First off, I have to wonder what is really meant by “open immigration”. Surely, there must be restrictions at some level, right? Otherwise, an invading foreign army could simply land on the beach and walk in unopposed. If this sounds silly, I’d ask you to define “open immigration” in such a way that it would avoid this case, including the more subtle case in which the foreign army comes over one at a time over the course of a year.

Maybe open immigration simply means that you allow lots and lots of people in, so long as they have a good story about why they want to come, and they don’t have any obvious open sores or leprosy.

I’ve come across a few major arguments in favor of this undefined “open” immigration. The most common is the economic argument. In this argument, open immigration is equated with free trade in labor. It would be impossible to argue that, from a very narrow economic perspective, free movement of labor is a bad thing. I won’t attempt to, because I don’t believe it. To my mind, if we can get jobs done here on the cheap, all the better.

The problem with this argument is that open immigration is not the same thing as free movement of labor. Free movement of labor is a subset of open (im)migration, and the former could quite conceivable be achieved alone. The latest term being used to describe the movement of labor without full fledged immigration is “guest worker”. If people in foreign countries can be hired by American companies, and work within the borders of the U.S., we have the desired economic effect.

Open immigration is a totally different animal. With that, people can simply wander in to the U.S. – uninvited - and maybe look for a job, maybe not. Furthermore, “open immigration” would imply that these people can immediately become American citizens with full voting rights and access to all manner of social services. A proper guest worker program would not grant these privileges.

I’d like to note that many libertarians have an ideal world in their mind when they discuss immigration. They imagine an America with next to no (or no) free social services, and in this context they see open immigration as a beautiful thing since immigrants wouldn’t have the option of coming in and becoming parasites. Inexplicably, they go on to advocate open immigration under our current welfare state conditions.

To be fair, some advocates of open immigration claim to have statistics showing that immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in social services. Personally, I find these stats impossible to believe, given that immigrants are generally at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. People in that position don’t generally pay any appreciable income tax at all.

Furthermore, Mexican immigrants vote approximately 70% for Democrats. Since they also tend to be socially conservative, they must be attracted to the Democrats’ economic quasi-socialism. I’d conclude that they want more government freebies, and at current rates of immigration they’ll soon have a lot to say about whether they get it.

Does it seem right for someone to come into the country and then right away vote to have the current citizens pony up a bunch of free money?

To give the “libertarian utopia” argument for open immigration any credibility, I think we’d have to ignore the fact that most immigrants would come over and immediately begin voting to destroy that very utopia. But even if we do ignore voting, only the most radically unrealistic variant of the libertarian utopia would even (kind of) work: virtually no welfare, no homeless shelters, no treatments for drug addiction, no tax funded prisons, no public land, emergency rooms must turn away the sick and dying, and so on. And this still ignores any drains on private charity.

I’ll be criticized as xenophobic for bringing this up, but there is also the issue of cultural assimilation. If, for example, all my neighbors suddenly sell their property off to people from a foreign country who don’t speak English and who have strange (to me) customs, this would impose a cost on me. I’m not saying that it would impose a cost on everyone, but it would impose a cost on me, and surely many others. This fact ought to be included in the calculation, though I realize many libertarians prefer to ignore uncompensated negative externalities in other contexts.

By the most extreme among libertarians it is argued that in a “real” libertarian society no immigration policy would be required at all. That’s because there would be no public property and the policy, such as it is, would boil down to the whims of those who happen to own property at the border (or should I say “border”). This whole concept raises many other questions (such as, what does national defense reduce to in such a context) and is so divorced from our current reality, that I’ll just mention it in passing.

This way of thinking does relate to another major argument for open immigration. It’s not actually so much of an argument, but a general anti-government sentiment summarized by: “Why do you think you get to decide who’s allowed to walk past some arbitrary boundary?” The view here, it seems, is that all humans have a natural right to go anywhere on earth that they want … sort of. In actuality, people who speak this way seem to think that only private property counts; public property belongs to one and all (or something). To the extent that there is an argument here, it’s supposed to be a principled, theoretical argument; that limiting immigration is an overreach of government and a violation of rights.

It seems obvious to me that the citizens of the U.S. have every right to set whatever immigration policy suits us. We don’t owe anything to those who are outside wanting to come in (though we may occasionally feel a moral obligation, as in the case of people seeking political asylum). We should set our policies to maximize our own benefit.

The land within the borders of the United States is jointly owned (to one degree or another and varying from place to place) by the citizens of the country. Some people refuse to accept it, but no land here is fully privately owned. If it were, it would be a sovereign country. At the same time, no land here is unowned either.

If you have a problem with jointly owned property, consider a home, owned by a husband and wife (jointly owned). Does this joint ownership imply that the family should adopt a policy whereby anyone is allowed to walk in off the street and camp in the living room?

A more clear analogy would be a private road running through a gated community. Would you really hold that it is somehow morally wrong for the residents to decide who is, and who is not, allowed to drive or walk on the private road? What then is the difference in the case of an American owned road leading to Mexico?

I hope I’ve made a case that we are not obligated to let everyone in the world into America. If you buy that, then we are left with the question of what immigration policy is in our best interest. From the narrow economic perspective of allowing the free flow of labor across the borders, a guest worker policy could be made to work without granting full citizenship rights to everyone we bring here to pick lettuce.

The question may remain, why not just let them all in anyway? My response would be security, welfare burden, and cultural assimilation. By security, I mean that you still need to define what is meant by open immigration; can the Chinese army just walk in?

The welfare burden exists at the present time, so don’t set policy at this time by simply assuming it away.

Finally, cultural assimilation includes (at least) two components. The first is the basic fact that new immigrants, in large part, do not appear to be coming here to become Americans. They are moving small versions of their home country here. This matters more or less to different people, but a very liberal immigration policy would eventually amount to a peaceful invasion of the southwestern U.S. by Mexico.

