Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

Good News For Catalonia

Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory. — Professor Bernardo de la Paz

In a world populated by compliant serfs it’s nice to know the spirit of revolution is still alive and well somewhere. The autonomous Spanish community of Catalonia has voted in favor of secession:

The main separatist alliance and a smaller nationalist party won 72 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament.

However, the pro-independence parties fell just short of getting 50% of the vote, winning 1.9 million out of 4 million ballots cast.

The separatists say the victory gives them a clear mandate to form an independent Catalan state.

Spain’s central government in Madrid has pledged to challenge any unilateral moves towards independence in court.

Predictably the Spanish government doesn’t want to lose its most valuable economic asset. Its court first said Catalonia couldn’t hold the vote, which was duly ignored. Spain may even be readying troops to take the region if it secedes but that’s currently only a speculation.

I’m just happy to see people are willing to separate themselves from their overlords. Scotland had the chance and threw it away but Catalonia seems willing to give Spain the finger whenever the opportunity arises. Hopefully this attitude doesn’t change and Catalonia ends up seceding from Spain.

If You Don’t Want People Viewing Content For Free Stop Posting It For Free

The war over online advertising just keeps getting better. Even though ad blockers reduce bandwidth usage, increase battery life, and protect against malware there are content providers whining that consumers shouldn’t install them. Some are even claiming that consumers have a moral obligation not to install them and have gone so far as to use loaded terms such as theft.

Now the pro-ads crowd is saying web consumers who view ad supported content while using an ad blocker are hypocrites. I might as well address this pile of bullocks since I’ve already invested so much time on this topic. The pro-ads crowd is painting a false picture. Namely that consumers should feel hypocritical about viewing something that’s been publicly displayed if they’re not viewing it how the creator intended.

Let’s consider a hypothetic scenario. A sculptor homesteads a plot of unused land in Libertariantopia (a magical land where everybody is supposedly a libertarian) and places one of his sculptures on it. He doesn’t build any fences or put up any signs indicating the land is his so people continue to walk through it as they always have. As they walk through his little plot of land they see his sculpture and stop for a moment to admire it. Suddenly the sculptor run at the people and starts screaming, “You can only view that sculpture through blue tinted glasses! You call yourselves libertarians?! You’re a bunch of hypocrites!” Assuming the people admiring the sculpture are good libertarians who believe in property rights, were they hypocrites for viewing that sculpture on the sculptor’s land without blue tinted glasses?

Absolutely not. First, they had no way of knowing they were even on private property since it wasn’t marked as such. Second, there was no indication that the sculptor wanted people to only view his sculpture through blue tinted glasses. Things would have been different had the sculptor fenced his land or put up obvious signs indicating the property was private. Then passersby would be aware that the property was private and not have entered it. Had the sculptor then hung signs stating, “Everybody is granted free entry for the purpose of viewing my sculpture so long as they are wearing blue tinted glass,” everybody entering his property would know that they could enter but their status as guests would be conditional based on the posted terms.

As you can guess this analogy is meant to illustrate accessing ad-supported websites. The sculptor’s plot of land is the website, the sculpture is the content, and the blue tinted glasses are the ads. Most websites have terms of service but they are not clearly posted just as no signs are clearly posted on the sculptor’s land. Under such conditions most visitors will remain entirely ignorant of any special rules they’re expected to abide by.

Unless web site owners clearly display their terms and conditions to visitors before allowing them access to the content they have no grounds on which to call visitors using ad blockers hypocrites. If you want people on your property to act in a certain way that’s outside of social norms, and let’s face the fact that using an ad blocker is now a norm, you should inform them. Don’t scream “Hypocrite!” because visitors are using an ad blocker if you don’t first display terms of services indicating such behavior was not allowed on your website.

What if the visitors aren’t libertarians and therefore don’t respect the owner’s property rights? Then you’ve got a much bigger problem on your hands because their philosophy may very well be socialist in nature and therefore they may view all property, including your content, as public. You’re going to have an even harder time successfully arguing that they’re hypocrites.

