sorry doesn't cut it

Onion Radio News

With Doyle Redland

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Report: Sorry No Longer Cutting It

Sullum on Borat

In Jacob Sullum's comments on the Borat movie, he writes:

Because I live in the U.S. rather than Russia, last night I had the opportunity to see Borat, which I highly recommend. In addition to making me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe (the look on former Georgia congressman Bob Barr's face during his brief encounter with Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazakh alter ego is by itself worth the price of admission), it made me sympathize a bit (a teeny-weeny bit) with the Anti-Defamation League's concern that people confronted by the outrageous anti-Semitism of Borat and his compatriots might not get the joke.

During the Running of the Jew, a traditional festival in Cohen's version of Kazakhstan, the townspeople chase a giant papier-mache figure that looks like a Nazi (or Arab) caricature of a Jew down the street. The Jew is followed by the Jewess, who lays a huge Jew egg that the children of the village attack with gusto, smashing it to bits. It's pretty damned funny, but I couldn't help wondering if the rest of the audience at the theater in Dallas was laughing at it for the same reasons I was. [italics added]

It's this last sentence that bugs me. Just seems condescending--"I am laughing at it for the right reasons, of course--but these Southern rubes? I'm not so sure...."

Tom Palmer Does Amsterdam

I just heard an interesting story about Tom Palmer. Apparently he was in Amsterdam recently for the Reason conference, and someone snapped a picture which is going around which shows Palmer splayed drunk on the floor in a quasi-sexy pose with a goofy look on his face. I won't post it here--it's too embarrassing for poor Tom.

I became a libertarian without reading ANY Rand...

I apologize dammit! I have completely embraced libertarianism, and not just the "touchy feely" legalize drugs stuff, but the caustic, damn-the-torpedoes, Kool-Aid enhanced version that apparently goes by the designation anarcho-capitalism. But that's not the bad part. I came to these conclusions and embraced this lunacy without reading one single word from any novel by Ayn Rand! Please don't tell anyone. I apologize deeply and hope the amount of Rothbard, Block, and Hoppe I've consumed will get me through. For now.

Yearly apology of a non-apologetic paleoconservative

I apologize for all of the offenses and outrages I have undoubtedly committed over the last year. My views are too divisive, too subversive and just too darn foreign to be accepted by any but the most radical (or enlightened depending upon one's perspective). Therefore I humbly apologize to all mainstream and mundane thinkers and ideologues for my thoughts and actions. Expect no further apologies for offenses to be committed in FY 07 until next September.

Regards,
El Cid

I never fininshed reading Atlas Shrugged

I apologize for not having finished Atlas Shrugged when I tried it some years ago. I think I'm on page 300 or so. Maybe I'll give it another try these days. Or not.

Holocaust Palmer v. Muslim Cartoon Palmer

Palmer today:

The cartoon images of Muhammed may have been offensive. They may have been shocking to some. Perhaps publishing them was in bad taste. Maybe it was even a sin. But no one should be harmed for publishing them, nor should the Danish government either punish the publishers or apologize for their publication.

Palmer a year ago:

The ban on the swastika, images of Hitler, and other emblems of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was imposed after the defeat of the Third Reich. And quite rightly, in my opinion, for it wasn’t merely a matter of “free speech,” but of preventing a brutal criminal conspiracy that had murdered millions from regrouping and taking back power. Banning it in, say, Canada or the U.S. would have been unjustified, as there was little chance that such people would organize to take over power here. (Ditto for restraining the speech of “holocaust deniers,” who should be allowed to peddle their crackpot views, which are about as plausible as denying the occurence of World War II.) But in the countries of Europe that had suffered through National Socialism, the ban was justified, on libertarian grounds, viz. a form of self-defense against known criminals.

Res ipsa loquitur.

P-word redux

Apologies from the gym

I apologize for reading this on the elliptical runner and this on the bike. I'm a nerd.

