Libertarians enjoy challenging others' assumptions, and it's invigorating. But it's also time to challenge the assumptions of libertarians: freedom-lovers, make your case.
Here's a couple of shots between the redoubtable Devils' Kitchen and myself, from a couple of posts back. To me, this isn't about drugs, essentially; it's about whether we are, or can be, free.
Devil's Kitchen said...
Sackerson, "How is it reactionary to wish to protect young people from habits that impoverish and enslave them (and this is what black communities object to)? I think perhaps some libertarians haven't really defined what they mean by liberty."
I am all for proper drugs education; however, it is worth noting that I had a considerable amount of it, and it hasn't stopped me from taking just about every drug on the planet*.
And do you know what? I have never had to have any kind of hospital or other treatment; I have never lost a job; I have never even been late for work, after having taken drugs.
I have never assaulted anyone (most drugs, other than alcohol, put you in a frame of mind in which violence is the last thing you want to indulge in), nor hurt anyone, nor even caused a public nuisance whilst on drugs either.
I am not addicted to drugs either, despite heavy usage of a few of them (most are self-limiting, in that the effects begin to wane after a period heavy usage).
I have, on the other hand, laughed like a demon, make some excellent friends, danced, thrilled, been immersed in music in a way that's not possible sober, and had many fantastic times whilst on drugs.
You see, what I chose was to take the education that I was given, and the advice of friends, and my own experience, and indulge in a free and informed choice.
That is libertarianism, and it is still no business of yours what I put into my body, as long as I am willing to pay the consequences. And I am: that's why I am privately insured up to the hilt.
DK
Sackerson said...
DK: thanks for visiting, I'd have drawn a chalk circle if I'd known you were coming.
I agree that alcohol is pernicious and have argued that rather than attempt to ban it, we should reduce its availability a bit - currently you can get it from the supermarket, post office, petrol station etc. And it does make many people horribly aggressive, so there is an incentive for others to band together and act in this way.
I do understand that there are many functioning drug users (as indeed there are functioning alcoholics), and the question of product purity is certainly one of the arguments propounded for legalisation and regulation. Set against that is what might then happen. If the research referred to by Paddington above is correct, the tendency to addiction is genetic, so the principal factor is opportunity. If only 5% have the fatal flaw, and these products become as available as a six-pack of wife-beater from Tesco Express, we could go from thousands of addicts to millions.
So one issue is how do you weigh your wish for a certain kind of pleasure, against the awful suffering of some other people? Is this corner of libertarianism less a struggle to be free of oppression than it is callous selfishness?
And there is a deeper question of the founding assumptions of libertarians: are we really free and rational in any case? If half our behaviour is genetically determined, and much of the rest conditioned by social expectations, drug-taking is not the blow for liberty that it was represented to be from the 1960s onwards. You yourself say "...I chose was to take the education that I was given, and the advice of friends, and my own experience...", which makes me think that your "free and informed choice" was conditioned by the example and advice of your friends, and the opportunity to take part yourself. Indeed, this is how I started on cigarettes and it took me a decade to get back off them, so I have some idea how unfree we really are. You'll see from my next post that I query whether public schools such as Eton had a drug problem as early as the 1960s, and "as the twig is bent, so the tree will grow".
I think we are in an age where the Enlightenment philosophy is as under threat from geneticism (and determinism generally), as Creationism was when evolutionary theory was formulated. Sartre refused to accept Freud's theory of the unconscious, because it fatally undermined his own position on existentialist free will.
So I think libertarians should move from questions of law, taxation, social liberty etc to re-examine the ground they are standing on.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The public school connection
Gosh, people get fussed when you suggest that complete licence isn't a good idea. Where did that start? Apparently I'm a 95-year-old reactionary, and a 21-year-old "righteous" (same accuser).
In 1969, I went to Cambridge University for an interview, and met my friend who'd just gone up. In general conversation, he told me that a third of the undergraduates at his college were Old Etonians, and that they were (a) a tight clique and (b) well into cocaine parties. This, at a time when I'd only recently heard of "pot", which for me conjured up the mental image of a Marmite jar.
