The Economist has a brief description of the state-building process in Somaliland, a de facto independent region within de jure jurisdiction of Somolia.
Aid and Somaliland: Mo money mo problems
The basic thesis is that in the absence of foreign support for the Somaliland state, the government was forced into developing a web of alliances and relationships with regional leaders, resulting in a government that is accountable to the people. Contrast this with the internationally recognized government of Somalia, a pathetic assemblage of warlords who have been constantly attempting to subdue the Somali people by force, backed by immense funding and direct military intervention from foreign states, including the USA.
I've been wondering for awhile if the USA's "nation building" activities have been fundamentally misguided, in that they are largely "state building" activities. This top-down approach assumes that foreigners can establish a functioning legal and political system, which will then create the conditions for the development of the economic and social relations that define a nation. This is the basic approach that Westerners have collectively used when dealing with their former colonies, and 50 years after decolonization, much of the territory assigned to these artificial states is still racked by warfare. I'm afraid of what will happen if the internationally recognized Somali government ever subdues Mogadishu, and then then seeks to assert its dominance over Somaliland.
This top-down approach ignores the fact that a legal and political system must be compatible with local culture, and even the most sensitive foreign intervention will probably fail to identify the appropriate structure for a given society. Even a native would often fail to establish a sustainable national system, simply because many of these societies lack the basic institutional framework on which a national government could be built .
The opposite approach would be "bottom up" nation-building: encouraging commercial relations and the development of dispute-settling frameworks. Once local institutions are developed, they can provide the framework for creating national institutions (for instance, when the USA was established, it was a relatively simple matter of getting 13 states with similar cultures to agree on a national constitution). This seems to be how the Islamic Courts Union got established in Somalia.
Of course, most "realists" would assert that a proper nation-building strategy would address the whole range of issues -- seeking synergies between the top-down and bottom-up approach. For instance, commercial relationships and a fair legal system help to support each other. However, when we allow the state to take the lead on nation-building programs, we will most likely see a bias towards state-building. In part, this is the consequence of perspective: the agents of the state think in terms of the state. But it also results from the ulterior motives of any outside participant in nation-building. They are not simply seeking security and prosperity (or even stability) for the people of the post-colonial territory in question, they are seeking their own economic and geo-political advantage. States have the ability to exploit their people, and by getting involved in the establishment of new nation-states, the ruling class of one nation essentially inserts itself into the ruling class of another nation.
This feature of state behavior is worth keeping in mind, lest we get fooled into once again bearing "the white man's burden".
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
"The man who screwed an entire country ": Berlusconi
The Economist has provided an aptly named review of Silvio Berlusconi's Prime Ministership: The man who screwed an entire country.
While they focus on his economic policies (or lack thereof), I was most stricken by this comment:
Following the Libby pardon, I suspected that the Bush administration was covering up a variety of abuses of power. None have come to light yet, and if they aren't revealed in the next few years, I'm guessing we will never have solid evidence of anything. It's possible that the Libby affair was a one-off situation; alternative, it's possible that Obama and the Democrats endorsed any secret and extra-legal activities of the Bush administration, and so they will continue to play along.
While they focus on his economic policies (or lack thereof), I was most stricken by this comment:
Over the years, he has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting or bribery. His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the convoluted proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law.As hard as it is to admit this, George W. Bush looked tame by comparison. When Bush pardoned Scooter Libby of obstruction of justice (without spending a day in jail), I interpreted it as a message to all of his other henchmen that they were above the law. However, the extent of Berlusconi's crimes and the length that he will go to in order to retain power makes Bush look like an amateur. With any luck, the Italians will soon reign in this would-be tyrant.
Following the Libby pardon, I suspected that the Bush administration was covering up a variety of abuses of power. None have come to light yet, and if they aren't revealed in the next few years, I'm guessing we will never have solid evidence of anything. It's possible that the Libby affair was a one-off situation; alternative, it's possible that Obama and the Democrats endorsed any secret and extra-legal activities of the Bush administration, and so they will continue to play along.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Italians win referendums
Italian Referendums Deal A Blow To Berlusconi : NPR:
Without commenting on the content of these referendums, I must say that I am impressed by how the Italian people successfully opposed Berlusconi's formidable political/propaganda machine.
Without commenting on the content of these referendums, I must say that I am impressed by how the Italian people successfully opposed Berlusconi's formidable political/propaganda machine.
Italians turned out in large numbers for four referendums and voted overwhelmingly this week to overturn key legislation passed by the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.Berlusconi had urged voters to boycott referendums on nuclear power, privatization of water utilities and trial immunity for the prime minister and other government officials. The vote was a humiliating defeat for the scandal-prone prime minister but does not automatically lead to his government's collapse.
...
Italy's three government-run TV networks and the three owned by Berlusconi himself more or less ignored the referendum campaign. The prime minister and several government officials said openly they would not vote, and urged Italians to go to the beach instead.
...
Cheers erupted when it was announced that turnout topped 57 percent, surpassing the quorum needed to validate the vote — the first time since 1995 the referendum quorum had been reached.
...
Each referendum was approved by around 95 percent of voters.
Monday, May 09, 2011
Is it wrong to pay a bribe?
There's recently been a bit of commotion about government corruption in India (particularly, bribery), with a lot of public pressure to eliminate it. According to the Economist magazine, (A novel way to combat corruption: Who to punish), one aspect of the debate is whether the laws should be changed to actually eliminate criminal penalties for people who pay bribes, as long as they are only paying to secure a service to which they are legally entitled.
There is some debate as to what the consequences of such laws would be. Such concerns seem irrelevant to me. It is praiseworthy to resist a demand for a bribe, but it should not be treated as an obligation. People need to get on with their lives, and can't be expected to bear the arbitrarily large burden associated with having licenses revoked or not being given access to money that is rightfully theirs.
The proposal described in the Economist is probably the most orderly way to deal with the problem. If some communitarian view of justice demands that the victim of corruption be held accountable for the crime (and he has no realistic administrative or legal remedy), then maybe the victim should have an alternative. Perhaps ad hoc tribunals should be able to run a corrupt official out of town. Or more realistically, if the state cannot effectively administer all of its regulations, the people at the top should aggressively move to eliminate them. If they can't do that, then their power should be eliminated.
There is some debate as to what the consequences of such laws would be. Such concerns seem irrelevant to me. It is praiseworthy to resist a demand for a bribe, but it should not be treated as an obligation. People need to get on with their lives, and can't be expected to bear the arbitrarily large burden associated with having licenses revoked or not being given access to money that is rightfully theirs.
The proposal described in the Economist is probably the most orderly way to deal with the problem. If some communitarian view of justice demands that the victim of corruption be held accountable for the crime (and he has no realistic administrative or legal remedy), then maybe the victim should have an alternative. Perhaps ad hoc tribunals should be able to run a corrupt official out of town. Or more realistically, if the state cannot effectively administer all of its regulations, the people at the top should aggressively move to eliminate them. If they can't do that, then their power should be eliminated.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UniLeaks: wikileaks for education
I just came across a new website called UniLeaks, which solicits...
In part, this is because I can't imagine that they would find particularly interesting documents that are distinctive of universities. The most likely "dirt" will relate to fund-raising, resource allocation, and employee relations -- just like with any large institution. My fear is that these people will be digging for documents like the stolen* emails at the center of Climategate, which they can then pass to the right-wing noise machine for selective quoting.
As I suggested in Privacy and Transparency at the University, this strategy seems to be increasingly common among some political factions. Michael Mann suffered legal harassment as a result of the Climategate brouhaha, and Frances Fox Piven was singled out and demonized by Glenn Beck at the height of his popularity. This may be a strategy of attacking soft targets -- mid-level public figures who will never wield political power and do not have a mass-audience.
With that being said, I am cautiously optimistic about the establishment of UniLeaks. I am deeply interested in maintaining transparency and accountability (but also political independence) among universities. I am also hopeful that the proliferation of Wikileaks-style organizations will help to move these whistle-blower systems into the political mainstream, and reduce the risk of retaliation.
Update: I found an article about UniLeaks in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The rhetoric used by the (Australian) administrator of the site seems to be a mixture of academia-idealist (e.g. students are not clients), and government-accountability (e.g. universities get a lot of state money). Also, some articles noted that this is just one of many specialized WikiLeaks clones.
*I say that these emails were stolen rather than leaked, because a leak requires that someone had legitimate access to the documents being leaked. Since no-one should have had access to the email database at the center of Climategate, that data must have been stolen.
restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance which is in some way connected to higher education, an agency or government body working in partnership with an institution, e.g., a University.As yet, I do not see the point in creating a system targeted at particular institutions. Maybe this is a way to attract specialists who would be interested in these documents. However, my first suspicion is that this is the work of anti-intellectuals who are digging for any possible dirt on academia.
In part, this is because I can't imagine that they would find particularly interesting documents that are distinctive of universities. The most likely "dirt" will relate to fund-raising, resource allocation, and employee relations -- just like with any large institution. My fear is that these people will be digging for documents like the stolen* emails at the center of Climategate, which they can then pass to the right-wing noise machine for selective quoting.
As I suggested in Privacy and Transparency at the University, this strategy seems to be increasingly common among some political factions. Michael Mann suffered legal harassment as a result of the Climategate brouhaha, and Frances Fox Piven was singled out and demonized by Glenn Beck at the height of his popularity. This may be a strategy of attacking soft targets -- mid-level public figures who will never wield political power and do not have a mass-audience.
With that being said, I am cautiously optimistic about the establishment of UniLeaks. I am deeply interested in maintaining transparency and accountability (but also political independence) among universities. I am also hopeful that the proliferation of Wikileaks-style organizations will help to move these whistle-blower systems into the political mainstream, and reduce the risk of retaliation.
Update: I found an article about UniLeaks in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The rhetoric used by the (Australian) administrator of the site seems to be a mixture of academia-idealist (e.g. students are not clients), and government-accountability (e.g. universities get a lot of state money). Also, some articles noted that this is just one of many specialized WikiLeaks clones.
*I say that these emails were stolen rather than leaked, because a leak requires that someone had legitimate access to the documents being leaked. Since no-one should have had access to the email database at the center of Climategate, that data must have been stolen.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Iceland: the friendly rogue state
Iceland's voters have rejected a plan by their government to cover the losses of Iceland's banks (and their foreign creditors). This is creating tension with the British and Dutch governments, which will probably keep Iceland outside of some of the main international financial systems; as such, Iceland will not participate in the heavily regulated and subsidized regime that defines modern global capitalism. They seem to be rejecting the speculation-driven growth that had created an illusion of great wealth, only to leave them with a shattered economy.
Having told the foreign economic powers to "shove off", Iceland has also freed themselves of any need to appease them in its other activities. Perhaps the next conflict will come over the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a set of laws that will help journalists and dissidents to criticize the powerful with less fear of retribution. Before long, the champions of corporate capitalism may start pointing to Iceland as a "rogue state" that refuses to play by the rules. If that should be the case, we need to remember that their only "crime" would have been to decide to live as free and equal members of a political community.
Having told the foreign economic powers to "shove off", Iceland has also freed themselves of any need to appease them in its other activities. Perhaps the next conflict will come over the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a set of laws that will help journalists and dissidents to criticize the powerful with less fear of retribution. Before long, the champions of corporate capitalism may start pointing to Iceland as a "rogue state" that refuses to play by the rules. If that should be the case, we need to remember that their only "crime" would have been to decide to live as free and equal members of a political community.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Privacy and Transparency at the University
The Mackinac think-tank has filed a broad Freedom of Information Act request for the emails of professors of labor studies at three universities run by the state of Michigan. This appears to be nothing more than political harassment, similar to the harassment of climate researcher Michael Mann by Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, following the "Climategate" brouhaha. It is specifically to avoid this type of political pressure that we have the notion of "academic freedom", and that universities jealously guard their independence from the state.
