You’re Doing it Right – Page 21

Supreme Court Rules Hotels Not Required to Surrender Registries to Law Enforcers Without a Warrant

What happens when law enforcers enter a hotel and demand to see the registry? That question was, surprisingly, up in the air until now. Even though common sense would dictate that a hotel isn’t required to surrender such information without a warrant being issued the question had to go all the way to the Supreme Court for a definitive answer. Luckily the Nazgûl decided to rule in favor of privacy:

The Supreme Court gave a big boost to privacy Monday when it ruled that hotels and motels could refuse law enforcement demands to search their registries without a subpoena or warrant. The justices were reviewing a challenge to a Los Angeles ordinance requiring hotels to provide information to law enforcement—including guests’ credit card number, home address, driver’s license details, and vehicle license number—at a moment’s notice. Similar ordinances exist in about a hundred other cities stretching from Atlanta to Seattle.

Los Angeles claimed the ordinance (PDF) was needed to battle gambling, prostitution, and even terrorism, and that guests would be less likely to use hotels and motels for illegal purposes if they knew police could access their information at will.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the 5-4 majority, ruled (PDF) that the Los Angeles ordinance violated the Fourth Amendment and is an illegal “pretext to harass hotel operators and their guests.”

What should concern people is that this ruling was determined by only one vote. Had a single Nazgûl voted the other way it would have been legal for law enforcers to storm a hotel and confiscate the registry without even obtaining a warrant. This is why the whole concept of majority rules doesn’t sit well with me. Sometimes the majority make the right decision, such as in this case, and sometimes they make the wrong decision.

It should be noted that this ruling doesn’t require hotels to surrender their registries without a warrant but it doesn’t stop them from voluntarily surrendering them. You should still avoid shitty hotels like Motel 6 that make it company policy to violate their customers’ privacy.

Self-Defense Comes to Puerto Rico

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), whose site now requires enabling JavaScript to view textual content and therefore pisses me off to the point where I really considered not linking to them, notes that a court ruling in Puerto Rico has eliminated the island nation’s firearm registry and licensing requirements to purchase and carry a firearm:

As of now, according to Sandra Barreras with Ladies of the Second Amendment (LSA), the group that brought the lawsuit, “there is no regulation to purchase or carry (and) all purchases will be handled in accordance with federal firearms regulations.” LSA is affiliated with SAF through the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR).

The class-action lawsuit challenged various articles in Puerto Rico’s gun law, which the court declared unconstitutional. Because of the ruling, Barreras said, Puerto Ricans may now carry openly or concealed without a permit, and they do not need to obtain a permit before purchasing a firearm.

This was a class action lawsuit involving more than 850 individual plaintiffs, she reported to SAF offices. The news was greeted with delight, especially because in reaching its decision, the court cited the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases, and the recent ruling in Palmer v. District of Columbia. Both the McDonald and Palmer cases were won by SAF.

It’s nice to hear some positive self-defense news coming from outside of the United States proper. I also find the amount of resources the state will stick into keeping the people under its rule from having an effective means of self-defense telling. Instead of simply abolishing the registry and licensing requirement as soon as somebody stated an objection the government of Puerto Rico enforced the laws and even invested resources into making an argument for keeping them in its own courts (when you can’t convince yourself registries and licenses are necessary then they truly aren’t). That really shows just how much states prefer their victims to be unable to fight back against both itself and any of its ilk (that is to say non-state robbers, attackers, and murders).

Brilliant Troll is Brilliant

I love a good gag. You should think the prevalence of trolls on the Internet would result in an endless stream of hilarious gags but, sadly, it doesn’t. It seems a large number of Internet trolls prefer to just be assholes. Thankfully there are still some old school trolls out there in meatspace performing some amazing pranks:

This guy is a legend. Just a God and hero among men. Mark Gubin is an artist and photographer in Milwaukee and decades ago he realized that his studio was along the flight path to the local airport. He had the brilliant idea to paint on the roof of his studio in giant letters “Welcome To Cleveland.” Why? To mess with people mostly.

