Author: Christopher Burg

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

There is a belief among statists that laws can prevent undesirable behavior. But statists have been passing laws for thousands of year, which is the same amount of time that other people have been ignoring them. Any law that is found to be inconvenient is ignored or bypassed:

But in an effort to cut down on the drunken mayhem, the town imposed a public drinking ban over the holiday—a law that apparently didn’t stop a few crafty, determined drinkers from setting up their own boozy sanctuary off the coast.

According to the BBC, the group spent Sunday building a makeshift private island off the Coromandel Peninsula, constructed out of sand, seashells, and a few wooden planks. The revelers set it up at low tide, and dragged out a picnic table and a cooler so they could get blasted out on “international waters,” see some fireworks, and stay away from the cops.

Sometimes I think nobody learned from Prohibition. The government of the United States went so far as to amend its constitution to prohibit alcohol throughout the country and yet people continued to manufacturer, trade, and consume alcohol. The United States’ War on (Some) Drugs is yet another example of undesirable laws being ignored. In fact the desire to ignore drug prohibitions is so strong that many individual states have announced that they’re no longer bothering to enforce them for cannabis. And why should they? While cannabis may be illegal people are still using it.

Prohibiting an activity doesn’t make that activity go away. At most it pushes that activity underground. But oftentimes a prohibition is blatantly ignored as is the case with these heroes who went so far as to construct a small sandbar in international waters.

I’m Putting Myself on The Blockchain™

I am formally announced that I’m putting myself on The Blockchain™. Please throw money at me:

The stock market loves blockchains. Last month, the Long Island Iced Tea Company rebranded itself as Long Blockchain and saw its stock price triple. On Tuesday, restaurant company Chanticleer Holdings saw its stock soar by 50 percent after the company announced that it would be moving its reward programs to the blockchain. The company owns several burger brands and operates a number of Hooters restaurants. It also holds a minority stake in Hooters of America, the parent company of Hooters.

Government Subsidized Murder

What happens when you combine trigger happy law enforcers and pranksters who are either oblivious to the consequences of involving law enforcers or simply don’t care? The phenomenon known as swatting:

Here’s what seems to have gone down. Two individuals were playing Call of Duty and got into an argument online over a game with a $1.50 wager. One of them, a person with the Twitter handle @SWauTistic, threatened to swat user @7aLeNT. The latter then provided an address that wasn’t actually their own in response to the threat. Shortly thereafter, @SWauTistic allegedly called in the false report, which led to a police response at the provided address. Andrew Finch, who lived at the address, reportedly went to the front door in response to the commotion and was shot. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon,” said Livingston. The police haven’t said whether Finch had a weapon at the time, but his family has said there were no guns in the house. The officer who fired the shot is a seven-year department veteran who will be put on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.

The individual who called in the false report was arrested but I’m betting that the trigger happy officer will be found innocent of any wrongdoing because he has a magic badge.

Swatting isn’t new but this story received more attention than most because somebody ended up dead. Sadly this was a question of when, not if. Law enforcers in this country kill a lot of people, oftentimes under very questionable circumstances. With a few very rare exceptions, officers who kill people are found innocent of wrongdoing. The lack of consequences certainly isn’t helping make law enforcers less dangerous. In addition to being trigger happy law enforcers in this country also like to respond with shock and awe. If you call in a hostage situation, there’s a good chance that a SWAT team will be kicking in a door instead of trying to make contact with the reported hostage taker in order to open negotiations. Of course, if they tried to make contact with the hostage taker instead, they would discover that the report was false and not have to go in guns blazing.

What this story ultimately illustrates is that if you want somebody dead, the government will happily do it for you.

The Cure to Inflation Must Be More Inflation

What happens when you give dictatorial powers to somebody who is entirely ignorant of economics? Socialism:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a 40 percent increase to the minimum wage as of January, a move that will foment what many economists already consider hyperinflation in the oil-rich but crisis-stricken nation.

Inflation is getting out of hand, what should we do? I know! We’ll increase the minimum wage! That’ll fix it!