The heavy use of the Internet by university professors has clearly opened them up to new forms of encroachment by political actors. Universities should dedicate some serious thought to how they manage their data, so as to keep private communications private, and properly document and release any information that should be made public.
I propose that, by default, all internal communications of university staff and students should be considered private, and should be handled in a way that maintains confidentiality. To accomplish this, university IT departments should develop encryption standards for individual email accounts and encourage their universal adoption. This is not a terribly difficult technical issue, as strong encryption systems have already been developed and deployed, such as Pretty Good Privacy. One of the big hurdles to adopting PGP encryption is to establish a network of users with trusted encryption keys; universities are in a perfect position to accomplish this.
This idea of secure communication within universities probably scares a number of people -- I've repeatedly heard mumblings about universities being sinister, oppressive forces in society (for example, view the first comment on this blog post at Bleeding Heart Libertarians). You don't have to be an anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist to insist that universities develop a high level of transparency. Universities provide some important public services where the quality of the final product (e.g. research results, student certification) cannot be easily evaluated without knowledge of the process by which it was produced. To maintain public trust, universities should develop a process that provides relevant information to anyone with a legitimate interest.
Documents relating to student evaluation should be available, both to administrators and to each student or their representative. If encrypted emails are among these documents, the student should keep a copy, and perhaps the university could keep a copy of the student's encrypted emails (at least, any from a professor), which could be recovered if the student provides his decryption key. One nice side-effect of widespread encryption would be widespread signing of electronic documents (using the same key), so that if a document is deemed relevant to an accusation, its authenticity can be easily validated.
Finally, we have the raw data that goes into research publications. The issues here are complicated, and many extend beyond individual universities. For instance, data accessibility has been a major source of contention in climate research, but much of the raw data is treated as a commercial asset by non-academic institutions, so there is little that universities can do. Additionally, scientists will always hesitate to release data until they have had a chance to analyze it themselves. Each field of research probably has to develop its own process for making raw data accessible. For instance, biologists have developed a massive database of DNA sequences (Genbank), and all major journals require that any sequence discussed in a publication be submitted to the database. There is currently a push to mandate the publication of the source code for any program used in an analysis. There has even been some frivolous dispute over accessibility to the raw data from traditional microbiological techniques (which is rarely digitized).*
The complete archiving of research data is an unreachable ideal, though it may become more common with the increasing automation of data collection. Every innovation in data collection and data storage will require researchers to develop new systems for archiving data, possibly leading to the loss of older data archived with obsolete systems. University IT departments (and perhaps librarian/archivists) may be able to provide resources that enable researchers to record their data in an accessible form, but ultimately the focus and extent of archiving and distribution will be determined by the value of the data to other researchers, not curious laymen.
*Addition: There are also experiments relating to transparency in the peer-review process.
The heavy use of the Internet by university professors has clearly opened them up to new forms of encroachment by political actors. Universities should dedicate some serious thought to how they manage their data, so as to keep private communications private, and properly document and release any information that should be made public.
I propose that, by default, all internal communications of university staff and students should be considered private, and should be handled in a way that maintains confidentiality. To accomplish this, university IT departments should develop encryption standards for individual email accounts and encourage their universal adoption. This is not a terribly difficult technical issue, as strong encryption systems have already been developed and deployed, such as Pretty Good Privacy. One of the big hurdles to adopting PGP encryption is to establish a network of users with trusted encryption keys; universities are in a perfect position to accomplish this.
This idea of secure communication within universities probably scares a number of people -- I've repeatedly heard mumblings about universities being sinister, oppressive forces in society (for example, view the first comment on this blog post at Bleeding Heart Libertarians). You don't have to be an anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist to insist that universities develop a high level of transparency. Universities provide some important public services where the quality of the final product (e.g. research results, student certification) cannot be easily evaluated without knowledge of the process by which it was produced. To maintain public trust, universities should develop a process that provides relevant information to anyone with a legitimate interest.
Documents relating to student evaluation should be available, both to administrators and to each student or their representative. If encrypted emails are among these documents, the student should keep a copy, and perhaps the university could keep a copy of the student's encrypted emails (at least, any from a professor), which could be recovered if the student provides his decryption key. One nice side-effect of widespread encryption would be widespread signing of electronic documents (using the same key), so that if a document is deemed relevant to an accusation, its authenticity can be easily validated.
Finally, we have the raw data that goes into research publications. The issues here are complicated, and many extend beyond individual universities. For instance, data accessibility has been a major source of contention in climate research, but much of the raw data is treated as a commercial asset by non-academic institutions, so there is little that universities can do. Additionally, scientists will always hesitate to release data until they have had a chance to analyze it themselves. Each field of research probably has to develop its own process for making raw data accessible. For instance, biologists have developed a massive database of DNA sequences (Genbank), and all major journals require that any sequence discussed in a publication be submitted to the database. There is currently a push to mandate the publication of the source code for any program used in an analysis. There has even been some frivolous dispute over accessibility to the raw data from traditional microbiological techniques (which is rarely digitized).*
The complete archiving of research data is an unreachable ideal, though it may become more common with the increasing automation of data collection. Every innovation in data collection and data storage will require researchers to develop new systems for archiving data, possibly leading to the loss of older data archived with obsolete systems. University IT departments (and perhaps librarian/archivists) may be able to provide resources that enable researchers to record their data in an accessible form, but ultimately the focus and extent of archiving and distribution will be determined by the value of the data to other researchers, not curious laymen.
*Addition: There are also experiments relating to transparency in the peer-review process.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Books: Inside Wikileaks
Daniel Domscheit-Berg (DDB), a hacker and member of the Chaos Computer Club, had been keeping an eye on Wikileaks for over a year, nursing a suspicion that it was some sort of front for an intelligence agency. That suspicion fell away in November of 2007, when Wikileaks published the Guantanamo Bay handbooks. Shortly thereafter, DDB invited Julian Assange to speak at the December meeting of the Chaos Computer Club, and began collaborating with Assange on the Wikileaks project, becoming a major coordinator of Wikileaks activities in Europe. By September of 2010, DDB had fallen out with Assange, and left Wikileaks to establish a competing system, called OpenLeaks (I've added the blog to my list).
This book is a description of DDB's experience working with Wikileaks. The main theme of the book is the unstable genius of Assange, which provides the context within which all of the technical, administrative, and political problems of Wikileaks had to be addressed.
DDB obviously has a bone to pick with Assange, and is using this book to publicize his own competing project. Like everything, it should be read with a skeptical eye -- this is simply the story that one man is telling. I actually had trouble finding independent information about DDB. His Wikipedia entry is sparse, and I only found one news article describing the release of this book. (ForeignPolicy.com has posted a video of a recent interview.)
Anyway, this book provides some insight into what drives an entrepreneur like Assange. Wikileaks was a visionary project, and perhaps such a project can only be pushed through by someone with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. Based on DDB's story, not only did Assange essentially dedicate his life to this high-risk project, but he also had the charisma to convince several volunteers and journalists to make substantial contributions to Wikileaks. This type of achievement is not possible for people with a healthy sense of their own limits.
DDB's thesis is that Assange's egocentrism* is destroying the project. DDB presents Assange as insisting of keeping total control over the project, while also being a completely inept administrator. I suspect that many visionary projects encounter this type of problem. The entrepreneur basically has to get the project off of the ground on his own because no-one else understands what he is trying to achieve, or they doubt that it is possible. Once the project has demonstrated success, the visionary entrepreneur will suddenly have collaborators, but he will not necessarily have any ability to manage a team. Even worse for a visionary project like Wikileaks, the entrepreneur cannot assume that his team-mates actually have a clear understanding of his own goals for the project -- after all, there are no examples from which they can derive shared expectations or even terminology. The visionary project has to deal with all of the problems of any start-up, plus the additional burden of having to deal with issues that no-one has dealt with before.
DDB sees three major core objectives for a project like Wikileaks:
Ultimately, DDB decided to start a competing institution, OpenLeaks. I wish him luck in this endeavor. This represents a maturation of the industry that Wikileaks established. Now we know what an institution like Wikileaks can accomplish. Now some people (like DDB) have first-hand experience tackling the problems of these anonymous leak systems. The only question now is how many of these institutions can be supported, and how will the public interact with them. Should a leak-source provide documents to both Wikileaks and OpenLeaks? Will that increase the chance of being identified? Will it assure prompt publication, or would it just waste resources with duplicate effort? How can a new institution gain the trust of potential sources? How does it demonstrate its ability to maintain anonymity?
It appears that the Wikileaks revolution has only just begun, and at some point it may be able to continue even if Wikileaks itself fails.
*my word, not DDB's; not meant as a psychological diagnosis
This book is a description of DDB's experience working with Wikileaks. The main theme of the book is the unstable genius of Assange, which provides the context within which all of the technical, administrative, and political problems of Wikileaks had to be addressed.
DDB obviously has a bone to pick with Assange, and is using this book to publicize his own competing project. Like everything, it should be read with a skeptical eye -- this is simply the story that one man is telling. I actually had trouble finding independent information about DDB. His Wikipedia entry is sparse, and I only found one news article describing the release of this book. (ForeignPolicy.com has posted a video of a recent interview.)
Anyway, this book provides some insight into what drives an entrepreneur like Assange. Wikileaks was a visionary project, and perhaps such a project can only be pushed through by someone with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. Based on DDB's story, not only did Assange essentially dedicate his life to this high-risk project, but he also had the charisma to convince several volunteers and journalists to make substantial contributions to Wikileaks. This type of achievement is not possible for people with a healthy sense of their own limits.
DDB's thesis is that Assange's egocentrism* is destroying the project. DDB presents Assange as insisting of keeping total control over the project, while also being a completely inept administrator. I suspect that many visionary projects encounter this type of problem. The entrepreneur basically has to get the project off of the ground on his own because no-one else understands what he is trying to achieve, or they doubt that it is possible. Once the project has demonstrated success, the visionary entrepreneur will suddenly have collaborators, but he will not necessarily have any ability to manage a team. Even worse for a visionary project like Wikileaks, the entrepreneur cannot assume that his team-mates actually have a clear understanding of his own goals for the project -- after all, there are no examples from which they can derive shared expectations or even terminology. The visionary project has to deal with all of the problems of any start-up, plus the additional burden of having to deal with issues that no-one has dealt with before.
DDB sees three major core objectives for a project like Wikileaks:
- Maintain the anonymity of the source (while possibly enabling further communication)
- Organize and filter the documents, perhaps removing information about private persons.
- Publicize the documents.
Ultimately, DDB decided to start a competing institution, OpenLeaks. I wish him luck in this endeavor. This represents a maturation of the industry that Wikileaks established. Now we know what an institution like Wikileaks can accomplish. Now some people (like DDB) have first-hand experience tackling the problems of these anonymous leak systems. The only question now is how many of these institutions can be supported, and how will the public interact with them. Should a leak-source provide documents to both Wikileaks and OpenLeaks? Will that increase the chance of being identified? Will it assure prompt publication, or would it just waste resources with duplicate effort? How can a new institution gain the trust of potential sources? How does it demonstrate its ability to maintain anonymity?
It appears that the Wikileaks revolution has only just begun, and at some point it may be able to continue even if Wikileaks itself fails.
*my word, not DDB's; not meant as a psychological diagnosis
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Panel urges TSA to implement ‘trusted travelers’ program - The Washington Post
There's recently been a lot of talk about a "trusted travelers" program, where a person could win the privilege of going through an expediated (less intrusive and less bothersome) security check once they have passed a background check and provide biometric identification.
According to The Washington Post:
In the end, the reality is that many people would need to submit to a background check just so that they can efficiently engage in an activity that is practically essential for the business and social lives of many Americans. Just another brick in the new class barrier.
