Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

Like Rats Feeling a Sinking Ship

Like California, New York has been gouging the people living within its borders for more and more tax money and like the people of California the people of New York are fleeing the state:

New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, according to the Tax Foundation.

Over that decade the state gained 2.1 million, so net migration amounted to 1.3 million, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.

Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

Once again we return to the fact that demanding more from the wealthy accomplishes nothing because they are also the individuals most able to flee. Some of the wealthiest individuals have been abandoning the United States because of the oppressive tax system, which is why the state is now pushing for a Nazi-esque tax for those leaving the country (and before somebody claims Godwin’s Law note that said law doesn’t apply when one is making an accurate historical reference).

As our cracking economy beings to come apart entirely we can look forward to more individual states increasing tax rates and implementing taxes for leaving. No country can tax its way to prosperity because those being taxes will eventually get sick enough of having their wealth stolen and either leave, abandon all productive endeavors (often referred to as going Galt), or do business exclusively in the “unofficial” economy (often called the black market by racist propagandists (that was hyperbole, clam down) who believe such a label makes it sound sinister). Either way money is kept from the state, which causes the state to lash out more violently as it dies a slow death.

Going Armed Becoming More Popular with Women in India

Woman are the fastest growing demographics for firearm sales in the United States and more are getting their carry permits every day. It’s nice to see the United States doesn’t hold a monopoly on armed women, women in India are arming themselves as well:

When Dr Harveen Kaur Sidhu travels from her home in an upmarket neighbourhood of the north-western Indian city of Chandigarh, she always slips her lightweight .22 revolver in her bag. The gun is a new purchase – Sidhu got her licence only a year ago – but now the 33-year-old dentist won’t travel without it.

“I don’t have faith in the police to protect me. There are so many attacks on women these days. It’s everybody’s right to defend themselves. I think all women who are vulnerable should be carrying guns,” Sidhu said. She is not alone. A growing number of well-off, educated Indian women are turning to firearms for protection.

The trend is part of a broader growth of gun culture in the land once known for the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi.

Stories like this put a smile on my face. Gun control advocates will obviously take that quote, twist it, and use it as irrefutable proof that I support women being attacked to push my agenda but that’s entirely false. The reason stories like this make me smile is because there are now more people out there who are armed and thus the risk involved in perpetrating violent crime has increased.

Robert Heinlein once wrote, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” Perpetrating a crime, like anything else, is done after determining the risks compared to the rewards and finding the rewards worth the risk. When a mugger robs somebody on the street that mugger had determined the act of armed robbery was worth the risk of the victim defending him or herself. When you increase the number of armed individuals you also increase the risk of perpetrating a crime. As the risks associating with perpetrating a crime increases the number of crimes committed decreases.

Another part of this story I want to address is the following:

There are estimated to be 40m guns in India, the second highest number in the world after the US. Licences are hard to obtain and most are illegal weapons, many manufactured in backstreet workshops. Ownership levels per capita remain low – three guns for every 100 people in India – but there is strong anecdotal evidence that middle-class interest in firearms is rising fast.

Many who promote gun rights are careful to clarify they only mean for law-abiding citizens. Paragraphs like the above make them squirm because they see so many people arming themselves illegally yet want to support those peoples’ actions. I’ve mostly given up tossing the “law-abiding citizen” caveat on my statements regarding gun rights. The bottom line is states often place numerous restrictions between individuals and their right of self-defense meaning the only way one can defend themselves is unlawfully. For example, the paragraph above states that a majority of firearms in India are illegally owned. Illegal by what regards? The state’s regards.

To quote Martin Luther King Jr., “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Laws prohibiting individuals from exercising their right of self-defense are unjust and should not be obeyed. When a woman in India arms herself against the wishes of the state she should be cheered. According to the state she may be unlawful but according to any decent person she is performing a just act.

A Taste of Power

I spend a great deal of time bitching about the current president, mostly because he is yet another person in a long line of assholes who have been made the figurehead of the country. I’m not sure if there will every be a president I don’t hate but Obama is a very special case because he actively campaigned on closing Gitmo, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the government more transparent, and ending the drug war only to do a 180 degree spin after his election. He hasn’t shutdown Gitmo, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still being waged, the government is less transparent, the war on drugs is still being waged, and he has even found time to order the assassination of two American citizens.

