“People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.”

It turned out to be a hoax, though. Krugman’s initial reaction is here. Dave Weigel’s cleanup is here. Krugman’s further comments are here.

It certainly seemed like something Krugman would say. After all, he has made similar comments in the past, as the unrepentant imposter (troll?) points out in his confession. Predictably (and disappointingly), the comments list was overrun with drive-by “Broken Window Fallacy, dumbass!” comments and immature grunts of the sophistication of “Hayek’s cool. Krugman drools.” It’s no wonder Krugman’s supporters have been having a hearty laugh at his detractors’ expense. We were duped.

Here’s what’s not being said, though. His supporters were duped, too. Evidence can be found in the state of the comment stream as of 3:30AM. (Yes, I did post comments. I was indeed duped. In my defense, though, my contributions were directed at pro-Krugman/Keynes commenters and not the hoax remark itself.)

It only seems fair to me that if Team Mises/Hayek loses points for attacking a straw man, Team Keynes/Krugman should lose points for trying to defend the fake remark as though it were a reasonable and substantive argument. So why haven’t I seen anyone else make this point? Are they out there, and I just haven’t seen them, or is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black (and hiding his can of black paint)?

“A monopoly is a grant of special privilege by the State, reserving a certain area of production to one particular individual or group.” – Ludwig von Mises Institute

Consequently, the following line from an article about PLCB’s plans to “modernize” laughably stupid.

“They also want lawmakers to let them create so-called ‘loyalty clubs,’ to offer customers discounts.”

How the hell can customers be loyal when there’s no competition?! Is this a case of Orwellian political newspeak or further evidence that the PA government is dominated by economic ignoramuses?

This nonsense has to stop. Abolish the PLCB!

No legislation without representation!

The following text is borrowed from Downsize DC, and I agree with it. I’d like to add to it, though. Let’s make it a constitutional amendment! Downsize DC suggests an amendment as a response to a court challenge of the act. I say skip the BS and go straight for the good stuff. What do you think?

Help us pass the “Read the Bills Act” (RTBA)

Part 1: What RTBA does and why

Most Congressmen are lawyers, and many others are businessmen. They know what “fiduciary responsibility” is. For Members of Congress, fiduciary responsibility means reading each word of every bill before they vote.

But Congress has not met this duty for a long time. Instead . . .

• They carelessly pass mammoth bills that none of them have read. Sometimes printed copies aren’t even available when they vote!
• Often no one knows what these bills contain, or what they really do, or what they will really cost.
• Additions and deletions are made at the last minute, in secrecy.
• They combine unpopular proposals with popular measures that few in Congress want to oppose. (This practice is called “log-rolling.”)
• And votes are held with little debate or public notice.
• Oh, and once these bills are passed, and one of these unpopular proposals comes to light, they pretend to be shocked. “How did that get in there?” they say.

There’s a basic principle at stake here. America was founded on the slogan, “No taxation without representation.” A similar slogan applies to this situation:

“No LEGISLATION without representation.”

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.

And since Congress has repeatedly committed “legislation without representation,” strong measures to prohibit these Congressional misrepresentations are both justified and required.

To this end we have created the “Read the Bills Act (RTBA).” RTBA requires that . . .

• Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.
• Every member of the House and Senate who plans to vote in the affirmative – to vote for tax increases, for spending bills, for the retention or creation of programs, in support of laws and regulations – must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.
• Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.
• Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.
• Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.
• Congress cannot waive these requirements.

The effects of these provisions will be profound . . .

• Congress will have to slow down. This means the pace of government growth will also slow.
• Bills will shrink, be less complicated, and contain fewer subjects, so that Congress will be able to endure hearing them read.
• Fewer bad proposals will be passed due to “log-rolling.”
• No more secret clauses will be inserted into bills at the last moment.
• Government should shrink as old laws reach their sunset date, and have to be read for the first time before they can be renewed.

And all of these things will enable a larger DownsizeDC.org to more effectively lobby Congress for small government.

Part 2: Our Strategy for passing RTBA

Our plan for passing this legislation is simple, but powerful.

• We have submitted a copy of RTBA to every member of Congress.
• We are asking every member of the House and Senate to sponsor this legislation and work for its passage.
• We are mounting a campaign to recruit thousands, and perhaps millions of Americans to lobby Congress to support RTBA.
• We are promoting this campaign with a variety of tactics, from Internet networking, to media interviews, to whatever it takes.
• We will run targeted radio ads, letting citizens know that their Congressman is failing to support this badly needed reform.

The need for this reform is so self-evident that nearly every person in America should support it, and few oppose it. We see no reason why we should not be able to overwhelm Congress with calls to pass this legislation.

• We dare Congress not to pass it. The more they resist, the larger and stronger we will grow.
• We dare anyone to challenge it in Court. The more the lobbyists attempt to defeat this reform, the larger and stronger we will grow.
• We dare the Courts to declare it un-Constitutional. If they do, we will grow larger and stronger as a result — probably big enough to begin a campaign to amend the Constitution to forbid “LEGISLATION without representation.”

There is simply no reason that any normal, tax-paying American should oppose RTBA. And the more the “powers that be” resist these reforms, the larger and stronger we will grow.

We win either way. And thus, we believe, we will win in the end.

Part 3: A Call to Action

To send your message to Congress in support of RTBA click here.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis

Earlier today I wrote a post about the Catholic Church’s teachings with respect to the bearing and raising of children, specifically as expressed by Pope Piux XI in his encyclical Casti Conubii. In the course to applying my amateur skills to parsing the text into more widely accessible terms, I found myself disagreeing with the Holy Father on several points related to the relationship between Church and State.

My ideals with respect to Church-State relations flow primarily from the maxim, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity”. What I regard as essentials are introduced in broad strokes via the Philosophy of Liberty. However, while the State arrogates to itself matters proper to the Church or the individual, a faithful member of the Church has a moral obligation to use civic means to prevent the State from participating in or protecting evil. Just how to go about doing that is the subject of much debate, however.

Rather than clutter up my post on family planning with digressions about politics, I’ve decided to write a separate post here. In order to better understand the context of these remarks, the reader is encouraged to read my other post, or at least the full text of the encyclical itself.

