There was a time when I didn't have to make these distinctions

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community, [...] people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

Not that Kerry is much better rooted in reality than Bush... but who doesn't believe Bush's cronies would say this stuff? That alone is a tad upsetting, yes?

Pirates & Emperors

School-house rock, non-interventionist-style. I find one of the most difficult libertarian positions to defend is non-interventionist. It's hard to defend the idea of not coming to the aid of victims. Unfortunately good intentions in the minds of common people and in the minds of our leaders, turn out to be wrong, often disastrously so. Since WWII, the U.S. has supported, then rebuked a long line of tyrants. The philosophy of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" has led to supporting Saddam, the Mujahideen, the Shah of Iran, and many others. We supported fascists in order to fend off communists, and we ended up with fascists. Surprise surprise. Remember also that, while we bemoan the trouble they cause us, far worse is the trouble they perpetrated on their people, which we are responsible for, in part. Such consistent and glaring failures suggest something fundamentally wrong about our way of deciding foreign policy. Non-interventionism means that while we may not help others, we also do no harm, and so are innocent. Given the history of our foreign policy, I see no better options. Anyway, I think these sorts of videos are an excellent way to explain the libertarian view in a clear way to outsiders. Enjoy!

Informing your vote...

Presidential Candidates Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian party and David Cobb of the Green party visited UT on October 7th, 2004 to debate the issues. For those of you who missed the debate, or who just can't get enough of it, you can watch the video right here. It's almost as good as having been there, except the video only captures about half of the event, the majority of the moderated questions and none of the audience questions, because the camera's battery ran out after half an hour.

The event also drew some media attention, which you can see by visiting our media page.

Who's your daddy now?

Regarding the previous post, I found this. Fifty years of government educational posters, a few of them priceless.

It's important to note, most of the above is targeted toward the military while at-war (beware the clap!). Here, the government has a legitimate justification for these campaigns. However, now-a-days, where once there might simply have been some silly poster, more and more often social sensibilities are being enforced with governmental punishments (seat belt & helmet laws, smoking, etc.), or otherwise, the government is spending our tax dollars trying to direct our decisions (food, drugs, smoking, etc.). When a group calls for these laws and programs, and thus force them and their costs on all of society, they usurp the right to self-determination of those they impose the programs on.

The government, as an institution created by man, should not be able to take actions that would not be permissible for a person to do on their own. Imagine your neighbor coming up to your car and telling you you owe him $500 for not wearing your seat-belt, then if you refuse to pay, throwing you in a cage in his garage. Not cool? Well seat-belt laws are an example of the above, perpetrated by an entire society on a few individuals. Self-defense, on the other hand is a right few deny individuals have. Our police and courts, when operating properly, are an expression of our cooperating in establishing a system of common self-defense. Our military is the same, but directed against foreign enemies.

Who's your daddy?

In other news, someone finally comes up with an apt metaphor to counter all those hip, upper-middle-class white suburban statists idolizing Che Guevara in shirt form (hooray for Cuban fascism, eh?). Get it here.

Bureaucrash has made some nice attempts to do the same, but they fall a tad short, I'm afraid. This is nice, however, and to the point:

Intel's CEO endorses Libertarian Platform! (sorta)

An excellent interview with Intel's soon-to-retire CEO, Craig Barret. He says some interesting things about how America is losing its edge in the tech industry. Seems we're not producing tech workers that are a cut above the rest of the world, as we once did. Why you ask? Surprise surprise, it's the government!

There are four things you can do in the United States to be competitive, and none of them is easy. The education system is first and foremost.

You need to fix the K-12 education system and have a higher influx of kids into college in the technical areas.

For about two years plus, I was a member of the Glenn Commission. [...] The Glenn Commission addresses this issue of what to do with math and science education in K-12 as a series of recommendations. Everything from: Treat teachers as professionals, use technology, put meritocracy into the system, pay for performance, make it easier for people to become math and science teachers, etc. I signed off on the report.

[...] It was a classic government report. You have a problem, you assign a commission to study it, you get the commission's report, you accept it with open arms, tie a red ribbon around it, put it on the bookshelf and you never look at it again. Then you continue to ask the question, "So what shall we do?"

From my very simple standpoint, I would put some competition in the system, and I would quantify the system.

The second one is research and development, because R&D is the seed corn for products and services of the future.

How much does the U.S. invest annually in agricultural subsidies, the industry of the 19th century? If you put food stamps in, you can get to a figure of $30 billion or $35 billion. If you keep food stamps out, you get $20 billion to $25 billion.

How much does the United States invest annually in basic R&D in physical sciences? About $5 billion.

Depending on how you count it, you spend four to six times more on agricultural subsidies, the industry of the 19th century, than you invest in producing the ideas for the industries of the 21st century. So, R&D spending is critical. It's also infrastructure. It's not bridges or roads. It's communications infrastructure, information technology infrastructure. You know that the United States is a laggard in broadband. We're kind of a third-world country from a wireless standpoint.