What happened? In my opinion, power happened. The New York Times has a long article that appears to have been written specifically to inflate Obama’s ego. It tries to make him out to be a great leader by explaining all the hard decisions he’s had to make since becoming the president. Desperately it attempts to explain Obama’s actions in a way that makes it appear as though he never deviated from his campaign promises. Eight pages are used in an attempt to address this concern:

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

How could a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture end up ordering the death of so many individuals without a trial? According to the New York Times article Obama is a messiah who swooped down from the heavens to personally ensure only the wicked received the wrath of the United States. Gone are the days of Bush’s tyranny, smitten by the wholesome nature of the great angel Obama! He has delivered this country from evil, he has given it a conscious, he is making the difficult decisions all good leaders must make!

Bullshit.

While the New York Times attempts to take eight pages to explain Obama’s actions are due to the difficult decisions he’s had to make as president the truth is Obama tosses his campaign promises to the wind because he got a taste of power, and he liked it.

The Lord of the Rings is really a story about the corrupting nature of power, something that shouldn’t be surprising coming from a man who expressed his political views as being more and more towards anarchy. In the story the One Ring is a magical entity that can give its wearer a great deal of power but that power comes at a price, it eventually corrupts its wearer no matter how noble they are. There is little difference between the One Ring and the presidency.

I’m not aware of one president who has entered the White House and kept his campaign promises. Most presidential hopefuls have grand campaign promises that would expand individual liberty and reduce the power of the state but once they get into office they try to destroy individual liberty and expand the state’s power. Some would say this is merely because politicians are liars, a sentiment I partially agree with, although I feel there are more pieces to this puzzle. Power is another piece.

You can see the corrupting nature of power in most people. Watch a random powerless schmuck suddenly feel the need to reign power viciously over unsuspecting air travelers when you pin a badge to his chest that reads Transportation Security Administration. Suddenly that meek individual is happily shouting orders at air travelers demanding that they remove their shoes, empty their pockets, and submit to either a radiating naked body scanner or sexual molestation. Your best friend in high school can suddenly become an insufferable dick because he caught you driving faster than the posted speed limit after being issued a costume and badge by the local police department. Even the neighborhood dog catcher can go from a kind man to a rabid bastard who is screaming at you to keep better control over your dog (even when your dog is on a leash and you’re holding it).

I have no doubt many people enter politics with good intentions. They believe they can change things or make them better. Is your local school allowing children to purchase soft drinks from a vending machine? Those bastards! Don’t they understand that soft drinks are making children obese? Obviously you must run for a position on the school board to correct this monstrous failure. Once seated on the school board though the soft drinks become a minor annoyance, you now have power over everybody in the school district after all. You can do so many things, you can stop bullying by demanding any offense speech be squashed and the speaker be suspended. Children who are missing school, regardless of their grades, can also be punished, you have the power to make it so. Teachers who teach material you don’t approve of, such as evolution, can be sacked and the classroom will once again be safe for God fearing christians.

Obama may have very well entered the White House with the plan to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he may have been ready to bring a new wave of transparency to the United States government, he may have even had a bill written up that legalized medical marijuana. Unfortunately for us something happened, Obama suddenly had access to executive orders, armed drones, the military, and the entire law enforcement arm of the federal government. Suddenly he had to tools to right all of the world’s wrongs. He could stop the terrorists from performing another attack by taking out terrorist leaders, he could prevent crime by sicking the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on dissidents, the options were limitless.

What Obama never stopped to consider was the fact that every tool at the state’s disposal requires the use of violence. To a socially well-adjusted individual the idea of using violence is to be reserved as a last resort, and only as a response to initiated violence. Once you succumb to the idea that violence can be used for the “greater good” you’re soon to be entirely corrupted. Any act of aggression is justifiable when it’s for the “greater good.” Sure, some innocent people may die when a hellfire missile is launched at a terrorist leader at a wedding party but that terrorist leader won’t be able to hurt anybody else! By killing that handful of people many more lives were saved! The ends justify the means!

This is why power scares me and why I avoid it at all costs. I don’t want power over others because I know what that can lead to. Politics is a game I won’t play, I’ve seen what happens to those who do. Some of the most liberty-minded individuals I know decided to play the political game only to turn into authoritarians. They justified supporting neocons by claiming that politician had his toe in the liberty lake and with enough coaxing would dive in entirely. Sometimes they claimed the neocon was better than the alternative and that we must suffer through his or her reign because it was a babystep in the right direction. The justifications becomes endless, they were given access to the One Ring and believed they could shake the curse, they were better than those who previously held it, they could use it for good. They were wrong.

