Month: January 2013

You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

While I admit there are multiple definitions of the world libertarian I don’t think any of them involve Glenn Beck:

Glenn Beck announced plans Tuesday during his online television program to expand the news operation in his media company, The Blaze, and refocus it as a libertarian network, opening three foreign bureaus, debuting a nightly newsmagazine show, and relocating his New York staff to showy new offices.

Glenn Beck operating a libertarian network would be akin to me operating a progressive network. Needless to say there would be no reason to take either seriously.

Pot See Kettle, Calls it Black

Sometimes the abject hatred gun control advocates hold for anybody who disagrees with them is so blatant not even the densest of men can miss it. Consider Gawker, an online media company that is, rightfully, held in a fairly low regard with a great deal of the Internet. Reporting found on Gawker websites can range from poor to abysmal and sometimes even involves overt hypocrisy, as is the case with John Cook’s article titled Here Is a List of All the Assholes Handsome Law-Abiding Citizens Who Own Guns Some People in New York City. In all fairness the author admits that his title isn’t entirely accurate as he doesn’t believe all gun owners are assholes:

(And for the record, they are not all assholes. Some of them need guns for legitimate reasons for their jobs, like providing security for assholes.)

As the title of the article implies, Mr. Cook decided to point out his belief that most gun owners are assholes by being an asshole. He posted a list of every name of every gun permit holder in New York City. Nothing demonstrates the vileness of your intellectual opposition like attempting to publicly shame them. Fortunately gun ownership in the United States is still generally accepted rendering Mr. Cook’s attempt at public shaming almost entirely ineffective.

I appreciate the actions taken by gun control advocates such as Mr. Cook. Their childish antics demonstrate a lack of maturity and put into question their sanity, which makes my job much easier. I hope Mr. Cook invests the great deal of time necessary to comb through the phone book in an attempt to tie addresses (which he was angry about not receiving) to names. Such a holy mission would take a great deal of time and that would hopefully keep him too busy to write articles, which would help his employer save some face by not having articles appearing on their front page that appear to be written by a person with questionable sanity.

Living Beyond Your Means

Fiscally conservative individuals spend a lot of time lambasting individuals who live beyond their means. In this case living beyond your means simply refers to spending more money than you have available. American consumers hold some $11.38 trillion of debt with the average household owing $15,418 on their credit cards. Obviously Americans are spending beyond their means if the above definition is followed. On the other hand spending beyond your means may actually be a smart investment strategy due to inflation.

The rate of inflation reported by the federal government hovers around two percent at the moment. How inflation is calculated has changed over the years and if we go by the 1990’s calculation method we get a number hovering around five percent and if we go by the 1980’s calculation method we get a number hovering around nine percent. In other words the rate of inflation is notable, especially when you use older calculation methods (the federal government periodically has to change the method it uses to calculate inflation in order to make the numbers appear better than they are).

Inflation is an insidious beast. Monetary policy advocates claim that inflation is necessary in order to prevent individuals from hoarding cash. What inflation actually does is discourage savings, meaning real wealth isn’t preserved for later use. Ideally purchases requiring large amounts of wealth would be paid for through savings. In such a case real wealth is exchanged for a good or service. Inflation discourages such a practice and encourages the use of credit, which is currently nonexistent wealth that is promised at a future date. Knowing this, under conditions of inflation, one can argue that living beyond your means is actually an intelligent economic strategy.

Let’s say you make a dollar. If you spend that dollar immediately you can buy a widget but due to inflation that dollar will not buy you a widget at a later date. Obviously the widget isn’t devaluing at the same rate at the dollar since a dollar can buy one now but not later. In such a case converting that dollar to a widget makes economic sense, since you will be able to trade that widget for more dollars at a later date. Effectively the widget allows you to preserve wealth. Even if the widget devalues, that is to say it becomes worth less due to wear, tear, and obsoleteness, it may devalue at a slower rate than the dollar. Under such circumstances it would make sense to convert dollars to widgets just to preserve purchasing power.

Why would an individual stop there? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to use credit in order to convert future devalued dollars into current goods? If widgets don’t devalue it would be smart to obtain as many of them as possible immediately. Even if you have to buy them on credit it would make sense to do so so long as the devaluation of the dollar due to inflation is higher than the cost of interest. On top of that the dollars you use to pay back your debt will have devalued so you can use credit to purchase wealth preserving goods now and pay back the debt with dollars that are worth less. Even if the widgets devalue you may come out ahead if the rate of widget devaluation combined with the rate of interest on the credit is lower than than rate of dollar devaluation, especially when you consider that the credit will be paid back with those devaluing dollars.