More important to a libertarian might be the fact that immigrants don’t appear to share the American cultural heritage of freedom and limited government. A massive influx of poor immigrants would mean a massive political shift to the welfare state left. juegos de poker online gratispoker de dadosstud pokerpoker en internetprobabilidades pokerel mejor poker onlinepoquer lineajuego al instante lineaonline pokerpacific poker comjugadas texas holdemcartas de pokerjuego poquerpoker online multijugadorno deposit bonus pokerjugar poker online gratispoker para jugarjuego poker omaha en lineajuego al instante webbonus de poker en lineastrip poker gratisreglas de pokerjugar omaha poker en lineapoker pcforo poquerholdem poker gratis,poker texas holdem gratis,holdem pokerjuego de poker online gratiscaribbean poker webstrip poker pcprogama codigo pokerdescarga gratis juegos pokerdescarga pokerpoker texas holddouble bonus poker downloadholdem poker descargarjuego texas holdempoker freestrip poker downloadjuegos poker,juegos pc poker,juegos de poker para descargar gratiscaribbean poker paginas internetworld championship pokerlas vegas casinowww slotsweb casinotop casinos onlinetrucos casino onlineblack jack en linea gratisvideo poker internetjuego de casino gratis,casino gratis,descarga gratis de casinosistemas ganar ruleta

Here’s an example of what I’d like to see more of; brief descriptions of the candidate’s positions on the major issues of the day. These positions, of course, are my own.

National defense. I am strongly in favor of a vigorous national defense, including, when appropriate, preemptive action on foreign soil. I am aware of the criticisms claiming “imperialism” by the United States, and I strongly agree that our military power should not be used to impose our cultural values on foreign nations, or to blatantly advance our purely economic interests at the expense of others. At the same time, threats to our nation’s security are complex, and simply holing up within our own borders is not a realistic option.

Terrorism. The so-called “war on terror” is simply a subset of the overall national defense. The primary difference, in my mind, is the simple fact that these enemies are not foreign nations and are thus not easily identified. Conventional military forces are not as well equipped to fight terrorist enemies, and a large part of the burden falls on intelligence agencies. Regarding the “torture” debate, I’m middle of the road. I agree that we should maintain the moral high ground to some extent, by treating our detainees as humanely as we reasonably can, but I find the argument about putting our own soldiers at risk un-compelling. When was the last time we fought an enemy who gave a damn about the Geneva Convention? Will our troops face an enemy who does any time in the near future? At present, any captured soldier would count himself lucky if he wasn’t beheaded on live TV.

Iraq. Invading Iraq was a mistake. I tend to agree that we are probably less safe as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq than we would be if we had done nothing at all. Having said that, we can waste all kinds of time pointing fingers and second guessing the original decision, but what matters now is how we go forward. Assigning blame and expressing regret don’t help us decide how to proceed. In my opinion, the United States now has a moral obligation to the Iraqi people not to turn tail and leave them suffering in anarchy and civil war. Our goal should be to stabilize Iraq as quickly as possible, and then get our troops out. I support withdrawal when either (a) Iraq has a stable government, or (b) we decide that our continued presence is not, and cannot make matters any better than they would be if we left. I am very receptive to the idea of breaking Iraq into states along ethnic lines if this is what is required to establish peace.

North Korea. There appear to be few good options when it comes to North Korea. Economic sanctions seem pointless, or even cruel, given the facts that North Korea is already heavily sanctioned and impoverished, and that inflicting pain on the populace of North Korea is clearly of little import to the government in charge. If and when feasible, I would support targeted military action aimed at North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

Economy. In general, I am a strong supporter of free markets and free trade. As a general rule, I feel that the best thing the government can do for the economy is stay out of the way and let the free markets work.

Taxes. Lower taxes are better. Whenever possible, taxes should be directed to those who use the service for which the tax is collected, e.g. gas taxes to pay for roads. I would support radical reform of the tax code at the federal level, such as a single rate flat tax with no exceptions (or exemptions). I reject the class warfare tactics employed by the left when debating tax policy (the most common being to demonize the top X%).

Minimum wage. I do not support increasing the minimum wage. In fact, I don’t support any minimum wage at all. To those who do I ask; why not make the minimum wage $75 per hour? What do you think would happen if such a minimum were actually enforced? It is the height of economic ignorance to suggest that anything is fundamentally different when the minimum wage is $10 as opposed to $75; they both result in economic losses and unemployment, the effect is just smaller when the minimum wage is lower. At the moral/personal level, I question why we would want our government to interfere with fully voluntary employment agreements between competent adults.

Social Security. Before I say anything else, I will say that I do not support any changes to social security that would significantly change things for anyone over 45-50 years old. Having said that, I think social security is a mess. To me, it seems to be a haphazard combination of forced savings, welfare and old-age insurance. Young people understandably consider social security to be little more than another tax that is unlikely to provide any benefit in the future. While it would be tempting to propose a complete phase out of social security, we must acknowledge that planning ahead for retirement is something that many, if not most, people find extremely difficult to do. Because of this, the forced saving aspect of social security has value. The personal retirement account was one approach to this problem that I think had value; saving is mandatory under that scheme, but the money a person saved still had his name on it. Another approach I would explore is the idea of private retirement insurance. It would be mandatory to carry a policy that guaranteed a minimum return starting at retirement until death; market competition would determine how much the policy costs.

Immigration. I flatly reject the notion that foreign people have any right to enter the United States. Immigration policy should be set solely for the benefit of current citizens. However, it is pointless to debate and implement new immigration policies when we are unable to control the flow of illegal immigrants into our country in the first place. So, the first step is to do a much better job controlling illegal immigration. If this requires building walls and/or using high tech surveillance then so be it. Additionally, since we are talking about illegal immigrants, we should treat those who harbor or employ them the same way we treat people who harbor other types of criminals. Obviously, I oppose offering any form of assistance or services to illegal immigrants. I am, however, in favor of making it as easy as possible to utilize foreign labor on a temporary basis. Employers of such labor should be responsible for their guest workers, to include bearing the cost of any services they utilize or damage they cause.

