I Told You I Was Good

Who needs a college degree? I told you here that there does exist a market for endangered species.

I was right according to this, and according to elementary economic theory, but who believes that silly stuff anymore.

Thanks, Dr. Perry.

Pragmatists Aren't From Mars, After All

On the one hand, Haitian immigrants might expropriate our property through the vote. They might not. Is this a mark against open immigration as such? I concede: Of course not, but instead it is a mark against majoritarian rule (the similar critique applies to my concerns with the welfare state and its usage by immigrants, too). I am obviously concerned, however, with the state of how things actually are. But Block is right (here) that being a pragmatist and going against your philosophical starting point is or can be a slippery slope.

Makes me think: What if, tomorrow, the U.S. found out that, say, Costa Rica has been plotting against it for decades, and has the complete capacity and intent on blowing every square mile of U.S. territory to bits? In fact, the U.S. knows when Costa Rica is going to do this, and the U.S. also knows where such weapons are located (no, really, we know this time) and could peremptorily strike first, preventing the whole shabang.

Is military intervention justified?

Certainly not from a Libertarian point of view. U.S. military intervention would involve the expropriation of resources via taxation of U.S. citizens, and if just one taxpayer said, "To hell with ya," it is unjustifiable insofar as the so-called 'non-aggression axiom' is concerned, the very axiom that the branch of libertarianism I am familiar with is based upon (I am excluding the possibility of a private military/defense force for illustrative purposes).

So, it's plausible that the U.S. is blown off the map by sticking to Libertarian principle. That's right, my nonexistent white culture: gone, along with all my buddies and family members.

Clearly here, it would pay, like it would with immigration above, to be a pragmatist, at least in the short run. The question is this: Even if we know as a metaphysical certitude that immigrants from country X are going to use the ballot box and the welfare state to expropriate our property and convert our kids to baby-vacuuming atheists and thus ruin our society, should we then step in and violate the initial axiom by fighting against immigration, or should we focus our efforts on the welfare state and the ballot box as such?

I do not condone Mr. Greenspan, as I hate the Fed with every bone in my body.

But I understand. It is a difficult decision to make.

Best Way to Help Haiti?

Art Carden argues at the Division of Labour blog that the best way to help the poor is to conduct an open-borders policy, thereby enabling individuals with fewer opportunities for economic advancement to come here and pull themselves up by the boot straps, or something like that. As much as I love Carden's lecturing style, he's dead wrong with this one, as are all other libertarians whom preach an 'open-borders' policy.

It would be one thing if all land was owned by individual, private owners: this includes buildings, homes, businesses, parks, roads, and all other land that possesses value. Then, we wouldn't be talking about an open- or closed-borders policy in the first place; the decision to include or exclude foreigners (this includes anybody not given advanced permission to enter a specific property) would operate on an individual basis, that is, property owners deciding what is best for the value of their own properties. In this way, no state is involved, and no board of bureaucrats and satraps decide for the community what's best for them, be it multiculturalism, isolationism, or otherwise. Business owners can exclude anybody based on any criteria if he so pleases, be it race, age, sex, religion, haircut, number of teeth, etc. We would expect that miscreants, delinquents, hoodlums, and any other type of human black sheep to be excluded from social exchange on any given property, as this would raise that property's value. This and similar policies would discourage such behavior, and if one considered such nefarious actions a psychological 'good,' he of course could admit the lowlifes on his own turf.

In present-day America, however, the situation is very different. The state owns the interstates, highways, 'public property,' considerable airspace, and even residential homes. The government has also made it illegal to exclude individuals from privately owned property on any physical basis, before a crime of some sort has been committed. One cannot discriminate when selling property, and no matter who you are or virtually what kind of criminal background you possess, if your income is low or nonexistent, you qualify for housing, food stamps, and other kinds of aid (cell phones, cable television, etc.). We see how our current society is strikingly different from a private property-based society, where there is no state to willy-nilly its subjects based upon the current political fashion.

Now, the problem with an open borders policy in our current society is this: Even if we assume that foreigners net an economic benefit to society, that is, that whatever malfeasance and misconduct they exhibit is outweighed by their labor productivity and diligence, we cannot say that society as a whole is better off. Humans do not derive psychological benefit just from economic, real-dollar profits and higher material standards of living. Those same foreigners who are economically profiting society might just as well be culturally degrading it at the same time. With state-owned roads and without the ability to exclude anybody short of blatant criminal misconduct, anybody can waltz into my store, move into my community, and utilize the public services system (transportation, education, etc.) as they please. Any reprobate can indirectly contribute to the degradation of norms, customs, religion, etc., of a society, thereby making many of its members worse off, even if the foreigner is assumed a saint in his own right.