All emphases in the quoted text below are mine.

“37. …what the families and individuals are, so also is the State, for a body is determined by its parts. Wherefore, both for the private good of husband, wife and children, as likewise for the public good of human society, they indeed deserve well who strenuously defend the inviolable stability of matrimony.”

This is a rather pernicious conflation of State and society. Lincoln’s paean to a government allegedly “of the people, by the people, and for the people” notwithstanding, the State is not an organic extension of its citizens. It is not an emergent phenomenon generated by natural processes. It is not the product of voluntary society. It is law, and law entails force. That force is negative, not in the sense of a moral evil, but in that its proper scope it inhibits behavior.

Frederic Bastiat describes it this way in The Law:

“What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

“Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

“Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

“If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

…

“Can the law — which necessarily requires the use of force — rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined. It must be admitted that the true solution — so long searched for in the area of social relationships — is contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice.

“Now this must be said: When justice is organized by law — that is, by force — this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization — justice. For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Since Bastiat so eloquently states ideas near to my own, I shall rely on him heavily for the remainder of this article.

Getting back to the relationship between the Church and the State with respect to marriage let’s see what Pius XI says.

“73. It follows therefore that they are destroying mutual fidelity, who think that the ideas and morality of our present time concerning a certain harmful and false friendship with a third party can be countenanced, and who teach that a greater freedom of feeling and action in such external relations should be allowed to man and wife, particularly as many (so they consider) are possessed of an inborn sexual tendency which cannot be satisfied within the narrow limits of monogamous marriage. That rigid attitude which condemns all sensual affections and actions with a third party they imagine to be a narrowing of mind and heart, something obsolete, or an abject form of jealousy, and as a result they look upon whatever penal laws are passed by the State for the preserving of conjugal faith as void or to be abolished. Such unworthy and idle opinions are condemned by that noble instinct which is found in every chaste husband and wife, and even by the light of the testimony of nature alone, – a testimony that is sanctioned and confirmed by the command of God: ‘Thou shalt not commit adultry,’[55] and the words of Christ: ‘Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.’[56] The force of this divine precept can never be weakened by any merely human custom, bad example or pretext of human progress, for just as it is the one and the same ‘Jesus Christ, yesterday and today and the same for ever.’[57] so it is the one and the same doctrine of Christ that abides and of which no one jot or tittle shall pass away till all is fulfilled.[58]“

Pius is wishes to see laws against adultery upheld.

“78. These enemies of marriage go further, however, when they substitute for that true and solid love, which is the basis of conjugal happiness, a certain vague compatibility of temperament. This they call sympathy and assert that, since it is the only bond by which husband and wife are linked together, when it ceases the marriage is completely dissolved. What else is this than to build a house upon sand? – a house that in the words of Christ would forthwith be shaken and collapse, as soon as it was exposed to the waves of adversity ‘and the winds blew and they beat upon that house. And it fell: and great was the fall thereof.’[59] On the other hand, the house built upon a rock, that is to say on mutual conjugal chastity and strengthened by a deliberate and constant union of spirit, will not only never fall away but will never be shaken by adversity.”

Serial monogamy and unwedded cohabitation are condemned.

“79. We have so far, Venerable Brethren, shown the excellency of the first two blessings of Christian wedlock which the modern subverters of society are attacking. And now considering that the third blessing, which is that of the sacrament, far surpasses the other two, we should not be surprised to find that this, because of its outstanding excellence, is much more sharply attacked by the same people. They put forward in the first place that matrimony belongs entirely to the profane and purely civil sphere, that it is not to be committed to the religious society, the Church of Christ, but to civil society alone. They then add that the marriage contract is to be freed from any indissoluble bond, and that separation and divorce are not only to be tolerated but sanctioned by the law; from which it follows finally that, robbed of all its holiness, matrimony should be enumerated amongst the secular and civil institutions. The first point is contained in their contention that the civil act itself should stand for the marriage contract (civil matrimony, as it is called), while the religious act is to be considered a mere addition, or at most a concession to a too superstitious people. Moreover they want it to be no cause for reproach that marriages be contracted by Catholics with non-Catholics without any reference to religion or recourse to the ecclesiastical authorities. The second point which is but a consequence of the first is to be found in their excuse for complete divorce and in their praise and encouragement of those civil laws which favor the loosening of the bond itself. As the salient features of the religious character of all marriage and particularly of the sacramental marriage of Christians have been treated at length and supported by weighty arguments in the encyclical letters of Leo XIII, letters which We have frequently recalled to mind and expressly made our own, We refer you to them, repeating here only a few points.

…

“85. The advocates of the neo-paganism of today have learned nothing from the sad state of affairs, but instead, day by day, more and more vehemently, they continue by legislation to attack the indissolubility of the marriage bond, proclaiming that the lawfulness of divorce must be recognized, and that the antiquated laws should give place to a new and more humane legislation. Many and varied are the grounds put forward for divorce, some arising from the wickedness and the guilt of the persons concerned, others arising from the circumstances of the case; the former they describe as subjective, the latter as objective; in a word, whatever might make married life hard or unpleasant. They strive to prove their contentions regarding these grounds for the divorce legislation they would bring about, by various arguments. Thus, in the first place, they maintain that it is for the good of either party that the one who is innocent should have the right to separate from the guilty, or that the guilty should be withdrawn from a union which is unpleasing to him and against his will. In the second place, they argue, the good of the child demands this, for either it will be deprived of a proper education or the natural fruits of it, and will too easily be affected by the discords and shortcomings of the parents, and drawn from the path of virtue. And thirdly the common good of society requires that these marriages should be completely dissolved, which are now incapable of producing their natural results, and that legal reparations should be allowed when crimes are to be feared as the result of the common habitation and intercourse of the parties. This last, they say must be admitted to avoid the crimes being committed purposely with a view to obtaining the desired sentence of divorce for which the judge can legally loose the marriage bond, as also to prevent people from coming before the courts when it is obvious from the state of the case that they are Iying and perjuring themselves, – all of which brings the court and the lawful authority into contempt. Hence the civil laws, in their opinion, have to be reformed to meet these new requirements, to suit the changes of the times and the changes in men’s opinions, civil institutions and customs. Each of these reasons is considered by them as conclusive, so that all taken together offer a clear proof of the necessity of granting divorce in certain cases.

