Month: November 2012

Unwarranted Fear

I’m sure you’ve all heard the news that Hostess, the company that produces Twinkies and other foodstuff that’s bad for you, have decided to liquidate:

Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of iconic treats such as Twinkies and traditional pantry staple Wonder Bread, said Friday it is shuttering its plants and will seek to liquidate the 82-year-old business.

The company, which filed for Chapter 11 in January, said it has requested bankruptcy-court authorization to close the business and sell its assets.

A victim of changing consumer tastes, high commodity costs and, most importantly, strained labor relations, Hostess ultimately was brought to its knees by a national strike orchestrated by its second-largest union.

I could write about the Union’s effectiveness at preventing Hostess from cutting its employees’ wages by 8% by forcing them to cut wages by 100% but you’ve heard it all by now. Instead I want to focus on the panic buying. There has been a lot of talk about people buying up stocks of Twinkies in the hopes of either storing them for personal consumption or selling them when they become more scarce. Although I expect this I’m still baffled by the behavior.

There is obviously a demand for Twinkies. Now that Hostess is being liquidate enterprising entrepreneurs have an opportunity to buy up the trademark, recipe, and production equipment for Twinkies and produced them without repeating the same mistakes as Hostess. Through the miracles of the market Twinkies are almost certain to continue on. Somebody else will own the manufacturing capabilities, pay the employees, etc. but they will likely be the exact same yellow cream-filled cakes as people seem to love.

In the immortal words inscribed on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, don’t panic.

At Least They Didn’t Have Guns

Consider this scenarior:

Robbers armed with axes and bats rode motorbikes into an indoor shopping centre in north London and raided a jewellery store.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. Even though England suffers some of the most draconian gun control laws out there people continue to commit violent crimes. In this case thugs armed with axes rode motorcycles to a mall jewelry store and robbed it. Fortunately nobody was injured by that could have been far different if the axe armed thugs had decided to attack any of the mall goers. Gun control advocates would say, “At least they wouldn’t have guns,” but I’d prefer to be shot than hacked up with an axe. Furthermore the motorcycles these thugs were riding gave them greater speed than anybody else in the mall, meaning running away wouldn’t have been an effective strategy. What could one do in such a situation? Little, unless they had an effective means of self-defense such as a firearm.

Gun control suffers many fallacies, one is the idea that violent crime can somehow be reduced if guns are strictly controlled. Robbery, wielding axes as weapons, and riding motorcycles inside of malls are likely all illegal in England, yet six individuals armed themselves with axes, rode motorcycles into the mall, and robbed a jewelry story. Making something illegal only prevents the lawful from partaking, it does nothing to deter those unconcerned with the law. Disarming those with no criminal intentions in the hope of preventing violent crime is hopeless. It does lower the cost of committing violent acts.

Monday Metal: At Midnight They’ll Get Wise by Grand Magus

Although a majority of the metal I post on this site falls under the categories of power and folk metal I will always have a soft spot in my heart for good old ’80’s style metal. Grand Magus is a band that I haven’t heard of before but has been around since 1996. Their music leads me to believe they were created a decade too late. Sit back and enjoy some old school sounding metal:

Violent Pro-Government Extremists

Shall Not Be Questioned has a post that links to an article trying to unite the various gun control advocacy groups. The article is an interesting read because I believe the author is completely unaware of the irony of what he penned. Instead of coming up with something new or unique to say about gun control the article parrots the now common anti-government fear mongering that seems to compose a majority of anti-gun statements:

But the truly stunning growth came from anti-government “Patriot”/militia movement that views the government as their primary enemy. These groups formed in the mid-1990′s based on the perception of violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, ID in 1992 and near Waco, TX in 1993. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is attributable to this movement which peaked a year after the incident and then rapidly declined. But the movement was once again energized in 2008 with the economic recession and the appearance of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. The numbers of these groups rose from 149 in 2008 to 1,274 last year. Of these, 334 were militias. A state by state listing of these groups is provided here. A graph produced by SPLC showing the meteoric growth of such groups is displayed below.

What did the Oklahoma City bombing have to do with gun control? Who knows? Furthermore the article only managed to bring up the three commonly cited examples of violent anti-government actions. Everything else is pure fear mongering.

Let’s consider the other side of the coin. What about pro-government extremists? Democide, that is non-war murders by government, has killed six times more people than wars this century alone. Whether we discuss the gulags of the Soviet Union, the death camps of Nazi Germany, or China’s Great Leap Forward the number of deaths caused by governments is high. Gun control advocates will often stop me here and claim that such atrocities would never happen in the United States. I’m pretty sure asking Native Americans or residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 whether or not the United States would commit democide would lead to a resounding yes.