According to The Washington Post:
Even a voluntary trusted-traveler approach would require passengers to provide credit information, tax returns and other personal data to verify that members pose little or no risk.I'm not sure what I think of this as a stand-alone policy. I'm suspicious of the long term political implications, as frequent fliers (who tend to be richer and have more political influence) are treated differently from the politically faceless masses. I also wonder if this will be used to punish and neutralize people with unpopular political views. For instance, would they "trust" an anarchist who has never advocated violence? Finally, will this be used as an excuse to open an investigation on anyone who applies for Trusted Traveller status? The backfround check could reveal suspicious financial patterns, perhaps related to drug purchases. Alternatively, it could end up being another enforcement tool for the Copyright lords.
In the end, the reality is that many people would need to submit to a background check just so that they can efficiently engage in an activity that is practically essential for the business and social lives of many Americans. Just another brick in the new class barrier.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Politics has failed
The ongoing budget stalemates, at both the state and federal level, are just the most recent demonstration that American political institutions are in decline. As far as such institutions go, they are still pretty good; however, we can only expect them to become an increasing burden on our society. These institutions are committed to maintaining the status-quo, yet they have made so many implicit promises over the past decades that they cannot realistically fulfill all of them, let alone face new challenges. They will continue to devise band-aid solutions to mounting problems, and continue to prop up other failing institutions (e.g. banks), thereby draining an ever increasing amount of our economic produce.
In contrast, many developing countries (e.g. Brazil, India, China) are ambitiously reforming their core political and economic institutions, which may soon be just as good as America's. While nationalists present this as some sort of threat, we should be thankful for the rise of these other economies that will provide alternatives to our own ailing institutions and pick up the slack for our own decreasing ability to innovate. With our institutions becoming increasingly parasitic, the only opportunity for economic growth will come from technological advances and disruption of our lethargic economic institutions (despite political backing) by way of new competitors. America will continue to contribute to some advances, but not enough on our own to maintain our standard of living in a world with fewer natural resources per person.
This is really our only path forward -- to replace our current bloated institutions with new ones. The hope of reform from within the political system is dead. President Obama was elected on the hope that he could bring this reform, and revive the legitimacy of the state. Two years into his term, there's no sign of success. Obama and his allies dedicated their political capital to major initiatives that changed everything but solved nothing. All they did was reallocate the spoils of power among various special interest groups.
Obama hasn't even done much to increase the transparency, efficiency, or lawfulness of the state. Treaties are still negotiated in secret (e.g. ACTA and such), without public comment, but with plenty of input from corporate bosses. Government departments (e.g. Treasury) still cover up mistakes and corruption. We've actually seen a startling increase in harassment of political opponents under Obama, as Wikileaks was systematically crippled the state-corporation cartel, and Private Bradley Manning has been threatened with exaggerated charges and mistreated prior to his trial.
The end fact is that the state is the enemy of the people. It's officials constitute a class with separate interests and ideology than the public at large. They act to increase the power of their offices and their own wealth. They are co-opted by various wealthy interests (e.g. big corporations) who help them acquire power through elections, exercise power once in office, and reward them with plush jobs after retirement -- as long as these officials manipulate the markets to increase the profits of their benefactors.
There is no real hope of reforming the state. It is evil by nature. We can try to restrain it by political means, but our best hope is to directly break its economic grip on our lives, while we build institutions that actually do serve our needs.
Update: Another good essay on this topic at C4SS: The Last “Political” Essay
In contrast, many developing countries (e.g. Brazil, India, China) are ambitiously reforming their core political and economic institutions, which may soon be just as good as America's. While nationalists present this as some sort of threat, we should be thankful for the rise of these other economies that will provide alternatives to our own ailing institutions and pick up the slack for our own decreasing ability to innovate. With our institutions becoming increasingly parasitic, the only opportunity for economic growth will come from technological advances and disruption of our lethargic economic institutions (despite political backing) by way of new competitors. America will continue to contribute to some advances, but not enough on our own to maintain our standard of living in a world with fewer natural resources per person.
This is really our only path forward -- to replace our current bloated institutions with new ones. The hope of reform from within the political system is dead. President Obama was elected on the hope that he could bring this reform, and revive the legitimacy of the state. Two years into his term, there's no sign of success. Obama and his allies dedicated their political capital to major initiatives that changed everything but solved nothing. All they did was reallocate the spoils of power among various special interest groups.
Obama hasn't even done much to increase the transparency, efficiency, or lawfulness of the state. Treaties are still negotiated in secret (e.g. ACTA and such), without public comment, but with plenty of input from corporate bosses. Government departments (e.g. Treasury) still cover up mistakes and corruption. We've actually seen a startling increase in harassment of political opponents under Obama, as Wikileaks was systematically crippled the state-corporation cartel, and Private Bradley Manning has been threatened with exaggerated charges and mistreated prior to his trial.
The end fact is that the state is the enemy of the people. It's officials constitute a class with separate interests and ideology than the public at large. They act to increase the power of their offices and their own wealth. They are co-opted by various wealthy interests (e.g. big corporations) who help them acquire power through elections, exercise power once in office, and reward them with plush jobs after retirement -- as long as these officials manipulate the markets to increase the profits of their benefactors.
There is no real hope of reforming the state. It is evil by nature. We can try to restrain it by political means, but our best hope is to directly break its economic grip on our lives, while we build institutions that actually do serve our needs.
Update: Another good essay on this topic at C4SS: The Last “Political” Essay
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
The Innocence Project -- puts your money to good use
The Innocence Project is fund-raising via The Liberty Papers: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is — The Innocence Project
This is surely one of the best uses of my charity/activism budgets.
My only concern would be that we would come to rely on pro-bono lawyers to defend the accused, rather than modifying our court system to provide sufficient resources for the accused. However, the current indifference of the politicians to the plight of the falsely convicted is not a response to pro-bono defense lawyers. In fact, these advocates for the wrongly convicted may be the only ones who can bring public attention to this problem, thereby changing public attitudes towards punitive laws and placing pressure on politicians to actually think about justice when they write their laws and construct their budgets.
Getting innocent people out of prison? I don’t see how you can argue with that. Note also that The Innocence Project is spending their time and money on the ground, helping actual convicts. This is not an activism organization lobbying your legislators, it exists to actual help individual convicts trying to prove their innocence.
This is surely one of the best uses of my charity/activism budgets.
- It helps people directly, unlike donations to political campaigns or regular advocacy groups
- It benefits the "least-advantaged members of society", unlike donations to cultural institutions
- It increases the total productivity of society be enabling the released prisoner to fulfill his social and economic roles, unlike institutions that only relieve suffering of the targeted individuals
- It increases awareness of widespread injustices, unlike charities that help people in the shadows
- It improves my own society, unlike charities that intervene in foreign societies
My only concern would be that we would come to rely on pro-bono lawyers to defend the accused, rather than modifying our court system to provide sufficient resources for the accused. However, the current indifference of the politicians to the plight of the falsely convicted is not a response to pro-bono defense lawyers. In fact, these advocates for the wrongly convicted may be the only ones who can bring public attention to this problem, thereby changing public attitudes towards punitive laws and placing pressure on politicians to actually think about justice when they write their laws and construct their budgets.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
To Israelis and Palestinians
I don't want your fucking war.
Don't try to sell it to me. Don't tell me how evil or barbaric "the other side" is. Don't try to delegitimize entire nations or deny their right to basic freedoms -- whether individual or communal. When you do that, you only discredit yourself.
If you want me to respect you and your institutions, then don't allow fanatics to gain influence in those institutions. I will not support any institution that implements the agenda of fanatics. I don't care if "the other side" is more fanatical.
Your nationalist squabble is on the other side of the planet. Don't bring it here.
Don't try to sell it to me. Don't tell me how evil or barbaric "the other side" is. Don't try to delegitimize entire nations or deny their right to basic freedoms -- whether individual or communal. When you do that, you only discredit yourself.
If you want me to respect you and your institutions, then don't allow fanatics to gain influence in those institutions. I will not support any institution that implements the agenda of fanatics. I don't care if "the other side" is more fanatical.
Your nationalist squabble is on the other side of the planet. Don't bring it here.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
PATRIOT Act extended
After my earlier post accusing Tea Party types of not being particularly libertarian, there was some talk about them possibly blocking the reauthorization of the PATRIOT act. Well, it has finally gone through, and here's how they voted. Of note, Bachman "aye"; Sen. Rand "nay" (same for Rep. Rand, of course).
Corruption is worse than terrorism
Corruption is worse than terrorism. Terrorists blow up existing infrastructure such as roads, airports and power plants. Corruption prevents such infrastructure from being made in the first place. Terrorists take innocent lives. Corrupt politicians prevent hospitals from being built, which means innocent lives that could be saved are not.The rest of the letter is worth reading for its perspective on corruption in India, but I wanted to focus on this particular excerpt because it mirrors a dispute that occurs in our own country also. This dispute essentially boils down to "utilitarianism vs. moralism". From the utilitarian perspective, our efforts should be focused on those issues that have the greatest impact on our welfare; in contrast, moralism insists on focusing on the individuals who are most evil. This creates a tension between giving our attention to evils that are mild but ubiquitous (driven by the petty sins that are common in humans) and giving our attention to the evils that are extreme but rare (driven by the exceptional sins of a few individuals). From the utilitarian perspective, terrorism is a relatively small threat, definitely not deserving of the great efforts we have gone to in order to reduce it (not to mention the suffering we have caused). However, from the moralist perspective, there really isn't anything worse than intentionally killing civilians.
I often wonder how to reconcile these two impulses. Maybe the "moralist" focus on evil actually has a utilitarian basis, arising from the great variation in the damage done by people with ill intent. While terrorists only kill a few hundred people a year worldwide, there's a slight chance that they could kill several million next year. It is easy to focus on these worst case scenarios when we talk about terrorism, but I suspect that these are nothing more than rationalizations for the venting of our anger. We don't need evil intentions to create catastrophes -- we have created numerous disasters just by our ubiquitous indifference to the harm that we are doing. The prime example of this is the collateral damage that the USA has caused in our "wars on terrorism", which was easy to predict beforehand.
Ultimately, I am discouraged from finding a justification for moralism because it is increasing clear that the moralists are themselves immoral. Using "collateral damage" as an example: it is immoral to knowingly cause a person's death, even if that was no the desired outcome. These moralists often cloak their crimes in rhetoric of "personal responsibility", but there is no personal responsibility when a person causes actual harm in the hopes of reducing the potential harm that someone else may cause. Each person is responsible for the harm that they cause, and talking about another person's irresponsibility does not provide any excuse for one's own actions.
And so we come full circle, and we ask "how do we achieve the greatest good with the resources that we have?" To do so, we seek good wherever we can find it. We face down evil if that is necessary, but otherwise, we allow the evil ones to wallow in their own filth. As long as we create faster than they can destroy, we will win.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Patents and progress in the method of discovery
I am often shocked by the rapid advances of scientific techniques, and how major accomplishments from a decade ago can be repeated with a tiny fraction of the effort. Recent advances in biology -- particularly with DNA sequencing and synthesis - may be exceptional, but the basic principle surely holds across all sciences: advances in the methodology of discovery will increase the ease with which future discoveries are made.
Through the recent past, the most general advances are probably related to computing -- the storage, transmission, and analysis of data. These advances are continuing, along with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. Regardless of whether these advances will create a technological "singularity", they will surely contribute to additional discoveries in all fields of science.
Recently, a "robotic scientist" has even been built. Specifically, this "scientist" is a geneticist, with a very limited toolkit (both in design and implementation of experiments). However, as a proof of concept, it does raise the specter that robotic systems will soon be able to make discoveries that traditionally required a lot of time from highly trained scientists. Perhaps over the course of a decade, we will see 100-fold reductions in the price of discovery, across many fields of research.
If we put this rate of advancement in the context of patent law, we see a startling incongruity. Patents grant a 20 year monopoly to the inventor of a new tool or process, supposedly providing incentive for research and development. This monopoly allows the inventor to capture all of the benefits of the new invention for himself -- which makes like more costly for everyone else, but seems fair as long as we assume that it was necessary to produce the invention in the first place. While this assumption has always had some problems, it seems extremely shaky in light of the current rate of progress.
