Hug You Before We Do Anything
Steven LaTulippe looks at Saudi Arabia from a libertarian perspective.#
The majlis is a deep-seated tradition which guarantees every man the right to personally meet with the king and make requests about whatever concerns him. Sometimes it involves money, sometimes it is about a government policy with which the citizen disagrees, and sometimes it is to ask for the king's opinion on a personal matter. This access is considered the right of every man, and the king could abolish or ignore it only at his peril.
Whatever else one might say about Saudi governance, this practice is not consistent with a dictatorship.
Contrast this with our situation here in America. "Face time" with our president is considered to be one of the most sought-after and difficult-to-obtain commodities in Washington. Occasionally, presidents have even sold audiences to the highest bidder for campaign contributions (Clinton's White House lodging scandals and exorbitantly-priced coffee soirées being two prominent examples). Thus, access to the president is largely reserved for powerful officials, wealthy contributors, and representatives of well-connected special interest groups.
What hope does the average American have of ever gaining a personal audience with the president to air grievances concerning government policy? Is there even a pretense of allowing even some of the citizenry to discuss problems with him in the tradition of the Saudi majlis?
Arnold Kling writes about Paul Samuelson and links to an interesting discussion of The "Sect" of Austrian Economics.#
I recently took the long form of the Are You an Austrian? quiz, which is about whether I agree with economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, not about whether I have the same country of origin as the new governor of California. I scored a 78.
I would have scored higher had I been trying to answer according to what I understand the Austrian School to believe. There were only one or two questions where I was a little unsure, and depending on how well I guessed on those I would have gotten somewhere between 90 and 100.
The reason that I only scored a 78 is that I took the title of the quiz literally ("are you an Austrian"), so I answered with my own beliefs, knowing that they diverged in some cases with the Austrian School. For example, I subscribe to the quaint notion of national defense. When tyrants and would-be tyrants ask about our President, as Stalin once asked Churchill about the Pope, "How many divisions does he have?" I would like the answer to be "more than enough to smash you!" The Austrian School thinks that you do not need a government to provide national defense. The Mises.org weblog is as eager as any Dean Democrat to see the U.S. fail in Iraq.
I found it interesting that the "Are you an Austrian?" quiz does not distinguish between knowledge of doctrine and belief in doctrine. To me, this is symptomatic of a sect, which focuses on doctrinal purity above all else. For a sect, to know is to believe, and to believe is to know.
A church, in contrast, tries to be as inclusive as possible. You can be a member of a church if you only subscribe to some of its beliefs, but not all of them.
Tom Palmer replies to Max Borders's case for libertarian hawkiness.#
Borders suggests that all libertarian opponents of the Iraq war are natural rights advocates (I've really no idea if that's true or not and don't think it really matters) and then claims, ex cathedra, that "We get rights by virtue of some sort of social contract, not from our Creator," which he thinks implies that if you're not part of the same social contract, "you are presumed 'enemy'."
Where to start with such claims? First, even social contract theory rests on some prior theory of rights, for it implies that people have the right to engage in the making of social contracts and that agreement (consent) is important, which can't be established on the grounds that we agree that it's important. (As an aside, I should point out that Borders is on weak ground when he makes sweeping claims about various philosophical positions. For example, he mischaracterizes Locke's theory of the state of nature and confuses it with Hobbes'; for Locke the state of nature is purely relational, such that two people who live in or under different states are in a state of nature relative to each other, but that does not imply that they have no obligations or rights relative to each other. There is no reason to presume that someone not a part of a particular social contract is a presumed enemy.)
Read the original and Borders' reply in the comments.
Razib on the magic of 150.#
Tom Palmer writes about Aaron Director.#
That said, the Washington Post obituary contains his wonderful note to his sister, now Rose Friedman, before her wedding to Milton Friedman in 1938:
"Tell him I shall not hold his very strong New Deal leanings — authoritarian to use an abusive term — against him."
Director was a great pioneer in the field of "law and economics" (often pronounced "lawn economics," which brings to mind optimal fertilization of front yards), a discipline that has done a great deal to help us to understand the world. (Newcomers to the field could look to the work of Ronald Coase and of David Friedman for very useful introductions.)
Bob Murphy writes on picking the neither of two evils and American democracy.#
In the long run, the only way to truly safeguard our freedom is to dismantle this horrible system of democracy, whereby murder and theft are considered legitimate so long as the person ordering them has been endorsed once every four years in a two-way race by at least 51% of the people who decide to go to the polls. (That sentence was a mouthful, but that's our beautiful system for you.) And yes, I know the US is supposed to be a republic, not a democracy (so please don't email me about this). But the US is supposed to have a Constitution, too. At this point, I think we would do better to face current realities rather than abstract formalisms that no longer apply.
As with venereal diseases, so with tyranny: Abstinence is the best form of protection. Rather than trusting the "vigilance" of future voters, let's scrap this wicked system and be done with it.
Jeff Sharlet writes about The Question of God, by Dr. Nicholi, and International Christian Leadership.#
PBS's latest God offering -- "The Question of God," blogged below -- will no doubt be a well-researched program centered around the ideas and interpretations of its two stars -- Freud and C.S. Lewis -- and the man who has pitted them against one another, Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. of Harvard. But both PBS and Beliefnet, which has interviewed Dr. Nicholi, are letting the good doctor avoid hard questions about the faith assumptions underlying his work. What does Dr. Nicholi, as the referee and rule setter of this imaginary debate, actually believe?
[...]
At a Feb. 18, 1968, the speakers at a meeting for conservative student leaders held at the Washington headquarters of International Christian Leadership (ICL) based their directions on a talk Dr. Nicholi had given for ICL at the Swiss embassy not long before. ICL was a network of powerful men in Congress, the military, and business who had committed themselves to "militant liberty" in pursuit of a "world-wide spiritual offensive," also referred to by the group's leader as "World War III." The goal was a "new world order" -- a phrase coined by ICL in 1945 -- based on a government of "Jesus plus nothing" with Washington, D.C. as its "world capital."
I read this book and the coin is completely weighted against Freud and young C.S. Lewis.
Peter Leeson describes socialized health care in Canada. We need to adopt this system, and quick!#
To keep the state's medical-related expenses manageable the Canadian government has to ration medical care. Those who need medical attention the most--for example the elderly and those who do not have a good chance of winning their health battles--represent poor investments for the state. They create high costs for the system but cannot be relied upon to generate much taxable income. To prevent the socialized system from going bust, these people are put at the back of queues for medical care or are outright denied much-needed treatment. Government also keeps costs down by simply making new or expensive treatments unavailable to citizens.
Why Judo is Better Than Karate#
The Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please#