Hillary 4 Evah!
Haven’t updated this in a while, but a liberal friend wanted to see my blog. Let’s hope she stops reading after the first post.
I just want to say Hillary Clinton is great and deserves to win the presidency. She’s smart, tough, and experienced. I so want her to raise my taxes and regulate the hell out of me. Go Hillary!
I Heart Economists
Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing
A paper presented by two researchers over the weekend to the annual meeting of the American Economic Association here challenges the conventional wisdom, concluding that violent films prevent violent crime by attracting would-be assailants and keeping them cloistered in darkened, alcohol-free environs.
“Economics is about choice,” Professor Dahl said. “What would these people have done if they had not chosen to go and see a movie? Whatever they would have done would have had a greater tendency to involve alcohol. If you can incapacitate a large group of potentially violent people, that’s a good thing.”
Professor DellaVigna added, “It’s not as if these people watching violent movies would otherwise be home reading a book.”
Well, in my case….
It’s an interesting argument and a reflection of the fact that sometimes reality can be counter-intuitive.
More Satiating
Apparently the state was holding some sort of election thing yesterday and, in Boston, voter turn-out reached a 20-year low of 13.6%. (I was climbing out of bed when I heard this on the radio, so hopefully didn’t get it wrong). I try to encourage voter apathy: the fewer people vote, the less perception that the winner has any sort of mandate. There is no ballot option for “none of the above,” (much less “no one at all”), so ballot abstinence is the closest you can get to voting for no one.
Technorati Tags: libertarianism
Government as Your Financial Planner
Liberal as Massachusetts is, sometimes I think my home state is not as bad as others when it comes to nannyism — the trend for government officials to infantilize citizens by treating them as incapable of making their own decisions.
But our attorney general Martha Coakley does have a taste for nannyism, seen in her belief that appropriate prescription drug treatment is a matter for prosecutors, not simply doctors and patients. She scratches that itch again today in her assertion that government is a better financial planner than the citizen (insert your favorite Big Dig joke here…). Her office has decided to ban “foreclosure rescues:”
Coakley said she would seek comments from the public over the next 28 days for proposals to make it illegal for lenders to inflate a borrower’s income on their mortgage application, to make mortgages that borrowers clearly cannot pay; and to provide credit when it is not in the interest of the homebuyer or an existing homeowner who is refinancing a property.
The government, or any impartial arbiter, I would argue, does have a legitimate role in defining what constitutes a legitimate contract. In addition, there’s not always a clear line between outright fraud and a fair contract that just isn’t the best deal for someone. So perhaps Coakley is doing the right thing; I haven’t researched “foreclosure rescues” and can’t say I know anything about them other than what I read in this article.
Yet it really sounds as though she is overreaching, telling citizens they are too stupid to avoid making a bad decision and can’t be held responsible if they do.
I am, however, somewhat sympathetic to her wish to ban lenders from “inflating” a borrower’s income; it’s plausible that some shady lenders would use misleading, ambiguous or obscure fine print to substantively alter the terms of a contract, for which borrowers should not be held responsible. But of course it depends on what “inflating” actually means.
Worse still is the idea of forbidding mortgages that the borrower “clearly” cannot pay. If it is “clear” to the lender that the borrower will default on the loan, the lender would not make the offer; if it is “clear” to the borrower that he or she can’t make the payments, then the borrower would not accept the loan. The strong presumption is that the government is a better judge of what someone can pay than both the lender and the borrower, each of whom knows their financial situation far more intimately than the state.
One can, of course, sympathize with someone who gets in more debt than he can handle; it happens to many well-meaning people. But that is what bankruptcy is for. We’re going down a dangerous road if we allow the government to protect us from our own decisions. It is one thing to have welfare and bankruptcy law in situations where a person is in a hopeless situation. It is another for the government to interfere in decisions that might possibly result in a hopeless situation — but might not.
Of course, the two are connected: once you decide to protect people from the consequences of their choices, you realize that paying for it (health care, welfare benefits, bankruptcy courts, etc.) can be expensive. It’s the next logical step for the government to directly interfere in people’s choices. But, of course, it’s in making bad choices, or seeing others do so, that we gain the wisdom to make better choices — including, of course, whom to elect to office.
The trend toward protecting people from bad choices will result in the population getting dumber, leading to even dumber politicians getting elected, leading to progressively dumber laws getting enacted: it’s the death spiral of the nanny state.