Give Us Us Free!

My friend Mush and I often break into spirited emulation of the slave character in Amistad's impassioned pleas to be freed from slavery: "Give Us Us Free! Give Us Us Free! Give Us Us Free!" Usually we do it to our wives when they harp on us to do something.

Oldie but Goodie: Palmer v. Raimondo

Hilarious interchange between the heroic and funny Justin Raimondo and the execrable Tom Palmer.

Secret Service Man

When someone disagrees with me, or sometimes just randomly, I'll tell someone, "don't you backtalk me in public!" Usually in a private conversation. Sort of puts them off balance.

I also like this: someone says, "Stephan, will you..." and I cut them off, "Don't you call me Stephan!" Usually stuns them, so they wonder for just a microsecond if they have my name wrong.

Also, when I go shopping w/ the wife, if I have my sunglasses on, as we walk across the parking lot or into a store, I circle around her and hold my hand up to block traffic and people, and scan around like an owl, playing Secret Service man. Wife hates it.

Sometimes, when we approach a restaturant, as I grab the door, I shake it as if it's locked, and give her a crestfallen look. Then she shakes her head and says, "Catholic High"

Funny Review of Lord of the Rings

Here. By fellow Apologist Michael Barnett.

feminism poem

Someone sent this to me:

Thoughts on Feminism

Feminism's steminism:
Ugly chicks are plentyism,
And require lots of ventilism
From years of neglectilism

-- The Insightful Buffster, 2002

King Kong

I apologize for having an unalterable prejudice that anyone who wants to see the new King Kong movie is a moron.

Palmer on Friends of Freedom

Well well well. This is interesting. Our boy Tom Palmer praises some "inspiring friends of freedom," including "Paata Sheshelidze and Gia Jandieri of the New School of Economics of the Republic of Georgia..."

I agree with Tom and thank him for promoting Paata, who is indeed a great libertarian. But a bit surprising, since the group he praises--Paata Sheshelidze and the New School of Economics--has published and promoted the work of those P-dog elsewhere condemns as racists, morons, and impediments to the cause of liberty, such as Hoppe and myself. I speak of the heroic "Library of Liberty" series published by the New School of Economics in cooperation with Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which contains Georgian translations of essays by various free market oriented writers. For example, Book I: Basics of Liberalism, published in February 2004, contains Georgian translations of classic essays by Mill, Bastiat, Mises, Ropke, Acton, Hayek, and of course, that great libertarian hero, and Palmer's bete noire, Lew Rockwell. Book II: Liberalism and Power (September 2004) has chapters by Tucker, Spencer, Oppenheimer, Nock, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and--gasp!--another pebble in Palmer's shoe--the great modern libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Book III. Liberty and Property, was published just last month (October 2005), and I believe Book IV. Liberty and Intellectuals will be published shortly. Book III contains works by Locke, Bastiat, Mises, Rothbard, Demsetz, James Buchanan, Palmer's buddy (and mine! :) Tibor Machan, David Theroux, Richard Stroup, James Dorn, and--heavens to betsy--Hoppe, as well as yours truly. (Full lists below.)

All this, of course, just makes makes Tommy boy's relentless, dishonest, monomaniacal attacks on Hoppe, Rockwell et al. look like the ridiculous, unfair bleating that it is. Poor Tom. I guess everyone but him is blind to the Misesian Menace. Not enough people are infused with his sense of Dimwit-Serioso High Libertarian Purpose, goshdarnit.

I bet it just drives P-dog nuts when he traipses around the world and keeps running into libertarians who love Hoppe and Rockwell. Heh hehh hehh. I apologize for taking a bit too much gleeful satisfaction in this thought.