Through the recent past, the most general advances are probably related to computing -- the storage, transmission, and analysis of data. These advances are continuing, along with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. Regardless of whether these advances will create a technological "singularity", they will surely contribute to additional discoveries in all fields of science.
Recently, a "robotic scientist" has even been built. Specifically, this "scientist" is a geneticist, with a very limited toolkit (both in design and implementation of experiments). However, as a proof of concept, it does raise the specter that robotic systems will soon be able to make discoveries that traditionally required a lot of time from highly trained scientists. Perhaps over the course of a decade, we will see 100-fold reductions in the price of discovery, across many fields of research.
If we put this rate of advancement in the context of patent law, we see a startling incongruity. Patents grant a 20 year monopoly to the inventor of a new tool or process, supposedly providing incentive for research and development. This monopoly allows the inventor to capture all of the benefits of the new invention for himself -- which makes like more costly for everyone else, but seems fair as long as we assume that it was necessary to produce the invention in the first place. While this assumption has always had some problems, it seems extremely shaky in light of the current rate of progress.
Great Book: Founding Myths by Ray Raphael
Having finished Ray Raphael's "Founding Myths", I want to reiterate my recommendation of this book. It was exceptionally enlightening for a book that is so short and accessible. I effectively covers historical aspects of the Revolutionary War that are typically ignored, while also providing an overview of how the study of the Revolution has been changed over time.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Guns: Liberty or Authority?
When in comes to gun laws, I am typically "pro-choice". There are several reasons that I oppose restrictions on gun ownership:
The mainstream gun lobby (e.g. the NRA, Republicans, and socially conservative Democrats) has quite an authoritarian streak. They may talk about the right to resist tyranny, but I often get the feeling that they are most concerned with their own ability to intimidate others into submission. This desire to intimidate and control others is apparent in their militaristic foreign policies, their obsession with severe punishment of criminals (even petty or victimless criminals), and their desire to limit the sexual options of others (e.g. restricting information about pregnancy and STD prevention, disparaging homosexual relationships).
So how is this desire to intimidate others displayed in their conception of political security?
First, despite their assertion of the importance of an armed citizenry, this group has no real critique of government, nor a theory of tyranny. Most of them regularly embrace the expansion of the state's surveillance and detention abilities. The only serious thought of resistance comes from the fringe militia movements, which are anxiously awaiting the initiation of mass arrests or a systematic civilian disarmament program, at which point they will rise up. The other place where people talk of imminent armed resistance is at the Tea Parties. But here, they assert the right to armed resistance even in the absence of any serious assault on our liberties, or any assault on the people's ability to resist tyranny. They speak as though abstract and mild restrictions on liberty are sufficient to warrant armed resistance -- "threats" as limited and fleeting as losing an election, or the implementation of moderate health care reform. Michael Austin documented and summarized how easily some conservatives turn to the rhetoric of rebellion:
Here we see a startling partisan double standard -- a strong and active state is a good thing as long as their people are in control, but as soon as this group finds themselves in the minority and the state does anything that they dislike, armed resistance is appropriate. This is not a freedom movement: when one faction within society clings to power, that is tyranny.
It isn't only in their rhetoric that pro-gun conservatives show their authoritarian tendencies. If you look at the National Rifle Association's "law enforcement training staff", you'll see a man who had to resign from the Fort Lauderdale police after being video-taped abusing his authority. This obviously does not bother the NRA. As with many gun loving conservatives, they worship the police and military, and almost any excess on the part of the government's gunmen can be excused as either being necessary to keep the riffraff in line, or an unfortunate but unavoidable mistake resulting from the demands of the job. This is not the attitude of anyone who has seriously contemplated resistance to tyranny.
Their authoritarian streak is also apparent in how they respond to constitutional crises in foreign countries. At the only Tea Party rally that I observed, there was outspoken support for the coup in Honduras. These people who claimed to represent "regular Americans" were obsessing over an issue that most Americans could not have cared less about. While the coup was arguably a win for democracy, it was clear that their concern was with the specter of socialism, and fears that President Obama would support the ousted socialist President Zelaya.
While Zelaya may have been leading Hondoras towards a dictatorship (albeit a popular one), the current crisis in Egypt has presented a clear alternative between a brutal tyrant and a popular uprising. Yet in this case, popular "anti-government" conservatives, such as Glenn Beck, have sided with the tyrant. They have chosen fear-based "stability" over the uncertainty of a democratic election, where socialists or Islamists could win power. This decision has clearly demonstrated that these conservatives fear freedom more than they fear tyranny. In such a context, the apparent purpose of the "right to bear arms" is to keep the rabble down.
Look to the rhetorical foundation for this "right to armed rebellion"--the Revolutionary War--and the "imperative to suppress slave rebellions" will be clearly seen as an equal basis for this concern with guns. As described in Founding Myths, one of the main fears of the rebellious colonists, particularly in Virginia and the southern states, arose from the risk of "domestic insurrection", i.e. slave revolts. In essence, if the British crown had disarmed the Southern colonists, then the colonists would have had this sword dangling over their heads, restrained only by the will of the British military. Much of today's pro-gun rhetoric evokes the same fears of a rampaging underclass.
Given the evidence above, there is good reason to suspect that their concern with gun ownership is driven by a desire to exclude poor people from political power. My final evidence for this takes us back to the gun lobby's dismissal of any form of direct resistance other than armed rebellion -- they don't talk of non-violent mass actions such as boycotts, strikes, or the less-violent disruption of commerce; instead, the conservative gun advocates go straight for bodily violence. This suggests that they do not expect to have the numbers needed to effectively implement the less-violent strategies. Their power depends on their control of property, including weapons -- not their numbers.
Having seen the authoritarian nature of the conservative (i.e. mainstream) pro-gun lobby in the USA, what is a libertarian to do? Participation in mainstream, single-issue advocacy groups is often presented as a strategy to achieve the limited goals of that group and to publicize libertarian ideas. However, if these mainstream groups are providing support to anti-libertarian activists and politicians, then any achievements on that single issue may be outweighed by regression on other issues. To anyone with a libertarian perspective on government, protection of the right to own guns would have to be a lower priority than resistance to military adventurism and the expansion of a police state.
Is there any way to protect the right to own guns without undermining more fundamental rights? Might there even be some synergy to be had? An extreme strategy would be to subsume all pro-gun activities inside of the libertarian movement -- essentially creating a "gun rights committee of the Libertarian Party". What this gains in purity, it loses in popularity (even if "Libertarian Party" is understood to be the decentralized, informal libertarian movement). The alternative is to try to establish non-political organizations that appeal to gun owners. Competing with the NRA may be difficult, but there may be other constituencies of gun owners who are not well served by the NRA -- the Pink Pistols may be a prototype for such a group, as may others who are turned off by the NRA's authoritarian and Republican tendencies.
In the end, I won't personally do much about this because I am not a gun owner, and I don't think that they are a terribly important issue. However, every time that I give a passive defense of the right to bear arms (e.g. "live and let live") or point out the numerous weaknesses in the arguments to ban guns, I'm going to get branded as one of those people (described above). While the actual prohibition of guns would not be a crippling blow to liberty, this issue is one of the main battlegrounds against the authoritarian mindset. Any time someone tells me that we have to establish a structure of systematic and widespread violence against non-violent people (e.g. confiscating property and arresting people) in order to prevent sporadic and relatively rare violence by others, I'm going to have to respond.
Update: Shortly after I wrote the above post, news came in that the PATRIOT act re-authorization had a mild setback in the House, as several Republicans defected from the party leadership and voted against re-authorization. Rumor was that this had something to do with the Tea Party, strengthening their claim to being a libertarian movement. Upon further consideration, there seems to be no difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party in general, both groups overwhelmingly supporting the re-authorization.
I also came across a nice example of a conservative trembling at the thought of Democracy, because most people just can't be trusted.
- Simple liberty: in general, a person should be able to do what he wants to do unless it directly interferes with the right of another person to do as they wish. To prohibit gun ownership is to instigate actual violence in the hope of restricting a remote potential for violence.
- Economic liberty: Guns play an important economic role for some people, particularly for use in hunting or removing predators from the vicinity of livestock.
- Personal security: some people reasonably feel that owning a gun increases their personal security.
- Political security: Political authorities have a tendency to transform into tyrannies; in these situations, guns may be useful as a last-resort form of resistance.
The mainstream gun lobby (e.g. the NRA, Republicans, and socially conservative Democrats) has quite an authoritarian streak. They may talk about the right to resist tyranny, but I often get the feeling that they are most concerned with their own ability to intimidate others into submission. This desire to intimidate and control others is apparent in their militaristic foreign policies, their obsession with severe punishment of criminals (even petty or victimless criminals), and their desire to limit the sexual options of others (e.g. restricting information about pregnancy and STD prevention, disparaging homosexual relationships).
So how is this desire to intimidate others displayed in their conception of political security?
First, despite their assertion of the importance of an armed citizenry, this group has no real critique of government, nor a theory of tyranny. Most of them regularly embrace the expansion of the state's surveillance and detention abilities. The only serious thought of resistance comes from the fringe militia movements, which are anxiously awaiting the initiation of mass arrests or a systematic civilian disarmament program, at which point they will rise up. The other place where people talk of imminent armed resistance is at the Tea Parties. But here, they assert the right to armed resistance even in the absence of any serious assault on our liberties, or any assault on the people's ability to resist tyranny. They speak as though abstract and mild restrictions on liberty are sufficient to warrant armed resistance -- "threats" as limited and fleeting as losing an election, or the implementation of moderate health care reform. Michael Austin documented and summarized how easily some conservatives turn to the rhetoric of rebellion:
[O]ur modern revolutionaries...have tried to co-opt the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers without accepting any of the responsibility that they pledged their lives to, who have repeatedly called the President of the United States a tyrant and a dictator, who have insisted (without a shred of evidence) that he is not a citizen of the United States, and who have equated government spending with slavery and health-care reform with satanic evil. People within this faction have accused entire congressional majorities of trying to destroy America, and they have called for revolution by any means necessary.
It isn't only in their rhetoric that pro-gun conservatives show their authoritarian tendencies. If you look at the National Rifle Association's "law enforcement training staff", you'll see a man who had to resign from the Fort Lauderdale police after being video-taped abusing his authority. This obviously does not bother the NRA. As with many gun loving conservatives, they worship the police and military, and almost any excess on the part of the government's gunmen can be excused as either being necessary to keep the riffraff in line, or an unfortunate but unavoidable mistake resulting from the demands of the job. This is not the attitude of anyone who has seriously contemplated resistance to tyranny.
Their authoritarian streak is also apparent in how they respond to constitutional crises in foreign countries. At the only Tea Party rally that I observed, there was outspoken support for the coup in Honduras. These people who claimed to represent "regular Americans" were obsessing over an issue that most Americans could not have cared less about. While the coup was arguably a win for democracy, it was clear that their concern was with the specter of socialism, and fears that President Obama would support the ousted socialist President Zelaya.
While Zelaya may have been leading Hondoras towards a dictatorship (albeit a popular one), the current crisis in Egypt has presented a clear alternative between a brutal tyrant and a popular uprising. Yet in this case, popular "anti-government" conservatives, such as Glenn Beck, have sided with the tyrant. They have chosen fear-based "stability" over the uncertainty of a democratic election, where socialists or Islamists could win power. This decision has clearly demonstrated that these conservatives fear freedom more than they fear tyranny. In such a context, the apparent purpose of the "right to bear arms" is to keep the rabble down.