We can add another wrench to this scenario by introducing debt forgiveness. Bankruptcy laws allow an individual to repudiate a great deal of their debt. Through the magic of bankruptcy an individual can buy a large number of wealth preserving widgets using nonexistent wealth then repudiate that debt. People will point out that repudiating your debt will damage your credit score, meaning you’ll have a more difficult time obtaining credit in the future. To that I would point out that any future credit would be worth less than current credit anyways. By converting dollars and available credit into wealth preserving widgets one is able to increase their purchasing power immediately, preserve it, and use it at a later date in lieu of credit. Bankruptcy laws don’t erase all credit, many government loans can’t be repudiated. This may not matter though. If one can erase enough of their debt to come out ahead in the end buying widgets on credit may be a smart decision economically.

The monetary system in the United States encourages living beyond your means. What incentive does an individual have to preserve cash when it’s constantly devaluing? If you spend money now you can buy more than if you waited. Furthermore if you take credit you can repudiate all or a portion of it through bankruptcy. Living beyond your means suddenly becomes a smart investment strategy because one can obtain actual goods and services for nonexistent wealth. Effectively you can get something for nothing.

Perhaps fiscal conservatives have been looking at things all wrong. Instead of saying that the economic problems we suffer under today are caused by individuals living beyond their means it may be smarter to place the blame on the constantly inflating currency and the ability to repudiate debt. An inflating currency encourages the use of credit instead of preserved wealth and the ability to repudiate debt encourages the use of credit that cannot be repaid.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Miguel at Gun-Free Zone posted an interesting article ran in the LA Times in 2007:

Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher homicide rate in their jurisdiction, and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, the group alleges. Odds are, it says, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in the world.

“You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined,” says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division. He says senior police officers are “obsessed with statistics because that’s how you get promotions,” and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate.

Japan’s annual police report says its officers made arrests in 96.6% of the country’s 1,392 homicides in 2005.

But Saikawa, who says he became disillusioned by “fishy” police practices and in 1997 left the force in disgust after 30 years, claims that police try to avoid adding homicides to their caseload unless the identity of the killer is obvious.

This article brings up a problem with reported numbers, they’re often massaged in order to make an issue look better than it really is. Numbers can be massaged in many different ways. Japan apparently tries to avoid labeling deaths as homicides, likely in an attempt to make the country appear safer by keeping the number of reported homicides very low. This isn’t the only case of such shenanigans being used to argue a case.

Consider Chicago’s policy of reporting homicides that occur indoors separately from those occurring outdoors. Chicago’s police justify the separate categorization for indoor homicides by claiming that police were unable to intervene whereas police intervention is possible outdoors. In truth the separate categorization was likely done in order to make homicide numbers look lower.

Number massaging occurs elsewhere. The United States is often cited as having the highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation. On paper this statistic makes it appear as though the healthcare industry in the United States is woefully lacking, especially when compared to nations that have state run healthcare systems. When you dig into each country’s methodology for calculating those numbers notable differences arrise:

A 2006 report from WHO stated that “among developed countries, mortality rates may reflect differences in the definitions used for reporting births, such as cut-offs for registering live births and birth weight.” The Bulletin of WHO noted that “it has also been common practice in several countries (e.g. Belgium, France, Spain) to register as live births only those infants who survived for a specified period beyond birth”; those who did not survive were “completely ignored for registration purposes.” Since the U.S. counts as live births all babies who show “any evidence of life,” even the most premature and the smallest — the very babies who account for the majority of neonatal deaths — it necessarily has a higher neonatal-mortality rate than countries that do not.

When two countries have different methods of calculating infant morality rates comparing official statistics from those two countries will give unreliable results.

One must keep in mind that reported numbers are potentially inaccurate. Inaccuracies may arise due to manipulating numbers before they’re reported (as Japan apparently does by failing to report many homicides as homicides) or by manipulating numbers after they’re reported (as Chicago does by categorizing indoor and outdoor homicides separately). When making arguments based on reported numbers one must use caution. Without knowing how those numbers were generated they become potentially worthless. A country’s homicide rate may be reported as low but you must know how those homicide numbers are generated to know for sure.

Investigating the Connection Between Psychotropic Drugs and Mass Murders

This is interesting:

The Board of Directors and membership of the International Society For Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry send condolences to the people of Newtown, Connecticut on their horrific losses. Our hearts go out to the parents of the children who were killed and to the families and friends of the adults who were killed.

We are calling for an inquiry into the connection between these acts of mass murder and the use of psychotropic drugs. Although the media have cited family members and acquaintances saying Adam Lanza was taking prescription drugs to treat “a neurological-development disorder”, we do not know if he was on psychotropic drugs. But we do know that James Holmes, the Colorado batman shooter, had taken 100 milligrams of Vicodin immediately before he shot up the movie theatre

(1). And we do know that:

  • Christopher Pittman was on antidepressants when he killed his grandparents (2).
  • Eric Harris, one of the gunmen in the Columbine school shooting, was taking Luvox and Dylan Klebold, his partner, had taken Zoloft and Paxil (3).
  • Doug Williams, who killed five and wounded nine of his fellow Lockheed Martin employees, was on Zoloft and Celexa (4).
  • Michael McDermott was on three antidepressants when he fired off 37 rounds and killed seven of his fellow employees in the Massachusetts Wakefield massacre (5).
  • Kip Kinkel was on Prozac when he killed his parents and then killed 2 children and wounded 25 at a nearby school (6).
  • In fourteen recent school shoots, the acts were committed by persons taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, resulting in over 100 wounded and 58 killed (7).
  • In other school shootings, information about the shooter’s prescription drug use and other medical history were kept from public records (7).