Technorati Tags: law, libertarianism, nannyism, welfare
Digital Privacy
Today Apple began releasing DRM-free music, which naturally engendered much commentary in the blogosphere. I thought there was an interesting post and comment thread over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
The post makes an interesting technical point about the DRM-free songs: the digital files are still embedded with the customer’s name (and possibly other unknown identifiers). Although there are no technical restrictions on copying, doing so might allow a copyright-holder to identify the source of a file uploaded to a peer-to-peer network, for example.
What isn’t clear to me is whether there is simply a name and account number embedded, or if there is more extensive watermarking.
The comment thread unfolded somewhat predictably, but well illustrates the different perspectives people take on intellectual property. There were two main perspectives:
1. Ominous Privacy Threat: People from this point of view found it unwelcome that music files could be tracked to an individual purchaser. This perspective has two subtypes: those who might want to engage in illegal file sharing, and those who see embedded metadata more as a general threat to privacy.
2. No Worries: Many commenters were more sanguine, observing that the only privacy “threat” was to people who break the law by illegally sharing files.
As is common for online discussions, there were many bad analogies and misinterpretations. For example, a commenter made a comparison to government wiretapping, sardonically adding “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then there’s nothing to worry about.” This, however, is not really comparable, since wiretapping is an intrusion that may occur without you doing anything illegal or wrong, whereas you need to publicly share your downloaded music files before anyone can finger you for breaking copyright.
As a straight point of logic, I think the No Worries camp has the better of the argument. Those people placing higher value on privacy or anonymity can probably find a way to strip the metadata, or convert the file to other formats, and it’s understandable that Apple would choose to embed the customer’s information considering how reluctant the music industry has been to give up DRM.
But there are some Big Picture questions that I think merit addressing:
1. Tracing as a Point of Law: Many people reacted by pointing out that tracing is only of concern if you are breaking the law; their implication is that an embedded name and account number are sufficient proof that you illegally shared the file.
The trouble is that digitized intellectual property is “leaky” compared to tangible property: there are many, sometimes fairly innocuous ways a file can be illicitly shared. Most obviously, hardware on which IP is stored can be stolen (especially iPods or laptops). Less obviously, network permissions are often set too loosely allowing others to access files without your knowing. And sometimes other people have physical access to your computer (think about all the traffic going through a college dorm room). That a digital file with your name on it has leaked out doesn’t necessarily mean you shared it.
When you buy something physical, like a big screen TV, you own it, and enjoy the benefits of ownership as well as the costs of protecting your property (installing locks on your doors, burglar alarms, insurance, etc.). When you download music, you don’t enjoy the same benefits of ownership; technically all you have bought is a license to play music. If you don’t get the benefits of ownership, it seems dubious you should bear the costs of protecting the music on behalf of the record company.
2. Slippery Slope: Apple’s putting your name in a music file you downloaded is not really so monstrous. Many commenters noted Apple has always done so, although I find that objection irrelevant because only now is the music being touted as unprotected. But I agree it’s not such a big deal.
In the long run, however, we have to realize that as the digital paper trail follows more and more of our actions (and purchases), liberties we previously thought we had will become ever more constrained.
That’s very abstract so let me give an example. Let’s say GPS tracking technology keeps dropping in price, and more car manufacturers begin installing them in vehicles. They realize, however, that drivers who drive over the speed limit put more wear and tear on their cars. By linking GPS data to another database of speed limits, they can find if you are exceeding the speed limit and thus truncate or void your warranty. It’s easy to see why insurers and police agencies would be interested in such data as well.
You don’t have anything to worry about unless you’re breaking the law, right? Well, most of us do periodically commit minor infractions of the law. How many of the people insisting enforcement of IP is no problem always come to a complete stop at stop signs, never disobey the speed limit, never used alcohol before the legal limit, or never experimented with drugs? Probably not many.
And of those who do follow the law to the letter, but “made mistakes” in the past, are they willing to confess to the police and accept a citation — or prosecution — for breaking the laws they purport to believe in? Probably not many at all.
But we can ignore that with a wink and a nod, because no one’s going to know about it; no one’s going to do anything about it. There’s no way to prove it — yet.
We should be more honest about lawbreaking. It is not such a shameful thing, in of itself. It depends on the law. With that in mind, the discussion over intellectual property hinges on what sort of lawbreaking you are willing to stomach. File sharing is illegal, but I’ve known many people who are not otherwise criminals who don’t see a problem with it. Perhaps they are wrong, but perhaps the law is wrong. I don’t want to get into a detailed argument about IP — this post is verbose enough.
