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WND column

Conservatives and Forced Consumption

It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. This is certainly true when it comes to Republicans, as no sooner had Chief Justice Roberts exploded all of the expectations that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be overturned due to the mandate that requires Americans to make certain purchases or face a financial penalty than various Republican commentators were attempting to manufacture a silver lining from the unadulterated equine ejectus of Roberts’ opinion.

Euro 2012: the greatest of all time

Spain 4 Italy 0

I thought Italy actually played fairly well and they were successful in keeping Spain from dominating the ball in the first thirty minutes, but their defense was just half a step too slow at just the wrong time and they couldn’t capitalize on the rare half-chances that they got. I thought Casillas was the player of the game when it was still in doubt, of course, once Thiago Motta pulled his hamstring not long after coming in as the third substitute, the game was over.

To me, the assist from Torres at the end said it all. Whereas most players on most teams, especially a substitute, would take that shot, he didn’t hesitate to make the perfect soccer play and give up a high percentage shot in order to allow his teammmate to make an even higher one. There may be some discussion about the Brazil 1970 team being better, but to only give up one goal in the entire tournament, then win by the biggest margin of victory in championship game history in clinching their third straight major title should be sufficient to cement this Spanish team’s claim on greatness.

As Ender said: “I’m not happy, but how could they beat THAT team?”

In which opinions are sought

Marcher Lord and I have been having some discussions about what the cover for the forthcoming first novel in the Arts of Dark and Light series should look like. On the one hand, it is a continuation of the story begun in Summa Elvetica, so there is a good reason to do it in the style of the SE cover. On the other hand, SE was a highly esoteric experimental novel with absolutely no pretensions of mass appeal whatsoever, so there is an equally good reason to go with a different approach. Below is an image with both possible cover styles shown side-by-side; click on it to see the high-res version.

Please note that all I’m looking for here is to get everyone’s opinion on which style they happen to prefer. I’m not looking for value judgments or long essays on the relative artistic merits. Obviously, the covers are not done and so it’s not at all necessary to point out that my name is misspelled or any other minor and easily corrected issues. So, please express your preference in the comments; I originally put up a poll, but some retard from 173.245.5x didn’t realize that ProProfs tracks IP addresses and kept voting repeatedly so we’ll have to do this manually. Needless to say, Anonymous votes won’t be counted.

Thanks, and in case you’re interested, I expect to have some additional book-related news early next week.

Kicking out the Paulites

Eric Golub recommends kicking Ron Paul’s supporters out of the Republican Convention:

The following words accurately describe the overwhelming majority of Ron Paul supporters.

“I will not vote for anybody other than Ron Paul. Mitt Romney is the same as Barack Obama. No to Obamney. Ron Paul or nobody. Maybe Gary Johnson, but not Mitt Romney under any circumstances.”

Ron Paul supporters have decided to hold a Libertarian lovefest in Tampa, Florida, on the days directly preceding the GOP Convention. They have every right to do this, and Republicans should have zero objections to them expressing themselves in the equivalent of the town square. This is what democracy is all about. If they have the permits in order, let them protest. If the GOP tries to shut this event down, well that would be morally wrong.

However, their event ends on August 26th. The GOP Convention begins on August 27th. The GOP Convention is a Republican Convention. It is a Mitt Romney Convention. It is not a Ron Paul or Libertarian Convention. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable at this point to ban Ron Paul supporters from the GOP Convention.

That’s right. An outright ban on their presence is the only way to prevent the event from turning into a debacle. There is no legitimate reason at this point for them to be there.

That’s perfectly fine with me. Kick them out, by all means. I’ll just make one request. After putting on your magic underwear and getting down at your Mitt Romney convention, don’t come crying back to those Ron Paul supporters begging for their votes in late October because it is THE MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVAHHHHH!!!!