This connection between psychotropic drugs and mass murder is not coincidental. There is enough evidence that antidepressants cause increased risk of suicide and violence for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its Canadian counterpart to require that drug companies include a “black box” warning to that effect on their packages. Our first knowledge of this association between psychotropic drugs and violence came from studies completed in the early 1950s, (8).

I haven’t heard of the International Society For Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) and do not know whether or not the organization is respected or reviled in the psychiatric community. With that said if the above information is accurate it would certain warrant some investigation. Psychotropic drugs are interesting as they work by directly interacting with the brain. Since we don’t fully understand the workings of the human brain yet unintended side-effects may very well spring up from the use of such drugs. Either way I’ll post more if more comes up.

Using the State’s Fiction Against It

Sometimes you can use the state’s own creations against it. Let’s say you want to drive in the carpool lane but don’t have a second person in your vehicle, how could you go about do so? Since corporations are legally people under United States law you could bring corporate papers with you:

When Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, Calif., was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane, he argued to the officer that, actually, he did have a passenger.

He waved his corporation papers at the officer, he told NBCBayArea.com, saying that corporations are people under California law.

He waved his corporation papers at the officer, he told NBCBayArea.com, saying that corporations are people under California law.
Frieman doesn’t actually support this notion. For more than 10 years, Frieman says he had been trying to get pulled over to get ticketed and to take his argument to court — to challenge a judge to determine that corporations and people are not the same. Mission accomplished in October, when he was slapped with a fine — a minimum of $481.

I think it could be a very interesting court case. On one hand the state has an incentive to rule against Frieman’s claim that a corporation is a person. Creating a corporation isn’t difficult and any ruling stating that a corporation is a person in regards to carpooling would give individuals an incentive to create dummy corporations for the specific purpose of driving in a carpool lane without a second person in the vehicle. On the other hand the state relies on corporation personhood for a great number of benefits including campaign contributions.

It’s always fun to see the state getting caught up in its own mess.

Forgetting History

I think a few people have a severe case of forgetting history:

A Jewish community strongly supportive of gun control plus Jewish lawmakers eager to enact new gun control laws may bring Jews into a lead role as the nation debates federal measures to rein in mass murders at its malls and schools.

Jews advocating gun control? Did these individuals fail to read the history of their own people? Are they entirely ignorant of the fact that Nazi Germany disarmed the Jews before the Holocaust began? How any Jewish individual could support gun control is beyond me.

The CIA Accused to Making Torture Sound Like a Valuable Tool in Information Gathering

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) apparently lied to the producers of Zero Dark Thirty by claiming torture was a valuable tool in gathering the whereabouts of Osama bin Lauden:

Lawmakers accused the CIA of misleading the makers of the Osama bin Laden raid film “Zero Dark Thirty” by allegedly telling them that harsh interrogation methods helped track down the terrorist mastermind.

The film shows waterboarding and similar techniques as important, if not key, to finding bin Laden in Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALs in 2011.

A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA’s detainee program found that such methods produced no useful intelligence.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody. The CIA is one of the most frightening organizations that has ever existed. We’re talking about the same organization that experimented on unwitting United States and Canadian civilians by administrating mind altering drugs in the hope of developed a truth serum. The CIA likely wanted to make torture sound like a valuable tool in the hopes that it would convince a majority of Americans to support the heinous act. In true torture is unlikely to reap useful information because a victim will try to say whatever he believes his torturers want to hear in order to make the pain stop. Torture is a great tool to use when you want an innocent person to confess to a crime but it isn’t a reliable method of gathering reliable information.

Gun Control Advocates Looking to Throw Everything at the Wall and Hope Something Sticks

It looks like the advocates of gun control in the White House are going to try throwing everything at the wall and hope something sticks:

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.

A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.

Typical government, when something fails to work they try it again, only harder. Since penalties for carrying guns near schools and giving guns to minors didn’t stop the school shooting in Connecticut the government is looking at making the acts of carrying guns near schools and giving guns to minors more illegaler. That’s the exact opposite of a solution. It goes without saying that somebody who has murder in their hearts and is planning to kill themselves after their despicable deed is done isn’t going to be swayed by the consequences of breaking any law. Punishment means nothing when you don’t plan to be around to suffer it.

It also sounds like the federal government is looking into creating a national database of gun owners. Since each sale would require a background check private sales would be illegal. By requiring a background check and having a national database of firearm sales the establishment of a national gun registry would be trivial.

Make not mistake the state is going to exploit the Connecticut shooting for everything it’s worth.