. And while the stories are indeed heart wrenching they actually undermine the narrative that these deaths are entirely a consequence of the prevalence of guns in society. Although the deaths were indeed the direct result of gun fire per se, the stories broadly fall into two categories of causation that have nothing to do with guns themselves being the causative agent of death. The first category is the most heart wrenching: that of the child’s parent or paramour of the parent being the killer. These were not accidental shootings; these were clear and deliberate murders of these children at close range. Had there been no guns available in these situations clearly a knife or any large blunt object would have done the job. In other words, absent guns, the outcomes for all of these stories would have been tragically identical.

The second category is that of accidental crossfire in drive by shootings or other gang activity. Obviously distance based killing is more easily facilitated by guns, however consider the fact that gangs are simply groups composed of criminals (people who already ignore all laws) so how could one reasonably expect even a total ban on all guns to have affected such activity? Criminals are no more going to obey laws banning guns than they obey laws against murder or theft. However, it is important to step back for a moment and ask why do these terrible drive by shootings occur? What is the source of so much gang violence? Drugs, or rather the prohibition of drugs. The prohibition of an economic good drives up its price and thus the incentive for people to engage in providing that economic good to those wiling to pay the high price. However, being outlawed, the trade of such goods lacks any formal legal protection, therefore those parties involved in its trade have no choice but to resort to violence in order to settle their disputes. The result? Far more innocent people being killed by drug prohibition related violence (as well as wrong-address-no-knock police raids) then have ever or could have ever been harmed by the drugs themselves.

If we are truly desirous of decreasing not only gun violence but all violence we must address the causes and not simply attempt to put band aids on the effects. Absent drug or other economic goods prohibitions all gang violence would cease insofar as most if not all gangs would dissolve as their central raison d’être (exorbitant profits from the sale of prohibited goods) would cease to exist. In terms of violence committed by parents against their children it is immaterial to question the means by which such violence is perpetrated: gun, knife, rope, hands – you can’t ban them all. All we can do is resolve to be more engaged with our neighbors in order to see the signs of potential violence.

If we wish to change the society we live in, we must individually act to be part of that change. It is our responsibility, not government’s. Delegating our wishes to government is the act of the indolent and cowardly; too lazy to try and persuade and too afraid to carry out the violence needed to force your neighbors to follow your worldview.