I could not possibly care less if Obama wins or if Romney wins. Based on the last three years, I would guess that Obama would actually do less damage since the Republicans in Congress will at least put up the occasional show of resistance to his leftward moves, whereas they will support Romney’s. I have to seriously question the intelligence of any conservative who intends to vote for Romney, as the only argument that made even a remote amount of sense, the Supreme Court Appointment argument, has been permanently destroyed by Chief Justice Roberts.

By all means, the Republicans should kick out the libertarians, the constitutionalists, the nationalists, and the fiscally sane. I think it would be fantastic. It’s long past time they joined a party genuinely devoted to freedom, the principles of the Founding Fathers, and the American national interest anyhow.

But what is it with neocons and their obsession with playing ideological police and kicking people out of organizations, movements, and political parties? Buckley did it, Lowry did it, and here this Golub is calling for it. It is increasingly apparent that permitting people who have ideologically “seen the light” at some point in their lives to assume positions of influence in their new party is a tremendously bad idea. If you were ever a Democrat, or worse, a Trotskyite or Socialist, that’s great if you eventually came to your senses and moved rightward. But you should not be permitted any leadership position or provided a voice in the right-wing media. After all, why on Earth should anyone else on the Right, who was never dumb enough to fall for any left-wing nonsense in the first place, pay your belatedly sane opinion any attention whatsoever?

Mailvox: the wages of stupidity

The wages of sin are death. The wages of stupidity are bankruptcy. NW writes to remind me of my prediction of the fatal consequences that result when a church leader parts company with the Bible in favor of the current worldly consensus:

Grace Community United Church of Christ will close its doors this weekend, but the pastor who says his decision to publicly support gay-marriage rights unwittingly thrust it on a path toward financial ruin plans to find a new home for his small congregation….

White said his church’s financial problems started in 2005 after he voted to support same-sex marriage at the United Church of Christ’s national synod. Attendance in the pews immediately dropped off the next week, and soon, three-fourths of his sizable congregation was gone. The departures took a financial toll, so the church took out a $150,000 loan in April 2007 to pay its bills, using the church building as collateral. The ministry owned the structure and owed no debt on the building at the time.

The high-interest loan was trouble from the start, and it was quickly acquired by Shrader and MS Properties. The church fell behind on payments, and interest and penalties began piling on, increasing the debt far beyond the initial principal. A settlement agreement called for the church to pay back $175,000 in May or $200,000 by the end of June.

Far too many members of the organized churches believe that the institutions themselves are the Church. They are not, and the true Church cannot compromise with abomination. Christianity cannot condone homogamy any more than it can condone ritual gang rape or child sacrifice. And when it purports to do so, it ceases to be Christianity.

It is fascinating, is it not, that this wolf in sheep’s clothing has no regrets about destroying his church’s solvency and driving off most of the congregation.

Euro 2012: avanti Azzurri

I’m not sure which I enjoy more about the Euros and World Cup. The irrational English pre-tournament optimism, followed inevitably by equally ludicrous despair, or the overexuberance with which the Italians always greet success in international calcio. Keep in mind that despite their great joy over the nominal upset, the Italians have NEVER lost to the Germans in a major tournament.

“It was a masterpiece of a game. One perfect first half, which even everyone who claimed that Balotelli could not be a center forward or that Prandelli had some problems could see. And instead, the manager got nothing wrong: for example, the move of Balzaretti to the right was inspired. The thing that left everyone amazed was in what little time Prandelli succeeded to make a team out of a group of excellent players with four stars, Balotelli, Pirlo, De Rossi and Buffon. In this brief period, he put Italy on display with an aggressive and intelligent soccer that has produced great games. The difference with Spain-Portugal was before the eyes of everyone: Italy-Germany was enthusiastic and beautiful, played by the Azzurri against a mighty squad that was nevertheless annihilated by the play of Italy. The work of the manager, the intelligence of the players, and the brilliance of Pirlo and Balotelli created an extraordinary miracle. Only Italy has displayed the true soccer to the Europeans: the victory against Ireland was mitigated by the modest skills of the adversary, but the test of the Germans has silenced everyone. The final with Spain will obviously be a very difficult game, but one can say that Prandelli and the players have already won Euro 2012. An even more enthusiastic success cannot be anticipated by anyone: no one thought the manager had the capability to make the national team play this way.

