Tag Archives: Libertarian living

Robert Bolt On Reputation Versus Reality

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At times I regret the loss of privacy and the vulnerability to slander that anyone who writes publicly has to face. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished by the mob that sees only upto the horizons of its own vulgar perspective.

Being a thief itself, it sees thieves in honest people. Being a liar itself, it calls what is patently truthful a lie. Motivated solely by venality and malice, it can see no other motivation in people who obviously struggle  to hew to their conscience, even when it endangers themselves.

How to escape slander without losing privacy to the envious, the malevolent, the pathological? You cannot. But you can consider your real audience, as Sir Thomas More suggests, in Robert Bolt’s fine play “A Man for All Seasons” (1960). More’s counsel addresses Richard Rich, an academic who despairs that the virtues of a great teacher can never be known beyond a small circle, but it’s advice that applies as well to anyone who has ever suffered from slander directed at them, when their actions were not only not dishonorable, they were more than ordinarily brave and honorable.

“MORE:  Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher.

Perhaps even a great one.

RICH: And if I was, who would know it?

MORE: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that . . . Oh, and a quiet life.”

Massachusetts Moves Millions Out Of Big Banks

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The Washington Post reports:

“Massachusetts officials on Wednesday announced plans to move millions of dollars in state investments out of some of the nation’s biggest banks to protest credit card interest rates.

State Treasurer Timothy Cahill said the state has removed Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo from a list of institutions approved for new state investments. Massachusetts, which is the only state to make such a move, is also beginning to divest $243 million in funds held at those banks, though the process could take up to six months.

“We want to bring some fairness into the issue,” said Cahill, who is running for governor. “I don’t think what we’re asking is . . . out of line.”

Frank Lloyd Wright: Education Today Provides Conditioning…

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This is a brief excerpt from a live interview with legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright (June 18, 1957), when he was ninety. The audio isn’t very clear, so I’ve provided a transcript. The words are pungent and speak succinctly to the task of weaning people from dependence on the state:

“Education has been unrealistic.
Education has not seen the nature of the thing we needed as a people.
Education has not provided enlightenment. It’s provided conditioning
By way of books, by way of what has been, by way of the past,
By the habituation of the human species to date.
And it hasn’t taken the views of the men who are capable of looking beyond
and seeing what the nature of the thing was.
What is the nature of this thing we’re in.
Now that’s the grace(?) of seeing in, not seeing at.
And all education today is a seeing at.”

Libertarian Living: New Initiatives In Cooperative Health Care

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Kevin Carson at The Center for a Stateless Society has a long, fascinating paper, “The Health Care Crisis: A Crisis of Artificial Scarcity,”about different new initiatives in providing health services that bypass the high expenses of the current delivery system. One example he cites:

“A New York doctor is offering flat-rate health care for the uninsured for $79 a month, but he has run afoul of state insurance regulations in a case that challenges the established norms of the U.S. health system….
Dr. John Muney, president of AMG Medical Group, said he started the program in September after noticing that many of his patients were losing their jobs, and therefore, their health insurance coverage.

About 500 people have registered for Muney’s $79-a-month plan, accounting for 15 percent of patients at the practice, which has offices in each of New York’s five boroughs. The monthly $79 fee… covers unlimited preventive visits and onsite medical services such as minor surgery, physical therapy, lab work and gynecological care. Ilana Clay, a 28-year-old who works in marketing for a jewelry firm, said she signed up in March because she could not afford her employer’s health insurance, which would have cost around $300 a month. “I hadn’t been to a doctor in a couple of years at that point,” she told Reuters. She had a scar removed in a quick onsite procedure that was covered by the plan. Muney said another patient came in with a tumor on her finger: “Somebody else asked $3,000 to remove it. The first visit, we were able to remove it, 15 minutes it took us.”
So far the program has not turned a profit, but Muney said he estimates that it could be profitable with 4,000 patients. In the meantime, he said, his motive is to give something back and provide a model of how healthcare can be more efficient.

“Our healthcare system lends itself to abuse, fraud and waste,” he said, adding that bypassing insurers saved on administrative costs, which he said were about 25 percent of the price of care. “With this model, we’re bypassing all that.”

Muney said he received initial complaints from state insurance authorities in November. “The law says you can do preventive checkups unlimited, but if they come for sick visits you have to charge your overhead costs,” he told Reuters.

In February he received a letter instructing him that he must charge that minimum cost, which he calculates at $33 a visit—a price he says will deter people from signing up. Troy Oechsner, deputy superintendent of the state insurance department, said the rules were designed to protect consumers.

“Our concern is … making sure that consumers can rely on any promises made to them and that they will get the services they paid for when they need them,” he said. Protecting consumers by making them pay $33 per visit instead of $10. As Cool Hand Luke would say, “Wish you’d stop being so good to me, Cap’n.”