“86. Others, taking a step further, simply state that marriage, being a private contract, is, like other private contracts, to be left to the consent and good pleasure of both parties, and so can be dissolved for any reason whatsoever.

Pius condemns those who would remove marriage from the purview of the Church and hand it over entirely to the State. In the process, though, he has made two logical errors. The first is that he has assumed that all who wish reduce marriage in the civil sphere to private contract wish to entirely remove marriage from the religious sphere. On the contrary, libertarian Catholics (Catholic libertarians?) such as myself wish to leave marriage, the sacramental joining of one man and one woman for unitive and procreative ends, to the Church (other private institutions may define marriage as they see fit, as they already do); a contract of civil or domestic union would merely add public legal recognition to what a couple has already contracted privately. There should laws pertaining to contractual unions for the sake of insurance, inheritance, etc., but marriage should be a private affair mediated by religious institutions, if at all. That way, the Church can marry or not marry whomever it pleases and the State can limit itself to setting and protecting civil contract laws. In such a system, domestic partnerships needn’t be be restricted in any way to marriage. For instance, two elderly sisters couldn’t register themselves as mutually committed despite sharing residence and financial burdens.

As a libertarian, I don’t believe the State should have anything to with marriage, whatsoever, beyond enforcing contract law. Like the “modern subverters of society” Pius decries, I contend that “the civil act itself should stand for the marriage contract”. However, unlike them, I do not believe that “the religious act is to be considered a mere addition, or at most a concession to a too superstitious people”. On the contrary, I believe the religious act to be the far more significant one, and the civil act is of no more import than signing of an apartment lease. The sacrament of marriage is far too serious, sacred, and important to be entrusted to the State. The Church alone should be the earthly guardian of the sacraments; the State has no legitimate claim to them. Not every citizen wishes to be married within the Church, nor does the Church permit all individuals to be sacramentally married. Nevertheless, all citizens have the right to freely associate and freely enter civil contracts.

Pius’ second logical error is that all private contracts are “left to the consent and good pleasure of both parties, and so can be dissolved for any reason whatsoever”. This is nonsense. Just because the terms of a contract can be made very lose and the bonds easily broken doesn’t mean they must or always will. There’s no reason why a Catholic couple couldn’t codify the vow they made before God and His Church in a civil contract, with appropriate legal consequences for breach of contract. Murray Rothbard responded to straw men like this in his “Myth and Truth About Libertarianism“.

Continuing with Pius XI:

“87. Opposed to all these reckless opinions, Venerable Brethren, stands the unalterable law of God, fully confirmed by Christ, a law that can never be deprived of its force by the decrees of men, the ideas of a people or the will of any legislator: ‘What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’[64] And if any man, acting contrary to this law, shall have put asunder, his action is null and void, and the consequence remains, as Christ Himself has explicitly confirmed: “Everyone that putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.”[65] Moreover, these words refer to every kind of marriage, even that which is natural and legitimate only; for, as has already been observed, that indissolubility by which the loosening of the bond is once and for all removed from the whim of the parties and from every secular power, is a property of every true marriage.

…

“89. If therefore the Church has not erred and does not err in teaching this, and consequently it is certain that the bond of marriage cannot be loosed even on account of the sin of adultery, it is evident that all the other weaker excuses that can be, and are usually brought forward, are of no value whatsoever. And the objections brought against the firmness of the marriage bond are easily answered. For, in certain circumstances, imperfect separation of the parties is allowed, the bond not being severed. This separation, which the Church herself permits, and expressly mentions in her Canon Law in those canons which deal with the separation of the parties as to marital relationship and co-habitation, removes all the alleged inconveniences and dangers.[68] It will be for the sacred law and, to some extent, also the civil law, in so far as civil matters are affected, to lay down the grounds, the conditions, the method and precautions to be taken in a case of this kind in order to safeguard the education of the children and the well-being of the family, and to remove all those evils which threaten the married persons, the children and the State. Now all those arguments that are brought forward to prove the indissolubility of the marriage tie, arguments which have already been touched upon, can equally be applied to excluding not only the necessity of divorce, but even the power to grant it; while for all the advantages that can be put forward for the former, there can be adduced as many disadvantages and evils which are a formidable menace to the whole of human society.

…

“91. To conclude with the important words of Leo XIII, since the destruction of family life ‘and the loss of national wealth is brought about more by the corruption of morals than by anything else, it is easily seen that divorce, which is born of the perverted morals of a people, and leads, as experiment shows, to vicious habits in public and private life, is particularly opposed to the well-being of the family and of the State. The serious nature of these evils will be the more clearly recognized, when we remember that, once divorce has been allowed, there will be no sufficient means of keeping it in check within any definite bounds. Great is the force of example, greater still that of lust; and with such incitements it cannot but happen that divorce and its consequent setting loose of the passions should spread daily and attack the souls of many like a contagious disease or a river bursting its banks and flooding the land.’[70]

92. Thus, as we read in the same letter, ‘unless things change, the human family and State have every reason to fear lest they should suffer absolute ruin.’[71] All this was written fifty years ago, yet it is confirmed by the daily increasing corruption of morals and the unheard of degradation of the family in those lands where Communism reigns unchecked.”

All this is to say that Pius believes that the State has an obligation to its people to write and enforce civil laws that uphold the laws of God, at least where sexuality, marriage, and children are concerned. I’ll address this erroneous belief in response to paragraphs 123-127.

