Hindsight Hypothetical Voting

Before the Election of 2008, I was asked by many of my friends who I would hypothetically vote for. That is, who would I vote for if someone had a gun to my head and threatened to pull the trigger unless I chose McCain or Obama.

When asked this question before the election, I said I would probably choose Obama, mainly for foreign policy reasons. He had nice rhetoric about the Iraq War, and I assumed that he wouldn't be too much worse than McCain when it came to domestic spending. After all, the last eight years of George W. Bush have been anything but fiscally restrained. In other words, I expected McCain, if elected, to spend like Bush, in which case I could not fathom how Obama could be much worse. Also, McCain had a hawkish foreign policy like Bush, which was a major negative. I thought about it and figured if I totted up the pros and cons, Obama would barely edge out McCain.

In hindsight, I think I was wrong in that estimation.

I can't say with certainty, but I now feel McCain would not have spent as much as Obama. In fact, I can't imagine how anyone, even Bush in a drunken stupor, could spend more than Obama. Obama has spent a mind-boggling amount of money over the last several months, and as a result, the deficit has swollen to terrifying proportions. What's more, Obama has not followed through on most of his anti-war rhetoric that was present during his campaign. He keeps doing more of the same in Iraq, while paying lip service to his promises. Namely, he claims to be drawing down troops in Iraq, but what's truly happening is they're being replaced with contractors. Not only that, he is increasing operations in Afghanistan.

I admit that it is possible for McCain, were he in office right now, to be considering invading Iran at this very moment. I don't doubt that Obama is less of a hawk on foreign policy. But now when I consider the totting up of the various pros and cons, the balance might shift in McCain's favor, if I had it to do all over again.

That aside, both candidates are horrendous, and I'm glad to say I didn't vote for either. *Dusts off hands*

Separate from Society?

Every so often I hear some uninformed individual say that libertarianism (or free markets) is a philosophy that doesn't take human nature into account. That is, it is alleged that human beings cannot live independently from society. The problem with this claim is it only demonstrates the arguer's lack of understanding about what libertarianism or the free market is.

Free markets don't create a society where we are all living alone in the wilderness, plowing our fields in complete autonomy. No. It actually relies on the nature of humans as social animals. The classical economists long ago exposed the failure of the arguments against free trade. Adam Smith famously stated that it is not from the benevolence of the baker that he bakes bread, but for his regard for his own self-interest. What these economists might not have realized is that those arguments can be applied, logically, all the way down to individual human beings.

The old argument against free exchange says that if we engage in free trade, foreigners will get the jobs that domestic citizens could have otherwise had, as domestic businesses will go for the cheaper labor overseas. Despite the fact that this argument fails to acknowledge that the exported labor actually raises the standard of living of foreigners, it fails to be logically consistent.

If free trade causes jobs to go to foreigners, interstate trade within nation-states causes jobs to go to other states. For example, if Texas and North Carolina allow free trade among the citizens of each state, Texas will lose jobs to North Carolina that it could have otherwise produced within its borders (textiles, perhaps?), and North Carolina will lose jobs to Texas that it could have otherwise had (cotton?). In short, Texas loses textile jobs and North Carolina loses cotton-producing jobs. Specifically, the jobs that each state would lose would be those in which the comparative advantage of the other state is greater. Thus, if Texas is better at producing cotton (given certain features of geography present in Texas), North Carolina will stop producing cotton and produce those goods in which it has a comparative advantage. This shows how free trade brings efficiency gains, as it allows certain areas and people to specialize in the production of what it is comparatively better at producing, with the excess being traded. But the real point is if trade with foreigners is objectionable, why is this interstate trade within nation-states tolerable?

To go further, if New York City allows free trade with Detroit, New York will likely lose automobile-producing jobs to Detroit, while Detroit loses clothes-producing jobs to New York. After all, following the anti-free trade logic, this is the conclusion one must draw.

To go as far as possible with this flawed argument, one must reduce it to the individual. If Bob and Tom engage in free trade with one another (the uninhibited exchange of goods and services), Bob will lose work for himself for each exchange he makes with Tom, and the same is true in the reverse for Tom. For instance, if Bob is good at growing tomatoes and Tom is good at purifying water, Bob would lose water-purifying work for each exchange of a tomato for purified water; the same in reverse for Tom, assuming a barter economy for simplicity of course.

