March 2015 – Page 3 – A Geek With Guns

How the State Manipulates Statistics

Any Internet argument that goes on for more than a few comments will inevitably result in all sides throwing statistics at one another. Statistics are the Internet argument equivalent of artillery fire and no form of statistics is as effective as government statistics. Government statistics, for some bizarre reason, are considered the most impartial by most people. However government statistics are usually skewed to favor, well, the government. From removing entire groups of people from unemployment statistics to conveniently ignoring the difference between full-time and part-time employment the state likes to cook the books to make its story sound good.

But governments don’t just manipulate statistics to pain a rosy picture. Sometimes they manipulate statistics to create a crisis. I’m fairly certain that’s what’s going on in Britain as its National Health Service (NHS) redefines female genital mutilation (FGM) to include voluntary vaginal piercings:

The NHS compulsory reporting regulations are intended to protect women and girls from the sometimes fatal practice of intentionally altering or causing injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1985, though recent studies suggest some 170,000 women and girls have undergone the procedure, while the NSPCC says 70 women a month seek treatment for the crime.

But under a directive which follows the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) definition of FGM, the term also applies to any women who has consented to having her clitoris or labia pierced for fashion or sexual reasons, meaning medical professionals will be obliged to record such adornments as such.

What does this do to the FGM statistic? It makes it appear to be a much larger problem than it is. Mind you FGM is a horrendous practice but manipulating the statistic to make it appear more common than it really is doesn’t help anybody. Except the state, of course. No crisis goes to waste when a government is around and a sudden “increase” (i.e. change in how the statistic is recorded) in FGM makes a good argument for the government to pass legislation that grants it more investigative and enforcement powers.

Keep this story in mind when you’re looking for a statistic to make your point or somebody throws a government statistic at you as a counterargument. If it’s a government statistic that doesn’t automatically make it impartial or accurate. The statistic very well may have been manipulated for any number of reasons. Furthermore any major changes noted in a statistic could be methodology related and have no bearing on a problem actually being discussed.

Where Libertarianism and Social Justice Share a Common Foe

It’s time for me to earn my dirty anti-libertarian leftist social justice warrior creds. Except I’m actually going to discuss a situation where libertarianism and so-called social justice warriors have a common cause (in reality what libertarians often disparagingly refer to as social justice has a lot in common with libertarianism).

Libertarianism and property rights tend to go hand in hand. In fact the biggest gripe many libertarians have with the state is its constant violation of individual property rights through taxation, confiscation, eminent domain, and other powers it has granted itself. Of all the ways the state violates property rights though the most egregious is probably the issuance of decrees that either prohibit property owners from performing or require property owners to perform certain actions with their property.

The social justice movement tends to fight against discrimination in any form. Recently many members of the social justice movement have been working to fight discrimination against transgender individuals. Although they oftentimes clash with libertarians over the property rights issue, as some social justice advocates want the state to prohibit individuals from discriminating even on their private property, they actually share a common enemy. The most egregious violator of property rights and the most dangerous discriminator happens to be the state.

Florida has become a battleground where violation of property rights and discrimination will be one and the same if HB 583 passes. The bill would make it a first degree misdemeanor for a transgender individual to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as. Likewise the bill would also open any property owner who allows transgender individuals to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as to civil lawsuits in the state’s monopolized courts.

In other words the bill, which has passed out of committee, would require property owners to enforce bathroom usage in the manner decreed by the state and that manner happens to be discriminatory.

Libertarians often have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything the social justice movement advocates and vice versa. These knee-jerk reactions often cause each side to refuse to work with the other side even when they share a common foe. It’s stupid and allows the state to use divide and conquer tactics to stomp on all of us. Both groups should be able to put aside their labels, declare a truce, and work together when they face a common enemy. Who knows, maybe both sides can learn a little bit from each other and create a longer lasting alliance.

The DMCA is a Corporate Subsidy

Planned obsolescence is a term generally used by the economically ignorant to explain the improvement of products over time. The claim is that, for example, Apple doesn’t make as good of phones as they could because they want them to be obsolete next year so consumers will buy the new one. This ignores the fact that using the latest and greatest hardware drastically increases costs so manufacturers of mass produced devices tend to use components that are still very powerful but cheaper as they rely on older technology. It also ignores the fact that a phone isn’t suddenly obsolete just because a new model has been released. If there were the case there would be no market for used phones.