From what I’ve witnessed there are really only two outcomes for those entering politics: you either realize what it is and exit as quickly as possible or you succumb to the power and descend into a world of darkness. I played the political game for a short while and recognized it for what it was and got the hell out as fast as I could. Obama on the other hand played the political game and was seduced by the power. Did he have good intentions? That I don’t know, psychopaths are attracted to power and have no qualm with using it. Obama may have had good intentions or he may have been a psychopath before entering politics. The only important part is the outcome, he is now a power hungry creature who has been entirely corrupted. He is part of a legacy of such people who we have called presidents.

What can we do? Elect Romney? Hardly. I hope you take away from this post my warning against the seeking power. I also hope you see the underlying lesson, the corrupting nature of power means no good can come from its use. Romney could be the “lesser” or two evils but the second he gets in the White House he will become entirely corrupted and end up being no less evil than Obama. I even worry that Paul could be corrupted if he won the presidency, it’s just so much power to hold. So long as we continue to grant individuals power over us we cannot “fix” this country. No man can wear the One Ring without being corrupted just as no man can win the presidency without being corrupted. We can’t “fix” this country by electing the “right people” because the right people will quickly turn into the wrong people once they are granted presidential power.

Let me end this post by quoting Frank Herbert:

This, then, was one of my themes for Dune: Don’t give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero’s facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem.

It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane.

That was the beginning. Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.

Feeling the Wrath of the State

Unions are an interesting beast. They claim to fight for the working man while demanding large tributes that end up lining the pockets of union bosses. I don’t oppose all unions, just the public ones that I’m forced to pay for. Unions, at a very basic level, are nothing more than groups of workers who come together to fight for better wages, benefits, and less hours. In this sense they are a form of voluntary association that I support.

Then there is the other side of unions, the side that tries to use the state’s gun to enforce their desires. They demand the state force employers to pay a minimum wage, provide mandatory benefits, and only allow employees to work a fixed number of hours. What these unions don’t realize is that the state is a vicious monster that lashes out against anybody and everybody. One moment the state will be your best friend, the next moment it will move against you because you no longer serve its desires:

Talks between Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd and the union representing 4,800 striking locomotive engineers have broken down, paving the way for the government to bring in legislation forcing them back to work, the company said on Sunday.

The Canadian government, concerned that a rail strike could hurt an economy still struggling with the aftermath of the last recession, had said it was prepared to introduce the legislation.

Railroad employees in Canada have gone on strike and talks between the union and employer have broken down. In a free society this part of negotiation could take several directions: the union could negotiate for less than they previously wanted, the union could except the current conditions, the employer could meet the union’s current demands, the employer could put forward a better deal that doesn’t meet the union’s current demands, or the employer could fire all the striking employees and hire people willing to work under current conditions. Unfortunately for the employees and union Canada isn’t a free society. Because of this either side can attempt to use the state’s gun to force the other party to comply. At times the unions benefit the state and they will provide the unions with benefits and protections, and at other times the unions are not useful to the state so they are struck down. In this case Canadian Pacific are more useful to the state so the state is going to enter the debate on their side and force the railroad employees to return to work.

The state is like the One Ring, it can’t be used for good. It is an entity of violence that can only perpetuate violence. While you may feel it’s doing an act of good when supporting your interests it will eventually attack your interests, devastating them.

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, a day when people are supposed to take a moment to recognize the fallen soldiers of yore. I feel we should also reflect on the fact men and women of this country are being sent overseas to die needlessly because monsters in Washington want to make resource grabs and project power in the hopes of scaring other countries into obedience.

If we really want to pay tribute to the men and women in the United States armed forces we should be doing everything we can to demand their immediate and safe return. Peoples’ lives should not be put on the line because some politicians want to kill brown people living in sandy (and more importantly, oil rich) regions.

I leave you now with a excerpt from a very wise man best known by his pen name, Mark Twain (it’s worth your time to read the entire thing):

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

War is hell, and the state is more than willing to throw people into this hell for its own personal gains.