A discourse on the obvious merits of the absolute protagonist of the semifinal with Germany: what can one say about Balotelli? One way is to think about his problematic attitude, another puts him in discussion as a player. Ballotelli is a player can do anything and play in any role, from the midfield to striker: aside from his goals, he plays well, he is unpredictable and concrete, he has everything to be a man of grand destiny. And also – I repeat – Pirlo, De Rossi, and Buffon always merit mention, even though it is necessary to name everyone. However, I mention these names in particular to repeat that Italy is a grand team with four players that have made the difference.

One note in this game against the Germans that merits mention is also Cassano, for his play, for the extraordinary assist on the occasion of the first goal: Antonio held onto the ball beautifully and Prandelli did well to put him on the point. The real surprise is truly the manager, who did not put a foot wrong, and above all, showed us the human rapport he installed in the players while succeeding by making all the right player selections and winning moves.”

His story is a touching tribute to humanity regardless of how one looks at it, but Mario Balotelli also illustrates that true integration into a foreign culture is at least partially possible in some circumstances, as the first thing that “the Italian boy with the dark skin”, as La Repubblica calls him, did after his match of a lifetime was to run into the stands to the mother who adopted him at the age of two.

“The most beautiful joy was to embrace Mamma Silvia. I scored the two goals for her,” said Mario after the game. “Those goals were for her. In the final, Papa Franco will come too. And then for goals, I will score four.”

Supreme Court stimulus

Or how Judge Roberts fixed the housing market. I think one of the more interesting aspects of the surprise decision by the Supreme Court to declare forced consumption constitutional by virtue of the federal taxing power is its potential use as a device for economic intervention. Since savings is the bane of the neo-Keynesians, the newfound ability of the federal government to dictate consumption means that there need never again be a savings glut, a demand gap, or what Paul Krugman decries as insufficient inflation.

For example, since there is presently insufficient demand in the housing market, the Congress can address this by simply passing a law requiring everyone with an annual income of more than $75,000 who does not presently have a mortgage to purchase a house with a price of at least $250,000 or face paying a tax of $15,000. Because the annual cost of the mortgage payments would only come to around $11,500 at current low interest rates, most people would choose to purchase a house rather than pay the tax, especially since there would be an implied “Roberts Put” providing a reasonable expectation of decent profits on the forced investment. Such a law would be perfectly constitutional, as per the court’s recent decision, and it would have an undeniably inflationary effect on home prices, bank assets, and national wealth while reducing those pernicious savings rates and ending debt-deflation in the household sector.

Surely permanent economic prosperity is nigh!

On this day

I understand there are various events of note occurring around the world today. But surely the most momentous is this: the greatest goal in the history of Tip Kick. It occurred today, June 28, 2012, from a goal kick. It inscribed a perfect arc, right into the upper corner of the net, actually knocking aside the outstretched hands of the surprised keeper. GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!!!

There will be other goals today, but none, I think, so magnificent.

UPDATE: Avanti Azzurri! 2-1 and it probably should have been 5-1.

Supreme Court: Obamacare is constitutional

This is the first Scotusblog take: “So the mandate is constitutional. Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court…. The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.”

People are still reading the opinion, but it would appear that the Court did its usual trick of admitting that the law is unconstitutional on its face, but finding a way of allowing it to come into force anyhow. And the support of the Bush-appointed Roberts for Obamacare demonstrates the complete absurdity of appealing to the Supreme Court to justify voting for Republican presidents. After nearly 40 years of this, you’d think Charlie Brown would realize that Lucy is never going to hold the football no matter what she says.