Gay Marriage. I believe that the debate surrounding gay marriage is terribly confused. To take a position on this issue, one needs to know what people really mean when they say “gay marriage”. I do not support any measure that aims to restrict the ability of people to enter contracts and have those contracts enforced by law. Therefore, if two people (homosexual or otherwise) wish to draw up a contract binding them to certain rights and obligations with respect to each other, I believe the legal system should enforce that contract and make it legally binding. At the same time, I do not support the push to erase the legal distinction between homosexual cohabitation and traditional marriage; a distinction that is clear to all but the willfully blind. Furthermore, I do not support any measure that aims to forcibly prevent companies, insurers, or any other private entity from making this distinction. Whether or not a company extends medical benefits to homosexual partners, for example, should be between the employer and the employees.

Abortion. I am unenthusiastically pro-choice. I think that abortion is generally a bad thing – it reflects poorly on the health of a society and its culture if abortion is widespread. In general, abortion seems to me to be a safety net for people who are being irresponsible, and thus on some level it encourages that irresponsible behavior. Even with all the negatives I see, however, I think that removing abortion as a choice would be worse. I would not, however, support any move to prevent individual states from enacting their own restrictions. I also would not support any push to have the federal government fund or in any way advocate abortion either domestically or abroad.

Environment. In my opinion, the environment is important insofar as it provides utility to humans. The environment is not God. Obviously, people value clean air and clean water. People also value the “environment” as a source for raw materials to make products, and as space in which to live and partake in recreational activities. I generally disagree with the idea that it is beneficial to block off huge areas wilderness for no other reason but to keep people off. Pristine wilderness is of little value if nobody can actually see it. Regarding pollution, I am receptive to novel market based approaches to dealing with the problem – such as pollution credits. See this essay for an idea I had regarding automobile pollution.

Energy. I oppose the use of government funding to promote “alternative” energy sources, including ethanol. I have every reason to believe that the financial markets know better than politicians what the future holds in terms of the availability of fossil fuel. I see no reason to waste money on energy sources that are not economically viable in the absence of government assistance.

Guns. I strongly support the rights of citizens own guns. I believe people should generally be allowed to purchase, use, and transport guns with a minimum of restrictions. I will not support any additional firearms restrictions at the federal level. At the present time (given the already heavy regulation of gun sales) I support recent legislation to protect gun manufacturers from politically motivated liability lawsuits. Obviously, gun rights can be abused. I support harsh penalties for those who abuse these rights. Additionally, I generally support moves to provide people protection from liability and prosecution when they use guns in self defense (within reason).

Health care. In general, I support efforts to bring more market forces to bear on medical providers, consumers and the health care system in general. I oppose any move toward socialized medicine. An example of a subtle but effective way to bring the market to medical care is with health savings accounts. These are relatively recent developments that combine high deductible insurance with tax free savings accounts applicable only to health care expenses. The important consequence is that people actually have to pay for medical expenses with their own money (to a point) and thus (a) don’t go to the doctor for every sniffle and get every expensive test in the book, and (b) shop around for lower prices when possible. I predict that if and when more people switch to HSA’s, doctors and clinics will be more up-front and competitive with pricing. The recent growth of convenient, low priced walk-in clinics is a great example of the market working for health care consumers. Another recent example is the drastic price cutting by Wal-Mart of commonly prescribed drugs.

As for lowering costs, liability for both doctors and drug companies is an area that could clearly use improvement. Recent awards in cases against the makers of Vioxx don’t even pass the laugh test; clearly Merck has not done enough harm here warrant driving it into bankruptcy. It’s not even obvious that the drug Vioxx was, on balance, a bad thing. Liability for doctors may or may not be a major contributing factor to the overall health care problem, but I have given some thought to how we might improve the situation anyway. See this essay.

Finally, I’ll say that I also think we (the public at large) might simply have a philosophical problem with respect to health care that will only make things worse as time goes on. We are unwilling to accept that some procedures and treatments are simply too expensive to offer universally. As it stands now, every fancy new treatment that becomes available is a potential blow to the system because we feel the need to make it available to everyone, regardless of which insurance policy they have or whether they are insured at all. The introduction of new treatment options should be a good thing (was the introduction of plasma screen TV’s a bad thing because only the wealthy could afford them?) Data cited in a recent edition of USA Today indicated that the cost of cancer treatment has gone up drastically in recent years, while the survival rate has gone up only modestly. Is it appropriate to pay (for example) $100,000 more in treatment for a 1% increase in the likelihood of survival? My opinion is that only individuals in a fee medical economy can make that decision.

Affirmative action. I do not support affirmative action. I believe that everyone is better off when employers are free to hire employees based on the criteria that they feel are the most appropriate. Admissions to public colleges and universities is not quite as clear cut. While I still do not support government mandated quotas, I do accept the fact that administrators may desire to create a certain kind of cultural environment on campus which may not be achieved by simply selecting the most academically gifted applicants.

Drugs. Though I consider myself a libertarian, I do not believe it would be wise to legalize currently illegal addictive drugs. I do, however, think that enforcement against end users should be heavily de-emphasized in favor of action against dealers. End users are generally the victims in my view; dealers are the perpetrators. Regarding perceived conflicts between state and federal drug law, I think that the federal government should generally stand down and let the states regulate themselves.

Did I miss any current issues?

The Fourth isn’t just a simple celebration of America, it’s a celebration of freedom. What else could that possibly mean besides enjoying the right to be left alone to do your own thing, without the government baring down on you with pointless restrictions, burdensome regulations and smothering taxes? Aren’t economic freedom, capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship still core American values?

The destruction of economic freedom is at the forefront of the liberal agenda, as far as I can tell. They seem to envision a massively taxed welfare state akin to the quasi-socialisms of northern Europe. But then what are they celebrating on the Fourth? “Hooray America … I wish you didn’t have a heritage of economic freedom … I wish you were more like Sweden” … ?