But there are times when examples of planned obsolescence, that is to say times when companies invested time and resources guaranteeing a product would cease to function after a certain period of time, can be found. Not surprisingly most of these examples rely on various corporate subsidies put into place by the state. One of those subsidies is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA criminalizes the production and distribution of technology that circumvents copyright protection schemes, which are commonly referred to as Digital Rights Management (DRM). How is that a corporate subsidy? Let’s take this case of actual planned obsolescence as an example:

The IlluMask is a $30 “light therapy” mask that utilizes LED lights to zap away bacteria, stimulate skin cells and otherwise fight acne/aging (depending on what model you purchase.) Sounds great (if you buy IlluMask’s claims). A lifetime of skin revitalization, and all for just $30. Oh, wait.

The trouble is, it is limited to 30 daily uses of 15 minutes each, totaling just 7 1/2 hours, effectively lasting you a month. At the end of which, you just discard the device and get a new one. That seems like a ridiculous waste of a perfectly fine, functional device whose LED’s can last at least 30,000 to 40,000 hours.

Even if we ignore the negative environmental impact of discarding plastic masks loaded with perfectly good LEDs, there’s still the incredible audacity of IlluMask’s claim that its mask will only last 30 days, at which point the LEDs doing all of the facial revitalization/bacteria zapping are suddenly useless, even with well over 99.97% of their lifespan still ahead of them (based on 35,000 hours).

The manufacturers of the IlluMask utilize DRM to prevent the device from working after 30 days. Fortunately bypassing the DRM is easy:

1. Change the batteries if lights are getting dimmer.
2. Use a screwdriver and open the case. Then remove batteries and unscrew screws so the plastic battery holder on top of the circuit board can be moved over. Be careful NOT to damage any of the delicate wiring.
3. Now that the circuit board is exposed, put the batteries back in their slots.
4. Using a piece of wire (such as a paper clip) touch one end of your wire and place it where the thin copper wire connects to the circuit board (silver spot marked LED). Touch the other end to the little RESET copper circle–located on the left of the circuit board (use the copper circle above the word RESET, not below).
5. Press the start button while the wire is in place.
6. Move your wire from the RESET button to the TEST button.
7. Press the start button again while the wire is in place, and the count should reset to 30!

Unfortunately the DMCA makes disabling the DRM a potentially criminal offense. And herein lies the subsidy. Thanks to the DMCA developing DRM technology can be worth the investment in time and resources. Even though DRM can always be bypassed, which would making it a poor investment in time and resources under normal circumstances, the existence of the DMCA means that anybody who does develop methods of bypassing DRM faces fines and prison time for doing so. The state threatens violence against anybody who attempts to bypass DRM, which drastically raises the cost of doing so. And the tax victims gets to foot the bill for sending the heavily armed cops to kidnap developers of DRM bypassing technology, having highly paid prosecutors and judges argue and rule the developer’s guilt, and guarding the prison the developer will be kept in for years. Were the DMCA not in place bypassing DRM would carry no risks and manufacturers would have no recourse other than attempt to develop a hardier DRM mechanism.

Yet Another Reason to Use HTTPS On Your Site

Transport Layer Security (TLS), often referred to by its predecessor SSL, helps protect the privacy of your users and prevents malicious actors from altering the content being sent between them and your servers. Since it’s such a powerful tool you should think every site would enable it by default but they don’t. If the privacy of your users and the integrity of your data isn’t enough to convince you to enable TLS maybe this will:

With CloudFlare, websites can afford extra security to users with Full SSL (Strict) encryption. Long story short, this strips certain identifiers from the traffic data ISPs use to block websites like TPB; since the information is routed through CloudFlare, website IP addresses are also hidden behind the delivery network. In the UK, where all major ISPs were strong-armed into blocking TPB in 2012, this has all but turned back time, with thepiratebay.se now accessible for Virgin, EE, BT and TalkTalk customers. Sky is the only popular provider still managing to block the site; you aren’t notified, as such, but the page won’t load anyhow.