Muney’s comments on the savings from bypassing insurance, by the way, are suggestive of the
ways that reforms in delivery of service—say, by incorporating finance into the cooperative organization of service—may also be a solution to the insurance crisis. The provision of most primary care through such member-financed setups with no insurance paperwork cost, no incentive to pile on additional services, and strong incentives to minimize overhead given the inability to profit from 10,000% markups for supplies and drugs, may well be the future of medicine. Absent the perverse incentives and high overhead that prevail in bureaucratic hospitals, it’s really not surprising Muney can do it for $79.”

Vatican Moves Away from Frankenfoods

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The head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson, has moved away from his predecessor’s support for developing genetically modified food to alleviate hunger in poor countries. Instead, he argues that adoption of the “precautionary principle” is warranted:

“There are a lot of claims that are disputed (like) that GMOs never call for the use of pesticides or insecticides or anything because they are resistant,” he said. Such claims have been challenged, he said, and some say “at a certain point (these crops) require insecticides whose chemicals break up later in the soil and render the soil less fertile.”

Given the disputed claims and doubts, “I think that we should go easy and probably satisfy all of these objections to the full satisfaction of those who raise these objections,” he said.

Because of the companies’ control over the patented seeds, “what is meant to alleviate hunger and poverty may actually in the hands of some people become really weapons of infliction of poverty and hunger,” Cardinal Turkson said.

Previously, opponents of GM carried the burden of proving that some harm was being inflicted. Under the PP, companies that planned on introducing genetic changes into an organism would have to bear the burden of proving that it was safe.

While this might seem counter-libertarian, I would argue it is not.

1. Since changes in genetics are impossible to regulate post facto, they cannot be subject to the usual economic arguments available to libertarians. The potential devastation is so irreparable that the principle of liberty demands that the bar be raised ahead of the event.

2. Biotechnology as an industry is concentrated in so few and such large companies, that free market conditions do not prevail at all in other respects. The companies owe their position in the market to their influence on government regulations and laws, to begin with. That suggests that there will be little in the way of normal market forces to check their natural profit-seeking from turning into rent-seeking based on preferential treatment, captive markets/monopoly, and government enforcement.  PP is simply a thoughtful mechanism to prevent profit from careening into plunder.

Bottom line, PP prevents looting or theft.

That makes it libertarian.

Pagan Libertarian Ethics

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I’ve seen some libertarians describe their ethic as, “Do what you will…but pay the price.”

Frankly, that is not a prescription at all. It simply describes consequences.

In ethical paganism, this would be considered incomplete, as the conclusion of the famous Wiccan Rede demonstrates:

“Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone, the truth you’ll know.
When you have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.

With a fool no season spend, or be counted as his friend.
Merry Meet and Merry Part, bright the cheeks and warm the heart.

Mind the Three-fold Laws you should, three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is enow, wear the star upon your brow.

Be true in love this you must do, unless your love is false to you.

These Eight words the Rede fulfill:

“An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will”

An Ye Harm None.

The  simple omission of this phrase has tragic consequences for people’s understanding of ethical practice. Worse yet, they enter a path of solipsism, narcissism, and even criminality, under the delusion that they’ve discovered a new moral law.

Of course, what constitutes harm is debatable….

Illegal Immigrant Workers

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David Kramer, at Lew Rockwell blog:

“You know what an “illegal” immigrant worker is, don’t you? It’s someone who voluntary decides to move from one piece of land on the planet Earth to another piece of piece of land on the planet Earth because he or she knows of a person at that second piece of land on the planet Earth who wants to voluntarily exchange with him or her a medium of exchange for his or her labor services—but wasn’t given permission to by a third party with a gun (i.e., the government).”

Roderick Long On Confucian Libertarianism

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Masterful libertarian scholar, Roderick Long, has a very long, fascinating paper, “Rituals of Freedom: Austro-Libertarian Themes In Early Confucianism,” at Mises.org. It traces libertarian ideas in Confucian thought, and makes a convincing argument that Confucianism is a better source of libertarian inspiration than the much more frequently cited Daoism.

I’m republishing a post on Long’s paper by Brian Caplan, at Marginal Revolution, because the pdf of Long’s paper isn’t very reader-friendly for a blog and Caplan has nice quotes from the piece.

“Unfortunately, Long points out, a much stronger theme in Taoist is primitivist hostility to modern civilization. Listen to Lao-tzu describe the Taoist utopia:

Lessen the population. Make sure that even though there are labor saving tools, they are never used. Make sure that the people look upon death as a weighty matter and never move to distant places. Even though they have ships and carts, they will have no use for them. … Make sure that the people return to the use of the knotted cord [in lieu of writing]. … Then even though neighboring states are within sight of each other, [and] can hear the sounds of each other’s dogs and chickens … people will grow old and die without ever having visited one another.