Every proponent of a minimum wage is ignorant of the fact that mandating a minimum wage doesn’t actually increase anybody’s purchasing power. When you mandate a minimum wage you guarantee that any work that isn’t worth that minimum wage is eliminated. Teenagers bagging groceries may be worth $2.00 an hour but not $3.00. If the minimum wage is set to $3.00 an hour, those teenagers suddenly find themselves unemployed. The higher the minimum wage is set, the more jobs are eliminated.

In addition to eliminating jobs, minimum wage laws also increase inflation. Some jobs simply can’t be eliminated by a business, which is something many proponents of minimum wage bring up when the above point is brought to their attention. A restaurant can’t operate without cooks (At least not yet. But cost decreases in automation will make such restaurants feasible very soon). If a minimum wage is set to, say, $15.00 an hour but a cook is only worth $10.00, then the restaurant owner has to either close shop or increase their prices. Most restaurant owners will opt for the latter, which means the cost of a meal goes up. Suddenly an $8.00 mean becomes a $10.00 meal and everybody who eats out finds themselves with less purchasing power.

By increasing the minimum wage 40 percent, the Venezuelan government guaranteed the elimination of many jobs and major increases in prices. These two things will only cause the average Venezuelan more misery. But dictators are seldom concerned with the amount of pain the average person has to suffer. Dictators are concerned with enriching themselves.

Dedicate the Year to Personal Greatness

Welcome to 2018. America seems to be starting off the year the same as it starts off most years. Law enforcers continue to act without accountability, the endless wars in the Middle East continue to be waged, and the dollar continues to fall in purchasing power. However, you can’t control any of those things. What you can control is yourself so why not dedicate this year to personal greatness?

Have you always told yourself that you’re going to start working out? Start working out today. Have you been thinking about reading a particular book? Start reading it today. Have you been thinking about learning that new skill so you can make more money? Start learning it today.

While you can’t control the actions of others, you can control your own so why not make yourself superior to everybody else?

Extending Professional Courtesy into Next Year

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman promised to announce whether Office Noor, the Minneapolis law enforcer who murdered Justined Ruszczyk, would be charged. Today Freeman made an announcement but it wasn’t the announcement he promised:

A decision on whether Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor should be charged in the shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond will be made sometime in 2018, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Thursday.

His professional courtesy will be extending into next year, which makes sense. The 2018 Super Bowl is being hosted in Minneapolis. Based on what the public has learned so far it appears that Noor isn’t going to be charged. When that’s announced it will likely cause some civil unrest. Seeing how far the city and country have already gone to appease their National Football League (NFL) masters I’m not surprised that this announcement is being pushed back into 2018, likely sometime after February 4th.

This must is clear, justice, or even the illusion of justice, isn’t as important as the annual handegg championship game.

The Rent Is too Damn High

Remember Jimmy McMillan, the founder of the Rent Is too Damn High Party?

He wasn’t wrong:

A recent survey by New York councilmember Helen Rosenthal found 12% of stores on one stretch of the Upper West Side is unoccupied and ‘for lease’. The picture is repeated nationally. In October, the US surpassed the previous record for store closings, set after the 2008 financial crisis.

[…]

“It’s not Amazon, it’s rent,” says Jeremiah Moss, author of the website and book Vanishing New York. “Over the decades, small businesses weathered the New York of the 70s with it near-bankruptcy and high crime. Businesses could survive the internet, but they need a reasonable rent to do that.”

Part of the problem is the changing make-up of New York landlords. Many are no longer mom-and-pop operations, but institutional investors and hedge funds that are unwilling to drop rents to match retail conditions. “They are running small businesses out of the city and replacing them with chain stores and temporary luxury businesses,” says Moss.

In addition, he says, banks will devalue a property if it’s occupied by a small business, and increase it for a chain store. “There’s benefit to waiting for chain stores. If you are a hedge fund manager running a portfolio you leave it empty and take a write-off.”

Fucking late stage capitalism!