“119. When these means which We have pointed out do not fulfill the needs, particularly of a larger or poorer family, Christian charity towards our neighbor absolutely demands that those things which are lacking to the needy should be provided; hence it is incumbent on the rich to help the poor, so that, having an abundance of this world’s goods, they may not expend them fruitlessly or completely squander them, but employ them for the support and well-being of those who lack the necessities of life. They who give of their substance to Christ in the person of His poor will receive from the Lord a most bountiful reward when He shall come to judge the world; they who act to the contrary will pay the penalty.[94] Not in vain does the Apostle warn us: ‘He that hath the substance of this world and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him?’[95]

“120. If, however, for this purpose, private resources do not suffice, it is the duty of the public authority to supply for the insufficient forces of individual effort, particularly in a matter which is of such importance to the common weal, touching as it does the maintenance of the family and married people. If families, particularly those in which there are many children, have not suitable dwellings; if the husband cannot find employment and means of livelihood; if the necessities of life cannot be purchased except at exorbitant prices; if even the mother of the family to the great harm of the home, is compelled to go forth and seek a living by her own labor; if she, too, in the ordinary or even extraordinary labors of childbirth, is deprived of proper food, medicine, and the assistance of a skilled physician, it is patent to all to what an extent married people may lose heart, and how home life and the observance of God’s commands are rendered difficult for them; indeed it is obvious how great a peril can arise to the public security and to the welfare and very life of civil society itself when such men are reduced to that condition of desperation that, having nothing which they fear to lose, they are emboldened to hope for chance advantage from the upheaval of the state and of established order.

“121. Wherefore, those who have the care of the State and of the public good cannot neglect the needs of married people and their families, without bringing great harm upon the State and on the common welfare. Hence, in making the laws and in disposing of public funds they must do their utmost to relieve the needs of the poor, considering such a task as one of the most important of their administrative duties.“

In his assertions regarding “the duty of the public authority to supply for the insufficient forces of individual effort” and the the State’s role “in making the laws and in disposing of public funds they must do their utmost to relieve the needs of the poor”, I must differ from the Holy Father. To take goods or money from one individual against his will and give it to another individual, however altruistic the end, is theft. Bastiat gives such legalized plunder the name of socialism.

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

“Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

…

“Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.”

“Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.

“This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

…

“I do not, as is often done, use the word [plunder] in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance — as expressing the idea opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.

…

“The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect persons and property.

“Furthermore, it must not be said that the law may be philanthropic if, in the process, it refrains from oppressing persons and plundering them of their property; this would be a contradiction. The law cannot avoid having an effect upon persons and property; and if the law acts in any manner except to protect them, its actions then necessarily violate the liberty of persons and their right to own property.

“The law is justice — simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit — if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic — you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?

When providing for the less fortunate is no longer voluntary, but obligatory and extracted by force or threat of force, it cannot be called charity. It is theft. That said, if the State has already confiscated the fruits of citizen’s labors, it would be better to allocate them to “relieve the needs of the poor” or altruistic ends than preemptive war, “stimulus” boondoggles, and other harmful destructions of wealth and/or life.

“123. But not only in regard to temporal goods, Venerable Brethren, is it the concern of the public authority to make proper provision for matrimony and the family, but also in other things which concern the good of souls. just laws must be made for the protection of chastity, for reciprocal conjugal aid, and for similar purposes, and these must be faithfully enforced, because, as history testifies, the prosperity of the State and the temporal happiness of its citizens cannot remain safe and sound where the foundation on which they are established, which is the moral order, is weakened and where the very fountainhead from which the State draws its life, namely, wedlock and the family, is obstructed by the vices of its citizens.

“124. For the preservation of the moral order neither the laws and sanctions of the temporal power are sufficient, nor is the beauty of virtue and the expounding of its necessity. Religious authority must enter in to enlighten the mind, to direct the will, and to strengthen human frailty by the assistance of divine grace. Such an authority is found nowhere save in the Church instituted by Christ the Lord. Hence We earnestly exhort in the Lord all those who hold the reins of power that they establish and maintain firmly harmony and friendship with this Church of Christ so that through the united activity and energy of both powers the tremendous evils, fruits of those wanton liberties which assail both marriage and the family and are a menace to both Church and State, may be effectively frustrated.

“125. Governments can assist the Church greatly in the execution of its important office, if, in laying down their ordinances, they take account of what is prescribed by divine and ecclesiastical law, and if penalties are fixed for offenders. For as it is, there are those who think that whatever is permitted by the laws of the State, or at least is not punished by them, is allowed also in the moral order, and, because they neither fear God nor see any reason to fear the laws of man, they act even against their conscience, thus often bringing ruin upon themselves and upon many others. There will be no peril to or lessening of the rights and integrity of the State from its association with the Church. Such suspicion and fear is empty and groundless, as Leo XIII has already so clearly set forth: ‘It is generally agreed,’ he says, ‘that the Founder of the Church, Jesus Christ, wished the spiritual power to be distinct from the civil, and each to be free and unhampered in doing its own work, not forgetting, however, that it is expedient to both, and in the interest of everybody, that there be a harmonious relationship. . . If the civil power combines in a friendly manner with the spiritual power of the Church, it necessarily follows that both parties will greatly benefit. The dignity of the State will be enhanced, and with religion as its guide, there will never be a rule that is not just; while for the Church there will be at hand a safeguard and defense which will operate to the public good of the faithful.’”[96]

“126. To bring forward a recent and clear example of what is meant, it has happened quite in consonance with right order and entirely according to the law of Christ, that in the solemn Convention happily entered into between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, also in matrimonial affairs a peaceful settlement and friendly cooperation has been obtained, such as befitted the glorious history of the Italian people and its ancient and sacred traditions. These decrees, are to be found in the Lateran Pact: ‘The Italian State, desirous of restoring to the institution of matrimony, which is the basis of the family, that dignity conformable to the traditions of its people, assigns as civil effects of the sacrament of matrimony all that is attributed to it in Canon Law.’[97] To this fundamental norm are added further clauses in the common pact.

“127. This might well be a striking example to all of how, even in this our own day (in which, sad to say, the absolute separation of the civil power from the Church, and indeed from every religion, is so often taught), the one supreme authority can be united and associated with the other without detriment to the rights and supreme power of either thus protecting Christian parents from pernicious evils and menacing ruin.”