Libertarian Ethics and Suicide

Via Tam I came across the following post by Roberta X discussing libertarian ethics, namely as it applies to suicide. Apparently there has been a bit of a debate in the libertarian/gun blogger realm over whether or not it’s ethical, according to libertarianism, to intervene when somebody is threatening suicide. I left a rather lengthy post on Tam’s site but I wanted to discuss this in a bit more detail and cleanup my thoughts. Roberta X had the following to say regarding the threat of committing suicide:

You don’t own other people; you don’t get to control what they do. When you threaten to harm someone — even yourself — you’re initiating force, attempting to extort something from the persons to whom you are expressing your threat.

I disagree with her statement. I’ve discussed self-ownership in more depth previously, but surmise it to say your are the sole owner of yourself. One cannot control your actions, even if they are in a position of authority you have the ability to rebel. Slaves have the option of attacking and attempting to kill their masters because humanity hasn’t yet (thankfully) developed a technology to entirely control the minds and actions of others.

Ownership in libertarian ethics implies some amount of control. The amount of control one wields depends on the amount of ownership one holds, if you are the sole owner of something you have total control over it, if you are a partial owner of something you have partial control over it. Let’s use the example of an automobile. If you are the sole owner of an automobile you may do with it as you please. Whether your drop a higher performing engine in the car, put in a more powerful sound system, or simply burn the car to cinder is nobody’s concern except your own (unless your action puts another or their property into harm, for example driving your vehicle into a building owned by another). On the other hand if you are a partial owner then anything done to the car must be agreed to by every other partial owner. You cannot rightfully drop in a faster engine in the car, put a more powerful sound system in the car, or burn the car unless the other owners also agree to your actions.

As the sole owner of yourself you have the right to do with yourself whatever you please. If you want to drink alcohol you can drink alcohol, if you want jump around in a mosh bit then you can just around in a mosh pit, if you want to destroy yourself entirely by committing suicide then you may commit suicide. No other person holds a stake in your person and therefore has no right to prevent you from taking any action that doesn’t harm others or their property. What about the statement that threatening to commit suicide is a form of extortion? This too I disagree with.

Extortion, under libertarian ethics, is generally considered a threat of action you have no right to perform. For example, if somebody pulled a knife on you and demanded your wallet they have performed an act of extortion, they have threatened to stab you if you don’t surrender your wallet. This can be considered an act of extortion because the attacker has no right to attack your person, such an act is considered an initiation of force. Were you to say to your attacker, “I have a gun and I will draw it an shoot you if you attempt to attack me” you would not be performing an act of extortion, you have every right to take such action to defend yourself against an initiator of force (I know such an act is not a good idea in a self-defense situation, I’m merely using this as an example to demonstrate a point, I’m certainly not recommending you perform such an action).

We’ve established that a person is a self-owner and therefore has total dominion over themselves and that extortion is a threat to perform an action that the threatener has no right to perform. Therefore suicide is not an act of extortion because one has a right to commit suicide by the fact they are the sole owner of themselves.

Does that mean one cannot intervene to prevent somebody from committing suicide? No, at least I don’t believe so. Ethics are black and white when discussing black and white situations but they aren’t so clear cut when discussing issues with a great deal of gray area. Like hypothetical self-defense situations, people who argue ethics usually create hypothetical scenarios where a “good” option exists. Unfortunately a “good” option doesn’t always exist. Murray Rothbard discussed one such situation in The Ethics of Liberty. Chapter 20 discusses lifeboat situations:

IT IS OFTEN CONTENDED that the existence of extreme, or “lifeboat,” situations disproves any theory of absolute property rights, or indeed of any absolute rights of self-ownership whatsoever. It is claimed that since any theory of individual rights seems to break down or works unsatisfactorily in such fortunately rare situations, therefore there can be no concept of inviolable rights at all. In a typical lifeboat situation, there are, let us say, eight places in a lifeboat putting out from a sinking ship, and there are more than eight people wishing to be saved. Who then is to decide who should be saved and who should die? And what then happens to the right of self-ownership, or, as some people phrase it, the “right to life”? (The “right to life” is fallacious phraseology, since it could imply that A’s “right to life” can justly involve an infringement on the life and property of someone else, i.e., on B’s “right to life” and its logical extensions. A “right to self-ownership” of both A and B avoids such confusions.)