Who could argue that individualism and “independent spirit” aren’t core to the American identity? In the political realm, this translates to individual responsibility. In other words, take care of yourself and suffer the consequences of your own mistakes (and conversely, reap the rewards when you do things right). Isn’t this really the opposite of the liberal program of ever more government programs to save us from our own laziness, incompetence and stupidity – to make those who are competent and driven subsidize those who refuse to try?

Besides the economic stuff, there’s the basic nitty gritty of what makes America unique. I’m surely biased, but here’s a sampling of things that I think are uniquely American. First of all, vehicles. Americans of modest means have garages full of cars, trucks, motorcycles, RV’s, boats, snowmobiles, 4-wheelers, Jeeps, tractors, and God knows what else. I don’t think there is anyplace else in the world with America’s level of personal airplane ownership.

Next, bigness. Americans of modest means (depending on where, of course) can live in big houses on large parcels of land. Especially in the west, communities are spread far and wide with vast areas of undeveloped land in-between. For now, Americans have access to hundreds or thousands of square miles of open land for camping, hiking, biking, hunting, 4×4 trail riding and almost anything else imaginable.

Next, guns and hunting. These are part of our national heritage. America is now one of the last holdouts when it comes to massive restrictions on private ownership. Western Europe, Canada, and even Australia have all implemented massive restrictions on civilian firearms ownership.

Finally, Christianity. America is, I think, the last holdout among developed western nations. While I’m not a practicing Christian myself, I can’t help but acknowledge that America has always been a Christian nation, and the fact that we are still (however scantily) clinging to those traditions surely explains why we are still behind Western Europe on the slippery slope of moral decay.

So call me crazy, but to me, America is the place where a middle class person can wake up in the morning in his 2500 square-foot house, go out to the garage and hop in his full-size Chevy pickup, tow his boat to the lake and go fishing. The next day, he might go to the range for some target practice, go out to the airport and rent a plane, or drive his Jeep out to the desert to explore the trails. Oh, and there’s still a decent chance that the guy is actually married to the mother of his children.

Now, contrast that to the liberal vision: Instead of living in a house, the guy lives in an urban center in an 800 square foot apartment. Ideally, he takes public transportation, but if he’s willing to pay the massive registration fees, he can drive an electric (or hydrogen powered) three wheel scooter. Boats and airplanes are out of reach to all but the most wealthy because of the high income tax rates and huge luxury taxes. Guns and hunting are illegal except for shotguns, which must be stored at the local police station. Marriage is gone, having been replaced with “cohabitation contracts” which do not specify the gender of the participants, nor the number of participants. And while there may still be huge areas of unpopulated wilderness, enjoying it is not possible, because access is prohibited.

Maybe I’m being unfair, I don’t know. All I know for sure is that everything liberals seem to want has already been done in Canada or Western Europe. On the other hand, the things that are important to me (and others like me) about America can’t be found anyplace else. Why do they have to ruin it for us, when they could just move someplace they like better?

And why celebrate the Fourth when you dislike the essence of America?

Hybrids use fossil fuel alone as their energy source. They are called “gas/electric hybrids”, but in the end, only gas is going in. There are no solar panels, no places to plug them into the wall outlet, no miniature nuclear power plants, not even pedals or a sail; just a hole to pour the gas into. The electric motor in a hybrid is used to aid fuel economy under certain circumstances, mostly during in-town driving. So ignore the fact that one car is a hybrid and another isn’t. All you need to know is the fuel economy. A plain old Honda Civic will beat any hybrid SUV all the time, and probably most hybrid cars on the interstate.

Who cares about MPG though? Do you really get the most “greenie points” for driving the car with the best MPG rating? Maybe you do, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk in terms of total gallons consumed? Why in the world would it be better to drive 100 miles round trip in a Honda Insight every day as opposed to driving a Suburban two miles? The guy in the Suburban is using less fuel, but the environmentalists still probably won’t let him into their club. Hell, it seems that the enviro fashion statement you make by driving a hybrid would put you higher on the greenie food chain than riding a bicycle. The government will pay you to buy a hybrid; will they pay you to ride your bike?

Having made these points, I’ll now say the the whole premise that it’s good to use less fuel is idiotic anyway. In the first place, burning fuel in your car is only one of many ways you consume it. Why dwell on that? Every time you buy something you are causing fuel to be used, either because the item got directly shipped to your house, or because it got shipped to the store where you bought it. On top of that, half the stuff you buy uses petroleum as an ingredient in one form or another. Am I a better person if I burn less fuel in my car, but then spend my fuel savings on other things?

Maybe we need some sort of greenie metric to grade people with. It would somehow be related to how much “stuff” (not just fuel, right?) you cause to be consumed, or perhaps your marginal contribution to the total demand. The winner would be a guy who lives in squalor in a hole in the woods. No, scratch that; the winner is the one who just kills himself right away.

Am I kidding? Most normal people consider it a good thing if you can convert resources into useful things that make peoples’ lives better. People who do this make money by purchasing a resource at a low price, adding value to it, and pocketing that difference when they sell. Environmentalists seem to be saying, “that’s all fine, except for the part where you buy things and use them. It’s better if there is no demand for things and nothing is used”.

Consider a hypothetical person who trades his Suburban for a Prius. Now he spends less on gas at the pumps (assuming he doesn’t just drive more), so he has extra money in his pockets. Is he going to throw it away? Surely he’ll spend it on something else. I challenge you to tell me how he can spend it without utilizing resources, if not petroleum itself. Anything he buys needs to be shipped from where it was made. And it has to be made from something. He could buy services or take a vacation, but the transportation “problem” is still there.

His only option is to throw his money away, or more likely, not work in the first place. Or he could just kill himself.