As I earlier indicated, I have no qualms advocating the absolute separation of civil and religious authority. I believe that cooperation between the two leads to great confusion and disarray among the citizens and the faithful. Too often the law is used as a crutch to lean to when the Church has failed her duty to lead, educate, and sanctify the people. This unhealthy dependence produces lazy, Pharisaical Christians. Meanwhile, as the Church offers an inch, the State takes a foot. If one kind of morality can be codified in civil law, why not others?

I’d argue that the Church, and other private social and religious institutions, should have never consented to government interference in marriage – or any regulation of faith or morals, for that matter. Once the cudgel of the State was used to enforce orthodoxy and orthopraxis, the genie was out of the bottle and would become nigh impossible to put back. Too often people of faith see Jefferson’s wall between Church and State as a way to keep the Church from interfering in matters of the State, but it also serves to keep the State from interfering in matters of the Church. Were marriages reserved to the purview of private social institutions, and civil unions or domestic partnerships limited to public contracts, constitutional amendments defining marriage would be moot.

Bastiat presents the classical liberal response to Church-State collusion.

“You say: ‘Here are persons who are lacking in morality or religion,’ and you turn to the law. But law is force. And need I point out what a violent and futile effort it is to use force in the matters of morality and religion?

“It would seem that socialists, however self-complacent, could not avoid seeing this monstrous legal plunder that results from such systems and such efforts. But what do the socialists do? They cleverly disguise this legal plunder from others — and even from themselves — under the seductive names of fraternity, unity, organization, and association. Because we ask so little from the law — only justice — the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist.

“But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

“We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

Pius counters:

“126. To bring forward a recent and clear example of what is meant, it has happened quite in consonance with right order and entirely according to the law of Christ, that in the solemn Convention happily entered into between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, also in matrimonial affairs a peaceful settlement and friendly cooperation has been obtained, such as befitted the glorious history of the Italian people and its ancient and sacred traditions. These decrees, are to be found in the Lateran Pact: ‘The Italian State, desirous of restoring to the institution of matrimony, which is the basis of the family, that dignity conformable to the traditions of its people, assigns as civil effects of the sacrament of matrimony all that is attributed to it in Canon Law.’[97] To this fundamental norm are added further clauses in the common pact.

“127. This might well be a striking example to all of how, even in this our own day (in which, sad to say, the absolute separation of the civil power from the Church, and indeed from every religion, is so often taught), the one supreme authority can be united and associated with the other without detriment to the rights and supreme power of either thus protecting Christian parents from pernicious evils and menacing ruin.”

Bastiat rebuts:

“Law is justice. And let it not be said — as it continually is said — that under this concept, the law would be atheistic, individualistic, and heartless; that it would make mankind in its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, worthy only of those worshippers of government who believe that the law is mankind.

“Nonsense! Do those worshippers of government believe that free persons will cease to act? Does it follow that if we receive no energy from the law, we shall receive no energy at all? Does it follow that if the law is restricted to the function of protecting the free use of our faculties, we will be unable to use our faculties? Suppose that the law does not force us to follow certain forms of religion, or systems of association, or methods of education, or regulations of labor, or regulations of trade, or plans for charity; does it then follow that we shall eagerly plunge into atheism, hermitary, ignorance, misery, and greed? If we are free, does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God? Does it follow that we shall then cease to associate with each other, to help each other, to love and succor our unfortunate brothers, to study the secrets of nature, and to strive to improve ourselves to the best of our abilities?

“Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice — under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility — that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve — slowly, no doubt, but certainly — God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.”

Amen!

Pretty standard fare, until you get to the bottom, which caused all of my hair to promptly fall out.

“As a for-profit institution, CEC has faced increasing pressure from the Obama administration and Senate Democrats in the past year. A proposed “gainful employment” rule from the Department of Education would deny federal funding to schools with graduates facing high proportions of debt related to their expected salaries. In 2010 a two-year associate’s degree from Pittsburgh’s Le Cordon Bleu cost $42,660. According to financial aid data for the 2008-09 school year, 47 percent of all students received federal student loans, worth more than $6.5 million to the school. Mr. Miller cited the “gainful employment” rule as a major factor in CEC’s decision to close the Pittsburgh school, and he predicted that it would soon affect other for-profit schools in the area.”

Let that sink in a moment. The school is closing because of pressure directly from the Obama administration.

Mind you, this is supposedly a highly regarded school, producing graduates who are in demand around the country. A brief Google search of “Le Cordon Bleu, Pittsburgh” returns scads of news articles from around the country about new, hot restaurants whose owners and chefs hail from Le Cordon Bleu.

Graduates of culinary schools don’t make a lot of money. That’s because chefs, pastry chefs, and their ilk don’t make a lot of money. You have to work grueling hours for pittance before you can climb your way out of the bottom of the ranks in a restaurant. Being a chef is difficult. Getting to the point where you are a head chef, or where you own your own restaurant, is very difficult and takes many years. Even when you do reach that point, restaurants fail all the time. Reaching a year is considered a major milestone. The restaurant business is not for the weak.

Surely we can give the students the benefit of the doubt that they understand this. That they know how much they are going to have to work, how little money they will make, and how difficult and uncertain their success will be when they make the decision to attend a culinary school. That they are doing this in spite of those challenges, because their desire to work with food, to follow their passion, is that great.

But because the Obama administration has made an arbitrary decision that no one should be permitted to take the risk of that amount of debt when the resulting employment does not produce millionaires, Le Cordon Bleu is closing.

I am angry about this, for two reasons.

First of all, since when does the government have any business deciding what debt we are and are not allowed to take on? That is a personal decision. If a student wants to go to culinary school, and wants to take on debt in order to fund it, that is his decision, not Mr. Obama’s or anybody else’s. It is frightening that the government can take aim at a private enterprise and strong arm it into closing because it does not approve of it. I understand that Obama and his ilk did not ‘intend’ for Le Cordon Bleu to close, but that is the result. Results matter far more than intentions.