That's 40 years ago now, just about. Eton was criticised a few years ago for taking a tough line on drugs. Wrong issue: their critics should have asked them just how long the problem had existed. What was going on in the study and the common room? Just don't ask Dave.
Drugs: a rope to hang ourselves with
Unity at the Ministry of Truth offers 15,000 words to justify the legalisation of drugs, and is cheered on by Devil's Kitchen and (or am I mistaken?) by James at Nourishing Obscurity.
On the other hand, ex-Birmingham prison medic Theodore Dalrymple points out that no-one has ever died from coming off opiates; de-addiction can be achieved in a limited time; and it's criminals who turn to heroin, not heroin-users who turn to crime.
"Ah, but we only want the same treatment as smokers and drinkers," will be the cry. Well, seeing the damage that fags and booze did to my 20-years-too-early departed parents (and friends and acquaintances, and Looked After Children I've worked with), I'm inclined to agree; but not in the way the libertarians wish.
I'd be interested to know all the costs, expressed financially, of the harm done by "cigareets and whisky". I very much doubt that the tax covers the expense of the disbenefits. Here's an example, relating to alcohol: "For the UK, the external costs are likely to be in excess of the £20 billion figure and indeed taking loss of life into account and using more usual figures to value this loss could bring the total closer to £45 –50 billion for the UK as a whole. This is clearly way in excess of the revenue yield of £12 billion in 2000/01."
Instead of battening on the addictions of its citizens, the government could easily forego the £18 billion revenue on tobacco and alcohol - that's only the same cost as the ludicrously expensive and probably unnecessary NHS IT project, "Connecting for Health". Then, freed from this compromising financial interest, it could begin to tackle the problems seriously - not through the unimaginative approach of Prohibition, but through better education, and limiting the outlets of these harmful substances, as I have already suggested here.
As for other drugs, what is this campaign to encourage us to spend half our lives in a doze, daze or haze? Is there a plan to subvert society, to leave us in the land of the Lotus Eaters? Are we to sleep like the hare, while the Eastern tortoise wins the race? Is the opiate of the masses to be opiates?
B*lls to the Politics of Ecstasy; it's just an excuse for the spoiled end of the middle classes to indulge themselves further, leading (like the Pied Piper) hordes of less safety-netted proles into oblivion.
And why should libertarians support addictions, which imprison the will and distort reason?
On the other hand, ex-Birmingham prison medic Theodore Dalrymple points out that no-one has ever died from coming off opiates; de-addiction can be achieved in a limited time; and it's criminals who turn to heroin, not heroin-users who turn to crime.
"Ah, but we only want the same treatment as smokers and drinkers," will be the cry. Well, seeing the damage that fags and booze did to my 20-years-too-early departed parents (and friends and acquaintances, and Looked After Children I've worked with), I'm inclined to agree; but not in the way the libertarians wish.
I'd be interested to know all the costs, expressed financially, of the harm done by "cigareets and whisky". I very much doubt that the tax covers the expense of the disbenefits. Here's an example, relating to alcohol: "For the UK, the external costs are likely to be in excess of the £20 billion figure and indeed taking loss of life into account and using more usual figures to value this loss could bring the total closer to £45 –50 billion for the UK as a whole. This is clearly way in excess of the revenue yield of £12 billion in 2000/01."
Instead of battening on the addictions of its citizens, the government could easily forego the £18 billion revenue on tobacco and alcohol - that's only the same cost as the ludicrously expensive and probably unnecessary NHS IT project, "Connecting for Health". Then, freed from this compromising financial interest, it could begin to tackle the problems seriously - not through the unimaginative approach of Prohibition, but through better education, and limiting the outlets of these harmful substances, as I have already suggested here.
As for other drugs, what is this campaign to encourage us to spend half our lives in a doze, daze or haze? Is there a plan to subvert society, to leave us in the land of the Lotus Eaters? Are we to sleep like the hare, while the Eastern tortoise wins the race? Is the opiate of the masses to be opiates?