Perhaps I see this more clearly than most; where I come from, "white" is a pejorative. I grew up fighting my middle school years away because of my white mannerisms, and in my neighborhood, I was violently excluded from an entire section by blacks my own age. I can't say the word 'nigger' in public, and to scoff at MLK day is heresy. Since I graduated, I have gone back as a substitute teacher to many black schools, only to hear black and hispanic numb skulls calling each other white, cracker, and uncle Tom. I cannot walk through the mall with my girlfriend on a Saturday night, lest we be subjected to racist and sexist heckling on the part of the overgrown baboons who populate these places. I have no real culture to call my own, because in places where white culture does manifest itself, such as the confederate flag and white hoods, they must be displayed in private, if at all. In fact, it is worse than mere white discrimination: blacks are extolled because of their misfortunes and ill-treatment in the past, and every day whites are made to feel sorry for actions that they themselves had absolutely nothing to do with. Holidays, months of the year and even presidential elections have come to stand more about race than any sort of substance.

I understand that similar situations can happen in a private property-based society, but I have serious doubts as to whether or not the situation a white male faces today is the same as a white male would have faced had landowners themselves been able to decide in full who it is they include or exclude on their own properties. My guess is, those who seek to suppress 'white' characteristics would be excluded from social interaction insofar as it takes place on property owned and operated by whites, because such nobodies would tend to depress their values.

In our current day, and on a much larger scale, there exists preferential hiring, diversity requirements (immigration and labor), minority scholarships, food stamp and welfare programs, and blatant reverse discrimination called 'affirmative action,' ALL of which assist other races and income classes at the expense of middle- to upper-class whites.

And this brings me to what I set out to destroy: open immigration, specifically for destitute Haitians. Haiti is the poorest country in all of the Americas, where more than 80% of its population lives in utter poverty. English is not a main language there, and foreign aid makes up roughly 40% of the government's budget. I'm willing to guess most Haitians are not familiar with classical liberal-libertarian property law and capitalism even on a primitive level, and thus most are friendly towards government interventionism. At best, then, open immigration from Haiti would import creole-speaking statists who hopefully will never have the opportunity or intelligence to vote. Importing them 'out of poverty' would make them better off at the expense of the communities they found themselves in, communities that had little to no say in who they wanted to import in the first place. Why must relatively free Americans be forced to suffer this kind of forced integration? This has become some sort of libertarian predilection that is utterly inconsistent with human welfare and the freedom of choice. 'Open-borders' in today's America is a euphemism for letting vagabonds and derelicts trample over what's left of property rights.

I understand that Haiti sucks right now, but that's not my fault. Their own government prohibits the preservation of private property rights and the movement of goods, services, and humans from one area to another. Importing crime, poverty, and ignorance into America via 'open borders' will not help their situation in the long run, and it certainly will not make mine any better off.

Ask me if I think it's fair to open up borders that I pay for in taxes, whether I like it or not, to at best creole recluses, and at worst human trash, subjecting my friends, family members, and even myself, to forced acculturation.

My answer is an emphatic no.

Synonym and Antonyms

Usury, the lending of money at relatively high rates to borrowers, is listed in Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus as follows:

Main Entry:	usury
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	lending money at a high interest rate
Synonyms:	exploitation, stealing (emphasis mine)

Apparently, time preferences are equivalent to criminal acts. A lending money to B at an interest rate above the market 'range' is immoral and exploitative.

This, of course, makes absolutely no sense. In the first place, it's hard to criticize a 'high' rate as such because that very rate is a component of the going market rate itself (assuming there is such a thing as a market rate). But of course, there is no uniform market rate, like there might be a uniform price for, say, Ramen Noodles or golf socks, because whereas these are uniform goods, the interest rate itself depends in large part upon the borrower of the money, and let us not forget that money borrowers are anything but homogeneous. Some borrowers have poorer credit histories than others; some need greater amounts of money than others; some need a specific amount of money longer than others, etc. Enter the interest rate, the price of borrowed funds, that approximates these varying circumstances. All else equal, those who are better at paying back borrowed funds can borrow money for cheaper; those with little or no collateral or equity to buffer against unforeseen losses find it more expensive to borrow money, etc.