Secondly, what’s next? Culinary school is essentially a trade school. You don’t go to college to become a chef, just like you don’t go to college to become an electrician. Most trade schools are also for-profit. Electricians, plumbers, and auto mechanics can do well for themselves, certainly better than if they hadn’t gone to school at all, but unless they build a very large, successful business, they probably won’t ever be wealthy. Do graduates of trade schools not make enough money in Obama’s estimation to deserve to get that training? Who is he to decide that?

Surely, we can agree that there are a lot of people who are shuffled into community colleges and low level state schools who shouldn’t have wasted their time and money in the first place. Surely taking on $20,000 in debt and getting training in a trade is better than taking on $20,000 in debt and dropping out of IUP after two years. At least the graduate of the trade school has some marketable skills that will garner him better money than the IUP dropout.

If this trend continues, will there be any trade schools left? Where will aspiring chefs, electricians and plumbers get their training? Will the sudden decrease in skilled labor in these fields cause the salaries to skyrocket for those who were lucky enough to get trained before Obama came to power? That will cost all of us. Restaurant meals will become more expensive, as will having our homes rewired and our plumbing fixed. We can do without restaurant meals, but what if we stop having our homes rewired? Fires will result. How long can you tolerate living with a backed up toilet or broken water main? How much can you afford to pay for that?

Who is this president, and what makes him think that he has the power to meddle in this market? What makes him think that his intentions matter more than the results? The government has no business doing this kind of meddling.

Rand Paul (photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons)

Recently the Republican nominee for one of Kentucky’s senate seat, Rand Paul, dared to question the 1964 passing of the Civil Rights Act (or did he?). This instantly made him a Very Bad Person™ in the eyes of progressives (not that having Ron Paul for a father is winning many popularity contests). Paul seemed to be defending the austro-libertarian contention that government intervention against prejudicial discrimination in the private sector is antithetical to the natural rights to freely associate and freely use private property.

Frederic Bastiat (public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Frederic Bastiat wisely said in Economic Harmonies, “Government acts only by the intervention of force; hence, its action is legitimate only where the intervention of force is itself legitimate.” The question at hand is whether or not governmental force is justified in forbidding discrimination.

Progressive arguments in favor of the Civil Rights Act are irrelevant to me. For them, the State is often the first, rather than the last, resort option for combating injustices. As a minarchist and subsidiarian, I cannot easily accept a heavy-handed federal solution to a problem. Too often government creates more and worse problems than it purports to solve. There is, however, a conservative argument that gave me pause. In a WaPo blog post, David Weigel points to a quote from author Bruce Bartlett against free market-based solutions to racism.

“As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation. Indeed, it got much worse, not just because it was enforced by law but because it was mandated by self-reinforcing societal pressure. Any store owner in the South who chose to serve blacks would certainly have lost far more business among whites than he gained. There is no reason to believe that this system wouldn’t have perpetuated itself absent outside pressure for change.

“In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. The gains made by the former slaves in the years after the Civil War were completely reversed once the Supreme Court effectively prevented the federal government from protecting them. Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn’t work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.”

Weigel also points to a defense of Paul by author Tom Woods.

“[A]ny non-hysteric knows a segregated restaurant would be boycotted and picketed out of existence within ten seconds.”

I’ve never heard of Barlett before, and I’d ordinarily be inclined to agree with Woods, but I think I might actually agree with the former. Before you write me off as a poor excuse for a libertarian, hear me out.

I’ll start by saying that Woods is right – if we’re talking about the America of 2010. The American deep south of the 1960′s was a different world, though. How did the country change so radically in 50 years? Debates over the proper role and scope of government aside, it’d be hard to argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t have a major impact on American society. Could it be that we needed “outside pressure for change” to fight racism, just as a person with clinical depression may need medications to give him enough momentum to escape his mental rut?

Maybe that’s what Bartlett means by saying that the libertarian solution to racism didn’t work. In his view, the market/private enterprise failed. In a sense, I may agree with him, though I wouldn’t call it a failure, per se. Invisible hand notwithstanding, the market (by which I mean all private endeavors, exchanges, and contracts) is not a system that optimizes its parameters to maximize the common good – or any goods for that matter, other than life, liberty, and property.  Rather, it converges on configurations and parameterizations that fulfill the common desires of society. Therein may lie its greatest weakness. It will not converge on moral goods unless a critical mass of people desires them.

Decision theory posits that we all seek to make rational choices that maximize some measure of expected utility. Woods might be have been right, even in the deep south of the 1960s, if profit were the only or most important measure of utility. However, rational choices can be made with respect to any number or manner of irrational ideals, be they good (e.g., the cardinal virtues) or evil (e.g., the cardinal sins). Thus, monetary cost is not the only consideration in consumers’ subjective valuation of products and services or from whom to acquire them, nor is monetary profit the only consideration in producers’, distributors’, or merchants’ pricing of products and services or to whom they might provide them.

The market is an incredibly complex network of individuals, collectives, utility functions, and rules for how they all interact – a game, if you will. Much like a physical system seeking an equilibrium configuration of entities that minimizes free energy, the market seeks to optimize utility functions within given constraints. What if the market settles into a local, rather than a global optimum, though? What if that optimum, which may or may not be stable, makes a collective of people a permanent underclass or lower caste?

If the common desires are not common goods, grave injustices could hypothetically be committed for indefinite periods, even when perpetuating and perpetrating them are irrational and counterproductive when viewed solely in light of the profit motive. Bigots in solidarity could deprive oppressed collectives of life, liberty, and/or property indirectly in effect, if not directly in deed. The market would settle on an optimum for the ruling class.

The core of libertarianism is the Non-aggression Principle, which forbids “initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property”. That’s active aggression, though. What about passive aggression? Might it be possible to deprive or interfere with a person’s life, liberty, or property through passively aggresive means, i.e., gaming the system? Could it be done without explicit force, coercion, or deliberate fraud?

A friend of mine, Rob Carr, asked an insightful question that put all of these muddled thoughts in my head.

“What if you weren’t permitted to take your child to any hospital within 60 miles when he’s sick?”

By “not permitted”, I take him to mean “impeded by passive economic aggression”, rather than “forbidden by force of law”. In addition to the seeds for this post, that question led me to ask the following questions of myself and my readers.