In the first place, a lifeboat situation is hardly a valid test of a theory of rights, or of any moral theory whatsoever. Problems of a moral theory in such an extreme situation do not invalidate a theory for normal situations. In any sphere of moral theory, we are trying to frame an ethic for man, based on his nature and the nature of the world—and this precisely means for normal nature, for the way life usually is, and not for rare and abnormal situations. It is a wise maxim of the law, for precisely this reason, that “hard cases make bad law.” We are trying to frame an ethic for the way men generally live in the world; we are not, after all, interested in framing an ethic that focuses on situations that are rare, extreme, and not generally encountered.

That is to say an extremely rare situations are special cases and should be treated as such. Being in a position to stop a suicide is one of these rare situations, one where other factors come into play. Using another example let’s say you come across a situation where somebody is being held a knifepoint by an attacker. Do you have a right to intervene if the victim doesn’t specifically ask? I would say yes, because it is a very safe assumption that the victim would gladly take you up on an offer to help if he or she was in a position to ask. In many cases people threatening or attempting to commit suicide are not in complete control of their faculties, they are often extremel depressed, mentally disturbed, under the influence of some kind of drug, etc. A schizophrenic may threaten or attempt suicide because a voice in their head is telling them to while a manic depressive may threaten or attempt to commit suicide during a depressive episode. Were the individual in full control of their faculties it is a safe assumption that they would ask for intervention. In fact the threat or even attempt of suicide is often a cry for help in of itself.

Considering the fact that being in a position to prevent a suicide is one of those rare situations akin to lifeboat situations and that threats or attempts of suicide are often cries for help I believe it just to intervene. That isn’t to say that all interventions to prevent suicide are warranted, if a person is in a state of perpetual pain and in full control of their faculties it is very possible that they would want to end their life to prevent ongoing suffering. In such a case intervention would be unwarranted.

Black and white situations seldom exist, there is usually a great deal of gray area. Because of this there are rarely absolute answers and thus some amount of common sense must be considered. Saying somebody has a right to commit suicide is correct, saying that intervening to prevent that suicide is a violation of libertarian ethics is subjective. Sure, ideally, such an intervention is a an encroachment on the rights of another. We don’t live in an ideal world, numerous circumstances often exist that would lead one to believe such intervention is desired. Perhaps the person threatening or attempting suicide is crazy, perhaps their family is being threatened and suicide is the only option that person sees to protect his or her family, perhaps the person is merely sick of living and desires to die. It’s nearly impossible for somebody in a position to prevent a suicide to know all the facts and therefore make the right decision. We don’t want to do what the state does, make an environment that discourages people from helping one another, and thus must rely on a great deal of individual judgement and at the moment common sense.

Ethics are great for general cases, which is why I like the “don’t be a dick” rule. Yes, there are times when one must certainly be a dick but for a vast majority of the time there is no need and thus not being a dick is a great general rule.

Score One for Private Enterprise

They said it couldn’t be done, they said we needed the state in order to achieve space flight, they were wrong:

Dragon has been built by the California firm SpaceX and is carrying half a tonne of food and other stores for the ISS astronauts.

It is the first time a private sector company has attempted to deliver freight to the station.

The high-flying laboratory’s Canadarm2 is being controlled by US spaceman Don Petit.

He grabbed the capsule at 13:56 GMT (14:56 BST). “Houston, looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” he radioed to Nasa mission Control in Texas.

To all of you who claimed this couldn’t be done please feel free to shut your mouth next time you get the idea that the state is the only entity that can accomplish something. Heck, if it wasn’t for the state we may have been on Mars already.

Copyright Infringement and Restitution

Ladies and gentlemen it’s time again for and rant regarding the United States legal system. The Supreme Court just refused to hear a case involving copyright infringement, which may cost the defendant $675,000:

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear the case of Joel Tenenbaum, who illegally downloaded music during college and now faces a $675,000 fine.

Tenenbaum’s been battling the music industry since 2007, over charges that he downloaded 31 songs online. A federal jury slapped Tenenbaum with a $22,500-per-song verdict in 2009, but a year later, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner reduced the fine to $67,500, calling the original amount “unconstitutionally excessive.” Then, last November, an appeals court raised the verdict back to its original amount.

For the act of downloading 31 songs Tenebaum is being nailed with a $675,000 fine, or $22,500 per song. Copyright infringement in the United States has nothing to do with protecting copyright holders or restitution, it has everything to do with punishment. Tenebaum isn’t being made to make amends for his infraction, he’s being made an example of because he dared to challenge the state’s cronies. The state doesn’t like it when you challenge it or its cronies and will usually bring down the biggest hammer possible as a demonstration of its power.