The price of fuel is set by market forces; supply and demand. It costs more when it’s hard to get and when more people want it. But why is it bad to want what you want? The hysteria surrounding hybrid vehicles and fuel economy boils down to the notion that it’s bad to want gas for your car; that fuel is different from other products on the market. When I buy gas, I’m paying my way; I’m paying someone from Exxon to pump it out of the ground, refine it and ship it to my local gas station. What’s it to you? It only affects you if you want to buy gas also, because the price is higher. It seems kind of hypocritical to blame others for wanting what you yourself also want. Or maybe you just wish demand was lower so your own bill would be less?

With that in mind, I’ve changed my position. All you people should start using less fuel. Ride a scooter to work, or better yet, a bicycle. I really want you to. That way it won’t cost as much for me to drive to work in my full-size pickup with an empty bed and nobody in the passenger seat.

There are some obvious differences between the gun maker liability issue and the issue of massive lawsuits against drug makers (as exemplified by the Merck Vioxx case). The gun maker liability issue centered largely on the question of whether gun makers should be held liable for damages caused by the illegal use of guns by others. Clearly there is nothing analogous to this when we look at the drug maker lawsuit issue. The lack of a potentially complex “chain of causality” (starting with manufactur and ending with a person being shot) could make the drug lawsuit issue easier, but then the complexity of determining causality at all is far more pronounced in the case of drugs than it is in the case of guns.

Most commentaries I have read on-line regarding the Vioxx case are focussed on the problem of determining causality, especially in light of the fact that juries are not really qualified to interpret complex medical evidence. From what I’ve read, the evidence in the Vioxx case was far from conclusive, yet the jury came back with an amazing $250 million dollar settlement. Whether jury competence is a major problem, I can’t say. The size of the award, however, strikes me as outrageous.

Of the approximately $250 million awarded, about $25 million was for actual damages — mental anguish for the wife and that type of thing. This alone is not defensible; the man was 59 years old, worked at Wal-Mart, and his arteries were found to be 70% clogged at the time of death. It’s a topic for another essay, but I have read elsewhere that the average person values his own life at somewhere between one and ten million dollars. Given this man’s advanced age, relatively poor health, and low income, he would undoubtedly come in on the low end of this range.

But the real kicker is the approximately $225 million in punitive damages. What is this for? Apparently the idea is to “send a message” to drug makers, and this it surely does. The message is “think twice before developing new drugs; if anyone is harmed by them, we’ll punish you — big time.”

This is where the economic reasoning applied to the gun liability issue can be applied again. If the system is working properly, a business, whatever it is, receives the correct signals, or incentives. Maybe this guy died because of Vioxx, maybe not. For the sake of argument, let’s assume he did. Does that mean that Vioxx is, on balance, a bad thing and that it should be removed from the market? To decide, we’d have to consider the numerous others who have benefited from the ability of Vioxx to fight potentially debilitating pain. If the benefits outweigh the costs, we want to keep the drug on the market.

It seems that there are at least two possible approaches: one is the free market approach, and the other is the top-down regulation approach. The market approach uses profit and loss signals to give businesses the correct incentives to do the right thing; benefits of products are captured in the form of sales receipts, damages are realized in the form of liability payouts. For this to work, however, the courts need to assess damages realistically.

Placing a dollar value on a human life is controversial, but necessary if any economic calculations are to be made. Once any emotional barriers are broken down, it should be obvious that human lives are not of infinite value as commonly held. Human behavior proves that humans do not place infinte value on their own lives. If we did, we would seldom go outside; the only activities worth doing would be those for which the risk of injury or death was more than counteracted by the expected increase in life span attained. Real life, however, is quite different; people risk their lives all the time in order to simply make their lives more enjoyable. They trade expected life span for both momentary pleasures and for activities that enhance overall quality of life.

If life were of infinite value, nobody would take pain killers.

There has actually been a considerable amount of study in the area of life valuation (try a Google search on “value of a statistical life”). If nothing else, the government sometimes wants a ballpark figure to use when deciding cost benefit trades for safety equipment and devices. For example, should the highway department use a fancy new form of high-traction concrete if it costs a $10,000 more per mile and will reduce fatal accidents by 0.1%? Economic analyses and techniques could also be used as a starting point when determining financial liability in drug cases, and the economic techniques could be used to make a case for a particular valuation in a specific case.

Note that the value of the specific life in question needs to be appropriately discounted if the person was seriously ill or close to death anyway at the time he was harmed by a faulty (or imperfect) drug. For example, suppose a drug is developed for a rare disease that kills its victims within 6 months of the time they are diagnosed. If the drug kills its user with a 50% probability, but saves him if it doesn’t, is it a good drug? All the users have to lose is 6 months worth of life anyway; for it to be a bad drug people would have to value 6 months of life more than half as much as they value the full remainder of their life expectancy, which seems unlikely. Therefore, it’s probably a good drug (assuming something better is not also available).

Under the market/liability system, of course, nobody is required to actually make this cost/benefit trade off. All we have to do is make drug makers liable for realistic (as close to actual as possible) damages and let them figure it out for themselves. Let’s say that the average person values the next 6 months of his life at 1/50th the value of the full remainder of his expected life span; he gets X enjoyment from the next 6 months, or 50X from the rest of his life. We could compute the percentage likelihood of death from taking the drug at which people, on average, would consider it a wash to take it or not to take it.

The expected enjoyment or utility associated with taking the drug, assuming for now that the drug is provided free of charge, is (1-P)*50X, where P is the probability of the drug killing the user (and thus 1-P is the probability of it saving his life). The utility associated with not taking the drug is X. By setting these equal and solving for P, we find the the break even point is P=1-1/50, or 98% — which is amazingly high. The assumption of a 50:1 ratio is not altogether unreasonable, but even if we lower it to 20:1 the value of P only drops to 95%.

In real life, unfortunately, the drugs can’t be provided for free. Suppose the drug company charges C (dollars) for a treatment with their drug. Whenever a person dies, the drug company is liable for the damages, X. Since a fraction P of the customers will die and be owed X, the average return from each sale is (1-P)*C - P*X. If the probabilities are not well known, the drug could still be marketed as a cure; customers will be willing to pay as much as 49X for a treatment (the benefit of being cured). If you plug 49X into the equation for the average return, you’ll see that, sure enough, P>98% makes marketing the drug unprofitable.