Look to the rhetorical foundation for this "right to armed rebellion"--the Revolutionary War--and the "imperative to suppress slave rebellions" will be clearly seen as an equal basis for this concern with guns. As described in Founding Myths, one of the main fears of the rebellious colonists, particularly in Virginia and the southern states, arose from the risk of "domestic insurrection", i.e. slave revolts. In essence, if the British crown had disarmed the Southern colonists, then the colonists would have had this sword dangling over their heads, restrained only by the will of the British military. Much of today's pro-gun rhetoric evokes the same fears of a rampaging underclass.
Given the evidence above, there is good reason to suspect that their concern with gun ownership is driven by a desire to exclude poor people from political power. My final evidence for this takes us back to the gun lobby's dismissal of any form of direct resistance other than armed rebellion -- they don't talk of non-violent mass actions such as boycotts, strikes, or the less-violent disruption of commerce; instead, the conservative gun advocates go straight for bodily violence. This suggests that they do not expect to have the numbers needed to effectively implement the less-violent strategies. Their power depends on their control of property, including weapons -- not their numbers.
Having seen the authoritarian nature of the conservative (i.e. mainstream) pro-gun lobby in the USA, what is a libertarian to do? Participation in mainstream, single-issue advocacy groups is often presented as a strategy to achieve the limited goals of that group and to publicize libertarian ideas. However, if these mainstream groups are providing support to anti-libertarian activists and politicians, then any achievements on that single issue may be outweighed by regression on other issues. To anyone with a libertarian perspective on government, protection of the right to own guns would have to be a lower priority than resistance to military adventurism and the expansion of a police state.
Is there any way to protect the right to own guns without undermining more fundamental rights? Might there even be some synergy to be had? An extreme strategy would be to subsume all pro-gun activities inside of the libertarian movement -- essentially creating a "gun rights committee of the Libertarian Party". What this gains in purity, it loses in popularity (even if "Libertarian Party" is understood to be the decentralized, informal libertarian movement). The alternative is to try to establish non-political organizations that appeal to gun owners. Competing with the NRA may be difficult, but there may be other constituencies of gun owners who are not well served by the NRA -- the Pink Pistols may be a prototype for such a group, as may others who are turned off by the NRA's authoritarian and Republican tendencies.
In the end, I won't personally do much about this because I am not a gun owner, and I don't think that they are a terribly important issue. However, every time that I give a passive defense of the right to bear arms (e.g. "live and let live") or point out the numerous weaknesses in the arguments to ban guns, I'm going to get branded as one of those people (described above). While the actual prohibition of guns would not be a crippling blow to liberty, this issue is one of the main battlegrounds against the authoritarian mindset. Any time someone tells me that we have to establish a structure of systematic and widespread violence against non-violent people (e.g. confiscating property and arresting people) in order to prevent sporadic and relatively rare violence by others, I'm going to have to respond.
Update: Shortly after I wrote the above post, news came in that the PATRIOT act re-authorization had a mild setback in the House, as several Republicans defected from the party leadership and voted against re-authorization. Rumor was that this had something to do with the Tea Party, strengthening their claim to being a libertarian movement. Upon further consideration, there seems to be no difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party in general, both groups overwhelmingly supporting the re-authorization.
I also came across a nice example of a conservative trembling at the thought of Democracy, because most people just can't be trusted.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Erosion of the rule of law
From Time Magazine:
Opinion: Tea Party's Rand Paul Correct, Laser-Pointer Law Absurd - TIME
Opinion: Tea Party's Rand Paul Correct, Laser-Pointer Law Absurd - TIME
That is a VERY important question... how is the law enforced? One way to enforce a law is to identify situations where it has been broken, and then catch the perpetrator. The other way to enforce the law is to choose a person to prosecute, and them watch him until he commits a crime. In a country where the vast majority of crimes are never prosecuted, and the "criminals" often don't know that they are breaking the law, it won't be to hard to follow the later strategy.
It takes only about five seconds of thought to see that Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's amendment to impose federal penalties — up to a five-year prison sentence — for [aiming a laser pointer at a plane] would be completely useless. How exactly would it be enforced?
Those reasonable anarchists
It's no secret that I find much value in anarchist writings; particularly in anarchist criticisms of statist ideology and institutions. When I see the clear thinking of such essays, I sometimes wonder how anarchists got the reputation for being unreasonable. Of course, there are less "rational" or "realistic" aspects of anarchism. For instance, anarchists put a lot of effort into dreaming up institutions that will replace the state, and the problems of establishing these institutions may seem insurmountable, making the anarchists into a bunch of dreamers. At the extreme, there are frequent calls of alarm and the repetition of conspiracy theories (aside from those "conspiracies" that have been well documented, even if ignored by most people).
Anyway, even the most extreme and alarmist anarchists are no more wild-eyed than plenty of "respectable" voices in mainstream political debate. Over the past few days, I checked in on the local talk-radio station, and got an earful of conspiracy theory and alarmism from nationally syndicated conservative stars -- Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.
If this type of stuff is respectable these days, then there is no good reason that anarchism shouldn't be mainstream.
Anyway, even the most extreme and alarmist anarchists are no more wild-eyed than plenty of "respectable" voices in mainstream political debate. Over the past few days, I checked in on the local talk-radio station, and got an earful of conspiracy theory and alarmism from nationally syndicated conservative stars -- Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.
If this type of stuff is respectable these days, then there is no good reason that anarchism shouldn't be mainstream.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Easy but important reading: "Founding Myths" by Ray Raphael
Who was Sam Adams? According to Ray Raphael, "Sam" Adams is only a myth, loosely based on a man named Samuel Adams who was one of many activists involved in organizing resistance to British rule in Boston. Raphael traces the development of this myth, including the origins of the name "Sam", and how Adams came to be credited with masterminding the resistance to British rule. Throughout, he evaluates the ideological basis of the myth, and how it contrasts with the reality of Massachusetts politics at the time.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, the American Revolution, or political revolutions in general. The book is interesting for a couple of reasons, yet still an easier read than most history books. Raphael revisits several familiar stories from the American Revolution, but uniquely emphasizes the role of "regular people", which is often overlooked in mainstream histories that focus on the men who held high offices in the government. Aside from providing a different perspective on the Revolution, Raphael uses these stories as case studies to illustrate how history is written -- or perhaps, how myths are made. For each of these stories, Raphael starts off by describing the oft-repeated myth, and then describing how it is wrong, why he believes that it is wrong, and how other historians got it wrong in the first place.
While the scholarship is impressive, this is not a dry academic work; as the subtitle makes clear, Raphael has an ideological agenda. He clearly states that he is interested in emphasizing the hyper-democracy of the revolutionary era, and tearing down the elitist stories concocted by later writers. While I happen to sympathize with his ideological aims, I often feel that his ideological assertions are heavy handed and that he is being unfair to the people that he disagrees with. While this could get irritating, I don't think that it detracts from the serious scholarship.
Despite being a serious book, it is still easy to read. In part this is due to Raphael's writing style, but moreso to the structure of the book. Each chapter discusses a different "myth", so it is easy to put it down for a week, and then resume with the next chapter. Also, most Americans are familiar with the basic stories, and should not have any trouble remembering the context for the issues being discussed.
My only qualification to recommending this book is that this is not an introduction to American history or the Revolutionary war. It assumes that the reader is familiar with the basic geography and politics of the Revolutionary era.
"Anarchy" in Cairo
Reports from Cairo indicate that state authority has collapsed, except for a military presence at a few strategic locations (reports NPR). The police have fled, prisons have emptied, and shops have been looted. Citizens are forming neighborhood defense squads. Apparently, this prevents people from protesting, but it seems that the protests have served their purpose (eliminating the Mubarak government) and the revolution has entered into a second stage.
Sunday is a business day in Egypt, but shops are largely closed in Cairo. The NPR reporter suggested that this is mainly due to security concerns. However, another thought occurred to me: do they have a currency anymore? I'd like to know what has happened to the Egyptian currency. A government-issued currency typically becomes worthless when that government is on the verge of collapse. However, I've seen little indication that that the Egyptian protesters are pushing for the type of revolution that would nullify the currency -- many of them seem to simply want Mubarak to leave.
So this period of "anarchy" is unlikely to last long, since the Egyptian people probably are not anarchists. As with many revolutions, this one may quickly degenerate into a civil war among various statist factions, each seeking to dominate the entire society.
Afterthoughts:
John Robb at Global Guerrillas reports rumors of police being involved in the looting, and speculates about the use of looting as a counter-insurgency strategy. Tip to Reason.
Sunday is a business day in Egypt, but shops are largely closed in Cairo. The NPR reporter suggested that this is mainly due to security concerns. However, another thought occurred to me: do they have a currency anymore? I'd like to know what has happened to the Egyptian currency. A government-issued currency typically becomes worthless when that government is on the verge of collapse. However, I've seen little indication that that the Egyptian protesters are pushing for the type of revolution that would nullify the currency -- many of them seem to simply want Mubarak to leave.
So this period of "anarchy" is unlikely to last long, since the Egyptian people probably are not anarchists. As with many revolutions, this one may quickly degenerate into a civil war among various statist factions, each seeking to dominate the entire society.
Afterthoughts:
- Rising food prices (i.e. inflation of a sort) may have been the trigger for these protests.
- As of Friday, the Egyptian pound was falling on international exchanges, as were other currencies in the Middle East. Likewise, the credit rating of the Egyptian state had been downgraded. Egyptian banks are closed due to the protests (by government order, I believe).
- Fun Facts from Wikipedia: this all started on "National Police Day".
John Robb at Global Guerrillas reports rumors of police being involved in the looting, and speculates about the use of looting as a counter-insurgency strategy. Tip to Reason.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Networked justice
In the 18th century, Thomas Paine argued that the structure of an agrarian society demanded a particular notion of justice relating to the use of land -- what he called "Agrarian Justice". His basic idea was that for us to live as free persons, we must have a set of rights that allows us to survive as a full participant in the economic system of our society. I'm thinking that it is time for us to reconsider our list of basic rights, due to our increasing reliance on networked computer systems. Perhaps this would be called "networked justice".
The basic problem is that most Americans rely on markets for almost everything -- even our most basic and immediate needs. We don't grow our own food, or even stock more than we would eat in a week; instead, we make regular trips to the grocery store. But we don't even make direct payments to the grocer anymore; instead, we rely on a bank to debit our account and credit the grocer's account. This reliance on intermediaries for all of our commercial transactions creates a serious danger arising from the risk of being cut off. As our institutions become increasingly dispersed, and we exchange money with people all over the planet, we become increasingly reliant on other people's computer networks, such as those owned by banks.
As we have seen with the recent Wikileaks drama, the risk of being cut off is real. Accounts can be shut down on the flimsiest pretense, even without formal criminal charges. This type of attack on a person would have been impossible a few decades ago, since it is essentially equivalent to convincing everyone in a community to refuse to sell anything to a person. In today's cashless society, this boycott can be enforced with the cooperation of only a handful of companies.
It isn't only limited to bank accounts. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has repeatedly warned, we are even more vulnerable to similar attacks on our ability to communicate. We increasingly rely on internet service providers or hosting services to communicate with our far-flung associates, yet all of this can be cut off on the basis of nothing more than suspicion of copyright infringement.
I can see three ways out of this. None of them is totally satisfying, so all three probably deserve some attention. One option is legal reform, which would protect service providers from pressure to cut off services from clients in the absence of a criminal conviction, or at least an indictment. The second is to establish alternative institutions, where services are provided by a distributed network of our peers. The goal here is to create electronic cash-like systems for commerce, and word-of-mouth like systems for communication. Many dedicated activists are working to build systems that provide basic social services on a mutual-aid model, but there remain substantial technical and organizational hurdles, not to mention the fact that they are competing with the state-subsidized establishment. The last option is live lifestyles that are less sensitive to the disruption of services. This can only take us so far before the economic costs become too large, but Americans are complacently disinterested in economic self-sufficiency. That is, we are disinterested until we lose our jobs or are struck by a natural disaster which cuts off services -- by which point it is too late.