The sign is decades old, and is having new life today after being passed around Twitter. For years the sign has caused passengers on planes to freak out about going to the wrong place. There apparently was a Denver to Cleveland flight that stopped over in Milwaukee and the sign caused all sorts of confusion from passengers who thought the plane must have skipped the layover.

You, good sir, are a true hero.

The Only Solution for Marriage Equality

The problem with suffering under a state for the entirety of your life is that you become conditioned to seeing everything as a political solution. Take the issue of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage has been a political hot button issue in recent years. One side, the sane one, wants same-sex couples to enjoy the same privileges and heterosexual couples while the other side, the insane one that believes legislating morality is good policy, oppose the idea. The first side wants to legalize same-sex marriage whereas the other side wants to keep it illegal. Too few, due to conditioning instilled by a life under statism, ask the import question, why is the state involved in marriage at all?

Marriage, after all, is nothing more than voluntary association. Two or more people, sometimes under religious rules and sometimes not, decide they want to enter an agreement that typically involves sharing property and power of attorney. It seems that Alabama is the first state where this question was genuinely considered and it resulted in the abolition of marriage licenses:

Why are there marriage “licenses” – a permission slip granted or denied by the state – rather than just contracts like any other? Why does government stand in the position to veto the choices of two people who want to commit to each other?

These are questions that the Alabama Senate considered in May this year. The result was the passage of Senate Bill 377, supported by 22 senators and opposed by only 3. Under this legislation, licenses would no longer exist for marriage. Marriage would become a plain contract filed with the Probate offices.

In effect, this would restore the traditional role of law in marriage as it has existed in most times and places, before the racially motivated and eugenically inspired idea of “marriage licenses” came along in the early part of the 20th century.

Being a political solution I wouldn’t be surprised if something was inserted to fuck certain classes of people over (say polygamous groups) but it’s certainly a more sane solution than deciding whether certain forms of marriage should be legal or illegal.

Religious aspects of marriage, when applicable, should remain exclusively in the hands of the religious. The contractual aspects of marriage should remain in the hands of the individuals entering the arrangement and their representatives (and, if things fall apart, their chosen party to resolve the dispute). The idea that the state, which is the most immoral institution in the world, should be allowed to grant or refuse permission is ludicrous. How, exactly, is an organization build on theft, kidnapping, assault, and murder a good moral judge for deciding whether or not individuals can voluntarily enter a contractual arrangement? I’m glad everybody isn’t trapped in the legalize or prohibit mentality.

Markets Versus the State

States throughout the world try to restrict markets. These attempts never succeed because the handful of individuals that comprise the state are up against the creativity of very person living under it. This is what so-called “black” markets exist.

Russia decided to place an embargo on foods from the European Union and United States in response to sanctions created against it by those regions. The embargo hasn’t stopped the importation of food from either region. But the embargo makes it risky for importers of these now illicit goods to openly advertise. In the past “black” market actors have relied on limited forms of advertising such as word of mouth. One advertisement agency has come up with a solution that allows “black” market providers to advertise their goods more widely and protects them from state agents:

Last summer, Russia imposed a full embargo on food imports from the European Union (as well as the U.S.) in retaliation for sanctions over Ukraine. This left authentic European food merchants in Moscow in a bit of a bind.

But one Italian grocery store there, Don Giulio Salumeria, kept selling its real Italian food—and came up with a bizarre out-of-home stunt to advertise to consumers without tipping off the police.

With help from agency The 23, the store developed a unique outdoor ad that could recognize police uniforms. Whenever the cops would appear, the ad would cycle out of its rotating display—in essence, physically hiding from the authorities.

Here’s a video showing the sign in action:

Obviously this solution isn’t perfect. Since it relies on recognizing police uniforms it won’t hide the advertisement from off-duty officers walking around in their regular clothes. However it is a demonstration of market innovation and could easily be expanded. In the next iteration they should have the sign store a facial picture of anybody recognized as an officer. Then have it compare faces of anybody passing by with known police officers and hide the advertisement if there’s a match. That way the sign would be able to hide its advertisement from off-duty and on-duty officers.

Innovative ideas such as this one are why the state will always fail when it attempts to restrict markets.