I wrote that sarcastically but there are people who are saying it seriously. If one only possesses an infantile knowledge of capitalism, it would be easy for them to blame this predicament on capitalism instead of the real culprit, government. The economic system the United States operates under can best be described as government manipulated privately held businesses. While businesses in the United States are nominally private they are heavily manipulated by government. Wealthy businesses are able to hire lobbyists who can influence politicians into massaging the regulatory field. The lobbyists work to create a regulatory field that favors their employers while simultaneously hurting their employer’s competitors. For example, a lobbyist working for Comcast might influence city politicians to raise the cost of the permits required to bury fiberoptic cable. A large Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Comcast can easily soak up those additional permit costs whereas small local ISPs are not able to and thus are forced to go out of business.

This manipulated environment is also a feedback loop. As wealthy organizations are able to push out more and more competitors they are able to become more and more wealthy. As they become more and more wealthy they are able to afford more regulatory manipulation and so on. The inevitable end of this feedback loop is an economy controlled by a handful of wealthy politically-connected players and devoid of small businesses. Banks, as major players in the regulatory manipulation game, recognize this and thus acknowledge that properties occupied or owned by large corporations are far more valuable that properties occupied or owned by individually owned businesses. Property owners going off of the banks’ assessments will let their properties sit empty until a large corporation shows interest in buying or renting it.

Parts of the United States are already reaching the point where individually owned businesses can no longer succeed. Other parts of the United States will eventually reach the same point. The feedback loop will continue until small businesses can only exist in the black market.

Designed by Apple in California

Designed by Apple in California is a tagline the company uses to add a little prestige to their Chinese manufactured electronics. In addition to designing electronics the company also designs its own stores. However, when people in California design stores they often overlook environmental issues that are rare there but common elsewhere, such as ice and snow:

Apple’s new flagship retail store in Chicago, the one with a MacBook-shaped rooftop, is nothing short of an architectural marvel. At least, that’s how some news reports put it when the store opened back in October. Beyond standing out among the less inspired buildings of the downtown Chicago area, the new Apple Store also happens to be very poorly thought through considering its thin roof now has dangerous icicles hanging perilously over public walkways.

Designed by Apple in a state that doesn’t have to deal with arctic bullshit. As a Minnesotan I can’t help but laugh at this.

Apple isn’t the first company to run into this problem and it won’t be the last. It’s too easy to take architecture for granted. An architect in California can easily overlook the effects harsh winters will have on their building. An architect in Minnesota can easily overlook the effects earthquakes will have on their building. If you’re tasked with designing a building that will be built in another region, it might be a good idea to contact some architects in that area and ask them about environmental issues they have to design around.

Being a Sore Loser Is Lucrative

Roy Moore is such a piece of shit that he couldn’t even managed to pull off a win in the red state of Alabama. Not only is he a loser but he’s a sore loser. Instead of fading into the shadows after his opponent was declared the winner of the race he has filed a lawsuit to block his opponent from taking office:

Attorneys for defeated Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the state from certifying Democrat Doug Jones as the winner of the special election held earlier this month, The Associated Press reported.

Jones defeated Moore in the Dec. 12 election by slightly less than 21,000 votes, a margin of 1.5 percent, but Moore has yet to concede the race. He has continued to ask donors to contribute to his “election integrity fund,” pledging to pursue “voter fraud and other irregularities at polling locations throughout the state.”

Emphasis mine.

This charade is pretty obvious. Moore is likely under no delusion that this lawsuit will result in him being give the seat. But the longer he’s able to drag this lawsuit on the longer he’s able to continue begging his supporters for money. He is probably hoping that this lawsuit will result in a sizable war chest for the next election.

Can You Steal from a Thief

An Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) office was arrested because he is suspected of stealing weapons from the department:

An Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of theft and weapons violations after officials say he kept eight flashbang grenades from a 2011 training session instead of turning them over to the department, according to court records.

But the question remains, can you steal from a thief? The department’s weapons are paid for with tax dollars and civil forfeiture funding. In other words the department’s weapons are paid for with stolen wealth. Assuming John Petculescu, the man who is charged with stealing the weaponry, is a tax payer, which is a pretty good assumption since he was a DPS employee, he has just as much of a right to those weapons as any other tax payer or victim of civil forfeiture. Unfortunately, the government has claimed a monopoly on theft for itself, which gives it the option to severely punish anybody who challenges its monopoly.