The basic problem is that most Americans rely on markets for almost everything -- even our most basic and immediate needs. We don't grow our own food, or even stock more than we would eat in a week; instead, we make regular trips to the grocery store. But we don't even make direct payments to the grocer anymore; instead, we rely on a bank to debit our account and credit the grocer's account. This reliance on intermediaries for all of our commercial transactions creates a serious danger arising from the risk of being cut off. As our institutions become increasingly dispersed, and we exchange money with people all over the planet, we become increasingly reliant on other people's computer networks, such as those owned by banks.
As we have seen with the recent Wikileaks drama, the risk of being cut off is real. Accounts can be shut down on the flimsiest pretense, even without formal criminal charges. This type of attack on a person would have been impossible a few decades ago, since it is essentially equivalent to convincing everyone in a community to refuse to sell anything to a person. In today's cashless society, this boycott can be enforced with the cooperation of only a handful of companies.
It isn't only limited to bank accounts. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has repeatedly warned, we are even more vulnerable to similar attacks on our ability to communicate. We increasingly rely on internet service providers or hosting services to communicate with our far-flung associates, yet all of this can be cut off on the basis of nothing more than suspicion of copyright infringement.
I can see three ways out of this. None of them is totally satisfying, so all three probably deserve some attention. One option is legal reform, which would protect service providers from pressure to cut off services from clients in the absence of a criminal conviction, or at least an indictment. The second is to establish alternative institutions, where services are provided by a distributed network of our peers. The goal here is to create electronic cash-like systems for commerce, and word-of-mouth like systems for communication. Many dedicated activists are working to build systems that provide basic social services on a mutual-aid model, but there remain substantial technical and organizational hurdles, not to mention the fact that they are competing with the state-subsidized establishment. The last option is live lifestyles that are less sensitive to the disruption of services. This can only take us so far before the economic costs become too large, but Americans are complacently disinterested in economic self-sufficiency. That is, we are disinterested until we lose our jobs or are struck by a natural disaster which cuts off services -- by which point it is too late.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Investment law, Facebook, and Goldman Sachs
What would you think of a government that:
Well, as everyone is finally learning, this is exactly the situation in the USA. The recent buzz about the Goldman-Sachs/Facebook deal, and its retraction, has put this law on the front page of newspapers across the countries. Of course, the oddity of this situation will be explained away with paternalistic comments about protecting "average investors" from risky investments. Who knows what's really going through the heads of the people who established and enforce this law... I don't have the time to figure it out. But it is odd.
- Reserved certain investment opportunities for a select class of citizens, and
- Prohibited the investment banks involved in the deals from talking to newspapers about such deals?
Well, as everyone is finally learning, this is exactly the situation in the USA. The recent buzz about the Goldman-Sachs/Facebook deal, and its retraction, has put this law on the front page of newspapers across the countries. Of course, the oddity of this situation will be explained away with paternalistic comments about protecting "average investors" from risky investments. Who knows what's really going through the heads of the people who established and enforce this law... I don't have the time to figure it out. But it is odd.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Are you on the inside or the outside?
Many commentators have been describing the new forms of segregation in American society -- where people are either members of an "in" group with special privileges, or you aren't. Much of the talk has focused on the segregation of workers into "protected" jobs from which they cannot be fired, and the rest who cannot get steady employment, in large part as a side effect of the protection system.
However, we are also seeing increasing segregation of Americans into the group with security clearance, who have access to massive government databases, and the rest of us who are forbidden to access this information. This segregation has troubling similarities to the system of the Chinese Communist Party, which maintains separate media systems for privileged insiders and the ignorant masses.
The Washington Post has taken the lead in exposing the scale of "Top Secret America", first by revealing that hundreds of thousands of Americans have this clearance, indicating that such clearance is increasingly a requirement for a decent job (like Party membership in Communist countries). Now the Post has described a massive database of "suspicious" Americans, which is available to pretty much every law enforcement agent. So next time a cop stops you for some trivial reason, he can check to see if you've ever done anything suspicious, and adjust his behavior accordingly. This is a good reason to use a pseudonym on the Internet.
A summary is here: Monitoring America: How the U.S. Sees You - CBS News
The best quote:
Apparently the mainstream media is finally waking up to what commentators like Kevin Carson have been describing for years:
However, we are also seeing increasing segregation of Americans into the group with security clearance, who have access to massive government databases, and the rest of us who are forbidden to access this information. This segregation has troubling similarities to the system of the Chinese Communist Party, which maintains separate media systems for privileged insiders and the ignorant masses.
The Washington Post has taken the lead in exposing the scale of "Top Secret America", first by revealing that hundreds of thousands of Americans have this clearance, indicating that such clearance is increasingly a requirement for a decent job (like Party membership in Communist countries). Now the Post has described a massive database of "suspicious" Americans, which is available to pretty much every law enforcement agent. So next time a cop stops you for some trivial reason, he can check to see if you've ever done anything suspicious, and adjust his behavior accordingly. This is a good reason to use a pseudonym on the Internet.
A summary is here: Monitoring America: How the U.S. Sees You - CBS News
The best quote:
"The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that - the old view," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.
Apparently the mainstream media is finally waking up to what commentators like Kevin Carson have been describing for years:
Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.Anyway, this reminds us that the main resistance to this trend is being attacked by "the authorities" as we speak, and these authorities are called out by John Wilkins in Statism and Wikileaks.
the real lesson is the extent to which the professional political classes of the west are statists. They have no concern for their citizenry. They have no concern for their economies or even for the corporations or big labor organisations they nominally represent. They only care that they are in power, or might get into power, and so the state is what they care about, so they can have that power.The last thing on my mind today is the fact that the Dream Act failed to pass. It sounded pretty innocuous to me, but there are enough authoritarian nationalists in Congress that even this law couldn't pass. Not a big surprise, but the likely hypocrisy of these nationalists was conveniently illuminated by the contrast against a recent essay describing the pseudo-liberal argument against affirmative action that conservatives trot out so often -- "since we're all equal, all discrimination is wrong". Of course, this ignores the central role of group identity in our society. Sometimes this group identity is implicit (e.g. cultural affinity), sometimes it is explicit (e.g. citizenship, family), but either way it is very important. If a person can't recognize that and consider how this factors into our decisions, then they are pretty naive. If they continue to advocate for group identity in one situation, even as they dismiss its complexities in another, then they are just hypocrites. I don't know what this particular author believes about nationality and migration, but if he's like most conservatives who use terms like "equality" or "individualism", then he's just an opportunist who will use whatever argument he can to secure privileges for himself and his favored identity group.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
My respectability vs. their legitimacy
Over the past few years, I've been conversing with a bunch of anarchists, and have come to accept their basic arguments. Anarchists have a bad reputation, so I've been using a pseudonym for these online conversations. In fact, I now use the name Ricketson (from Benjamin Ricketson Tucker) in all my online political discussions, though this is simply because I prefer that a Google search of my real name points to my professional writings and not my political opinions.
The core doctrine of anarchism is that all coercive power, particularly the state, is illegitimate and should be resisted. As such, it can be difficult to support anarchist causes while maintaining respectability in mainstream society, where state power is generally taken for granted and is often considered an essential part of a good society. On top of that social pressure, there is also the fact that anarchists position themselves directly at odds with an institution that regularly deprives people of property, liberty, and life; so associating with anarchists brings some physical risks, and it is very important for anarchists to know what actions will provoke the state to action and stay within those bounds.
Fortunately, the USA and its citizens are generally tolerant of abstract political opinions, so there is a lot of room for advocacy of anarchic social reforms. However, anarchists necessarily push the limits of that tolerance in their attacks on the legitimacy of the state and its laws. If laws of the state are illegitimate, then interfering with the enforcement of those laws is implicitly legitimate, as long as the circumstances are appropriate.
However, not all law-breaking is the same. Anarchist "direct action" can come in the form of scofflawry*, civil disobedience, and outright resistance against the enforcers of the law. Anarchists are safe as long as their opposition to the law is kept abstract (even the American Declaration of Independence advocates the right to resist the state), but they could get in hot water if they were to support particular acts of resistance. Even if they stay within the formal limits of the law, they would risk attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies and facing extra-legal harassment from these powerful groups. I've got a family to support, and don't want to go there.
The recent brouhaha surrounding Wikileaks illustrates these dynamics. For details, go to Wikileaks Watch at the Ruling Class Blog, but there are two important points relevant to the topic of this essay: first, a person who says "the wrong thing" can be targeted for extra-legal harassment by the USA; second, reciprocal harassment of the state and its allies will be taken very seriously by the state.
The harassment of Wikileaks is a prime example of extra-legal (i.e. no due process) harassment in response to "saying the wrong thing". Following their publication of a whole bunch of slightly confidential documents, Wikileaks' website suffered a denial-of-service attack, law enforcement agencies effectively froze several accounts associated with Wikileaks, and several high profile politicians called for extra-legal action to be taken against Wikileaks.
In response to this harassment, several of the instigators and collaborators have been themselves targeted for similar harassment, such as denial-of-service attacks on their websites. This has sparked debate among anarchists over whether this counter-harassment is justified. Some of the rhetoric has made me question whether I can openly associate with these people (for instance, by making a donation) and maintain my mainstream respectability (i.e. avoid unwanted attention from powerful institutions).
It's one thing to make abstract arguments for breaking the law; it's another to provide moral support for people who are breaking a specific law as we speak. The difference is even greater when the law-breakers are physically interfering with another person's activities (an "attack", in the broadest sense of the word).
Finally, the justification of the law-breaking is important. The DoS attacks by "Anonymous" are often portrayed as Civil Disobedience; such cases are treated as limited threats by the established powers, but they can still be met with substantial retaliation. However, if the attacks are viewed as resistance (i.e. an attempt to directly block the exercise of power) , the full power of the state will be brought against the lawbreakers and their supporters. In this case, Anonymous has really escalated the seriousness of the Wikileaks situation. Compare the "Civil Disobedience - Resistance" of Anonymous with the "Scofflawry - Civil Disobedience" of Wikileaks. It isn't even clear that Wikileaks did anything illegal, but there is no doubt that the acts of Anonymous are illegal. Furthermore, Anonymous has a clear victim. This type of escalation had better be necessary, or else I am going to stay a mile away.
Through my associations with anarchists, I have been comforted by those who swear off confrontation, insisting that their goal is to expose the illegitimacy of the state and start building the institutions that will replace the state. Not only do I believe that they make an important point about what is the most productive strategy for improving society, but I feel comfortable that associating with such people will not bring me to the attention of the police.
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm whining about how hard it is for me to contribute to "the cause"; I did not write this to make excuses for myself or belittle those who have shouldered the responsibility for developing and communicating anarchist ideas. I just want to make a small point about the tactics of a political movement -- if we want to gain mainstream influence, then mainstream people need to feel comfortable associating with us.
*I believe that I have coined the term "scofflawry". Is there a better term for the habit of evading law enforcement? Scofflawry is a bit awkward, but is conveniently parallel to outlawry.
The core doctrine of anarchism is that all coercive power, particularly the state, is illegitimate and should be resisted. As such, it can be difficult to support anarchist causes while maintaining respectability in mainstream society, where state power is generally taken for granted and is often considered an essential part of a good society. On top of that social pressure, there is also the fact that anarchists position themselves directly at odds with an institution that regularly deprives people of property, liberty, and life; so associating with anarchists brings some physical risks, and it is very important for anarchists to know what actions will provoke the state to action and stay within those bounds.
Fortunately, the USA and its citizens are generally tolerant of abstract political opinions, so there is a lot of room for advocacy of anarchic social reforms. However, anarchists necessarily push the limits of that tolerance in their attacks on the legitimacy of the state and its laws. If laws of the state are illegitimate, then interfering with the enforcement of those laws is implicitly legitimate, as long as the circumstances are appropriate.