A practical problem here is that people generally aren’t going to have “49X” on hand — the value of something like 25 years of life. This is, of course, a pretty far fetched example though, where a drug will kill you 98% of the time. Even so, there are some options. One is to simply take out a massive loan. The “49X” price, recall, was the break even price where the person is indifferent between death and paying the bill. Hopefully, it won’t be that bad of a deal. Another option is to realize that the reason it’s so expensive is because the price includes (or in the simplified example consists fully of) the expected loss to the drug company of paying the estate if the patient dies. If the drug company could be indemnified, all he’d have to pay is the actual charge for the drug itself.

Thing is, there is a serious moral hazard problem if everyone gets in the habit of telling the drug company that it isn’t liable for damages. If that happens, the incentives to put out a beneficial drug are drastically reduced. A way around this is to allow consumers to sell their tort rights to a third party, probably an insurance company. The user can use the money from the sale to offset the cost of the drug, but the drug maker still maintains its liability (it simply pays someone else instead). Selling the tort rights for most real life situations (in which the probability of death is very low), will provide enough money to cover the bulk of the bill.

In this wild case, however, where the probability of death is very high, another scheme would be required (because the tort rights are only worth P*X and the bill may be as much as 49X). For this case, the user could make a deal with his insurance company like this: “If I live, you pay me the 49X I need to pay the bill. If I die, you get the liability payout.” So, to the insurance company the value of the deal is 0.98X-0.02*49X. That’s a break-even deal, so the user just needs to sweeten it a little so the insurance company can make a profit. The big difference between this approach and the simple sale of tort rights is that the insurance company only pays you if you live. With the simple sale of tort rights, the tort value ends up in your estate even if you die (which is most of the time in this example).

Once the drug’s record is established, and “P” is accurately (and widely) known, things get a little more complicated. A consumer who actually knows the risks might make a different choice. His net expected benefit from taking the drug is now known to be (1-P)*49X - PX - C. He’ll buy the drug if that expression comes out greater than zero. Setting this to zero, solving for C, and plugging into the average return expression for the drug company, we find that P must be less than 86% in order for buyer and seller to come to an agreement. [See comments at the end of the essay]

This 86% [96%] number has a huge assumption in it, and that is that the consumer places no value on the compensation paid to his estate if he dies. This seems like an extreme case. The other extreme is when the person does not apply any discount to money received after death (which is reasonably possible for someone with heirs), in which case he’ll pay 49X regardless of the value of P. Note that the drug company still isn’t interested in that deal unless P<98%.

Bear in mind that the 86% person would still rationally want to take the drug even at a 98% fatality rate, as long as he didn’t have to pay for it. The cost that he would have to pay, and the fact that he would notice the loss of that money if he lived is the problem. Since he doesn’t care about money his estate gets after he’s dead, he has no reason not to sell his tort rights for approximately P*X and apply that to the cost of the drug. Note that, to make things simpler, I assumed that C dollars for the next six months is as valuable as C dollars for the rest of the person’s life. This will probably not be true in general; C dollars with only six months to spend it is probably worth less. The more the near term money is discounted, the more the person is willing to pay, and the closer we get to 98% again.

I may have lost all my readers by this point, but I wanted to go through the math to show how a free market system with a liability rule can motivate a drug company to do the right thing — that is, so long as the damage awards are correct. As explained, it’s not necessary for the probabilities to be known for the drug company to get the proper feedback; though they would certainly want to have an idea of it, lest they lose their shirts in court later. In no case is the drug company motivated to put damaging drugs on the market, and if a beneficial drug is available, insurance-like arrangements can be used to allow consumers to opt-out of the benefits of liability without changing the incentives to the drug maker.

If the damage awards are excessively high, as in the Vioxx case, drugs that are released will be skewed heavily toward “excessively safe,” meaning that a large number of other beneficial drugs will be kept off the market in order to prevent the “one in a million” from dying of complications. People, especially juries, need to be less emotional and more rational when thinking about damages. I’m sure it’s easy to get caught up in the plight of a single patient like Mr. Ernst (the one who supposedly died from taking Vioxx), but what about the millions of others who can no longer benefit from the drug in question? And while there are certainly emotional barriers to placing dollar values on lost human life, there’s no escaping the fact that that’s what you are doing, as a jury member, when you determine the penalty in a drug case. The dollar value chosen goes right into the calculation that determines whether a possibly beneficial drug should be released.

Like I said before, if human lives are of infinite value, then there is no place in the world for pain killers. If juries insist on delivering damage awards consistent with an (almost) infinitely valued human life, the liability system will do it’s job and drive pain killers off the market.

Having said all this, we could question whether a liability system is even appropriate at this time. Even more so than in the case of gun distribution, the sale and distribution of pharmaceuticals is heavily regulated by the government. When the FDA gives it’s approval to a drug, it is more-or-less explicitly telling people that it considers the drug to be “safe.” If it is going to police the industry in this way, and attempt to give people a sense of security by approving some drugs and disallowing others, doesn’t it only make sense that the FDA should suffer the liability penalty when things go wrong? Where is the FDA while all this Vioxx nonsense is going on?

To summarize, a free market in pharmaceuticals, coupled with a liability rule that has the drug manufacturer pay real damages when things go wrong, will automatically achieve the desired effect of having only beneficial drugs on the market (or at least stay on the market). This will be true so long as damage awards are reasonable. The awards don’t need to be perfect; if they are close, then drugs that are clearly beneficial will be profitable — some at the margin will be on the market when they shouldn’t be, or off the market when they should be. We can tolerate a little inefficiency, but awards such as those in the Vioxx case are clearly off the chart in terms of reasonableness. They send a completely wrong message to drug manufacturers: don’t release a drug unless it has absolutely no side effects whatsoever.