Fighting Piracy

Piracy has been the content creator’s boogeyman since Napster. We’ve been told time and again that piracy will destroy musicians, authors, and movie makers even though all three groups are raking in more money now than ever. This is because consumers are willing to pay for content. The fatal flaw in previous efforts to fight piracy has been a reliance on legal strategies. But you can’t sue people into behaving a desired way. You can, however, make them a better offer:

Online entertainment services such as YouTube and Netflix have already taken away a large chunk of BitTorrent’s “market share” in North America and the trend is carrying over to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

[…]

This doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s less torrent traffic, as overall bandwidth use may have doubled in the same period as well. However, other online entertainment services are gaining ground during peak hours.

With 21% YouTube currently accounts for most traffic and Netflix is also on the rise, even though it’s only available in a few countries. In the UK and Ireland Netflix is already good for 10% of peak downstream traffic.

Services such as Netflix and Spotify can succeed in fighting piracy where lawsuits cannot. This is because they rely on providing consumers a convenient service for a price they seem to find fair (judging by the fact both services have a ton of users). For me, as an Apple Music user, paying $10 per month to have easy access to almost all of the music I want to listen to without having to manually manage anything is worthwhile. With BitTorrent I have to search for the music I want, hope there’s a copy in a format I can use, hope there’s enough people seeding it to make the download take minutes instead of days, and finally manually add it to my music libraries (which span across several computers and mobile devices). My time is valuable enough to me that $10 per month is worth not having to do all that dicking around. Apple Music has effectively stopped me from pirating music (not that I ever have because it would be foolish to admit to such a thing on a public page).

Motivations for piracy are often looked at in only dollars. People assume pirates are simply too cheap to pay for content. The calculation isn’t so simple. Pirates steal content for a multitude of reasons including official sources not providing a format they want, the time needed to pirate the content is less than the time needed to acquire it through official sources, or the strings attached to official sources (such as DRM) being too draconian. If content producers want to fight piracy they need to learn why piracy is occurring and offer a solution that addresses those reasons.

Basic Income Only Strengthens The Ruling Class

There appears to be a worldwide competition to see which country can implement the stupidest idea. Possibly heading the United States’ competition are the basic income advocates:

Basic Income Action is, according to co-founder Dan O’Sullivan, “the first national organization educating and organizing the public to support a basic income.” In an email, he tells me that “Our goal is to educate and organize people to take action to win a basic income here in the US.”

Interest in a basic income, also called a guaranteed or universal income, an annual unearned salary, or just “getting handed a giant lump sum of free cash every year,” is percolating. Of late, it’s been the subject of magazine features, it’s been championed by economists from major financial institutions, and it’s even been touted on the presidential campaign trail.

Basic income is an appeal idea to many for the simple fact that it promises everybody a salary for doing nothing. It’s an idea so appealing even some libertarians have been suckered into it (and then had their arguments ruthlessly decimated). And according to its advocates it will help topple the power of the ruling class (or the “one percent” as they call it):

Perhaps the biggest thrust of the basic income movement’s argument is that technology is eliminating jobs, and they’re not coming back. (Hence we see more wealth accumulating at the top 1 percent, the class that happens to own the bulk of the automated labor; and an infamous economic recovery that has largely benefitted the rich, not the middle class.)

I’ve already addressed the fallacy of technology eliminating jobs so I won’t go into that more here. What I want to address is the ludicrous claim that basic income will somehow loosen the grip of the ruling class.

Where, exactly, does the money to fund basic income come from? Basic income advocates will tell you it comes from taxes. Somehow they miss the fact that taxes are monies collected by the State, which is yet another name for the ruling class. In other words basic income gives the top one percent yet another justification to steal money from the people. More insidious though is that it makes receivers of basic income even more dependent on the top one percent.

It’s a trick the federal government has used for decades. After collecting taxes from each state the federal government then redistributes them under the friendly title of “aid”. Some states end up getting more than they paid in while others receive less but none of the money is given without strings attached. Each state is then told to either do what they’re told or their money will be cut off. For states that receive more than they pay this is especially bad because they’re receiving the sweet end of the deal. But even the states that receive less than they pay don’t want to piss off the federal government because they would then lose more money. So you end up with a system that allows the federal government to dictate any number of terms to the states.