However, not all law-breaking is the same. Anarchist "direct action" can come in the form of scofflawry*, civil disobedience, and outright resistance against the enforcers of the law. Anarchists are safe as long as their opposition to the law is kept abstract (even the American Declaration of Independence advocates the right to resist the state), but they could get in hot water if they were to support particular acts of resistance. Even if they stay within the formal limits of the law, they would risk attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies and facing extra-legal harassment from these powerful groups. I've got a family to support, and don't want to go there.
The recent brouhaha surrounding Wikileaks illustrates these dynamics. For details, go to Wikileaks Watch at the Ruling Class Blog, but there are two important points relevant to the topic of this essay: first, a person who says "the wrong thing" can be targeted for extra-legal harassment by the USA; second, reciprocal harassment of the state and its allies will be taken very seriously by the state.
The harassment of Wikileaks is a prime example of extra-legal (i.e. no due process) harassment in response to "saying the wrong thing". Following their publication of a whole bunch of slightly confidential documents, Wikileaks' website suffered a denial-of-service attack, law enforcement agencies effectively froze several accounts associated with Wikileaks, and several high profile politicians called for extra-legal action to be taken against Wikileaks.
In response to this harassment, several of the instigators and collaborators have been themselves targeted for similar harassment, such as denial-of-service attacks on their websites. This has sparked debate among anarchists over whether this counter-harassment is justified. Some of the rhetoric has made me question whether I can openly associate with these people (for instance, by making a donation) and maintain my mainstream respectability (i.e. avoid unwanted attention from powerful institutions).
It's one thing to make abstract arguments for breaking the law; it's another to provide moral support for people who are breaking a specific law as we speak. The difference is even greater when the law-breakers are physically interfering with another person's activities (an "attack", in the broadest sense of the word).
Finally, the justification of the law-breaking is important. The DoS attacks by "Anonymous" are often portrayed as Civil Disobedience; such cases are treated as limited threats by the established powers, but they can still be met with substantial retaliation. However, if the attacks are viewed as resistance (i.e. an attempt to directly block the exercise of power) , the full power of the state will be brought against the lawbreakers and their supporters. In this case, Anonymous has really escalated the seriousness of the Wikileaks situation. Compare the "Civil Disobedience - Resistance" of Anonymous with the "Scofflawry - Civil Disobedience" of Wikileaks. It isn't even clear that Wikileaks did anything illegal, but there is no doubt that the acts of Anonymous are illegal. Furthermore, Anonymous has a clear victim. This type of escalation had better be necessary, or else I am going to stay a mile away.
Through my associations with anarchists, I have been comforted by those who swear off confrontation, insisting that their goal is to expose the illegitimacy of the state and start building the institutions that will replace the state. Not only do I believe that they make an important point about what is the most productive strategy for improving society, but I feel comfortable that associating with such people will not bring me to the attention of the police.
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm whining about how hard it is for me to contribute to "the cause"; I did not write this to make excuses for myself or belittle those who have shouldered the responsibility for developing and communicating anarchist ideas. I just want to make a small point about the tactics of a political movement -- if we want to gain mainstream influence, then mainstream people need to feel comfortable associating with us.
*I believe that I have coined the term "scofflawry". Is there a better term for the habit of evading law enforcement? Scofflawry is a bit awkward, but is conveniently parallel to outlawry.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Good riddence: Emilio Massera obit in Economist
The Economist magazine has an obituary for Emilio Massera. I'd never heard of him before, but apparently, he was the admiral of the "dirty war" during Argentinia's military dictatorship. We can thank him for converting "disappeared" to a transitive verb. This obituary brings up one question: what was the role of the Vatican (bank) in this immense crime?
Emilio Massera | The Economist
Update: The link to the Vatican Bank was through a secret society, "Propaganda Due".
Emilio Massera | The Economist
Update: The link to the Vatican Bank was through a secret society, "Propaganda Due".
WikiLeaks changes domain name
In the face of a distributed denial of service attack, WikiLeaks has been forced to change its domain name.
It can also be accessed directly by IP address: http://213.251.145.96/
It can also be accessed directly by IP address: http://213.251.145.96/
Friday, November 19, 2010
On "The Statist Media"
Radley Balko proposes that the "legacy media" (i.e. mainstream media) is authoritarian, not liberal (due to their treatment of the TSA body scanner policy). I don't have much to say on this, except that these institutions cannot be pigeon-holed into any preconceived ideological categories. They have their own interests and their own culture, and this article provides some insight into that culture: The Statist Media | The Agitator
Update: The EFF provides instructions for filing complaints against the TSA.
Update: The EFF provides instructions for filing complaints against the TSA.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Our own Cultural Revolution?
As an academic with some Chinese colleagues, I've heard the horror stories of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution ™. I've never even considered whether it could happen in America, but a couple of essays from conservative academics have pushed the possibility into my mind.
First, the stage is set by the class/culture war masterpiece from Angelo Cordevilla, "America's Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution", presenting the "ruling class" as culturally disconnected from the rest of the country (oddly called "the country class", even though for the past century or so the majority of Americans have lived in cities). As is common in these criticisms of the liberal elite, academics take much of the blame for ignoring the culture of the common man, who just isn't going to take it anymore. The second reading, Whoring it in Higher Education from Jason Peters, bemoans the loss of academic integrity in the face of financial incentives. He seems to be saying that everyone involved in higher education, from the students to the professors, has abandoned the nobility of learning in favor of social status and prosperity.
The following excerpt is what reminded me of the Cultural Revolution:
First, the stage is set by the class/culture war masterpiece from Angelo Cordevilla, "America's Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution", presenting the "ruling class" as culturally disconnected from the rest of the country (oddly called "the country class", even though for the past century or so the majority of Americans have lived in cities). As is common in these criticisms of the liberal elite, academics take much of the blame for ignoring the culture of the common man, who just isn't going to take it anymore. The second reading, Whoring it in Higher Education from Jason Peters, bemoans the loss of academic integrity in the face of financial incentives. He seems to be saying that everyone involved in higher education, from the students to the professors, has abandoned the nobility of learning in favor of social status and prosperity.
The following excerpt is what reminded me of the Cultural Revolution:
I’d like to see more people with soft hands working harder, professors and students alike. I would allow no one on a liberal arts college campus to eat in the cafeteria who has not participated that week in serious food production.Of course, Professor Peters is not suggesting that this solution be forced upon schools from the outside, let alone that children be separated from their parents or that unrepentant ivory tower snobs be executed. I see no reason the believe that anything like the Cultural Revolution is likely, but I wonder if there might be the slightest seed of it somewhere in contemporary political movements like the Tea Party. America is different from China of the 1960's both in the large portion of population that may qualify as "elite" (e.g. college educated) and the mobility among classes. However, if the economy continues as it has, with lawyers, bankers, and computer programmers getting additional raises even as the non-college crowd struggles to make ends meet...then maybe, just maybe.And I would make more stringent demands on faculty members who enjoy arguing in the faculty dining room the merits of various single-malt scotches. Let them argue, but let them do some real work first. Let them, for example, castrate a ram for every gyro they eat.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Where's the respect?
Yesterday, I wrote that the rhetoric and political agenda of conservative Christianity can easily be interpreted as disrespectful towards those of us who don't share their religious views and policy preferences (Don't say "abortion is murder"). This rhetoric is often moralistic -- suggesting that anyone who disagrees is fundamentally degenerate, rather than simply being mistaken about one rather small part of life. The political agenda is often punitive -- insisting that certain behaviors are obligatory or prohibited, rather than simply being encouraged or discouraged.
While I believe that conservative Christians are the main source of this disrespect in public discourse, I figure that I should try to figure out where they may feel disrespected by the people whom they disagree with. Unfortunately, many public figures make constant spurious claims that Christians are the victims of frequent disrespect, yet the examples that they cite (e.g. "The War on Christmas") are typically nothing more than non-Christians challenging the cultural dominance of Christianity.
Here are the issues where I expect that conservative Christians (really, social conservatives more generally) may feel that their sense of morality is being disparaged, or that they are being prohibited from engaging in important aspects of their desired lifestyle.
Aside from partisan posturing and attacks on politicians, most disrespect in public discourse originates from conservatives.
While I believe that conservative Christians are the main source of this disrespect in public discourse, I figure that I should try to figure out where they may feel disrespected by the people whom they disagree with. Unfortunately, many public figures make constant spurious claims that Christians are the victims of frequent disrespect, yet the examples that they cite (e.g. "The War on Christmas") are typically nothing more than non-Christians challenging the cultural dominance of Christianity.
Here are the issues where I expect that conservative Christians (really, social conservatives more generally) may feel that their sense of morality is being disparaged, or that they are being prohibited from engaging in important aspects of their desired lifestyle.
- Animal rights: There's nothing worse than being called a murderer. Animal rights activists can get pretty extreme in their rhetoric. Luckily, the absolutists have no real political or social influence. While conservatives may call these people "leftists", in fact they are just as likely to target their fellow "leftists" as anyone else. In fact, one of their favorite targets is another stereotypical "leftist" group -- biologists engaged in animal research. Another favorite target of animal rightists is the hedonistic, fur-clad cosmopolitan elite who the cultural conservatives often rail against. Regular Americans eating cheeseburgers almost never receive any attention from these people. The small-town family farm of conservative ideal is typically viewed as being a pretty humane system for producing meat. Vegetarians are definitely more common on "the left" than "the right", but they are typically pretty tolerant of us carnivores, and there isn't any reason that a Christian must eat meat (is there?). The only real conflict between traditionalists and vegetarians arises over hunting, but vegetarians will typically cede the issue if the hunters make the case that it is an important part of non-elite culture and livelihood (but British fox hunting doesn't get a pass).
- Gun prohibition: As with hunting, some extremists will attribute base motives to people who want to own guns, such as bloodlust or a desire to dominate others (frankly, many Republicans have done a lot to connect these ideas in public perception). However, most calls for restricting gun ownership are framed as utilitarian anti-crime measures. As with meat-eating, gun ownership doesn't have anything to do with Christianity, though guns do play a role in some traditional lifestyles. The prospect of broad gun prohibition is politically plausible, but remote. If conservatives are concerned about losing their guns, that risk is nothing compared to the prohibitions that they are imposing on others.
- Multiculturalism/Libertinism: Conservatives are often depicted as "hateful" or "dictatorial" for holding others to certain standards. This is often a reasonable response to attempts by conservatives to impose their cultural preferences on others. However, this hostile response is not justified if the conservative is trying to persuade others to change their lifestyle in the absence of coercion. But unless we have a culturally libertarian state (including unlimited immigration), non-conservatives will be justifiably suspicious that any advocacy for cultural uniformity is just a prelude to violence.
- Abortion: Opposition to abortion is often ascribed to an attitude that women are subordinate to men. This accusation is probably made to quickly in many cases, but I cannot say that it is unprovoked; if you want to dictate major life decisions to women, be prepared to be called "sexist". While not all opponents of abortion are sexist, there is good evidence than a good portion of them are, and America traditionally was sexist, so a traditionalist should not be too shocked by this accusation.
Aside from partisan posturing and attacks on politicians, most disrespect in public discourse originates from conservatives.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Let's talk, but don't say "abortion is murder"
Todd Hartch, has written an interesting essay about what drove him to get involved in the gay marriage debate at his workplace. Many of us try to avoid the topics of politics and religion at our workplaces, but things are a little different for Mr. Hartch since he's a (tenured) professor of history at a public university. He's also a socially conservative Christian, and like many conservatives, feels that he's been pressured to keep his mouth shut by the fabled "campus political correctness".
I am probably the ideological opposite of Prof. Hartch, but I liked a lot of what he said in his essay, and my first impulse is to endorse his call for his political/ideological allies to speak up. Below are some of the key points of his essay, with my thoughts interjected:
Campus Political Correctness and the Costs of Free Speech
Overall, most members of the department follow the same strategy as Hartch described. It's just good manners. There is good reason to avoid this sort of confrontation with one's colleagues. At best, it distracts from work, and it may even make it impossible for colleagues to work together.