B*lls to the Politics of Ecstasy; it's just an excuse for the spoiled end of the middle classes to indulge themselves further, leading (like the Pied Piper) hordes of less safety-netted proles into oblivion.
And why should libertarians support addictions, which imprison the will and distort reason?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The next wave of bailouts
It's not just the banks that are short of money. Many US States and local authorities are also suffering financial problems, and this is affecting the trade in their bonds, i.e. their borrowings on the money market. ("What are bonds, exactly?" - see here.)
Michael Panzner reports that municipal bonds ("munis") offer a better yield than US Treasury bonds, but the difference is still not enough to pay for the extra risk. Professional investors are short-selling "munis". i.e. betting that they will fall in price. A steep fall may indicate imminent bankruptcy, and some say this is on the way for many authorities, as Mish reported at the end of December.
So, what will happen when the US Government is seen to be buying everybody's bad debts?
People (even here in the UK, where we tend to wait patiently for our wise rulers to solve all) are beginning to worry about inflation, and are thinking about investing again. An article in Elliott Wave International warns us not to be panicked into parting with our cash, and reminds us:
... there are periods when inflation does erode the value of cash. I mean, look at the seven years leading up to the October 2007 peak in U.S. stocks: big gains in the stock indexes, while inflation was eroding cash. No way did cash do as well as stocks during that time.
Right?
Wrong. Cash outperformed stocks in the seven years leading up to the 2007 stock market high. That outperformance has only increased in the time since.
Since this is the view I took and communicated to clients in the 1990s, you will understand that I didn't make much money as a financial adviser. But it was certainly good advice, even if it was based on strongly-felt intuition rather than macroeconomic analysis.
Not that analysis guarantees results, in a world where the money game's rules are changed at will by politicians with a host of agendas that they don't share with us ordinary types. But my current guess is that the stockmarket will halve again in the next few years, when compared with the cost of living.
Michael Panzner reports that municipal bonds ("munis") offer a better yield than US Treasury bonds, but the difference is still not enough to pay for the extra risk. Professional investors are short-selling "munis". i.e. betting that they will fall in price. A steep fall may indicate imminent bankruptcy, and some say this is on the way for many authorities, as Mish reported at the end of December.
So, what will happen when the US Government is seen to be buying everybody's bad debts?
People (even here in the UK, where we tend to wait patiently for our wise rulers to solve all) are beginning to worry about inflation, and are thinking about investing again. An article in Elliott Wave International warns us not to be panicked into parting with our cash, and reminds us:
... there are periods when inflation does erode the value of cash. I mean, look at the seven years leading up to the October 2007 peak in U.S. stocks: big gains in the stock indexes, while inflation was eroding cash. No way did cash do as well as stocks during that time.
Right?
Wrong. Cash outperformed stocks in the seven years leading up to the 2007 stock market high. That outperformance has only increased in the time since.
Since this is the view I took and communicated to clients in the 1990s, you will understand that I didn't make much money as a financial adviser. But it was certainly good advice, even if it was based on strongly-felt intuition rather than macroeconomic analysis.
Not that analysis guarantees results, in a world where the money game's rules are changed at will by politicians with a host of agendas that they don't share with us ordinary types. But my current guess is that the stockmarket will halve again in the next few years, when compared with the cost of living.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Conspiracy, not c*ck-up
Michael Hudson sees the current crisis as deliberately fomented, and intentionally anti-democratic (htp: Anon, on Nourishing Obscurity). The economic is now shading into the political:
What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model has been a great success from the vantage point of the top of the economic pyramid looking down. The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy. From their point of view, their power has exceeded that of any time in which economic statistics have been kept.
You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards; it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.
Meanwhile, Karl Denninger makes his case for the perpetrators of the credit crunch to be penalized under the US laws relating to mail fraud.
What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model has been a great success from the vantage point of the top of the economic pyramid looking down. The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy. From their point of view, their power has exceeded that of any time in which economic statistics have been kept.
You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards; it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.
Meanwhile, Karl Denninger makes his case for the perpetrators of the credit crunch to be penalized under the US laws relating to mail fraud.