In sum, this anti-free trade philosophy logically leads to primitivism, a break down in the division of labor and the productivity that comes with it, and brings about complete self-sufficiency. It is actually the free market that fully complements human beings as social animals.

Response to a Christian

I was in an argument (sort of) with a Christian about god. The following is one of my replies. Enjoy!
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I can address some of what you said without even invoking biology. The following is the fallacy of division, plain and simple.

"MATTER IS NOT CONSCIOUS, NOR CAN IT BECOME CONSCIOUS"

Aside from that, which should cause me not to give a second thought to this argument, it's simply wrong. Evolution explains how matter can become conscious and intelligent. If you were knowledgeable about it at all, you would know that. RNA has been created in the laboratory from the combination of various elements under certain conditions, and since it is a fundamental building block of life which replicates itself, science has gone a long way in showing how life can spawn from non-life.

There is not one shred of evidence that humans have some immaterial spirit. You are your brain. If your brain is damaged, a part of you dies with it. If your brain is completely destroyed, "you" perish with it as well. Neuroscience is a new study, so there's a great deal left to learn. However, what we can be confident in saying is that the human brain evolved on Earth just like every other living thing and that we are our brains. Our brains are EXTREMELY complex (100 billion neurons and up to 100 trillion synapses), which is why human beings are so intelligent and have this thing called consciousness. We are nowhere close to having the technological ability to design a computer (or robot) that is as complex or as sophisticated as the human brain.

That being said, I do think it's theoretically possible if human beings live long enough. At that point, robots could then have software advanced enough which allows them to feel pain, love, happiness, and be aware of their own existence. In fact, modern neuroscience speaks of different parts of the brain as computer software (this is known as the computational theory of the mind). Certain areas of the brain are devoted to controlling certain bodily activities. The frontal lobes, for example, contain software dedicated to planning and giving humans the ability to predict the consequences of actions. It is also this region that inhibits (puts the brakes on) the limbic system, which is where our emotions come from and are processed.

The simple fact is that I'm on far better ground, even with so much left to learn about the human brain, when it comes to reasonable propositions. You accept materialism. We all do. You have to because you are in a material world and have a material body. There is no objective, scientific evidence of some immaterial spirit that is controlling our material bodies. All the evidence says we are our material brains.

It doesn't even make sense to say we have an immaterial spirit guiding our material bodies, as immaterial is basically another word for non-existence. It doesn't explain one thing and isn't the slightest bit interesting.

A Talking Donkey

I never cease to be amazed at the credulity of the religious. A while back, I commented on a talking donkey in the Bible. It's in Numbers 22:28-30. Back when I did this, I had several people claim that I had no idea what I was talking about, because I was taking it as literal truth. Some said I obviously had not read anything about the Bible and was uneducated because of the way I presented the scripture and made fun of it.

My obvious response was that I wasn't talking to the metaphorical Christians. I was talking to the ones that take every word in the Bible as literal fact. For someone to get upset at me and treat me as if I don't know what I'm talking about, well, it only speak to that person's ignorance of his fellow believers. Do not attack me when I'm actually addressing views a great deal of people hold. That is, some Christians don't say that the story of Balaam and the donkey is allegorical. Instead, they say an actual donkey talked to an angel on planet Earth. That it was as real as anything else in reality.

I've posed this question to fundamentalists (those who take the Bible entirely literally) to gauge their reactions. The vast majority of these fundies have no problem accepting a talking donkey. They say that in the past talking animals were actually very common, after all Eve talked to a snake in the Garden of Eden.

One can only sit back and laugh at such credulity. I used the talking donkey story in an effort to show fundies how ridiculous it is to take the Bible literally, but that doesn't discourage them in the least. They are willing to accept blindly whatever the Bible says. And this fact is precisely why they are so dangerous. There is not one drop of evidence for a talking donkey or snake, ever. The Bible is the perfect word of their perfect god, so whatever it says MUST be true, right? Give me a break.

Did I say I sit back and laugh at them? Well, truth is that I'm just as likely to shed a tear over this sad fact about members of my species.

Knee-Jerk Responses to Privatization

If any of you follow the website LewRockwell.com, you may have noticed that Dr. Walter Block had an article a few days ago in which he defended privatizing bodies of water and the notion of voluntary slavery contracts. I stumbled upon a Canadian website that published Dr. Block's article exactly as it appeared on LewRockwell.com. I encourage you to go view it.