TLS makes blocking access to websites more difficult (although not entirely impossible). Many web filters rely on identifiable information viewable in plaintext streams. When you encrypt those streams with TLS those filters are no longer able to see the identifiable information and therefore can’t block access.

Avoiding censorship is just another reason why you should not only enable TLS on your site but make its use mandatory by disabling unsecured connections (or redirecting them to secured connections as I do with this blog).

The Only Prison for Libertarians is On the Right

As a libertarian one of the things that greatly amuses me is how elements on both the “left” and “right” sides of the political spectrum attempt to court us. One minute we’re an ineffective minority of extremists and the next we’re supposed to have a lot of common ground with whatever side is trying to appeal to us.

One of the more entertaining articles that tries to court libertarians to the “right” is this fine piece. You know the article is going to be a doozy when it starts with “The talented National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke…” If there’s are two things that don’t go together it’s talent and the National Review. The laughs don’t stop there. The author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, claims:

The political calculus for libertarians is relatively straightforward: They are a small minority — albeit an influential one — and are not completely at home in either party, but can get a lot done if they ally with one in particular.

See, when we’re being courted we’re influential! Gobry’s assertion that libertarians could get a lot done if they allied with one of the two major parties is particularly funny. A lot of libertarians decided to do exactly this and jumped onto the Republican Party ship only to get kicked off and boarded by many unsavory scoundrels. During this libertarian expedition they were told how valuable their views were and how they were welcomed with open arms. Then the Republican National Convention started getting closer and it appeared the libertarians captured a sizable number of seats in several states. This forced the Republican Party to show its true nature and it threatened to banish Nevada’s delegates if too many were going to vote for Ron Paul, had Ron Paul supporters arrested in Louisiana, and prohibited Ron Paul supporters in Maine from participation by forcing them to sign an oath of loyalty to Romney. As a final blow the Republican Party moved to change the rules to dissuade libertarians within the party from participating and even went so far as to hold up one state’s delegates to prevent them from hindering the rule change. Needless to say participating in the Republican Party didn’t do jack shit for libertarianism.

The article then makes the best argument against libertarians participating in either major party’s political process:

And self-delusion it was: On every issue of importance, the left has betrayed libertarians (if “betrayed” is the right word, given that they never actually bothered to promise them anything). Obama’s treatment of the Constitution has been as roughshod as any of his predecessor’s.

Saying Obama’s treatment of the Constitution, which libertarians are supposedly upholders of according to the author, was as roughshod as Bush’s really drives the point home that both parties give no fucks about any supposed restrictions to their powers. If both Republicans and Democrats are doing the same thing then why should libertarians support either of them? Here’s where the real laughs come in:

The reason why liberaltarianism was always doomed to fail is because, at the end of the day, progressivism is an all-encompassing ideology. And while libertarians won’t agree with conservatives on everything, the two can certainly agree on a lot, because of a key bedrock principle of libertarianism that is shared with conservatives but not progressives: the importance of localism.

Holy hell, that’s rich! Conservatives recognize the importance of localism? Is that whey the Republican Party is always pushing for national laws prohibiting same-sex marriages? Is that why they’re looking to replace the Affordable Care Act with another national healthcare scheme? Is that why they’re constantly supporting drug prohibitions on a national level? Is that why they’re always arguing that we need to keep “illegals” out of this country instead of allowing each border state to decide what it wants to do for itself? Conservatives lost the right to claim they supported local politics long ago. But the best laugh was saved for last:

It is exactly this sort of ideological, moralistic progressive urge that makes progressivism and libertarianism like oil and water and makes the conservative movement the natural home of libertarians. At the end of the day, an alliance with the conservative movement is the only plausible way for libertarians to effect meaningful political change in America.

According to Gobry the natural home for libertarians is an abusive one because, as I pointed out above, libertarians were living in that home and were beaten harshly for it. I think the biggest joke of this article though is implying libertarians want to effect political change. While some libertarians certainly do I am not one of them. I am part of the branch of libertarianism that wants to eliminate the state entirely. My goal, and those who share my goal, don’t want to put the right people in power, we want to remove everybody from power. In my opinion libertarianism’s natural home is in counter-economics. That’s because counter-economics allow individuals to act on their own accord and not as part of some political collective. Individualism is at the core of libertarianism so any collectivist strategy is going to be a poor fit.