UPDATE: Bingo. “The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn’t matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.”

UPDATE 2: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding…. to answer a common question, the whole ACA is constitutional, so the provision requiring insurers to cover young adults until they are 26 survives as well.

Mailvox: of free trade, Austrians, and authors

CA asks about protectionism in Alabama:

If I understand your position correctly, you say the free movement of labor is an inherent flaw in the free trade ideology. If this is true, the recently passed Alabama HB 56 would theoretically correct for the free movement of labor by forcing illegal immigrants out of the workforce. Apparently it did force them out of the workforce and now Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing. The situation turns the “they took our jobs” argument on its head.

Would you chalk this up to the fact that Americans have become soft and lazy because illegal immigrants have been doing all the hard work for so long? Do you expect that, if the law is kept on the books, legal workers will eventually take the reigns when the situation becomes more dire? Am I entirely missing the point somewhere? Basically, how do you fit this empirical data into your anti-free trade theory?

I have been enjoying this discussion, btw, thanks for the intellectual stimulation.

First, I have to offer a mild correction to the statement that “Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing”. The fact is that Alabama farmers cannot find enough labor to meet their needs because legal workers are unable or unwilling to perform the work that the illegal immigrants had been doing at the same lower wages the immigrants had been receiving. Would they have any trouble finding sufficient labor if they paid $1 milllion per hour? Of course not. So, it’s not a problem of a shortage of labor, but rather, insufficient wages.

How does this fit into my anti-free trade theory? Perfectly. In the free trade scenario, the low-wage laborers migrate legally to Alabama and stay there, increasing the farmers’ profits at the expense of the Alabama workers and the local Alabama culture which is now permanently transformed into Mexico-Alabama. The Alabama workers must either reduce their standard of living by accepting Mexican wages or leave Alabama in search of a place where they can find higher wages. Even if overall wealth is increased temporarily, it comes at a high cost in societal destruction, as even if Alabama’s population remains the same, its demographics do not.

And since immigrants are disproportionately young men, the qualitative change in the workforce likely means exchanging young, single Hispanic men for Alabama family men. This will tend to increase crime, lower property values, reduce social cohesion, and incur other costs that don’t show up in the simple economic calculations.

AM, on the other hand, thinks that opposition to free trade is impossible for a libertarian:

According to the lead for your columns you are a “Christian libertarian.” Perhaps you really are a Christian. Your column on free trade definitely scratches the libertarian part. You also seem to believe that NAFTA, etc. are free trade agreements. You also fail to explain any harm from real free trade or any benefits from using force and violence to interfere with individuals who want to trade. You are good at name calling of Ricardo and others who advance the principles of comparative advantage. Yet you have not one word about what is wrong with the principles. I eagerly await your analysis and criticism of the principles of comparative advantage. I suspect I will be waiting a long time. Government borrowing is a problem. That it borrows from those the people of the US trade with, rather than from people of the US doesn’t make the borrowing any more destructive.

I can see how some libertarians can reasonably argue that I am No True Libertarian, but their thinking is simplistic and relies upon the fallacious concept that maximizing human liberty requires maximizing the legal range of human behavior. I will eventually be presenting a positive case for opposing free trade in some circumstances as part of my argument for National Libertarianism. In the meatime, as we can see from the example of this email, many free trade advocates are blatantly dishonest. Let’s list just a few of the obvious falsehoods some of them keep repeating:

1. Free trade does not mean free trade in services.
2. Free trade does not involve the free movement of labor.
3. Free trade does not involve free trade agreements.
4. Free trade is binary.

AM also throws in numerous other falsehoods as well, but I expect most of you can see how absurd they are since, just to give one example, I have obviously supplied considerably more than one word about what is wrong with the principles of comparative advantage. But let’s focus on the idea that NAFTA, GATT and other free trade agreements are not free trade agreements.