The particularly interesting thing is the Canadian website allowed comments to the article to be posted. In fact, the main reason I encourage you to visit the site is to read those comments. I skimmed through about 2/3rds of them before stopping from annoyance. Block is called names ranging from fascist to corporatist to neo-conservative, labels which obviously do not apply to him if one thinks even briefly on his positions and arguments.

Leaving the idea of voluntary slavery contracts aside, I was astounded at the number of people in the comments who took issue with the classic idea of the Tragedy of the Commons. This idea says that when a resource is public (or held in common), it tends to be depleted and to be the target of capital consumption, i.e. people try to get as much as they can now for fear of someone else taking their portion in the near future. The solution to this classic problem is privatizing resources. All resources.

Dr. Block's "radical" proposal was the privatization of lakes, rivers, and streams. This is simply a logical extension of the basic idea of the Tragedy of the Commons. The main objection raised to this proposal by commentors was that there are people who exist who treat their private property poorly. Obviously this is not a seriously-thought-out objection. The argument never was that NO ONE would treat his or her private property poorly. Rather, the argument was that there is a tendency for resources in general to be treated better than they otherwise would.

Does this mean that bodies of water will not be polluted? No. It means pollution will be rationally allocated by the market to suit the demands of consumers. Some bodies of water will be clean, and some will be polluted. The point is that market forces can optimize this allocation for the betterment of society as a whole. The property owners have an interest in the preservation of future income streams, which is an interest that doesn't exist when resources are held publicly.

After all, if civilization is to continue at all, rational allocation of pollution on some level is going to exist.

There are many other knee-jerk reactions to Dr. Block's privatization proposal, but I won't go into them. Have a look for yourself.

Political Tests

I recently took an online political quiz. Here are the results:

Nathan is a far-right social libertarian. He is also a non-interventionist and culturally liberal. Nathan's scores (from 0 to 10):

Economic issues:+10 right

Social issues:+9.78 libertarian

Foreign policy:+7.38 non-interventionist

Cultural identification:+6.55 liberal









Most political quizzes are a waste of time. I was referred to the one above by a friend who said it was much better than most he'd encountered, so I did it. The results were pretty accurate. The only problem I have is the meter at the bottom where you rate the intensity of each answer you give. There were also a few of the questions I had a problem clearly answering.

For example, the quiz states in question #8, "Sċhool science classes should teach intelligent design." It then asks for you to strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree, with the statement. The problem is if the state is running schools, I don't want "intelligent" design taught in a biology classroom. However, if schooling was left totally up to the market, I don't care what the curriculum for any particular school is. I simply answered the question assuming it related to public schools and chose "strongly disagree." It's questions like these that make most political quizzes garbage. But I must admit that this one was not as bad as most, like my friend told me.

To take the quiz yourself, go here.

The Darwinian Free Market?

I watched an interview hosted by Richard Dawkins with a lady named Wendy Wright. Mrs. Wright promotes "teaching the controversy" in the classroom regarding evolution. I encourage you to watch the interview to see just how deluded this woman is. Dawkins is much more respectful than I think even I could have been, and I consider myself a very nice and respectful person.

The reason I mention this is Dawkins says something in this interview that I find puzzling and wrong. Keep in mind that I admire Dawkins a lot, and I've learned a lot from his books on the topic of evolution and god. However, in this interview he tells the interviewee that a human society based on Darwinian principles would be a vicious, evil society that tramples on the poor, and he says it's a society he has no desire to live in. He claims that one has to recognize Darwinism in order to build a society that is truly good, since Darwinism must be rejected as a tenat of social foundation. He goes on to claim that a Darwinian society would be one based on an unhampered free market.

This statement goes directly against anyone who understands basic, free-market economics, and it also falsely equates Darwinism with radical free markets. One of the reasons I promote an unhampered free market is because it provides more for everyone, not just the rich. I assume Dawkins thinks a "just" society is one that has laws like the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, universal health insurance, etc., which he views as helping the least among us. In every area where this "just" society is supposed to help the poor, it can be shown to do the exact opposite. The clearest case is the minimum wage: it hurts the very people it's intended to help by unemploying marginal workers. The same can be said of each of the other provisions of this just society that Dawkins desires.

I want an unhampered free market because the poor will be better off, along with everyone else. If Dawkins properly understood free-market economics he wouldn't go around promoting disabling the saving grace of the free market. In short, he wouldn't oppose the best form of social organization.