Advocates of gun control want to strip non-state individuals of firearms. Their method of doing this is to implement laws against gun ownership and have state agents, armed with guns, kidnap or murder any non-state individual in possession of a gun. Who is the more violent extremist? Me, an anarchist who carries a gun but has never killed anybody, or somebody who wants armed agents of the state to initiation violence against people like me? I would say the latter show a much higher propensity for violence. They want to give more power to organizations that have, together, killed an estimated 262,000,000 people (and that’s not including the wars those organizations have waged). How does that make sense? How can somebody claim to oppose violence while advocating state-initiated violence? Just because a guy with a costume and a badge initiates violence doesn’t make it something other than violence.

Statists seems to have a hard time scrounging up examples of anti-government violence. They mention Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombings time and time again but in each case the number of people who died was relativel small. One other other hand I can point out many examples of pro-government violence that killed millions of people. It seems disarming the people would put them at an even greater disadvantage when faced with state aggression. Why do gun control advocates want to disarm generally peaceful individuals instead of disarming states? Why are they pro-government extremists? If gun control advocates truly opposed violence they would be demanding the governments around the world disarm.

Seeing Through the Propaganda

Israel and Palestine are at it again. After Israel killed the top military official of Hamas, and posted the video of the assassination on YouTube (classy Israel, just plain classy), things have gone nowhere but down. After the assassination rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, which caused Israel to call in the reserves (isn’t it funny how quickly things spiral out of control). During all of this propaganda has been flying every which way. Of everything I’ve read so far the most outright disgusting piece of propaganda I’ve seen so far was the following statement made by Netanyahu:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas “deliberately targets our children and they deliberately place their rockets next to their children.”

Hamas his deliberately targeting Israeli children? Let’s talk about children for a moment. How many children have been killed by this pissing contest between Israel and Palestine? Quite a few, but the numbers are certainly skewed against Israel. By September 2000 1,477 Palestinian children were killed by Israelis while 129 Israeli children were killed by Palestinians. Adding the totals since September 2000 we get 2,863 Palestinian children killed by Israelis and 258 Israeli children killed by Palestinians. Looking at the numbers it seems Israel is the one that has a higher propensity to target children.

Somebody reading this will probably try to label me an anti-Semite as that is the traditional insult of Israelophiles. Such a charge would be entirely false. In fact I don’t like either Israel or Palestine. I’m an anarchist, I don’t like any state. All I’m trying to do with this post is point out the propaganda and explose it for the falsity it is. Honestly the only way this fighting will end is if the people in each country give their respective governments the boot. Until that day people on both sides are going to be killed and state agents on both sides will be spewing out propaganda to win the hearts and minds of the world in the hopes of rallying public support for their wars.

Terrorist Food Trucks

Thanks to Bruce Schneier’s blog I now know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone off the deep end:

Public Intelligence recently posted a Powerpoint presentation from the NYC fire department (FDNY) discussing the unique safety issues mobile food trucks present. Along with some actual concerns (many food trucks use propane and/or gasoline-powered generators to cook; some *gasp* aren’t properly licensed food vendors), the presenter decided to toss in some DHS speculation on yet another way terrorists might be killing us in the near future.

That’s right. Instead of serving up a quick hot meal, these food trucks will be serving up death, and lots of it! Under the heading “Terrorist Implications,” the FDNY lists the exact reasons we should be concerned, most of which begin with the word “high.”

I hope you’re afraid of food trucks now because they may actually be terrorists in disguise! This is another case of the state creating fear to justify itself.

The Economics of the Affordable Care Act

With Obama’s reelection and the Democratic Party’s control of the Senate it appears that The Affordable Care Act is here to stay (it would still be with us had Romney won, he’d have just repealed it and replaced it with the same thing but under a different name). Now that the law is starting to go into affect we’re seeing the unintended consequences. Since the legislation raises the costs for many business owners we’re seeing changes in employment methodology. Many companies are laying off employees to avoid the financial burdon of the legislation, other companies are cutting employee hours, and now some franchises are going to implement surcharges to offset the additional expenses of Obamacare:

While some business owners threaten to cut workers’ hours to avoid paying for their health care, a West Palm Beach, Fla., restaurant owner is going even further. John Metz said he will add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills to offset what he said are the increased costs of Obamacare, along with reducing his employees’ hours.

“If I leave the prices the same, but say on the menu that there is a 5 percent surcharge for Obamacare, customers have two choices. They can either pay it and tip 15 or 20 percent, or if they really feel so inclined, they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server, who is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare,” Metz told The Huffington Post. “Although it may sound terrible that I’m doing this, it’s the only alternative. I’ve got to pass the cost on to the consumer.”