1938 sign in Lancaster, Ohio (public domain photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

• How secure is your life if you are denied affordable nourishing food, clean water, or affordable life-saving/sustaining healthcare?
• How secure is your liberty if by concerted effort you are denied free participation in the market by the majority of your peers? Denied affordable and comfortable transportation? Denied affordable, quality housing?
• How secure is your right to private property if there are coordinated efforts to deny your acquisition of property (at least at affordable prices) or your attempts to obtain gainful employment?
• What about our equality in inherent human dignity? Isn’t prejudicial discrimination antithetical to human dignity?

The free market does not fail. It always gives us what we want, whether it’s good for us or not. I am confident that there are nearly always market-based (i.e., private) solutions to societal injustices. Nearly always. What if prejudicial discrimination doesn’t have an achievable private solution?

Was the Civil Rights Act good and necessary after all? I don’t know. What are your thoughts?

Addendum 05/23/10: It’s come to my attention that the statement that  the “free market does not fail” has been misunderstood. Actually, it’s been called “stunningly naive (and very untrue)“. However, I think calling it naive it a misunderstanding of my intended meaning. Anyhow, by saying “the free market does not fail”, I mean that in much the way I’d mean “the physical laws of the universe (thermodynamics, gravitation, etc.) do not fail” or “evolution does not fail”. Certainly, there can be outcomes that are unpleasant when considered from certain perspectives, but they do not “fail”, as the word is commonly understood.

At a gross level, the market can be likened to a complex system of entities (persons, businesses, goods, etc.), forces (fiduciary media, credit, etc.), and constraints (laws, natural phenomena, etc.). The system is directed, as if by the  invisible hand of entropy, to a free energy minimum – an equilibrium. Subjective valuation of events and outcomes in the free market system are extrinsic to the system itself. An earthquake that kills thousands of people is a tragic event, but it does not represent a failure of geological forces. In contrast, a set of laws that puts people at greater risk of dying during earthquakes (through something they are forced to do or not do) can be rightly considered a failure of government.

With regard to the last point, this:

“It’s also worth noting that Plessy v. Ferguson involved a Louisiana law that was designed to prevent the Pullman Company from offering equal seating options to blacks. That, in fact, was the entire purpose of Jim Crow laws. Even if, for example, the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina had wanted to serve the four black college students who sat down at their lunch counter on February 1, 1960, the laws in place at the time told them that they couldn’t. Racial segregation in the South wasn’t a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution. For that reason alone, it was a violation of the 14th Amendment and the Federal Government was entirely justified in trying to bring it down.

“Now, none of this means that racism didn’t exist in the South. Obviously it did, otherwise Jim Crow never would have been imposed in the first place. However, by passing these laws it’s fairly clear what that the intent of the Southern legislatures was to prevent the newly freed blacks from participating in the economic life of the South by denying them access to jobs, business opportunities, and trade while at the same time denying them access to the polls so that they wouldn’t be able to have their voice heard at the state capital. At the same time, it prevented other whites, as well as businesses from other parts of the country, from any efforts to break down the walls of segregation.”

Update 05/24/10: Jacob Sullum at Reason Magazine has a pretty good rebuttal to Bruce Bartlett.

‘Undoubtedly, changing mores would have broken down some of this over time, but there is no reason to believe that it would have been quick or that vestiges wouldn’t still remain today. Indeed, vestiges remain despite the Civil Rights Act.’

“This is a serious objection that opponents of bans on private discrimination have to address…

“Unfortunately, Bartlett conflates this argument with a puzzling claim that the Supreme Court was at “its most libertarian” when it blocked enforcement of the 14th Amendment…As Damon Root noted last week, state-mandated segregation ‘is not a market failure; it’s a racist government assault on economic liberty.’

“Bartlett’s careless conflation of private and public discrimination renders Paul’s position, which is based on the vitally important distinction between the two, incomprehensible. Bartlett then uses his own confusion to portray Paul and libertarians generally as apologists for racist government policies:

‘…Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn’t work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.’

“The ‘perfect test’ of freedom was a legal regime in which the rights of African Americans were systematically denied, murderous assaults on them went unpunished, and businesses were forced to discriminate against them? And all that was somehow the result of ‘libertarian philosophy’? It’s hard to believe that Bartlett, a former Ron Paul staffer and occasional Reason contributor, believes any of this. This deliberately dense rant reeks of Bartlett’s desperation to distinguish himself from libertarians who have been unfairly tarred as racists by joining in the ad hominem assault.”

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”

Despite having written that 86 years ago, Mr. Chesterton hit the nail very much on the head. I didn’t know if I should laugh or scream as I watched Republicans motivate their base in opposition to socialistic/corporatist expansion of government involvement in the health care market, as they perversely and hypocritically decried the Big Government nature of the bill in one breath, and panicked old folks with the specter of losing their Medicare coverage in the next.

Republicans fought hard against Medicare in 1965. Why are they now defending it? How long before they’re defending Obamacare? Truly, “Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob.”

Will the GOP ever have new ideas (e.g, those of Cato Institute, Mises Institute, or Acton Institute)? Or will they always be the party of welfare state stasis and warfare state expansion?

a typical Pittsburgh neighborhood street after the storm

Snowmageddon. Snowpocalypse. SnOMG. Whatever you call it, we knew it was coming, and we knew it would be bad.

If you ask Mayor Ravenstahl, though, he and the rest of Pittsburgh’s government aren’t to blame for the painfully slow plowing process.

“Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who left town Friday to celebrate his 30th birthday in the Laurel Highlands and got stranded there, told reporters that forecasts that morning called for 4 to 8 inches of snow. Soon after he got back in town Sunday he was at the city’s Emergency Operations Center talking — he noted pointedly — to the same people he had been talking to all weekend by computer and phone while at the Laurel Highlands.”