Basic income would allow for the exact same thing on an individual level. After collecting taxes the State could, and certainly would, attach a number of strings to basic income. If you didn’t comply you wouldn’t get a basic income. For people entirely reliant on basic income this would effectively mean they would be entirely without money. Those who had an additional revenue source would still stand to lose a sizable chunk of cash and would therefore also be motivated to comply. Anybody who pays any attention to politics in this country can already tell where this would lead: the further empowerment of the ruling class.

Basic income is just another statist wet dream. It sounds benevolent on the surface but would only serve to further entrench the oligarchy. Toppling the ruling class requires decentralization. Their tools of control must be rendered impotent. Granting them even more power over the populace’s livelihood accomplished the exact opposite.

The People Who Make The World Better

I have several especially statist friends who constantly claim they’re making the world a better place because of their involvement in politics. It’s the most pathetic ego stroking I’ve ever seen and there isn’t even a kernel of truth to it. Running for office, sucking off political candidates, and constantly telling other people how they should live their lives doesn’t improve the world in any way. Do you know what does improve people’s lives? Markets. Providing people the goods and services they need will actually benefit them. Consider the prosthetics market. Prosthetics are leaping ahead at a fantastic pace. We’ve gone from hooks on pulleys to replace missing arms to prosthetics attached to the nervous system capable of mimicking a lot of what natural limbs can do:

Hastened by advances in neurology and robotics — and tragically by the spike in U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan without limbs — a new era of prosthetics has emerged, using signals from the brain to evoke an increasing variety of movements from bionic limbs.

Jorgenson is one of about 50 patients worldwide — and the youngest, so far — to undergo a surgery called targeted muscle reinnervation, in which severed nerve endings in her arm were reassigned to control muscles that would trigger sensors in the bionic arm. With the surgery, which was performed last year at the Mayo Clinic, she also became the first to have six nerves rewired, giving her the ability at will to move the robotic elbow up and down, rotate the wrist, and open and close the hand.

[…]

Learning how to signal the proper muscles to trigger movements from the bionic arm happened quickly, Jorgenson said, but mastering it is taking time.

“Sometimes when I raise my arm up,” she said, “the hand will start twisting around.”

When it closes, the hand can create a grip-crushing 22 pounds of force, but it can also be delicate enough to hold a paper cup. So developing control has proved crucial. After daring her older brother to let her squeeze his nose, she tried it on herself. She squeezed too tightly and found herself unable to release the hand because the shock caused her muscles to tense up.

But on Wednesday, she transplanted the plant, filled the pot with soil, and cleaned the mess with a dustpan — all with little to no delay between the time she wanted her prosthetic to move and when it did.

“It’s pretty amazing how intuitive she has become,” her father said.

Her next step will be triggering two motions at once — such as moving the elbow while closing the hand — but she is comfortable enough to start wearing the bionic arm to school. The eighth-grader had delayed until now, because her school lacks air conditioning and the prosthetic can become uncomfortable in high heat.

The people involved in the development of this girl’s prosthetic limb have done more to improve the world than anybody who has invested their time in politics. And they’re not done. Unlike politicians who accomplish a minor goal and declare complete victory, people involved in the prosthetics market aren’t satisfied with replicating only a few features of natural limbs. They want to replicate everything:

DARPA promised prosthetic limbs that produce realistic sensations, and it’s making good on its word. The agency’s researchers have successfully tested an artificial hand that gave a man a “near-natural” level of touch. The patient could tell when scientists were pressing against specific fingers, even when they tried to ‘trick’ the man by touching two digits at once. The key was to augment the thought-controlled hand with a set of pressure-sensitive torque motors wired directly to the brain — any time the hand touched something, it sent electrical signals that felt much like flesh-and-bone contact.

If you want to make the world a better place learns skills that allow you to make new goods and services for consumers. You don’t have to work in the medical field but that’s certainly a great market to consider. Something as simple as a restaurant will provide more people more good than any politicking.