Economically literate individuals expected this to happen. You can’t increase the costs faced by a business and not expect that business to compensate. Unfortunately man people are economically illiterate and are therefore throwing a fit about the layoffs, slashed hours, and additional surcharges. The economically illiterate are advocating businesses that adjust their employment methodology in response to Obamacare be boycotted or sued.

What’s ironic is the economically illiterate got exactly what they wanted, Obamacare. As with anything there were consequences and now advocates of Obamacare are trying to escape those consequences. The only lesson that should be learned here is to be careful what you wish for.

Ron Paul’s Farewell Speech

Yesterday Ron Paul gave his farewell speech to Congress. It will likely be the last speech opposing war to ever be given in Congress so I highly urge you to read the transcript . His speech can best be summed up as the following: Knock off the violence, it’s not doing anything positive. In his speech Paul condemns state violence against foreign countries and people living in the United States. Sadly he is the last true advocate of free market economics and voluntaryism left in the federal government so we will likely hear no more than lip service paid to peace and economic freedom. Before closing Paul had some valuable advice:

The idealism of non-aggression and rejecting all offensive use of force should be tried. The idealism of government sanctioned violence has been abused throughout history and is the primary source of poverty and war. The theory of a society being based on individual freedom has been around for a long time. It’s time to take a bold step and actually permit it by advancing this cause, rather than taking a step backwards as some would like us to do.

[…]

The ultimate solution is not in the hands of the government.

The solution falls on each and every individual, with guidance from family, friends and community.

The #1 responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow. This is of greater importance than working on changing the government; that is secondary to promoting a virtuous society. If we can achieve this, then the government will change.

Steering this country around can only be achieved by changing the hearts and minds of the individuals living here. That means getting a population that consists heavily of violent individuals who support the use of coercive means to force others to comply with their desires to turn over a new leaf. As you can see it’s an insurmountable tasks and one that is unlikely to be accomplished anytime soon. Still the best way of achieving a non-aggressive society is to live a non-aggressive lifestyle. This doesn’t mean opposing self-defense but opposing the initiation of force.

I’m sad to see Paul leaving but am happy to know he escaped the political system with his immoral soul intact. Americans have spoken and they have indicated a desire to live in a violent redistributive society where rights are mere whims of government officials. People want the wars, they want money taken from others and given to themselves, and they want only the rights they approve to be protected. So long as public opinion continues to support the status quo there is no chance of liberty thriving in this country. Those of us that support liberty must do our best to lead by example in the hope that others will follow in our footsteps. Perhaps some day people will be ready for a society built on non-aggression but that day isn’t today.

I want to thank Ron Paul for promoting non-aggressive ideals in the United States. His contribution to liberty is incalculable as noted by the massive growth of the liberty movement since his presidential bid in 2008.

My Assessment of OpenNIC

A few months ago I posted about OpeNIC. For those who didn’t read that post OpenNIC is a decentralized Domain Name System (DNS). Most Internet users setup their computers to use DNS provided by their Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are several weaknesses to using an ISP provided DNS including possible reliability issues (the ISP’s DNS servers go down), potential censorship (the United States government has used its power over DNS providers to enforce nonexistent censorship laws), and stored log files of sites you’ve visited that are easily accessible by law enforcement officers.

OpenNIC, being a decentralized system, avoids many of these weaknesses. Since there are so many OpenNIC servers available to use the chances of a complete DNS outage is reduced. Government enforced censorship is more difficult because the OpenNIC has several exclusive Top Level Domains (TLD) that cannot be controlled (i.e. shutdown) easily. Logs are also harder for government officials to obtain since most OpenNIC servers either keep no logs or purge logs within 24 hours (a server’s policy is generally be found here).

I’ve been using OpenNIC for all my DNS needs since September and so far have had a favorable experience. Well known TLDs (.com, .net, .org, etc.) are properly forwarded to their respective servers so I’m able to access any domain name without issue. DNS lookups aren’t noticeably slower using OpenNIC when compared to using DNSs provided by Google, OpenDNS, or Comcast. I also haven’t experienced any downtime. Overall I like OpenNIC and will continue using it and will recommend it. I think the system is able to address some shortcomings of centralized DNSs while being reliable enough for day-to-day use.

They Hate Us for Our Freedom

I can’t imagine why so many people in the Middle East hate the United States:

From McChrystal’s remarks:

We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there’s danger, they’re asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. That doesn’t mean I’m criticizing the people who are executing. I’m just giving you perspective. We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.

Emphasis mine. They must hate us for our freedom, it couldn’t be because our government is killing innocent people left and right.