Author: Christopher Burg

Keep the Jazz Cabbage Illegal or Fido Gets It

It’s amazing how far agents of the State will go to keep the War on (Some) Drugs going. The latest, and probably most petty, attempt to keep people on the side of continuing the drug war is to threaten dogs:

The training director of a police K-9 academy in Illinois claims that if the state legalizes recreational marijuana, it will have to euthanize all its pot-sniffing dogs, The Pantagraph reports.

Keep the jazz cabbage illegal or the dogs get it!

If cannabis was legalized tomorrow, all of the dogs that have been trained to sniff out the plant would cease to be useful to law enforcers. However, they wouldn’t cease to be useful entirely. This is something so obvious that even the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) understands it. The TSA puts dogs who have failed training up for adoption. While they may not be useful for sniffing out bombs, they can still provide an individual or family with companionship. There is no reason that drug dogs that are no longer useful to law enforcers can’t be put up for adoption as well. But I can see why an organization that makes its money off of training drug dogs to sniff out cannabis would pull out all of the stops to try to keep cannabis illegal.

It Doesn’t Matter What the Majority Says

Every political argument seems to eventually boils down to polls. It makes sense since polls indicate what the majority wants and the majority should be listened to, right? If, for example, the majority of Minnesotans support stricter gun laws, then the politicians should respect their desires, right?

A majority of Minnesotans support stricter gun laws in the United States, including wide backing for a ban on military-style rifles and for raising the age for gun purchases from 18 to 21, a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found.

This is usually the point where I would point out the way polls are manipulated to get desired results. For example, if you poll urban individuals about gun control, you’re likely to get a different result than if you poll rural individuals. Likewise, if I’m a publication with a predominantly Democratic readership, the results of my poll about gun control laws are going to differ from the poll results achieved by a publication with a predominantly Republican readership.

Instead of focusing on why polls are irrelevant due to ease of manipulation, I’m going to focus on an even lower level assumption made by people who cite polls: that a majority is right. Take it away, Mises!

Stating that the majority supports a law is irrelevant because there is no inherent wisdom in the majority. For example, if a majority favored a law that required the first born son of every family to be sacrificed to Beelzebub, would you agree that a law requiring that be passed? I’m guessing most people wouldn’t because it’s an awful idea. I’m also guessing that some proponent of democracy will dismiss my example and by extent my argument as being ridiculous, which it is because I chosen it specifically to illustrate my point in the most hyperbolic manner possible. To appease those individuals though, I will present a more realistic example.

Let’s say a few individuals own businesses in a poor neighborhood. The majority of people living in the town decide that they want to revitalize that neighborhood. To accomplish this they demand that the city government pass a new property tax to raise funds for revitalization efforts. Interestingly enough, the demanded property tax is high enough that it would force the poor businesses in that neighborhood to close shop. Should the will of the majority be followed even though it’s obvious that their idea of revitalizing the neighborhood is to use the city’s tax code to run poor individuals out of town?

The premise of democracy, that the will of a majority should become the policy of the State, is flawed at its very foundation because it necessarily assumes that what a majority wants is correct. This is why I dismiss arguments based on the will of a majority outright. Saying that a majority supports something is no different than saying that you personally support something. Saying that you or a majority support something isn’t an argument in support of that thing, it’s merely an expression of personal preference. And, unfortunately for you, I don’t give a shit about your personal preference.

All Are Equal under the Law, But Some Are More Equal than Others

One of the supposed foundations of the United States governmental system is that all are equal under the law. Anybody who has read about the country’s history knows that this claim is utter bullshit. Even today the various governmental bodies use their power to create laws that directly target subsets of individuals. The government of Seat Pleasant, Maryland is being sued because it decide that not everybody is equal under its tax laws:

The owners of a discount market, a Chinese takeout restaurant and a liquor store say officials violated the city’s charter and state and federal laws when they created an ordinance that sent the property taxes of certain businesses soaring.

Steven Franco, who owns the discount market, said the “special revitalization” tax is a part of an attempt by Seat Pleasant’s leaders to lower the value of the properties so the city can buy the buildings for its own use.

“You can’t attract business like this,” said Franco, whose city property taxes last year jumped from $5,991 to $55,019, dwarfing the $18,269 property tax he pays to Prince George’s County. “It’s backward economic thinking.”

This situation isn’t unique. Municipal governments like to wield their property tax powers to run out business that they find undesirable. Of course they never claim to be doing as much when they’re writing such taxes since that could cause them to appear unfair. But everybody knows that there is an almost infinite number of ways to discriminate without appearing to be overtly discriminating. If, for example, you want to run liquor stores out of town, you simply hit the businesses in their neighborhoods with “revitalization” taxes that you claim to be aimed at “restoring” some parts of the city. This works well because many liquor stores are in poorer parts of town that city officials claim to want revitalized.

It’ll be interesting to see how this lawsuit turns out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the court sides with it’s fellow government employees.