Update: see page 8 of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation's Summer 2005 newsletter, reporting on the New School of Economics of the Republic of Georgia, and noting:

The idea of organizing a free-market think tank in the Republic of Georgia was born in Auburn, Alabama, USA in August of 2001. At that time the two future founders of New Economic School – Georgia (NESG), Paata Sheshelidze and Gia Jandieri were visiting the Mises Institute, which inspired them to create an institute in Georgia that facilitates change by educating people.

[...] Since 2001, NESG has strengthened itself by building partnerships with like minded institutions around the world including Mises Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Atlas Foundation, and Foundation for Economic Education (all based in the US US), Hayek Institute (Austria), Fraser Institute (Canada), Naumann Foundation (Germany) etc.

Oh, wow, the NESG has close ties to the Mises Institute--and was even "inspired by" them. Poor Tom.

***

The "Library of Liberty" Series
(published by the New School of Economics in cooperation with Friedrich Naumann Foundation)

Book I: Basics of Liberalism (Feb. 2004)

1. N. Gorgadze & P. Sheshelidze, Introduction Notes on Liberalism
2. Henry George, Ode to Liberty
3. John Stuart Mill, on Liberty
4. F. Bastiat, The Wisdom of Adam Smith
5. L. von Mises, On Equality and Inequality
6. W. Ropke, Cultural Ideal of Liberalism
7. Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity
8. F. A. Hayek, Liberalism (Introduction)
9. Lew Rockwell, An American Classical Liberalism
10. Paata Sheshelidze. Forward to Liberty

Book II: Liberalism and Power (September 2004)

1. Paata Sheshelidze, Introduction Notes - Man's Life as a State's Property
2. Akaki Tzereteli, Kudabziketi (Snobbism)
3. Benjamin R. Tucker, The Relation of the State to the Individual
4. Herbert Spencer, The Great Political Superstition
5. Franz Oppenheimer, The Idolatry of the State
6. Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (shorten version)
7. Friederik A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (shorten version)
8. Ludwig von Mises, Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism
9. Murray N. Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State
10. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Political Economy of Democracy, Monarchy and Natural Order
11. Paata Sheshelidze, End Notes for those who wish to Read More on Free Market

Book III. Liberty and Property (October 2005)

1. John Locke, Of Property (parts from The Second Treatise of Civil Government)
2. Frederic Bastiat, Property and Law
3. Ludwig von Mises, Liberty and Property
4. Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, The Property Right Paradigm
5. Murray N. Rothbard, Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution
6. Roman Kapelushnikov, Theory of Property Rigths (part)
7. James M. Buchanan, Property as a Guarantor of Liberty
8. Tibor R. Machan, In Defense of Property Rights and Capitalism
9. David Theroux, Property Rights v. Environmental Ruin
10. Leszek Balcerowicz, Towards an Analysis of Ownership (part from Socialism, Capitalism, Transformation)
11. Richard L. Stroup and Jane S. Shaw, An Environment Without Property Rights
12. Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property
13. James A. Dorn, The Primacy of Property in a Liberal Constitutional Order: Lessons for China
14. T. Anderson, L. Huggins, How Secure are property rigths?
15. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Ethics and Economics of Private Property

Book IV. Liberty and Intellectuals (forthcoming)

Lucy & Desi -- I don't Get it

One thing I have been curious about--Lucille Ball in 1940 married Desi Arnaz, a Cuban--a hispanic. He played her husband Ricky on I Love Lucy. Now it seems to me that for a hispanic to marry a white chick back in the 1940s would have been a bit taboo. Yet I can't recall ever having heard that this is the case. I am not aware of any mention ever being made that when I Love Lucy came out, there was controversy about Lucy being married to a Cuban; that the show was "brave" and "heroic" and "pathbreaking" etc.

What gives? How come it was not likea big scandal?