If You’re Good At Something Never Do It For Free

I know the Joker is supposed to be the bad guy in The Dark Night and probably serves as some sort of metaphor for the evils of capitalism but he had some goddamn sage advice:

if-you-re-good-at-something-never-do-it-for-free

As I’ve mentioned previously I hate the “giving culture.” Unfortunately most of us have been inflicted with this giving nonsense since our impressionable youths. Teachers harp on students to “share” (usually a euphemism for give away) their toys, pencils, and other earthly possession to any student who asks. In college students are suckered into working for free, often under the guise of an internship, because it will “help them build a resume.” Then when you get into the professional world you might be asked to work longer hours for no additional pay and be accused of not “loving your work” if you decline. Fuck. All. Of. That.

Let’s consider how you get good at something. Although there are a handful of anomalies that seem naturally gifted at whatever they pursue most of us only become good through seemingly endless practice. Successful authors? Almost all of them have written a lot. Skilled programmer? Almost all of them have years of programming under their belts. Bad ass martial artists? Almost all of them have been practicing their art(s) for years. There’s a reason the phrase “Practice makes perfect,” is so popular.

Why should you invest years of your life into developing a skill set and not expect some benefits? And why should you tolerate people belittling your investment by demanding you to give your skills away? The idea of investing is to see a return. That’s why, if you’re good at something, you should never do it for free. You put in the effort where others did not. Likewise, when you want somebody to do something for you then you should recognize their years of effort and not demean them by demanding they do it for free.

Exchange isn’t an evil plot for the haves to steal wealth from the have nots. It’s a mutual respect and acknowledgement of accomplishments. For example, I respect and acknowledge that a automotive engineer has invested years of their life in developing a skill I haven’t so I pay them to build me a vehicle. Likewise, many people seem to respect and acknowledge that I’ve invested years of my life in developing computer science skills and pay me to utilize them.

If you’re good at something you shouldn’t feel ashamed or awkward commanding a price for it. And you should feel free to tell anybody who tells you otherwise to go pound sand because there’s no reason for you to put up with that kind of insulting bullshit.

The Illusion Of Control

On Friday six people were shot in Minneapolis:

Police said the incident happened around 2:30 a.m. on 5th Street between Hennepin and 1st avenues near an alley by Sneaky Pete’s.

Minneapolis police officers were nearby and took three people into custody. Two guns were recovered. The six who were shot received noncritical injuries and were treated at Hennepin County Medical Center.

“Violent acts like last night’s shootings are abhorrent and contrary to the values we hold as a city,” Mayor Betsy Hodges said in a statement.

The mayor pledged a full investigation into the circumstances leading to the incident, which occurred around the time most downtown bars close. However, in an e-mail exchange with the Warehouse District Business Association executive director obtained by the Star Tribune, First Precinct Inspector Michael Kjos said there was no evidence that the two rival groups involved in the violence came from a bar or nearby business.

Kjos said the area was “saturated with police officers” and several officers witnessed the gunfire but did not engage because there were too many pedestrians in the area. The arrests and recovery of the two handguns followed a foot chase, Kjos said.

The responses have been typical. Calls for more gun restrictions, hiring more police officers, and restrictions on establishments that serve alcohol are being made. Gun restrictions have only ever served to disarm people willing to follow the law. Officers were on the scene so having more available wouldn’t have changed anything. And there was no evidence that the perpetrators had been in an establishment serving alcohol so additional restrictions on bars wouldn’t have made any difference. What this story demonstrates better than anything is that centralized controls are ineffective.

The question still remains, what can be done to deal with situations such as this? Contrary to popular belief the solution isn’t relying on third parties to deal with the problem. As with anything else in life the only solution is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.

You cannot control the actions of others so the first step is getting that silly notion out of your head. Once you’ve accepted that fact you need to ask what steps you can take to make yourself safer. For situations such as this the most effective option is avoidance. Our subconscious is pretty good at picking up on subtle signs of danger. Oftentimes people write off these feelings by telling themselves they’re just being paranoid. Don’t do that. If the little voice in your head is telling you something isn’t right then you should listen to it and vacate the area.