Police Dislike When the Tables are Turned

As policing in the United States continues its downward spiral into thuggery people are finally starting to fight back. More people are recording police encounters to hold officers accountable. Demands are being made in many major cities to curtail police powers. And in a few places people are actively interfering in police attempts at kidnapping. All of this has many of the more psychopathic officers upset:

Whatever the reason, Melbourne police are grateful that for the second time in recent weeks experience and training overcame fear as officers found themselves surrounded and assaulted by hostile anti-police crowds.

This Friday night, Lt. Steve Sadoff saw 22-year-old Phoenix Chansler Low coming out of the Main Street Pub with an open container.

“The officer told him to go back inside or get rid of it,” said Melbourne Police Commander Dan Lynch. “From there it went downhill. The subject was very intoxicated and he began fighting with the officer.”

The scary thing was what happened next. A crowd of people started closing in on Lt. Sadoff and he was attacked from behind, Lynch said. Sadoff used his taser to get Low off him, and it scared the crowd away long enough for him to radio for help and make the arrest.

The person who attacked Sadoff from behind got away.

The “touch on crime” crowd want you to focus on the fact that an officer was attacked and not the fact that the officer initiated the situation by getting in the face of a person who had performed no crime (carrying an open alcohol container outside of a bar does not involve a victim and is therefore not a crime). Had the officer let the patron be nothing would have happened.

“This is the second incident in the past few weeks where officers were making an arrest and the arrestee or people around attempted to interfere with the officer attempting to do his job,” Lynch said. “It is tremendously concerning to us. Every confrontation an officer has is an armed confrontation and the officers are trained to use the minimal amount of force necessary.”

No, this is the second incident in the past few weeks where people prevented officers from kidnapping somebody. People are getting fed up with unaccountable police officers kidnapping and shooting people who haven’t hurt anybody. Decades of little police accountability combine with officers who enjoy power trips has eroded the public’s faith in modern policing. Since they lack faith in the institution they are unwilling to cooperate with it. If officers are really becoming concerned about this trend then they should start taking measures to regain the public’s trust. That starts with refusing to enforce victimless crimes and actually using minimum necessary force to resolve situations (not just talking about it).

Watching Cronies Fail

A major benefit of providing solutions to government meddling is watching as the government’s cronies fail. Cab drivers in Mexico, as cab drivers in much of the world, are unhappy with ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. Their unhappiness is understandable since they’ve been shielded from competitors by their government for decades. When you haven’t had to compete in a market it can be scary facing competition because it makes you realize that you have to actually provide a superior service if you want to thrive.

On Monday cab drivers in Mexico went on strike to protest Uber. The protest was a plea for the Mexican government to ban Uber. The end result was to give Uber a great dead of publicity and convince a lot of people to try Uber since they couldn’t get around using traditional cabs:

Monday’s protest from Mexican Taxi drivers, against ride-sharing mobile apps such as Uber, has proved a boon for the San Francisco-based company. After offering a protest-edition special with two free 10-dollar rides, downloads of the app rose by 800 percent, Uber Communications Director for Mexico Luis de Uriarte said on Tuesday.

Unlike Uber, the signs of regulated taxis were off in Mexico on May 25, as some 5,000 drivers took to the streets of Mexico City. Chanting “Get out Uber!” union leaders demanded the government impose a ban on the smartphone-based service.

With the hashtags #UberNoPara (Uber doesn’t stop) and #MexicoNoPara (Mexico doesn’t stop), Uber launched a campaign offering two MEX$150 (US$9.8) fares for free between 7:00 a.m. and 9:59 p.m. on Monday. The initiative not only have become a commercial success, it brought PR blowback on the taxi drivers.

Uber and Lyft are providing a solution to a market that has been crippled by government regulations for decades. Many localities put an artificial cap on the number of legal taxi cabs that can operate. Other localities, while not putting an artificial cap in place, require potential taxicab drivers to pay a licensing fee, which adds a barrier to entry. The result has been lackluster taxicab services in much of the world. With ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft anybody can act as a taxicab. Suddenly cronies that have been protected from competition are facing the competition of anybody with a vehicle and they’re floundering.