The True Nature of Sanctions

For decades the United States government has been utilizing sanctions against nations that it doesn’t like. We’re told that sanctions are a humane alternative to war. The thinking goes that the lives of the people of the target nation will be made so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow their government.

First it must be pointed out that sanctions are an attack against the people of a nation, not the government. It must also be pointed out that sanctions assume the population of a nation or complete fucking idiots.

I believe the first point doesn’t receive enough acknowledgement. Sanctions prohibit the people of a nation from accessing goods and services. These goods and services can range from medical and sanitation supplies to banking services. Prohibiting access to medical and sanitation supplies results in a predictable outcome. But even prohibiting access to foreign banking services has a major toll. Notable funds kept outside of a target nation often aren’t taxed by that nation. When sanctions are placed on banking services that forces people of a target nation to keep their money inside of the country and that allows the target government to collect taxes and further enrich itself.

Sanctions also assume that the people of a target nation are idiots. Imagine you’re living in a small nation that has recently had sanctions placed on it that prohibit the importation of medical supplies. Your child becomes severely ill and dies because you cannot access the medical supplies necessary to cure them. Are you more likely to be pissed off at your government or the foreign government that prevented you from accessing the medical supplies your child needed? If you’re capable of any critical thinking whatsoever your anger will be directed at the foreign nation. And therein lies the problem with sanctions, they tend to further strengthen the target nation’s government because it gives them an enemy to point at and blame all of their nation’s problems on.

So one is left to wonder why governments use nations. I think the real reason they do is because the politicians of those countries have a psychopathic need to attack people of a target nation for being foreigners. This day and age it’s not acceptable to firebomb a city because it causes civilian casualties. Therefore other tools must be used to attack those civilians and sanctions are that generally accepted tools. This is something we should all consider whenever we hear about the United States government issuing new sanctions against countries it doesn’t like. When it does that it’s not attacking the government it doesn’t like but the people being stomped by that government’s boot. It’s cowardly to say the least.

This Blog Now Officially Endorsed as Leftist, Anti-Capitalist, and Social Justice Advocacy

Since I’m friends with a lot of libertarians I periodically use Facebook to collect stories to write about and last night was no exception. When I opened Facebook I noticed a friend tagged me in a post he titled, “Looks like one of our own has officially been injected into the SJW debate at its upper levels.” At first I thought one of those fedora tipping GamerGaters was busting a nut over something I wrote but to my pleasant surprise it was just a link to a blog written by some fellow named Christopher Cantwell.

I’m not terribly familiar with Cantwell. The only thing I really know about him is that he was give the boot by the Free State Project because of his advocacy for murdering government employees.

If you go to his post you’ll see that he officially endorsed me as a leftist, anti-capitalist, social justice warrior. Long time readers of this blog already know that I consider myself a leftist as I’m against rulers. They are also probably laughing at the anti-capitalist bit. Whether people think of me as a social justice warrior generally depends on their views of various social issues. Based on what I’ve read so far by Cantwell I will choose to accept this as a badge of honor.

He also seemed a bit upset that I was railing against the Republican Party but it’s not uncommon for statist libertarians to get upset with us anarchist libertarians when we do that. In fact I was once on the other side so I do understand where he’s coming from. Now that I’m on the anarchist side I also know that nothing I say will convince him that the concept of limited government is impossible. That’s a journey one must make on their own.

My writings speak for me and I’ve annoyed plenty of electrons writing this blog. I leave you to be the judge on whether or not Cantwell’s accusations are true and I submit the entirety of my blog, which covers my journey from statist to anarchist, as defense of my libertarian credentials.

My Offer to Denizens of Oklahoma

Republicans in Oklahoma, like Republicans in a lot of other states, know the source of this country’s woes. It’s not a dying economy or the perpetual state of war, it’s homosexuals. To fight against this scourge they have been busy trying to get amendments to state constitutions prohibiting same-sex marriages. They’ve also been busy rewriting marriage laws when they fail to prohibit same-sex marriage hard enough. In Oklahoma they are trying to ban the recognition any secular marriage certificates:

House Bill 1125, sponsored by Republican State Representative Todd Russ, is a radical measure that would end secular marriage licenses in the state. In addition, the bill would bar all judges and other secular officials from performing marriages in Oklahoma.