And the last thing that you can worry about is the Hippocratic oath of "Do no harm," but not applying to doctors, applying to governments. California (is) a wonderful example of where government rules, (and) regulations and policies are not only restrictive, but detrimental, in driving business away. Other countries are aggressively pursuing investment, much more than the United States.

As for the second point, regarding R&D, the government would inevitably subvert the process of handing out the money to the appropriate researchers. How do I know this? Nobel Laureate Milton Freidman says:

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost.

Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch!

Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40% of our national income.

Because lawmakers aren't personally invested in the outcome, it can easily be subverted by other interests. This of course brings us to another fundamental problem with government finances. The problem of concentrated benefits vs. decentralized costs. That is, if I'm a farmer lobbying for millions in subsidies, I'm going to work hard at it, perhaps spending money to entertain the lawmaker, while taxpayers, who will lose pay for the subsidies, but at just cents a piece, won't have reason to work as hard to prevent that from happening. If a hundred thousand special interests exploit this flaw, suddenly government is 40% of the GDP... Sad story.

If government wasn't so big, there most likely would be a lot more R&D spending, because there would be more money going around, as it would be spent more efficiently in the private sector (see ol' Milt, above).

As for the educational criticism, they look remarkably like reforms any market would impose on its participants (think higher ed.). Unfortunately, public education quashes that.

The Economics of Donnie Darko

I'm a culture snob. I am bored by 90% of what goes through the neighborhood movie theatre, 95% of what comes through my television, and 99% of what comes through the radio. I sometimes hear my fellow snobs say "There's nothing good on TV/Radio/Movies, why don't they play 'the good stuff'", by which they mean, the stuff I want to hear/see. Knowing what I do about economics (it's a hobby of mine). I sometimes bother to tell them "What you watch, not everybody wants to see! They're just playing to the largest audience available to them. If more people wanted what you want, you'd see more of it." They of course respond "No it's the corporations," or something else equally mindless. They don't think about why they think the corporations are out to spite them, just that they are.

Once in a while, though, something unconventional happens that helps me to prove this point: That everybody wants money, which means, if they're playing by the rules they want to earn money. Even your money. They have to give you what you want to get it. It's called mutually beneficial consensual exchange, a.k.a. "trade". But how do they know what you want? Well, first they look at what you've been buying, and then there are always people betting on something new, to see if you will like it. If people like and buy it, they'll make more of that sort of thing. This is called "Dollar voting".

So this guy writes a script. It's a weird one. Don't believe me? Well, it's got a giant bunny in it. Right. Anyway, it turns out a bunch of people will like this movie, but we don't know that yet. He doesn't know how many people will pay to see this movie, and neither do the studios he shows the script to. In making a movie, the studios have to put down a boatload of money, so they don't just hand it out willy nilly to every guy who pitches a story with a giant bunny in it. But the writer, he believes it's a good movie and he shows the script to everyone he can get it to. And not everyone in the business is too normal or too scared to realize that it's good. But it's weird, and funding a movie takes a lot of money and work, so it's not easy to just push it through. Luckily, Drew Barrymore, who for some reason is sort of a movie star (no I don't understand why), liked it too, and she, as a movie star, talked to her friends in the "Biz" and got them to give this movie a chance.

So this guy makes a good movie, and it's called Donnie Darko. Unfortunately, his movie finished just in time to comes out in November of 2001. You remember, that time when just about everyone was scared to go outside and sobbing uncontrollably in the grocery store, because of the terrorism thing? So not many people ended up seeing the movie. Alot of movies do badly, and it's almost always because the movie is bad (there are plenty of those). So the people who funded the movie thought "Damn, we bet on that weird bunny movie and it didn't pan out. I guess people don't like weird bunny movies, we shouldn't make any more weird movies, especially not with bunnies in them". And so they didn't, but that was not to be because it was a good movie, and:

"...the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never."

- William Friedkin

It turns out that some people weren't freaked out to go out, and the people who saw it liked it. Then they told their friends about it. Who told their friends about it. Etc. Etc. Next thing you know. The DVD is selling like hotcakes. Then, in 2002, the movie does well in Europe. Next thing you know, the studio executives start thinking: "Maybe it wasn't the bunny, maybe it was something else". And maybe it was, so two years later, this very strange movie, which is liked by many, but very much out of the mainstream, has been given a second chance. Now maybe it will do better.

But that isn't what's important. You see, all these teenagers and college students and weird movie likers told the studio executives what to do. They said "I want more of this", and the studio execs responded. Now all the people who enjoy the movie can see it the way they would have if not for 9/11 messing everything up. That's dollar votes, that's capitalism.

Meanwhile millions in the streets couldn't give us a Presidential Candidate against the Iraq war. So which is better again? Politics or Economics?

• Donnie Darko's Very Weird Website
• Interviews with the Director, Mr. Richard Kelly
• New Market films

Full Disclosure: I actually haven't seen this movie yet... but it comes to Dobie the end of this month...