But I do want to stress there are going to be many more of these seemingly minor bits of information tying our identities to things we might prefer to keep private. Any one item, like this one with Apple, will seem minor and tolerable, but what is the cumulative effect? Eventually almost anyone can be prosecuted for one infraction or another, and who actually is prosecuted will be at the discretion of those in power.
Is Sex by Fraud Rape?
The Massachusetts supreme court says “no.” The case involved a man who had sex with his brother’s girlfriend by entering her bedroom with the lights out, pretending to be his brother. The court decided that the law has “for two centuries defined rape as sexual intercourse by force and against one’s will and that it is not rape when consent is obtained through fraud.” The court said the legislature would need to change to the definition of rape. Given that the same court found there is a right to gay marriage without awaiting legislative change, this reasoning strikes me as rather inconsistent.
My view is that, whether it is called rape or not, obtaining sex through fraud is a serious crime. Perhaps it is not as bad as using force, just as swindling someone is not as bad as directly using violence to obtain money, but it still deprives the person of the ability to make her own choices.
Although justice was not served, it is possible the court was correct insofar as having its hands tied by the legislature. Under our system the “lawmakers” in the legislature are supposed to be the source of law, so if they haven’t made the law, then it doesn’t exist.
This case illustrates the uselessness of the legislature. The legitimate function of courts is to discern justice, with justice seen as existing independently of any one person or group’s viewpoint. Having to rely on the legislature to create good law (and avoid creating bad law) impedes the courts’ ability to do justice.
The obvious objection is that we need a division of power; we do not want judges to have total discretion in deciding law. That is a good objection, but it would be a non-sequitur to infer a legislature is needed to supply the courts with law. Eliminate the legislature and establish competition between courts, so that judges must be fair, impartial, and respectful of people’s rights in order to protect their reputations.
Technorati Tags: law, philosophy, rape
“There is nothing immoral if there is nothing in charge.”
Said Al Sharpton in his debate with Christopher Hitchens, repeating a common argument against atheism.
What I find so weird about this argument is that it attempts to reject moral relativism, yet it is, itself, a moral relativist argument. It says that morality does not exist independently and is relative to the whim of God.
Murder is wrong, for example, because God says thou shalt not kill. But if, next Tuesday, God decides you should disembowel your neighbor and drink blood from his skull, then it is righteous and justified to do so, according to this argument. One can hope God would not demand such a thing of you, but even the religious admit they cannot fully know God’s plan.
And even if you believe God is too benevolent to do such a thing, or that God is unlikely to communicate such a wish, if you adhere to this argument you must admit it would be rightful to disembowel your neighbor and drink blood from his skull if God did unequivocally demand it of you. He is the only source of morality, after all.
Yet, incredibly, even within the very argument from which I quoted, Sharpton claims:
“When you raise the issue of morality, if there is no supervisory being, what do we base morality on? Is it based on who has the might at a given time, who is in power? [.. ]There is nothing immoral if there is nothing in charge.”
It is his own argument, not the atheists’, that is an appeal to power, to say the only possible source of morality is from someone “in charge.” Of course, it is well known logical error to believe rightness necessarily inheres in power or authority.
Sharpton’s faulty belief springs from another logical error, the argument from ignorance. He doesn’t know or care how morality might arise without God, seems to refuse to consider the possibility, and uses that ignorance as the basis for his belief that morality comes from God. (I’ve previously discussed ways to think about morality without relying on religion.)
Reading about this debate reminded me of Glen Whitman’s instructive post on the subject. Whitman notes the vague idea that morality comes from God can be considered more precisely, viewing God as either the “knower” or the “decider” of morality. If you view God as the decider of morality, then, as elaborated above, you have an essentially an amoral, relativistic view of morality that simply hinges on doing whatever the guy who shoots lightning bolts out of his fingers tells you to do. If, however, you view God as the knower of morality, you have conceded morality exists independently of God.
Technorati Tags: morality, philosophy, religion
Spelling Flames are Lame…
…but I really hate when people make this mistake:
Intellegent Gun Law Passed in Texas « The Libertarian
The content of the post is encouraging, at least, pointing to a story that says Texas is becoming more liberal about allowing people to use lethal force in self defense (“liberal” in the proper sense of the term).
“The right to defend oneself from an imminent act of harm should not only be clearly defined in Texas law, but is intuitive to human nature,” [Governor] Perry said on his Web site.
Now you’re talking.
Torture: The difference between law and judgement
Radley Balko captures my sentiments regarding torture. He adopts a seemingly contradictory position, that torture should not be legal, but in the event it proves necessary, the president can use his pardon to forgive it — almost as if he’s saying it should be illegal, but allowed.