Under a just system what would Tenebaum be made to pay? I would argue nothing because I don’t believe infinitely plentiful resources should be protected with violence but let’s assume copyright laws are somehow just, what should Tenebaum be made to pay? He should be made to pay restitution, that is the value he took. Assuming each song can be purchased for $0.99 on the iTunes store the grand total of Tenebaum’s fine should be $30.69 plus all fees paid by the copyright holder to recover the money. Instead Tenebaum is being forced to pay 21,994.134897 times the value he “stole.” How the hell is this just? It’s not, but it is legal:

(c) Statutory Damages. —

(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.

(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her employment who, or such institution, library, or archives itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies or phonorecords; or (ii) a public broadcasting entity which or a person who, as a regular part of the nonprofit activities of a public broadcasting entity (as defined in subsection (g) of section 118) infringed by performing a published nondramatic literary work or by reproducing a transmission program embodying a performance of such a work.

Looking at the law the fact that it was written to punish instead of deliver justice is obvious by the fact that the minimum fine for infringing a copyrighted work is $750.00. This was actually an increase from what the fine once was:

The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 amended section 504(c) as follows: 1) in paragraph (1), by inserting “$500” in lieu of “$250” and by inserting “$20,000” in lieu of “$10,000” and 2) in paragraph (2), by inserting “$100,000” in lieu of “$50,000” and by inserting “$200” in lieu of “$100.” Pub. L. No. 100-568, 102 Stat. 2853, 2860. The Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 amended section 504(c), in paragraph (1), by substituting “$750” for “$500” and “$30,000” for “$20,000” and, in paragraph (2), by substituting “$150,000” for “$100,000.” Pub. L. No. 106-160, 113 Stat. 1774.

Apparently a $500.00 fine for “stealing” a $0.99 song wasn’t enough and thus it had to be increased to $750.00. I find this to be ridiculous. How the hell is this legal? Oh, I almost forgot, Disney and the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) are politically well-connected and therefore get special protection from the mob state.

Let’s consider what copyright infringement is for a minute. When you steal a car from somebody you have effectively taken away another person’s right to said car. Two people cannot be in possession of the car at the same time so in order for one person to use it another must go without. If you steal a $30,000 car I would argue that anywhere between $30,000 and $60,000 restitution, plus recovery fees, would be just compensation. The reason I would set an upper limit of $60,000 is because stealing the car really took away the owner’s right to the car and therefore a just punishment would be to have the thief lose his right to a car. Copyright is different since no actual theft takes place.

If I download a song via BitTorrent I’m not depriving another human being of that song. No theft has occurred because theft implies taking another’s right to something, copyright infringement merely implies you violated a state granted monopoly over an infinitely reproducible good. Of course many followers of Ayn Rand have argued that by downloading said song you’re taking away the copyright holder’s “right to a sale” but that implies that the downloader was actually planning to buy the song if it wasn’t available freely, an assumption that is often false. Either way you’re not denying anybody the copyrighted work when downloading a digital copy and thus should not be made to pay double the “damages” incurred.

Justice is supposed to imply righting a wrong, not enriching politically well-connected favorites of the state. Unfortunately our “justice” system is really a punishment system. It’s not about righting wrongs, it’s about making examples out of those who dare disobey the decrees of the state. Courts aren’t used primarily for mediation in disputes but for striking fear into the people.

The Folies of Rent-Seeking

In economics the term rent-seeking is used to define actions where economic rent is sought by manipulating the social or political landscape instead of mutual trade. The classic example of this practice are patent trolls, companies that either buy or register patents for ideas they have no intention of manufacturing so they can sue another company that does attempt to manufacture a good that is covered by said patents. This has become very easy in today’s environment because almost anything is allowed to be patented including software and business models.

Microsoft has just be smacked upside the head because a judge has determined the Xbox 360 S violates the patent of another company and has recommended an import ban on the console:

An administrative law judge for the International Trade Commission issued a recommendation that the commission ban 4GB and 250 GB Xbox gaming consoles from import to the United States. The recommendation(PDF) was released to the public on Monday, and would punish Microsoft for infringing against some of Motorola’s patents. The patents permit video transmission and compression on the console and between the console and its controllers.

Right now it’s up to the International Trade Commission (ITC) to either agree with the judge and order the import ban or disagree with the judge and overrule the ban. Of course this case is really payback for the import ban Microsoft got enacted against Motorola:

The US International Trade Commission today ordered an import ban on Motorola Mobility Android products, agreeing with Microsoft that the devices infringe a Microsoft patent on “generating meeting requests” from a mobile device.