Technically, he’s right that the morning prediction wasn’t for a blizzard. My memory is that the prediction in the morning was 3-6″. By midday it was upped to 4-8″ (6-10″?). By the time I left work around 4PM, we were to expect 8-14″. The point isn’t what the morning prediction was, though. The crux of the matter is what city officials did and didn’t do as the expected snowfall rose.

intersection of Graphic St. and Greenfield Ave. during Friday night's storm

As my wife and I boarded a PAT bus in Oakland around 4:45 PM the snow was already falling heavily, and the roads were showing hints of ugliness to come. By thetime we were leaving our sons’ daycare on Murray Ave around 5:15PM, the roads in Squirrel Hill were definitely getting bad. That night, around 9PM, we went for a walk. The neighborhood was peaceful and quiet, and the falling snow was beautiful.

We didn’t see a single plow in all that time.

What we saw upon waking the next day was incredible. Our street in Greenfield was covered with at least a foot of snow. Pics from around my house can be found at my Flickr account.

We didn’t see a plow on our street until late Monday afternoon. As this P-G article points out, we weren’t alone in being snowed in and annoyed about it. A number of citizens using the #snOMGpgh tag “bellyached” on Twitter about the state of their neighborhood streets. To note only that would miss the bigger problem, though. Impassable side streets are just collateral damage from more fundamentally bad decision making.

Hizzoner has  protested that criticisms of snow response just aren’t fair. After all, when he left for his birthday party, how could he have known that the storm would be so bad? And once the snow was on the ground, how could he be blamed for the justifiable difficulties in moving so snow from the roads?

He’s partially right about what to do after the fact. You can’t just push around that much snow; it has to go somewhere, and that takes time and equipment. Those of us on secondary or tertiary roads shouldn’t be too surprised that we weren’t plowed out, as annoying as that was. What about primary roads, though?

“And here I was thinking Forbes and Fifth were main roads. Silly me!” – Carriechiz

Is there really any good reason for main roads to still be a mess? Four days out from the storm? With the National Guard in town to help? With private contractors hired to provide additional equipment?

I don’t think so.

Nor do I think most of this nonsense had to happen in the first place. One simple decision might have saved us a lot of headaches. Somebody in city government should have been keeping track of the storm as it developed. When it became apparent that 8″ was to be the minimum rather than the maximum accumulation, trucks should have been mobilized. If plows had been working throughout the night, primary and possibly secondary roads would never have accumulated a foot of transportation-stopping snow.

If Hizzoner would like to suggest that even if plowing had begun before the storm had ended there wouldn’t have been enough plows to make much of an difference, I’d like to remind him of this:

Mayor declares war on snow

“With the city fielding more than 1,000 calls about unplowed streets this week, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl intends to pull out all the stops — and a few more snow plows as well — to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“An admittedly frustrated and upset mayor said yesterday that city workers will inventory all public works vehicles to see if some, including garbage trucks, could have snowplows mounted on them to help clear streets.

“Then, by next winter, Mr. Ravenstahl wants an automated snow removal routing system in place to determine the most efficient way to use the fleet…”

How’s that war working out for you, Mr. Mayor? Mission accomplished? I guess we should just consider the National Guard’s help in digging us out as a surge.

P.S. The article that mentioned my Twitter was actually my second fifteen minutes of P-G. Here’s my first – in case anyone cares.

Update 02/10/2010: Maria of 2 Political Junkies has posted a historical review of Mayor Ravenstahl’s limp plow performances.

Update 02/12/2010: Ravenstahl is either a fool or a liar. He told ABC news, “No one could have anticipated this“.

Subsidized science

“Baltimore-based company Champions Biotechnology has a business tale to tell, one reminiscent of Robin Hood. But there’s no robbing of the rich in this story. Rather, Champions uses revenue from premium services offered to wealthy clients to subsidize risky—and hard-to-fund—research.”

[...]

“Champions spent $1.7 million on R&D in fiscal year 2009, and it gathers those funds through a unique business approach: Research is funded with revenue from premium oncology services, offered to a select clientele. The company creates ‘personalized tumorgrafts’ for cancer-stricken individuals, each to the tune of $100,000…”

[...]

“By R&D, Sidransky is referring to Champions’ separate bank of anonymous tumorgrafts, or mice carrying tumors—grafted from spare tissue acquired through collaborations with academic institutions.”

[...]

“Peter Houghton, director of the Children’s Cancer Center in Columbus, Ohio, considers tumorgraft models ‘very good for identifying active drugs.’ Houghton is openly skeptical, however, about applying this technology to individuals…”

[...]

“In the meantime, the company is getting kudos for its unique business model. ‘I don’t think [using premium services to fund R&D] is done in practice today, though I like the idea,’ says Stuart Barich, Oppenheimer’s managing director.”

Are we living on Bizarro World?! Where do I begin to show how completely ass-backwards the author’s understanding of economics is?

Let’s start with the title.

It’s not subsidizing.

This funding model is not subsidizing. Just what are subsidies?

subsidy

1. a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
2. a sum paid, often in accordance with a treaty, by one government to another to secure some service in return.
3. a grant or contribution of money.
4. money formerly granted by the English Parliament to the crown for special needs.

Source [emphases mine]

Notice that the common understanding of subsidies is that they are grants of money from a government to another entity, usually private. This is exactly the funding model for most science and medicine in this country, made possible by the NIH and similar federal entities.

It’s not “a unique business approach”.

What Champions Biotechnology is doing is called capitalism. Profits from one venture are used to fund expensive R&D for another. That’s what “evil” drug companies do. That’s what drives innovation.

It’s not remotely similar to Robin Hood.

Robin Hood robbed from the rich (who’d confiscated wealth through gratuitous taxation and political back-scratching) and gave to the poor. In this case, the rich presumably acquired their wealth through business acumen. They willingly and with full consent part with some of their wealth in return for services rendered. The demand for these services far outpaces supply, so prices are high. The profits earned for rendering these services is reinvested in expensive R&D that benefits everyone. Advances lead to new premium services for the rich to purchase, and the cycle continues.

The Robin Hood rich in this story are government institutions. Who but the government confiscates the wealth of the people through taxation? How else do governments acquire the funds for “direct pecuniary aid”?

Has science been divorced from the free market and feeding from the government trough so long that scientists don’t recognize capitalism when they see it? I suppose I can at least be encouraged by knowing at least some think it’s a good approach.