This position is only contradictory, though, if one operates from the assumption that law must cover every possible contingency. That assumption is an unfortunate result of our litigious and increasingly politicized society, wherein right and wrong are barely (if at all) distinguished from legal and illegal.
In reality, that something is legal doesn’t make it right; that something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong.
Another way to look at it is to consider the importance of judgement, in that sometimes you must make a decision using your knowledge, experience and intuition in circumstances that could not have been fully anticipated — in circumstances where the proper course of action can’t be written out in advance.
Thus, it makes sense to proscribe torture in general, because we want to sharply limit its incidence. Expressly allowing torture, even with restrictions, has a variety of negative consequences. I won’t repeat them here.
On the other hand, if some US personnel should find themselves in extraordinary circumstances wherein they believe, in good faith, that torture is the only way to procure information that would save lives, I hope they would do it. I would not want an attack to unfold because some people insisted on following the rules.
Put differently, this means “justified” torture would necessarily entail some risk to those doing it. There can be no blanket immunity: what sort of “public servant” wants special rights to brutalize people, but with no risk to himself? I would only trust someone to do something as awful as torture if that person was willing to put his career, even his freedom, on the line because he was confident there was no other way to prevent an attack. Someone who wants the power, but not the responsibility, cannot be so trusted.
Technorati Tags: torture
Ungodly Gay Babies
A forward looking Baptist clergyman, Albert Mohler, admits the possibility that homosexuality has a biological basis. More interesting, he would support hormonal treatment to “straighten” (my term) an unborn baby should this become possible. To my great annoyance the Times does not provide a link, but I did manage to google the clergyman’s blog. Quoting:
If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.
Mohler makes it clear that he supports neither genetic engineering, nor abortion of gay babies, naturally. He only suggests the possibility of a prenatal hormonal treatment that would alter the fetus’s chromosomes, eliminating its disposition for homosexuality. It’s not clear to me, however, that this is distinguishable from the genetic engineering he condemns, as it could be a less direct way of accomplishing the same thing.
Although I began writing my post to ridicule him, once I began reading the original blog I see he is a perceptive individual who has, perhaps, a better ability than most people of similar mind to grasp how the issues will unfold. In particular, he realizes how such treatment has the potential to reverse the way socially liberal and conservative people consider reproductive topics:
Feminists and political liberals have argued for decades now that a woman should have an unrestricted right to an abortion, for any cause or for no stated cause at all. How can they now complain if women decide to abort fetuses identified as homosexual? This question involves both abortion and gay rights — the perfect moral storm of our times.
I was imagining alternate scandals of the future, where some prominent conservative who has vocally condemned genetic engineering is later found to have engineered his child to be straight.
Reading Mohler’s blog is hard going; it must be like watching someone try to repair a watch with a hammer. It is delicate work, trying to reason about complex, cutting-edge issues, but then his unshakable faith in the literal truth of the Bible comes haphazardly smashing down.
One of the main, er, thrusts of Mohler’s argument is the distinction between orientation and action; i.e., gays are responsible for not acting on their inclinations, but their inclinations are not in themselves sinful. And as a point of logic, I agree. For example, it’s conceivable (I have no idea how likely) that there may be a genetic component to antisocial personality disorder, but that doesn’t excuse people with this disorder from committing crimes, regardless of their antisocial orientation.
Yet while it should be possible to get by without periodically robbing and killing people, it seems unimaginably cruel to demand someone totally curtail his or her sexuality, which is a far deeper, more intrinsic aspect of a person’s life. Imagine being told God forbids you from blinking your eyes — except it’s even worse than that, I’d say.
More important, one can advance rational arguments for punishing crime, but so far as I can tell the arguments for the sinfulness of homosexuality have no rational basis, depending on interpretations of faith (which makes me wonder why I’m bothering with this at all.)
It is at least notable that some in the gay community criticized Mohler for “playing God.” This foretells a lobbying effort coalescing in the future to prevent parents from controlling the sexuality of their offspring. Unless the social acceptance of homosexuality progresses far more rapidly than science, we may indeed get to the point where most parents “straighten” their unborn babies, resulting in the gay demographic dwindling. This would be understandably upsetting to many in that community, although perhaps not to others.
My hope is that liberal attitudes toward homosexuality progress at roughly the same pace as science, such that by the time it is possible for parents to make that choice, it is no longer such a big deal that everyone would make it. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