The Stupidest Thing I’ll Read All Day

Throughout human history heads of state have done some really nutty thing. For example, Caligula was said to have declared a war on Neptune, deployed his legions to the coast near Britannia to attack the sea (literally, stab at the sea and hurl artillery into it), and collect seashells as spoils of war. But compared to this, Caligula seems positively sane:

Eliminating the national debt, which Trump said he could accomplish “over a period of eight years,” was one of several ambitious claims Trump made in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday. The Republican front-runner explained that he will govern in the similarly atypical, convention-defying manner he has campaigned.

He’s going to eliminate over $19 trillion of debt even though the country he’s heading is spending so much money that it’s still increasing that debt? If he managed to do that, at least outside of declaring the United States bankrupt, it would be a literal miracle. But nobody expects politicians to keep their promises and Trump realizes this. He’s simply the first president to decide that if he’s going to lie anyways, he might as well tell really big ones.

Who Has Authority over Culture

Culture, like society, is something that exists exclusively in the human imagination. It’s an abstract concept that doesn’t exist in the real world. That being the case, I find stories like this one to be ridiculous:

TAIPEI, Taiwan — When Keziah Daum wore a Chinese-style dress to her high school prom in Utah, it set off an uproar — but not because of its tight fit or thigh-high slit.

After Ms. Daum, 18, shared pictures on social media of her prom night, a Twitter user named Jeremy Lam hotly responded in a post that has been retweeted nearly 42,000 times.

[…]

“My culture is NOT” your prom dress, he wrote, adding profanity for effect.

“I’m proud of my culture,” he wrote in another post. “For it to simply be subject to American consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.”

Something that only exists in your imagination can only be yours in your imagination. But for a moment let’s assume that culture is a real thing that can be appropriated. Where do people who throw around accusations of cultural appropriation get off thinking that they’re the ultimate authority over what is or isn’t the proper use of a culture? Because while Jeremy Lam may be upset that Daum wore a Chinese dress, Snail Trail and Zhou Yijun believe quite the opposite:

“I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” said someone called Snail Trail, commenting on a post of the Utah episode by a popular account on WeChat, the messaging and social media platform, that had been read more than 100,000 times.

“It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation,” Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural commentator, said in a telephone interview. “From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”

This illustrates one of the biggest problems with treating imaginary concepts as if they were real objects. An imaginary concept may exist in the heads of multiple individuals but each of those individuals will put their own spin on it. The concept of Chinese culture, for example, exists in the heads of billions of individuals but none of those individuals likely agree entirely on what constitutes Chinese culture. Sure, most of them will likely agree to a few major concepts. For example, most people will likely agree that the Chinese language is part of Chinese culture. However, diving into the minute will quickly reveal that no two individuals share the exact same concept.

One of the disagreements over the imaginary concept of culture is who has authority over it. If one Chinese individual tells a white girl that she can’t wear a Chinese dress but another Chinese individual says that she can, who is correct? Which of the two individuals has the authority to dictate whether or not the white girl’s behavior is appropriate? Feel free to answer the question in the comment box if you want but I will require that you show your work.

Who Knew Punishing the Law Abiding Could Have Consequences

Everybody will die from opioid addictions if something isn’t done! We must roll over and let legislators and law enforcers do whatever is necessary to stop this threat!

That’s how I’ve been reading the news as of late. Opioids are the current boogeyman for the War on (Some) Drugs. Whenever a chemical becomes the boogeyman in the War on (Some) Drugs new legal restrictions are placed on it. Unlike many previous boogeymen, opioids are legally prescribed and many overdoses have been caused by legally prescribed drugs. In response to this, government busybodies have been putting pressure doctors to prescribe fewer opioids. The result of this pressure was predictable:

A report published yesterday by the health care consulting firm IQVIA shows that the total volume of opioids prescribed in the United States, indicated by the green area below, fell by 29 percent between 2011 and 2017, from 240 billion to 171 billion morphine milligram equivalents. Last year’s 12 percent drop was the largest ever recorded. The number of opioid prescriptions and the number of patients receiving opioids for the first time are also declining. The report notes that “decreases in prescription opioid volume have been driven by changes in clinical usage, which have been influenced by regulatory and reimbursement policies and legislation that have been increasingly restricting prescription opioid use since 2012.”

But as you can see in the graph, the total number of opioid-related deaths counted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicated by the blue line, is not falling along with opioid prescriptions. To the contrary, it has risen sharply in recent years, driven by dramatic increases in deaths involving heroin (orange) and illicit fentanyl (the main component of “other synthetic opioids,” the category represented by the gray line). The CDC has not released final data for 2017 yet, but more increases are expected.

People addicted to opioids aren’t going to suddenly stop being addicted when their doctor refuses to renew their prescription. Instead they’ll seek out other ways to acquire opioids. Enter the black market. However, black market opioids are dangerous. Since opioids are the current boogeyman, people who deal in opioids face greater risks than those who deal in, say, cannabis. These risks necessitate concealment. The best way to conceal a chemical substance is to make it smaller and the best way to make a chemical substance smaller is to make it more potent.