Providing solutions to government create problems weakens its grip by showing how unnecessary it is. While government protected taxicab drivers were refusing to provide services ride-sharing swooped in to save the day. Because of this people are unlikely to accept any prohibition against ride-sharing services.

Go and Make It

This is effectively what us agorists have been advocating for decades:

What if we stopped attacking people for a cause and started attracting people to a cause? What if we became creators instead of mere critics and conquerors? Rather than waging war—either figuratively (in arguing) or literally — what if we channeled all of our passion and energy into disruptive acts of creation?

What if we bypassed electoral politics and established a more cooperative era…one in which the best ideas win?

In this new age, politicians would be replaced by innovators. Political capital would be replaced by creative capital.

Social change would not be planned by bureaucrats. It would emerge from the collective creativity of artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs working in cooperation.

Agorism utilizes counter-economics to provide goods and services in a manner that doesn’t feed the state. Permits are not acquired, taxes are not collected or paid, and regulations are not consciously adhered to. Instead goods and services that people want, not what the government says the ought to have, are created and sold for a lower price since all of the cost of bureaucratic overhead is absent.

We living in a world where solutions can be more easily created. “Go and make it,” is an excellent slogan for a new revolution. It encompasses the power of individuals to create solutions and the fact that the new revolution won’t be fought with the state’s tool of war but with markets.

State Solutions Versus Market Solutions

Technology is a double-edged sword. One edge improves the lives of people. The other edge enables bad people to do bad things. When you want to see both edges of a technology you need only compare how it is used by the state versus the market. Consider drones. States use drones to spy and drop bombs on people. Meanwhile the market utilizes them to provide better services to individuals. Xcel Energy is planning to utilize drones to inspect power infrastructure:

Xcel Energy says it has approval from federal regulators to use drones to inspect more than 320,000 miles of electric and natural gas infrastructure.

The Federal Aviation Administration says Xcel can use the small unmanned aircraft systems to visually inspect electric transmission and distribution lines, power plants, renewable energy facilities, substations and pipelines.

This will allow more reliable provision of power by identifying flaws in the infrastructure before they become a major problem. It will also allow fast identification of problem sources as aerial inspection of power infrastructure is usually faster than ground inspection. Instead of using drones to terrorize entire nations Xcel Energy is another company that has found yet another way to utilize the technology to enhance the lives of people.

Deus Ex is Our Future

Deus Ex is a great series of video games because it not only has great game play but also addresses the issue of transhumanism. As prosthetic technology improves we will certainly have people opting to have their squishy natural limbs and organs replaced by far superior mechanical versions. Even now prosthetics are becoming more capable. But they still lack one major feature, a sense of touch. That will soon change:

Daniel Moran, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science and of neurobiology, of physical therapy and of neurological surgery at the School of Medicine, has received a three-year, nearly $1.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test a novel device his lab developed that would stimulate the nerves in the upper arm and forearm. If it works, upper-limb amputees who use motorized prosthetic devices would be able to feel various sensations through the prosthetic, which would send sensory signals to the brain.

[…]

Moran and his team, which includes Harold Burton, PhD, professor of neurobiology; Wilson (Zach) Ray, MD, assistant professor of neurological surgery, both at the School of Medicine; and Matthew MacEwen, who will graduate with an MD/PhD in May 2015 and worked on this project for his dissertation, have developed a macro-sieve peripheral nerve interface designed to stimulate regeneration of the ulnar and median nerves to transmit information back into the central nervous system. The macro-sieve is made of an ultrathin, flexible material similar to a soft contact lens, is about 1/8th the size of a dime and looks like a wagon wheel with open spaces between the “spokes” that allow the nerve to grow.

At this rate we’ll have actual cyborgs within the decade. It’s amazing how quickly technology is advancing. Much of it is due to the development of every smaller power-efficient computers. Since technology is cumulative, that is to say technology builds on itself to create more technology, we may enjoy that almost utopian future dreamed of in the 1950’s (you know the one with flying cars and infinite energy provided by nuclear power).