Palmer on Hoppe, Coase, and Wealth-Maximization

In a recent post I noted that around 15 years ago, Palmer published two law review articles (Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law and Economics Approach and Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects) arguing against patent and copyright and also critiquing the wealth-maximization "law and economics" approach of Richard Posner. In the first article cited he criticizes "A jurisprudence that claims to be based on “law and economics” but that would constructively assign or rearrange rights as part of a strategy to achieve some pre-determined outcome (maximization of utility or of wealth, for example) .... " Notice that Palmer characterizes Posner's wealth-maximization framework as one that would lead to the rearranging of property rights to try to maximize wealth.

Now Posner is of course a Coasean. And in fact others such as Rothbard, Walter Block (2, 3), Gary North, and Hoppe (2) have made a similar observation about implications of Coase's views (see also the views of Roy Cordato (2); Timothy Terrell's and Sebastian Storfner's summaries of Austrian critiques of Coase). Some of them note that the Coase Theorem could be interpreted as a recommendation that courts assign property rights so as to maximize wealth--in fact this is exactly what uber-Coasian Posner recommends, at least according to Palmer.

What is interesting is that in Palmer's campaign to smear Hoppe by repeatedly distorting Hoppe's views, he also has attacked Hoppe several times (1, 2) for interpreting Coase the way Palmer interprets Posner. He says Hoppe's and Rothbard's reading of Coase as meaning that "that courts assign property rights to contesting parties in such a way that 'wealth' or the 'value of production' is maximized" is an "absurd parody of an interpretation" and a "bizarre misstatement" of Coase. Palmer goes on:

Hoppe once attacked another panelist at a conference who had discussed the Coase Theorem by accusing the panelist (and Coase) of arguing that judges should be empowered to confiscate and rearrange property whenever the judge determined that the new distribution would be efficient. Now Coase has never said that and that’s not a part of or even an implication (at least, not without a number of questionable additional premises) of the Coase Theorem.

So, let me get this straight: Palmer's interpretation of Coasian wealth-maximizer Posner is reasonable, while Rothbard and Hoppe's interpretation of Coasian wealth-maximizer Coase is absurd and bizarre...? Of course a given interpretation of Coase is open to reasonable criticism, but is Palmer's attack here--given his history of blatant distortions of Hoppe's views, repeated even after being exposed, and given his similar views on one of the chief Coasians--a reasonable one, or merely evidence of his desperate attempts to smear Hoppe?

For links to other libertarian critics of Coase, see this post.

Palmer on Patents

Palmer's recent comments about patents are interesting in view of his previous publications about intellectual property.

First, around 15 years ago, Palmer published two law review articles (Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law And Economics Approach and Are Patents And Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy Of Property Rights And Ideal Objects) arguing against patent and copyright and also critiquing the wealth-maximization "law and economics" approach of Richard Posner. Note that he opposed patents on principled grounds, and rejected the wealth-maximization approach. E.g., as he noted in the first article (p. 303),

A jurisprudence that claims to be based on “law and economics” but that would constructively assign or rearrange rights as part of a strategy to achieve some pre-determined outcome (maximization of utility or of wealth, for example) overlooks the analogy between the spontaneous order of the market and the spontaneous order of a legal system.

I.e., according to Palmer, Posner's wealth-maximization framework would lead to the rearranging of property rights to try to maximize wealth. Something he presumably opposes.

Anyhoo, back in 2003 some of Cato's scholars (Doug Bandow and Michael Krauss) came out in favor of restrictions on free trade based on the notion that reimportation of drugs would allow consumers to avoid some of the monopoly price charged due to the US patent system. Cato's adjunct scholar (and utilitarian) Richard Epstein has also argued in favor of patents, especially in the field of pharmaceuticals, and on this ground also opposed reimportation. Thus, as I have noted previously, support for intellectual property rights leads once again to the undermining of genuine private property rights, such as the right to trade.