Heroin and especially fentanyl are highly concentrated forms of opioids, which means they generally need to be diluted before use. Failing to dilute fentanyl properly can lead to a deadly overdoes. So the government has created the perfect storm by declaring opioids a prescription only medication and then taking away many of those prescriptions. And like typical government busybodies, instead of admitting that their policies may have been in error, they have doubled down, which is only exacerbating the situation.

Promises, Promises

There was a lot of anger when Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested for, apparently, being black in Starbucks. Some people have claimed that there were other grounds for the arrest but form what I’ve found, and I admit that I hasn’t spent much time digging deeply into this so I could be incorrect, the arrest was for being black in Starbucks. But the reason for the arrest is irrelevant. What matters is the public’s perception of the arrest. That perception has caused a not insignificant amount of heartache for both Starbucks and the City of Philadelphia, which employs the law enforcers who performed the arrest. The City of Philadelphia, not surprisingly, decided to settle the matter with a payoff. However, it got off cheap:

Two black men arrested for sitting at a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything have settled with the city for a symbolic $1 each and a promise from officials to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.

Emphasis mine.

Promises from politicians aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Nelson and Robinson would have been better off taking the $200,000 and setting up the program themselves because I guarantee that the city is going to sweep its promise under the rug as soon as the public forgets about the entire matter. If Nelson and Robinson somehow do manage the make the city go through with its promise, the officials tasked with doling out the money will certainly find a way to disqualify everybody who isn’t politically connected. That’s how government programs work.

Overall, this was good news for Philadelphia and bad news for black people who frequent Starbucks because now neither the city nor its law enforcers have any motivation not to arrest people for being black in Starbucks.

Private Gun Registries

Gun control advocates haven’t had as much success politically as they had hoped. While a few states took measures to punish gun owners who did nothing wrong, the federal and most state governments left well enough alone. However, politics is just one way to forward your agenda. Some gun control advocates, the ones in actual positions of influence, are looking into implementing a private solution:

The financial companies have explored creating a new credit-card code for firearms dealers, similar to how they code restaurants, or department stores, according to people familiar with the matter. Another idea would require merchants to share information about specific firearm products consumers are buying, some of the people said.

Such data could allow banks to restrict purchases at certain businesses or monitor them. The talks, which are informal and might not lead to any action, have occurred against the backdrop of the national debate around guns in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., high-school shooting, which left 17 dead.

While the article notes that such a mechanism could be used to restrict gun purchases, it could also be used to establish a private registry.

A national gun registry has been at the top of the gun control advocates’ wish list. They know that confiscating firearms in the future would be far easier if gun owners were known to the State. But the politicians have so far been wary of implementing such a registry. If, on the other hand, financial institutions tracked which of their customers made firearm purchases, they would possess a de facto registry. Moreover, it would likely be a registry accessible to the federal government since it could subpoena the information.

Admittedly, this kind of registry would be easy enough to avoid by just paying cash for firearms. But such a strategy would only work if cash remained legal tender, which is something government busybodies are working to change.

Encouraging Black Market Alcohol

Have you heard the news? Prohibitionism is trendy again! It shouldn’t surprise anybody that alcohol has landed in the crosshairs of world governments again. After all, these governments have been waging a multiple decade war against every chemical substance that brings an ounce of joy to people’s lives. The latest strike by neoprohibitionists is Scotland’s decisions to set a minimum legal alcohol price:

It is the first country in the world to implement such a law, with the Scottish government believing its introduction will save lives.
The new legislation sets a 50 pence (approximately 70 cents) minimum price per unit of alcohol. Anyone licensed to serve alcohol in the country — in shops as well as bars and restaurants — will need to follow the new pricing laws.

One unit is 8 grams of alcohol, which in terms of drinks is equal to a 25-milliliter shot of 40% alcohol, such as whiskey, or 76 milliliters of wine at 13%. A standard 175 millileter glass of 14% wine in the UK is 2.4 units. In the United States, a standard drink is 14 grams of alcohol, equal to 148 millilters of table wine.

I can only assume that the politicians who passed this law are actually secret agorists. This law, like all forms of alcohol prohibition before it, will result in more alcohol business going underground.

Anybody who has researched Prohibition in the United States is well aware of the fact that alcohol didn’t cease to exist during that era. Alcohol actually flourish. People made their own bathtub gin, built their own stills, brewed their own beer, opened speakeasies, and found other ways to get the alcohol they desired in spite of the law. A lot of gangsters made a literal fortune from bootlegged alcohol.

People don’t stop consuming alcohol when a bunch of government busybodies decide to ban it or make it prohibitively expensive. If legal alcohol becomes too expensive, people opt for tax-free illegal alcohol instead.