[…]

Under the legislation, atheists and others not wanting to be married by a religious official could file an affidavit through the court clerk’s office claiming a common-law marriage.

But there’s a flaw in this plan. I happen to be a Discordian pope and one of my official pope powers is to create new popes. I hereby offer to make anybody living^* in Oklahoma an official pope so they can issue marriage certificates. Since they would be popes they would also be able to define what sorts of marriages they would be willing to recognized.

* Any Discordian knows this is a unnecessary offer since every man, woman, and child is already a pope.

What Happens When You Densely Populate a Desert

Things aren’t looking good for California. Not surprisingly for a desert water is in short supply. Unlike most deserts California happens to be very densely populated, which has lead to a major crisis:

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

Assuming this estimate is accurate California is in for some very bad times. So what’s to be done? Let’s ask the statist that wrote this article:

Several steps need be taken right now. First, immediate mandatory water rationing should be authorized across all of the state’s water sectors, from domestic and municipal through agricultural and industrial. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is already considering water rationing by the summer unless conditions improve. There is no need for the rest of the state to hesitate. The public is ready. A recent Field Poll showed that 94% of Californians surveyed believe that the drought is serious, and that one-third support mandatory rationing.

Second, the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 should be accelerated. The law requires the formation of numerous, regional groundwater sustainability agencies by 2017. Then each agency must adopt a plan by 2022 and “achieve sustainability” 20 years after that. At that pace, it will be nearly 30 years before we even know what is working. By then, there may be no groundwater left to sustain.

Third, the state needs a task force of thought leaders that starts, right now, brainstorming to lay the groundwork for long-term water management strategies. Although several state task forces have been formed in response to the drought, none is focused on solving the long-term needs of a drought-prone, perennially water-stressed California.

Not surprisingly the statist’s answer is stupid. Rationing, making new agencies, and establishing a task force isn’t going to accomplish jack shit. The problem is that California, at least the southern portion of the state, is a desert. Since the state decided to declare a monopoly on water rights in the region it ignored the very real fact that deserts are not the greatest places to pack a lot of people and agriculture into. Now California is densely populated and a major agricultural state. The only thing surprising about this fiasco is that it didn’t enter a critical level like this sooner.

So I return to the original question, what’s to be done. Fixing this problem isn’t feasible with central planning so the only viable answer is to remove the state from water rights and management and allow the market to do its thing. I would predict doing this would increase the cost of water in California dramatically and therefore encourage people and agriculture to move elsewhere. This is likely the only long-term solution for California’s water shortage but people don’t want to hear it because they prefer the fairytale that statism has been telling them, which is any economic rules can be nullified so long as enough people vote hard enough.

Venezuela Going Full Dictatorship

It was bound to happen. As the failure of centrally planned economics wrecks the lives of Venezuelans and the United States places more sanctions on the country to make those miserable wretches even more miserable somebody was going to demand absolute power in the name of fixing everything. That demand was made by the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and was granted:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been granted the power to govern by decree until 31 December.

The measure was approved by the National Assembly, where Mr Maduro has a majority.

He requested the approval of the Enabling Law after the United States issued new sanctions against Venezuelan officials.

The opposition says he is using the incident to amass power and divert attention from the economic crisis.

Mr Maduro said he needed the special powers to deal with the threat posed by the United States, which he accuses of meddling in Venezuela’s affairs.

The opposition, that is to say the members of the National Assembly who aren’t completely ignorant of history, called it. Maduro is just exploiting a horrible situation to amass power. This is the exactly same playbook used by a million despots before him and will likely continue to be successful in the foreseeable future. What can Venezuela expect? It depends on how drunk with power Maduro gets. In the best case scenario little changes and his power to rule by decree goes away at the end of the year. But the worst case, which is also the more commonly case, involved his opponents all dying and his ability to rule by decree lasting indefinitely.

I really hate to see the lives of so many people become as miserable as the Venezuelans have. But our species seems entirely unwilling to learn from the mistakes of centrally planned failures. Even when we get reminders such as Venezuela the common reaction seems to be blaming the entire mess on not enough centralized power being wielded.