Another step would be to keep a clear head, which means not drinking. But telling people not to drink is worthless because they aren’t going to listen. Instead I will take the middle ground by pulling a page from the responsible drinker’s playbook. Every group is supposed to designate a sober driver. There’s no reason that person should only be concerned about driving. I like to think of designated drivers as designated adults. Their job is to ensure everybody gets home safely. In addition to driving that should also involved being the lookout. If their little voice is saying a situation is dangerous they should inform the group that they need to be elsewhere. Granted, herding drunks is like herding libertarians but a designated adult can only put forth their best effort and each person is ultimately responsible for themselves.

If you’re not drinking you should also carry a gun. You can’t control when you’ll find yourself in this kind of situation but you can increase your odds of survival. As with popular belief regarding centralized control the popular belief that having less armed individuals increases overall safety is bullshit. Relying on a third party for protection isn’t a solution because you can’t guarantee a third party will actually protect you. Take charge of your defense and carrying the most effective means of defending yourself when you’re responsible enough to do so (i.e. not when you’re drinking).

Stop asking what “we” can do. There is no we. There is only you so ask what you can do. Until you ask the right question it’s impossible to come up with the right answer.

The Fragility Of Control

I’m a fan of the concept of defense in depth, which is one reason why I hate any solution that is dependent on everybody acting in a particular way. Prohibitions are just such a solution. Gun control advocates like to point to countries such as Japan as proof that control works. Of course gun control relies on everybody in society being unarmed so as soon as one person breaks the prohibition the entire solution falls to pieces. Even though manufacturing firearms is verboten in Japan, at least for the serfs, one Japanese man managed to build numerous firearms in his home:

A 60 year old man in Japan was recently arrested for building homemade guns of his own design. According to him it was his hobby for the last 40 years. He used scrap anvils as a source of hardened steel and crafted his own ammunition using toy caps and casted lead bullets.

In this case the man was merely building firearms as a hobby and no evidence exists that he meant to sell them to nefarious sorts. Although they’re a bit rough overall the firearms actually look pretty well made. More importantly, due to Japan’s strict firearm restrictions, the man was probably one of the more heavily armed individuals in the country. Had he decided to either use or sell his firearms nefarious purposes it would have left the general population at a severe disadvantage.

No solution that depends on everybody in a society to act in a specific way can succeed because there will always people that act outside of those specifications. That’s why I prefer solutions that can be decentralized. Restricting access to firearms only works so long as everybody is unarmed. Allowing individuals to arm themselves reduces the overall advantage a firearm provides to a single individuals. Arming individuals is a better solutions to gun violence than restricting gun ownership precisely because it relies on hardening individuals instead of expecting them to act in a specific manner.

Cell Phone Carrier Illegally Tapped Journalist’s Phone Proving Privacy Can’t Be Protected By Laws

Whenever a bill purporting to strengthen privacy protections enters the political field I receive numerous requests to support it. I always politely decline, which results in the advocate saying some variation of “I know you’re an anarchist but it doesn’t take any time to call your representatives.” It’s a false argument because it does take time to call the person who supposedly represents me (even though I never appointed him to represent me) in Congress. And since privacy laws are ineffective at protecting privacy it takes time that will gain me absolutely nothing, which is not a wise investment in my opinion.

Privacy laws are just like any other State decree. Those who are willing to tolerate the laws will follow them and those who find them burdensome will ignore them:

Telco giant Vodafone illegally ­accessed a journalist’s mobile phone records to discover the source of stories about the company, hid systemic privacy breaches from authorities and covered up fraud in its Brisbane office, according to ­internal documents.

An investigation into these allegations is currently under way. The outcome is irrelevant since the damage has already been done and it’s unlikely Vodafone will be made to pay compensation to the involved parties (usually whatever government agency oversees the regulation gets the winnings from any trail with maybe a pittance given to those actually harmed).

Protecting privacy can only be done by directly protecting it. Once privacy has been violated it’s too late to defend it. That’s why I push cryptography so heavily. Privacy laws are irrelevant if you have taken effective measure to protect your privacy. If you’ve failed to protect your privacy the laws are still irrelevant because the damage has already been done.

Begging the State to issue decrees is a waste of your time that can be better spent learning how to actually address the issue you’re petitioning the State about.