Stock market could halve again
As you know, I've been doing my own extrapolations recently, based on the Dow since 1928, and the implication is that the low point could be as deep as c. 4,000 points, i.e. another 50% off where it stands today.
Now, "Mish" looks at revised earnings estimates for companies and relates them to stock prices, applying various price-earnings ratios. His conclusion is broadly the same.
As Michael Panzer predicted* (reviewed here in May 2007) there's been a flight to cash, and now (as he also predicted) it looks as though inflation is set to roar. This will disguise what's happening to stocks, but underneath it I see that decline. As in the '60s-'80s. it may take some years after the apparent turnaround before real values increase again.
Provided you trust the government to pay up when due, and to calculate inflation fairly, National Savings Index-Linked Savings Certificates (or US TIPS) may be a valuable weapon in your anti-inflation armoury.
*"He predicts first a credit squeeze, which makes cash king and ruins our credit-dependent lives and businesses wholesale; then hyperinflation, as the government prints money to keep the system from complete collapse.
In this scenario, at first, stocks, corporate bonds, property, commodities (including gold), even government bonds and savings certificates, all decline in value against hard cash as everybody scrambles to settle their own debt, collect what's owed to them and continue to pay the bills. Then the hyperinflation hits and everybody tries to offload their currency."
Now, "Mish" looks at revised earnings estimates for companies and relates them to stock prices, applying various price-earnings ratios. His conclusion is broadly the same.
As Michael Panzer predicted* (reviewed here in May 2007) there's been a flight to cash, and now (as he also predicted) it looks as though inflation is set to roar. This will disguise what's happening to stocks, but underneath it I see that decline. As in the '60s-'80s. it may take some years after the apparent turnaround before real values increase again.
Provided you trust the government to pay up when due, and to calculate inflation fairly, National Savings Index-Linked Savings Certificates (or US TIPS) may be a valuable weapon in your anti-inflation armoury.
*"He predicts first a credit squeeze, which makes cash king and ruins our credit-dependent lives and businesses wholesale; then hyperinflation, as the government prints money to keep the system from complete collapse.
In this scenario, at first, stocks, corporate bonds, property, commodities (including gold), even government bonds and savings certificates, all decline in value against hard cash as everybody scrambles to settle their own debt, collect what's owed to them and continue to pay the bills. Then the hyperinflation hits and everybody tries to offload their currency."
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Snap
Denninger:
JAIL the fraudsters, including those in Congress, Treasury and on Wall Street. Bluntly - if we can find a predicate felony to nail you with in this mess, off you go.
REMOVE all of the overseers. This includes The Fed. Set up a new agency that is charged with enforcing all of the laws related to the financial system including The Federal Reserve Act, and empower them with subpoenas. Direct that they must act and operate "in the sunshine", with everything published on The Web. You do an evil thing, the public sees it. They try to hide it, the public sees it.
DEFAULT all the bad debt. Yes, this "booms" a lot of banks. Tough.
SET UP new banks. Take the remaining $350 billion and capitalize ten banks with $35 billion each. IPO them to the public. By law no officer, current or former, of an existing public bank may serve on these firm's boards. Now we've got the means to replace the credit creation the boomed banks can't do any more.
JAIL the fraudsters, including those in Congress, Treasury and on Wall Street. Bluntly - if we can find a predicate felony to nail you with in this mess, off you go.
REMOVE all of the overseers. This includes The Fed. Set up a new agency that is charged with enforcing all of the laws related to the financial system including The Federal Reserve Act, and empower them with subpoenas. Direct that they must act and operate "in the sunshine", with everything published on The Web. You do an evil thing, the public sees it. They try to hide it, the public sees it.
DEFAULT all the bad debt. Yes, this "booms" a lot of banks. Tough.
SET UP new banks. Take the remaining $350 billion and capitalize ten banks with $35 billion each. IPO them to the public. By law no officer, current or former, of an existing public bank may serve on these firm's boards. Now we've got the means to replace the credit creation the boomed banks can't do any more.
Uncanny. We agree pretty much exactly. Either he's an amateur, or I'm a professional.
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