Now, I don’t deny that these various agreements do not constitute perfectly free trade. After all, we still have immigration laws, work visas, and numerous other means of preventing the free movement of labor and various tariffs are still on the books. But there is no denying that these free trade agreements have led to a greater volume of trade as well as a reduction in tariff rates and the number of tariffs. Consider the facts:

NAFTA provides for the elimination of Mexican tariffs on 5,900 categories of imports from the United States and Canada (mostly machinery and intermediate goods), representing more than 40 percent of Mexico’s overall trade. Other products are reclassified in a simplified tariff list having four rate bands–5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, and 20 percent. The United States eliminated tariffs on 3,100 additional categories of Mexican goods, bringing to 80 percent the portion of all Mexican exports to the United States that will be free from tariffs. Some 4,200 categories already had been included in the General System of Preferences (GSP) and were thus already exempt from tariffs. The treaty eliminates some tariffs immediately and phases out the rest over five, ten, or fifteen years, with vulnerable industries in the United States and Mexico receiving the longest protection.

Mexico’s deadlines for lowering trade barriers are generally longer than those for Canada and the United States. The latter countries are required to lift immediately their tariffs on some 80 percent of Mexico’s nonoil exports, while Mexico must grant immediate free entry to 42 percent of United States and Canadian exports. Special rules apply for trade in textiles, vehicles and auto parts, and agricultural products. The treaty also governs trade in services, including overland transport, telecommunications, and financial services, and it includes provisions for the liberalization of government procurement.

NAFTA requires Mexico to abolish protectionist limitations on foreign investment (except in the energy sector), allow free profit repatriation by United States and Canadian firms, and guarantee investors against property seizure without full compensation. The treaty allows foreign banks to take up to 25 percent of Mexico’s banking market and allows foreign brokerages to take 30 percent of the securities business by 2004, after which all restrictions are to be eliminated.

The dishonesty of the “free trade agreements are not free trade” argument is readily apparent in the way in which the free trade arguments oppose adding new tariffs, raising tariff rates, or reducing immigration on the basis of their free trade doctrine while simultaneously attempting to claim that no amount of eliminated tariffs, reduced tariff rates, or increased immigration can be considered free trade. They’re claiming that the protectionist pros and cons can be judged on a graduated basis, but the pros and cons of free trade cannot be. This is not only dishonest, but is obviously absurd, since the benefits of free trade cannot magically arrive all at once with the Traders’ Paradise if the costs of protectionism appear piecemeal.

NAFTA is not an entirely free trade agreement, but it is an agreement to engage in freer trade, it has in fact led to freer trade, and as such, it serves perfectly well as an example of the failure of free trade doctrine. I note that in all the denials of connection between NAFTA, GATT, and other free trade agreements and genuine free trade, very few free trade advocates have come out and called for the cancellation of those agreements. This is not to say that no free traders ever opposed NAFTA; it should come as no surprise that Murray Rothbard did.

And on a mildly amusing tangential note, I’m not the only one who has noted Gary North’s inability to distinguish between related, but distinct concepts.

According to Gary: “[Mises’s] disciple Murray Rothbard promoted 100% reserve banking. But, because he [Rothbard] opposed the existence of the state, his call for 100% reserves was not a call for legislation requiring 100% reserves.”

Murray Rothbard of course opposed the state. But, according to Gary, Murray would therefore have to oppose all legislation or laws. Yet, clearly, Murray (as a libertarian, not an Austrian), favored laws against murder, rape, etc. In his view, they would be implemented not by the government, but by private defense agencies. It is a misconstrual of free market anarchism to say that advocates of this philosophy oppose all laws. Au contraire: We are supporters of proper law, i.e., laws upholding individual rights and private property. Indeed, our criticism of the government is that it violates such proper law.

And finally, a member of the Dread Ilk has published a book on Round One. No doubt Nate will want to check it out.