However, let's assume that universities manage to protect the free speech rights of everyone. Professors still must not appear to be prostletyzing to their students. Hartch has provided examples of how professors can participate in these discussions outside of the classroom, but even there the power relationship between students and professors still holds. A professor will have to be impeccably respectful of others in order to avoid intimidating students into silence on this issue. I think this will be difficult if a professor such as Hartch effectively says "my sexual impulses are healthy, while yours are worthless if not destructive".
Finally...
As you may have noticed, my own opinions are well outside of the mainstream (largely opposite to Hartch's). As things stand, I avoid talking about a lot of my political and moral opinions. When I do discuss these issues, I take care to avoid direct contradiction of mainstream values (though I will openly question the value of voting). I was more open about my fringe opinions during my first couple of years in college, but as I entered a more professional environment, I kept my mouth shut more and more.
Whatever happens, part of the purpose of the university is to hash out these issues and clearly expose the purely idiotic arguments that are so common in public discourse.
For further thought: International travel is part of the job description for many academics. Would open discussion of sensitive issues interfere with their ability to travel, particularly to more restrictive countries? Even in the USA, one academic was denied entrance due to what he had said about drug use, and another may have been denied entrance dues to his political opinions (since visa's can be denied without any evidence, we can't really know).
I am probably the ideological opposite of Prof. Hartch, but I liked a lot of what he said in his essay, and my first impulse is to endorse his call for his political/ideological allies to speak up. Below are some of the key points of his essay, with my thoughts interjected:
Campus Political Correctness and the Costs of Free Speech
For at least two generations, Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, and other religious conservatives have sought to “get along” with the prevailing American campus culture of relativism and moral license. We have dedicated ourselves to academic excellence, to fair and balanced teaching, and to keeping a low profile. We have kept quiet in department meetings, in the faculty senate, and on university committees. We have bitten our tongues when colleagues disparaged our religion, our morality, and our most cherished beliefs. We have convinced our colleagues that religious conservatives can be surprisingly thoughtful and urbane.The above description matches my own impression of the situation in academia (at least in the sciences). I have a number of conservative religious colleagues who allow their religious identity to be known, but don't make a fuss when they disagree with others. Political comments are often shared among like-minded colleagues, though a few faculty members will make leftist/anti-religious comments to broader audiences and sometimes earn a rebuke for unprofessional behavior.
Overall, most members of the department follow the same strategy as Hartch described. It's just good manners. There is good reason to avoid this sort of confrontation with one's colleagues. At best, it distracts from work, and it may even make it impossible for colleagues to work together.
In the end, what have such actions won for us? ...Our jobs are secure and our careers give every sign of continuing success.
We have watched, though, as our campuses veered farther and farther off course. Sexual license is now taken for granted. Mentions of abortion, homosexuality, and even bestiality [I think Hartch didn't get the joke -R] hardly merit a second glance in our campus papers. Many students have never heard a rational conservative argument about any moral issue.I agree that rational conservative voices are hard to find. At least, it's hard to find any who can speak meaningfully about social issues to a person who doesn't share their own religious and cultural identity (Hartch is only the second such writer that I've encountered).
This is something that conservatives should keep in mind if they want to engage in thoughtful discussions with others. Hartch was bothered by derisive comments targeted at his culture, but I think that conservatives most often are the ones dishing out derisive comments. Liberals may make snide comments about conservatives in their private conversations, but conservatives regularly announce to the world that liberals are degenerates who are destroying everything good in our society. Off the top of my head, I recall a Republican candidate for Congress who attacked his Democratic opponent for supporting "San Francisco values", and the Pope recently blamed atheists for Nazism. These are mainstream conservative Christians. To further illustrate the point, conservatives regularly use moral reasoning to justify criminal punishment of many actions that others engage in (e.g. drug use).
A thoughtful conservative will have to keep this in mind when he tries to hold a conversation with others: mainstream conservatism regularly denigrates the morality of others and even threatens others with physical punishment. The epitome is probably the rhetoric around abortion. Mainstream conservatives regularly equate abortion with murder and the holocaust. If you tell your colleague that "abortion is murder", think about what you are saying. This person may have had an abortion, or may know someone who had an abortion. In that situation, you would be calling that person or their friend a murderer. That's quite a loaded word, and even if you don't mean to say that abortion should be punished by imprisonment or execution, it isn't hard for another person to make that inference (at least at an emotional level).
Many conservative positions can be viewed as threatening, and must be thoughtfully worded if they are not going to start a fight. I've seen what happens when the words "abortion is murder" are uttered to the wrong person. So, if you want to have a thoughtful conversation, don't say "abortion is murder"; you may also want to be clear to distance yourself from anyone who does make those statements in public.
Perhaps all this might be justified if students were somehow benefitting from this atmosphere of license and relativism. The opposite is the case. Most students, even at the best universities, have no passion, no love of learning. Focused on careers, at best, or, more often, on nothing at all, they approach texts that have changed the world as if they were being forced to read the dictionary. Faced with the results of painstaking research, they yawn and check their phones. They do less homework than American students have ever done before because professors have relaxed their requirements. The result is that, amazingly enough, students are bored in their modern Sodom.
...What is to be done?
It’s time to speak up. It is time to make a public case for truth, for human dignity, for academic standards, and for the joy of learning. I guarantee that students will not be bored when they see us defending the truth. (I should point out that speaking up is not a synonym for being rude.)I agree that students typically don't appreciate the opportunities that they have at a university, and faculty have a responsibility to engage them in any way possible. If that means discussing politics and morality, then so be it. If there is anyplace where Americans can have a respectful political discussion, it is on campus.
We need to go into this process knowing that the risks are real....we risk our jobs. There’s not much that can be said to minimize this threat, but I can propose that if universities make it a common practice to fire their vocally conservative professors, it will publicize our arguments more than anything we could do on our own.Interestingly, most calls to fire politicized professors (e.g. Ward Churchill) come from conservatives. David Horowitz has made it his mission to discourage professors from discussing political, moral, or religious issues with their students.
However, let's assume that universities manage to protect the free speech rights of everyone. Professors still must not appear to be prostletyzing to their students. Hartch has provided examples of how professors can participate in these discussions outside of the classroom, but even there the power relationship between students and professors still holds. A professor will have to be impeccably respectful of others in order to avoid intimidating students into silence on this issue. I think this will be difficult if a professor such as Hartch effectively says "my sexual impulses are healthy, while yours are worthless if not destructive".
Finally...
[W]e need to dialogue with those most opposed to our ideas. Some professors and students will respond to our more visible presence on campus with anger and ridicule, but some will want to understand us. With this latter group we must make every effort to communicate clearly and to forge relationships of trust and respect.Well, good luck with all this. Such discussions should have intellectual value, and they may even overcome some of the divisiveness of mainstream political discourse. Finally, a tradition of open discussion of issues outside of one's own specialty may allow truly fringe opinions to be expressed openly. Maybe the radicals will be a bit more visible. Maybe recent immigrants will become stronger advocates for their traditional religions. There is also the chance that the anti-religious expressions that Hartch wants to counter will become much more frequent and ubiquitous as more people feel comfortable discussing these issues.
As you may have noticed, my own opinions are well outside of the mainstream (largely opposite to Hartch's). As things stand, I avoid talking about a lot of my political and moral opinions. When I do discuss these issues, I take care to avoid direct contradiction of mainstream values (though I will openly question the value of voting). I was more open about my fringe opinions during my first couple of years in college, but as I entered a more professional environment, I kept my mouth shut more and more.
Whatever happens, part of the purpose of the university is to hash out these issues and clearly expose the purely idiotic arguments that are so common in public discourse.
For further thought: International travel is part of the job description for many academics. Would open discussion of sensitive issues interfere with their ability to travel, particularly to more restrictive countries? Even in the USA, one academic was denied entrance due to what he had said about drug use, and another may have been denied entrance dues to his political opinions (since visa's can be denied without any evidence, we can't really know).
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Fraud everywhere
From News of the Weird:
Fair is fair, but I'm willing to accept a truce if they are.
A lawyer in Xian, China, filed a lawsuit in September against a movie house and film distributor for wasting her time -- because she was exposed to 20 minutes of advertisements that began at the posted time for the actual movie to begin. Ms. Chen Xiaomei is requesting a refund (equivalent of about $5.20) plus damages of an equal amount, plus the equivalent of about 15 cents for "emotional" damages -- plus an apology. [The Guardian (London), 9-8-10]I hope she wins. In fact, I hope that she comes to America leads a billion-dollar class-action fraud lawsuit against the movie theaters and movie studios. If the movie studios will sue their audience for illegally distributing copyrighted material, then we should sue them for this sort of systematic nickel-and-dime fraud that regularly emanates from the marketing departments of corporate America.
Fair is fair, but I'm willing to accept a truce if they are.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Democrats deserve to lose.
I made the mistake of watching TV this weekend, and was treated to the massive flood of campaign advertisements (mostly negative). One in particular stood out as especially disgusting. It comes from the DSCC, is completely xenophobic, and is embedded below.
This add attacks Pat Toomey for his stance on trade with China. It starts off by focusing on Toomey's opposition to trade barriers with China, blaming them for "costing Pennsylvania nearly 100,000 jobs". This is bad enough. Apparently Democrats have no idea of how to stabilize the American economy, so all they can do is target China as a scapegoat*. However, it gets worse.
The advertisement finished by criticizing Toomey for welcoming China's economic growth, as though it's a problem that hundreds of millions of Chinese have risen above poverty in the past three decades. One advertisement (which I cannot find) even suggests that Toomey is betraying America because he considers the welfare of Chinese to have some value (and therefore he should seek a position in the Chinese government). To top it off, the advertisement end with a message in a fortune cookie.
All in all, this advertisement campaign reflects very poorly on the Democrats. First, it validates the impression that their economic strategy is identical to Hugo Chavez's: isolate and centralize. Second, it indicates that their foreign policy views economic growth outside of the USA as a threat. Finally, it demonstrates that their political strategy is to find scapegoats* for our economic problems. If I weren't so cynical about politic advertisements, I'd say that the Democrats were fascists.
*The Chinese have sold us cheap goods and given us cheap loans. Our misuse of those resources is not their fault. We could have used them to increase our own productivity, but instead we went on a wasteful consumption binge. Likewise, the fact that some people cannot find work is not due to the fact that foreigners sell us cheap goods; it is due to how we organize our own economic resources.
This add attacks Pat Toomey for his stance on trade with China. It starts off by focusing on Toomey's opposition to trade barriers with China, blaming them for "costing Pennsylvania nearly 100,000 jobs". This is bad enough. Apparently Democrats have no idea of how to stabilize the American economy, so all they can do is target China as a scapegoat*. However, it gets worse.
The advertisement finished by criticizing Toomey for welcoming China's economic growth, as though it's a problem that hundreds of millions of Chinese have risen above poverty in the past three decades. One advertisement (which I cannot find) even suggests that Toomey is betraying America because he considers the welfare of Chinese to have some value (and therefore he should seek a position in the Chinese government). To top it off, the advertisement end with a message in a fortune cookie.
All in all, this advertisement campaign reflects very poorly on the Democrats. First, it validates the impression that their economic strategy is identical to Hugo Chavez's: isolate and centralize. Second, it indicates that their foreign policy views economic growth outside of the USA as a threat. Finally, it demonstrates that their political strategy is to find scapegoats* for our economic problems. If I weren't so cynical about politic advertisements, I'd say that the Democrats were fascists.
*The Chinese have sold us cheap goods and given us cheap loans. Our misuse of those resources is not their fault. We could have used them to increase our own productivity, but instead we went on a wasteful consumption binge. Likewise, the fact that some people cannot find work is not due to the fact that foreigners sell us cheap goods; it is due to how we organize our own economic resources.
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