The FDA is a wildcard in all this; it generally appears overly cautious — keeping beneficial drugs off the market — then reverses itself when public opinion turns against it. In the end, a properly functioning liability system leaves the FDA as nothing but a hindrance. If the FDA is going to maintain its role as determiner of drug safety, it should at least step up and take some (or all) of the blame when a drug it approved doesn’t work out as expected.

[Added 10/16/05]: There is an error in the math that arrived at the 86% value above. It’s not actually relevant to the main thesis of the essay, but I thought I should correct it. The value of a cure, to anyone, is 49X-C: 49X for the extension of life minus C, the cost of the treatment. If a person dies in treatment, and he places no value on money added to his estate after his death, he simply loses X, the value of the six months of lost life. The fact that his estate is compensated is of no relevance. All put together then, the value of the drug to this type of customer/patient is (1-P)*(49X-C)-PX. For it to be worth taking, C must be less than (49X-50PX)/(1-P). As a sanity check, set P=0 (drug works every time) and you’ll see that it’s worth 49X to him, as expected.

The drug manufacturer’s equation doesn’t change: for it to be a good deal to them, under the liability rule I prescribed, C must be greater than PX/(1-P). The maximum value of P where both the drug maker and customer are happy is about 96%. This doesn’t seem like much of a difference from the 98% value we had before (the highest P that is of value if the drug is free), but it’s enough difference to drop the price to 25X.

Justice in holdings refers to the general assessment of whether people within a society have a moral right to the material wealth that they possess. The question is of obvious interest to those of us who are interested in politics because political systems are all about attempting to achieve economic justice for the members of the society. For example, if it is against the law to steal, it’s probably because people in the society think it is unjust for a person to own things that he has obtained by theft.

Various principles can be applied to determine whether the current distribution of holdings in a society is just or not. In his book, Nozick contrasts entitlement principles to patterned principles of distributive justice. Most libertarians bases their assessments fully on entitlement principles. A person is entitled to what he possesses if he acquired it justly; either by acquiring it justly from nature or by having it justly transferred to him by someone who himself held it justly. The principle is historical in that whether the current holdings are just is purely a matter of seeing how they came about. There is no way to simply look at the current pattern of holdings and tell whether it is just without knowing the method by which it came about (unless you can infer from the current pattern that there is no just means by which it could have come about).

A problem we might run into, however, is that the chain of transfer of title becomes more and more unclear as we go back in time. Title to very old things (most notably land) will in almost all cases have a shady past; unjust transfers almost certainly exist in the chain of transfers leading to current ownership. For current ownership to be considered just, is it necessary for every single transfer in the chain of ownership to be just as well? As a practical matter, we need to draw the line somewhere. My own opinion is that if a person acquires ownership justly, we ought to accept that, regardless of the extended history of ownership. Unjust transfers can be left between the two people who were a party to them.

In contrast to entitlement principles, we have patterned principles of justice in holdings. These principles state that people should possess holdings that are in some way related to other factors about them (the people). For example, a principle may hold that people ought to receive their holdings on the basis of how much they need them, or by how morally upstanding or smart they are (or any combination of these). It is all too easy for even the most staunch libertarian (or capitalist) to get sucked into a debate where he attempts to defend his position on the basis of some perceived just pattern of distribution. For example, have you ever made the argument that wealthy people generally deserve what they have because they worked hard for it (or alternatively, that the poor tend to be lazy, and therefore deserve their lot)? Or perhaps you argue that under capitalism, people get paid in accordance with how much their contribution is valued by others. These are arguments based on patterned principles.

Patterning, of course, is hopeless as a rigorous principle (regardless of the pattern desired). How could any desired pattern be maintained? In theory, it could be achieved for a few moments, but as soon as anyone decided to do anything with his holdings, such as buy something, trade, or give a gift, the pattern would be disrupted. If we have a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor to satisfy someone’s notion of justice in holdings according to a pattern, can they then complain about the new pattern that evolves as the former-poor voluntarily transfer their wealth away in exchange for goods and services? What good is the money to the poor if they can’t spend it? Should the redistribution be repeated continually in a vain attempt to maintain the desired pattern?

Even if a pattern could somehow be maintained, can any given pattern be anything but arbitrary? The favored patterned principle at this time would seem to be something like this: “People ought to have the same holdings unless they have done something special to deserve more or less.” What is meant by “deserve”? A number of things come to mind. People may think that those who work harder deserve more, as opposed to the lazy who deserve less. “Nice” people may deserve more than mean people. People who suffer adversity may deserve more than those who “have it easy” (or is this just a special case of working hard?).

What is the basis of this patterned principle though? I can’t see any. Well, I can’t see any reasoned basis for it. Maybe I’m cynical, but I suspect the real basis of this patterned principle is envy. It bothers people when they receive less than others, especially when they think they have worked harder and the other guy has more simply because of random chance (he inherited it, or is smarter or better looking or more driven). This is hardly enough to base a political system on though, especially given the fact that the desired pattern is generally only achievable by means that are unjust according to the more defensible entitlement principles.

I guess I’ll leave it at that. The distinction between entitlement principles and patterned principles is one that I had not considered before. Libertarianism is firmly based on entitlement principles, not patterned principles. In contrast, left-liberals seem entirely obsessed with patterns. While it may make for interesting conversation to discuss the patterns that may or may not emerge under an entitlement system, don’t confuse these side-effects with the real goal.

For more on this topic, I strongly recommend Nozick’s book.

What the proposed measure does is basically eliminate gun manufacturer and dealer liability for the criminal misuse of guns. You might think that this is a totally reasonable thing to do. After all, how can we hold people or businesses responsible for the actions of other people? The thing is, we actually do this all the time in our daily lives. If you give a toddler a permanent marker and set him free in a white room, you can say it’s all his fault when the walls and furniture are ruined, but you’d know full well that it’s partially your fault too. It’s the same thing if you hand a gun to a mental patient or a criminal, or simply leave one unattended on the front lawn; if someone gets shot you share at least some of the blame. Perhaps you’re only morally culpable to the extent that you can foresee the negative consequences, but you’re always in some sense responsible because you were a link in the chain of causality.