This call for restrictions on free trade caused an outcry in the libertarian community, prompting Ed Crane and Roger Pilon to meekly disavow Bandow's and Epstein's protectionism. Interesting, this piece apparently endorses "the need for drug patents to encourage R&D"--this apparent endorsement of a utilitarian, wealth-maximization approach to policy seems to conflict with Pilon's principled, deontological, non-utilitarian, rights-based libertarianism--as shown in his 1979 Georgia Law Review article "Ordering Rights Consistently: Or What We Do and Do Not Have Rights To" and his 1979 University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, "A Theory of Rights: Toward Limited Government."

In recent posts Palmer appears to bend over backward to soften his previous principled anti-patent stance so that he does not conflict with other pro-patent Catoites--apparently now including Krauss, Bandow, Epstein, Crane, and Pilon. Writes Palmer:

I've been critical of the patent system in the past. Mr. Brady has given me a quiz about whether I conform to his vision of right-thought or have drifted further into thought crime[,] as he defines it. I am not a fan of the patent system and think we could generally live well without it. (I've posted a few articles on my web site indicating why.) The one exception to that general hostility to patents, as I have suggested elsewhere, is the system of patents for chemicals, notably pharmaceuticals. Because chemical compounds are relatively easy to reverse-engineer and can be successfully marketed independently of their role in a larger product (unlike, say, innovations in jet engine design, which often are only valuable as part of a kind of engine), patents may indeed generate incentives for innovation that greatly improve human welfare. That's an argument for them. Since the innovation has the characterstics of public goods (costly to exclude and non-rivalrous in consumption, the latter being the relevant feature here), a good profit maximization strategy ought to be price discrimination, by which those who can pay more do so and others pay less.

Re the "public goods comment--note in the "Non-Posnerian" above piece Palmer's sensible criticisms (pp. 284-85) of the coherence of the very notion of public goods. As for the "suggested elsewhere" comment, he must be referring to this post, where he writes:

Pharmaceuticals and chemicals offer undoubtedly the best cases for patent protection on utilitarian grounds. In my Hamline Law Review article ..., p. 301, I quoted from a study by Edwin Mansfield from the American Economic Review in which he pointed out that "patent protection was judged to be essential for the development or introduction of one-third or more of the inventions during 1981-1983 in only 2 industries -- pharmaceuticals and chemicals." That seems not to have changed. The reason is pretty easy to understand: reverse-engineering in the case of chemicals (which broadly includes pharmaceuticals) is quite easy. In the case of pharmaceuticals, at least, R&D costs are very high and would still be high even without some of the very costly efficacy tests imposed by the Food and Drug Administration. Furthermore, the benefits of new pharmaceuticals are enormous. If one were to make a case for patent law, that's the strongest industry for which to make it.

Palmer has elsewhere rejected the wealth-maximization approach, so what does it matter that pharmaceuticals is the "best case" that can be made under this approach? Why does he say the case of patents for pharmaceuticals is "one exception to" his previous "general hostility to patents," when this case is utilitarian and wealth-maximization based, an approach he has rejected (and presumably he still maintains that even under the wealth-maximization approach the case fails).

Note how snippy he is to Mark Brady's questions to him about patents--"Mr. Brady has given me a quiz about whether I conform to his vision of right-thought or have drifted further into thought crime[,] as he defines it." It is as if Palmer is annoyed that in response to his seemingly pro-patent comments, his previous principled and anti-patent writings are being waved in his face. Given so many of his colleagues' utilitarian endorsement of patents, is Palmer now embarrassed by his previous opposition to both? Is he trying to say that he is still principled, and anti-patent, but that the dominant pro-patent, utilitarian approach of prominent Catoites is "respectable"--or that he has (sort of?) softened his "hostility" to this approach? It wouldn't be the first time Palmer's views have "evolved".

Hurricane Rita and its Devastating Effect on Houston

From an email going around:

With all the news lately about Hurricane Katrina, we shouldn't forget That Houston has had it's share of devastating weather also.

The attached photo illustrates the damage caused to a home when Hurricane Rita passed through the Houston area a couple of days ago. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take life for granted!