In contrast, Long finds much of value in the Confucians:

The early Confucians, by contrast, may not be as radical in their anti-statism as the Taoists, but in my estimation they make up for this flaw by firmly yoking their anti-statism to the cause of civilization, commerce, and the Great Society; their overall program thus looks a lot more like contemporary libertarianism than the Taoist program does. One Confucian text, while noting approvingly Laozi’s hostility to despotism, sharply criticizes Laozi for wanting to “drag the present age back to the conditions of primitive times and to stop up the eyes and ears of the people”; the best ruler instead “accepts the nature of the people,” which is to long for “beautiful sounds and forms,” “ease and comfort.”

The highlight of Long’s article is his discussion of the Sima Qian (c. 145-85 B.C.). Almost two thousand years before Adam Smith, Qian opined that “Wealth and currency should be allowed to flow as freely as water!” and had arguments to defend his position. And who said that Chinese intellectuals had no appreciation for the merchant class? Few Western thinkers match Sima’s appreciation of entrepreneurship:

These, then, are examples of outstanding and unusually wealthy men. None of them enjoyed any titles or fiefs, gifts, or salaries from the government, nor did they play tricks with the law or commit any crimes to acquire their fortunes. They simply guessed what course conditions were going to take and acted accordingly, kept a sharp eye out for the opportunities of the times, and so were able to capture a fat profit. … There was a special aptness in the way they adapted to the times …. All of these men got where they did because of their devotion and singleness of purpose. … [T]here is no fixed road to wealth, and money has no permanent master. It finds its way to the man of ability like the spokes of a wheel converging upon the hub, and from the hands of the worthless it falls like shattered tiles. … Rich men such as these deserve to be called the “untitled nobility” …

Murray Rothbard praised Sima in his history of economic thought, but Long notes that he neglected to mention that he was a Confucian!

It is hard to read this piece and not stand in awe of Long’s command of the Chinese literature. This is a body of thought comparable to Western philosophy in its intricacy and depth. Even if you couldn’t care less about Chinese proto-libertarians, this article exemplifies the true meaning of scholarship. And so the Sage says: check it out!” Continue reading →

Random Thoughts On My Return

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My thoughts on the last leg of my schlepp back to the US were mixed….how did my 4 month jaunt get stretched to double the length, for starters..

And why does a continent as rich in natural resources as South America have poverty of any kind….and why is customer service such a difficult concept for some cultures….

But let me rewind a bit.

I left you in Salta, where I spent a two days recovering from a 33 hour bus trip from Montevideo sans any food.

That wasn’t provoked by an attack of asceticism.  When I got to Buenos Aires, I had no Argentine pesos on me, the banks were closed, the ATM wouldn’t take my card for some reason, and it was pouring too  heavily for me to venture out into the city. The restaurants at the station wouldn’t accept Uruguayan pesos or a card. So, between Friday morning in Uruguay and late Monday in Salta I literally ate nothing, except for a soggy white bread sandwich with watery cheese and ham. I didn’t really feel hungry, though, until I got off at Salta….

But more on all that in another post, when I’ll give you my impressions of my trip back..

Today, I’m still catching up and will just leave you with a few random thoughts….

1. The infrastructure and organization of the United States is still unparalleled and impressive in every way, in spite of deterioration and neglect…

2. Americans should get over their love affair with politics. They’re bad at it, it doesn’t suit their style, and it annoys everyone else. America is at her best making things happen. The business of America really is business.

3. I love the English language. With a smattering of Asian and European languages for comparison, I still find everything I want in English.

4. You can lead a rich, well informed, and not uncomfortable life without a car or a bicycle, without air conditioning, a fan, internet, a phone, an I-Pod, a blackberry, wireless, a TV, or even a radio.

5. If you’re willing to drink tap water and eat stall food, you can eat every meal out on 2 dollars a day in Peru, and have meat/fish at least once a day. If you cooked at home, you could eat well for under 15 dollars a month.

6. America has been a unique experiment in history, made possible because several favorable elements lined up in one spot on the globe. One of those elements – in fact, one of the cardinal ones – was the puritan work ethic. What it does it say that our intelligentsia, by and large, despises it.

7. A man can be free with just economic freedom. Even if he cannot act politically, or speak his thoughts, he can think them. If he can think his own thoughts, he is still his own man. But a man without economic freedom can think only his master’s thoughts….and his master will be the state.

8. It isn’t the politicians we need to worry about. They have to stand election. It isn’t even the financiers. They have to reckon with bankruptcy.

But the media faces neither elections nor a balance-sheet. There you have the tyrant.