Payback is a bitch, especially when dealing with rent-seeking. Instead of spending money on research and development to introduce newer and better products for consumers to buy Motorola and Microsoft have instead opted to sink money into costly court battles. It is becoming more common in the business world to rely on suing violators of held patents to make money instead of selling goods and services, in fact an entirely business model has developed around the process.

The patent system is a mechanism used by the state to grant monopolies over ideas. Ideas, not being scarce resources (in other words if I tell you my idea I haven’t lost my idea, we both have it), should not be artificially restricted through the state’s monopoly on violence. Unfortunately the state does grant monopolies on ideas and they do enforce those monopolies through force. Instead of fostering an environment of innovation as the founders of this country believed they were doing when implementing the patent system, an environment of liability has been created. Innovation has taken a backseat to lawsuits, after all suing somebody is still a cheaper and less risky process then researching and developing new products.

The Manipulation of the Sugar Market

If you go to grocery stores that cater to international tastes you’ll usually run across what is most often referred to say “Mexican Coke.” Truthfully it should be called international Coke because the drink people are often seeking out isn’t just available in Mexico, it’s available in many other countries. Why? Because “Mexican Coke” is made with real sugar so it tastes far different that the crape we can buy in bulk here in the United States. The sugar market, like so many other markets, has been manipulated by the state to such an extent that high fructose corn syrup is more economical than pure natural sugar:

When a government guarantees profits to those large corporations with powerful lobbies, the market loses its natural regulating mechanism. Instead of weeding out the most inefficient companies, the state subverts the consumer and keeps these companies propped up with corporate welfare. This is particularly true with respect to the agricultural industry.

In the absence of tariffs, importation quotas, and subsidies, the natural tendency of the market would be to produce cheap foreign sugar, which soda manufacturers would then import to sweeten their product. Domestic farmers are naturally opposed to this system because they cannot compete with more-efficient foreign firms. So, instead of competing for the dollar votes of the millions of individuals who form the free market, these large corporations have the power to lobby a select group of politicians to confer them special privilege. When a businessman tries to secure his profits not through free competition but through state privilege, he is not acting as a market entrepreneur but rather as a political, rent-seeking one.

In this case, the political entrepreneur was Archer Daniels Midland, a company that lobbied Congress to pass draconian quotas on sugar importation. But why would ADM, a corn producer, want to artificially raise the price of foreign sugar? A basic lesson of economics is this: when the price of a good is raised, all other things being equal, people cut back on their consumption, and (depending on the elasticity of demand) they look for substitutes.

High-fructose corn syrup, which is made from cornstarch, which ADM grows, is such a substitute.

Sugar doesn’t grow well in the United States so producing it cheaply is impractical. Because of this consumers of sugar usually import it from foreign produces. This isn’t a problem in a free market because farmers in the United States are able to grow crops that don’t do well in areas favorable to sugar cane so trade can go both ways. Unfortunately when given the option to hinder competition through the political process most economic actors will jump on the opportunity.

In this case an individual who produced a corn-based sweetener wanted to push out competing foreign sugar producers. Doing this is easy when there is a state that can impose import restrictions (and also subsidize corn producers to encourage more of the crop to be grown, thus reducing the cost). Tariffs, import quotas, and subsidies are nothing more than mechanisms available to the state to grant its cronies monopolies. If a domestic producer is having difficulties selling their produce because of a superior foreign competitor the state will happily intervene and push out the foreign competitor so long as the domestic producer has something of value to offer the politicians. In fact this demonstrates the fact that we never moved away from mercantilism. The state still controls foreign trade, they are just less overt about it. Instead of a king openly granting a monopoly to a favored merchant the state now hides those grants of monopolies behind tariffs, import restrictions, regulations, subsidies, government contracts, etc. Even though the rules of the game have changed the game itself hasn’t.

Some people are probably curious about why this matters. It matters because market interventions come at a costs to your and me, the consumers. Our choices are artificially restricted and the lack of competition ensures prices will remain higher than they would otherwise. We end up having to pay a higher price for an inferior product. While producers of high fructose corn syrup will claim it tastes the same as sugar anybody who has had a “Mexican Coke” and a domestic Coke will let you know such claims are bullshit.