With my example above, it's all too plain to see why 'usury' laws are completely ridiculous. In the unhampered market, what is considered an 'usury' rate is simply a rate that reflects competitive market conditions on the lender's side (monopoly position, etc.) and the borrower's relative risk-level. Usury laws that dictate how high of an interest rate can be charged on loans only serve to exclude market participants. Put simply, if you are a borrower such that the market determines your interest rate to be substantially higher than most other borrowers, the government steps in and makes it illegal to loan you money. End of story.

What struck me sour, though, was that the dictionary labels the equivalent of peaceful market exchange rates, however high as they may be, as exploitation, when it is the government and its usury laws that actually do the exploitation by excluding classes of borrowers from the starting line.

Negative Returns

When password requirements become too onerous, the level of protection decreases. Consider passwords of enormous complexity: x amount of numbers, y amount of capital letters, and z number of character entries. There is no easy way to remember such a complex combination, so a given account holder would now store the password on his PC, in a relatively easy location, such as his personal folder. Family members, roommates, and anybody else (all of which were the most likely to access his account in the first place) with the capability of accessing his computer will be able to find this information relatively easy, and thus the ridiculous requirement guaranteed a break-in.

Even if we relax one of the parameters, it is likely that protection will still be compromised. Consider a single requirement of only z number of character entries, say, 15. I will now string words together that make up a silly sentence, or perhaps my full name, or the like, whereas before I could have remembered a small set of 4 random numbers that excluded anybody else with ease.

Of course, none of this is guaranteed, but I do question the effectiveness of password requirements. However, they have guaranteed excluding somebody from the account with unbelievable reliability:

Me, the account holder!!!

What if Erwin Hunted Endangered Species?

Or what if I did? After all, animal-rights activists don't play by the rules. If they did, they could decide that the population of a particular species is too sparse, and if they wanted to increase its numbers or preserve them, nobody would stop them from buying the property the animal is on and caging it or fencing it off. If somebody already owns the land on which the animals resides, the activist could bid for the animal in question; either way, the market has for 'endangered species,' like every other valuable commodity, a solution that doesn't involve anybody having to compel anybody else with a big stick made of solid fiat.

Instead, animal-rights activists lobby intensely for the preservation of these animals, which involves zoning and restrictive property rules. This only hampers the intensification of the division of labor, drives the price of surrounding land up, and at the end of the day, we're all subsidizing the valuables that nobody really values, at least not enough to buy those valuables themselves.

So, I've decided to take it upon myself to hunt down endangered species of all kinds. If animal-rights activists don't want to play by the rules of the market, which is a system based on mutual cooperation and peaceful exchange, then I certainly won't play by their statist rules. If they don't have anything to protect anymore, maybe they'll leave the rest of us peaceful market participants alone. I'm going to hunt bald eagle, red wolf, polar bear, Florida cougar, African elephant, and any other specie I can get my shells in. Endangered plants aren't exempt from a good weed-wacking and a dose of NaOH, either. It'll be great fun, all at the statist's expense.

What'd your econ teacher tell you about unintended consequences when fooling around in the market?

*Update: Check this out. Turns out what I described above is a third degree felony in the state of Florida, subjecting me to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years.

Let's do it.

Enemies of Private Property

Many blogs have "Markets in Everything"-type posts; I instead will have "Enemies of Private Property" posts. If I come upon a more clever title, I'll use it.

My inaugural jerk of mankind is none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. I am absolutely tired of race-baiters such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, all the way down to "libertarians/conservatives" such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, praising this enemy of private property. King did not stop short of discouraging Jim Crow laws and segregation on state-owned grounds; on the contrary, King lobbied heavily for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which destroys the precious notion of private property probably most effectively in Title II:

"All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation... any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests... any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises... any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment."

I need not go any further with this analysis because it is obvious that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made absolute haste in destroying the definition of private and public property. The necessity of the ability to exclude others from privately-owned property is made perfectly clear when we realize that without this power, anybody could at any time rape our bodies, sleep in our beds, and drink our beer without reservation. State education has so baldly obfuscated this obvious point that to say anything negative about King is simply heresy.

King was also supportive of economic reparations and the idea of some form of "economic justice," which has long been popular amongst intellectuals and politicians. I need not talk about this because anybody not under the influence of heroine can point out the fallacies in such thinking.