Here’s another way to look at it. Even though I don’t think it’s generally true, suppose that the sale of guns by a certain manufacturer was a net negative on society, all things considered. In other words, the harm from accidental and purposeful shootings exceeded the benefits of self defense and the enjoyment derived from hunting, target shooting, collecting and all the rest. In such a case, we want the system to send the correct signals to this manufacturer. To be specific, we want the business to be unprofitable — to show a loss equivalent to the damage being done. The manufacturer can either change its ways or go out of business (or stay in business running at a monetary loss; this could be okay if the damages were being paid and properly directed to compensate victims).

Without any liability, however, this will not be the case; the manufacturer will make money because the benefits of gun ownership will be passed along to it in the form of sales receipts, but the costs associated with negligent and criminal use of guns will be borne by other people. The signals will be all wrong and the manufacturer will stay in business with no incentive even to change its ways.

On the one hand then, I think the anti-gun folks have a case; eliminating liability is all wrong. On the other hand, these anti-gun zealots are not being at all consistent. They are quite clearly only interested in driving gun manufacturers out of business. For one thing, if we are going to hold manufacturers financially liable for shooting deaths and injuries, doesn’t it make sense that the people who actually pulled the trigger should be held liable as well? Of course they should. In fact, a sensible approach (at least in most cases) would be to bleed the shooters completely dry financially before even looking at the gun dealers and manufacturers.

There are different ways we could approach it, and I think they’d all amount to about the same thing in the end. One is that we could take each shooting on a case-by-case basis. If a criminal shoots someone, for example, we put a dollar figure on medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc. and get as much of this as we can out of the shooter or his insurance company. There should be no escape from this liability on the part of the shooter; if he can’t pay right away, then we garnish the better part of his wages for the rest of his life if necessary. If, after all that, however, the bill is still not paid, then we move up the chain to the dealer (assuming he’s next in line, there may be others in line first), and then, finally, the manufacturer. In practice, we should never actually get to the manufacturer, since the dealer (if not someone sooner) would be insured and the insurance company would pay. This is not “punishment” for the dealer or manufacturer, mind you, it’s simply a cost of doing business. The money, once collected, is to go to the victim, not the state (except, possibly, to cover court costs and the like).

Another, possibly more elegant approach is to charge the shooter not for actual damages, but for statistically expected damages. If shooting someone once from 20 yards with a 45-Colt causes, on average, $40,000 in damages, then the shooter is liable for that amount regardless of the actual damages in his particular case; the court system provides the insurance-like function of collecting average damages from criminals and paying actual damages to victims¹. This approach is, arguably, more fair in that it charges people for the damages that they could have reasonably foreseen — sometimes more, sometimes less than actual damages. I think it would also tend to lower the cost to dealers and manufacturers somewhat, since the large peaks — which common criminals are likely unable to pay — would be smoothed out. As in the first approach, damages are to go to the victim, not the government.

Yet another variation is one under which liability, as a percentage of the total, is distributed to the various parties (shooter, dealer, manufacturer, possibly others) on a case-by-case basis, based on the particulars of each case. To be honest, I can’t really figure out how an overall system could be made to work this way (since it would be hard to guarantee that the numbers would add up right and all the bills would be paid), but it’s somewhat appealing since sometimes the shooter himself is actually not the one most responsible for the shooting. Consider, for example, children, drunks, the mentally incompetent, or even just a reluctant crime partner. People who knowingly provide weapons to such people or encourage their behavior share a large portion (perhaps most) of the blame. There are plenty of such hypotheticals, and I think at least some component of this idea would have to find it’s way into either of the first two ideas if they were to actually be implemented.

There are undoubtedly other variations on this theme, but the real point is that it’s totally unreasonable and unfair to subject only select entities to financial liability. What we’re talking about, at least kind of, is a system of restitutional — as opposed to retributional — justice. I’m all for this if we do it right. Step one is to apply it uniformly, not just to those who are the targets of political ill-will. For it to truly be restitutional justice, of course, the money that is collected also needs to be directed to the victims. I don’t think the anti-gun lobby and their lawyers really care about this; they just want to soak the gun manufacturers.

Finally, a workable system of restitutional justice requires that the the monetary penalties be reasonable, and have a known basis such that everyone can know ahead of time how they will be computed. As it stands now, it is nearly impossible for the gun industry to know what it’s up against. Anti-gun lawyers seem to simply pull a gigantic figures out of thin air (based on some nonsensical “cost to society,” or emergency room bills, or whatever) and try to get them to stick. If the judge is sympathetic to the anti-gun cause, then they just might (but the money will never go to victims anyway). No reasonable system of restitutional justice can rely on such baseless and arbitrary damage awards.

So, while the anti-gun crowd does have a valid objection to shielding gun makers and dealers from liability, the direction they are going right now is all the more terribly wrong. The fact that they do not have justice or economic efficiency in mind is clear for all to see. Furthermore, going to a full, consistent system of restitutional justice is not even on the radar screen.

And although I pointed out at the beginning that gun makers would not get the proper signals without being liable for some of the damages associated with criminal use of guns, it’s really not as bad as that. With gun makers and dealers receiving the proper signals, in the form of high or low liability insurance premiums, they would be motivated to strike a balance between making their product widely available and recklessly selling guns to all comers. Under such a system, they would almost certainly have some restrictions on who they sold to; or they might require proof of firearm liability insurance, or whatever. Notice, however, that this is exactly what the government is attempting to do in its own ham-fisted manner. The government has created a gigantic system of hoops that gun manufacturers and dealers must jump through in order to do business. By doing so, I would argue, they are implicitly indemnifying gun manufacturers; they are saying, “so long as you follow the rules, we take responsibility for whatever happens next.” Things are far from ideal this way, but it’s not as though manufacturers and dealers are getting a free pass; they still have to follow the rules, and as far as limitations on sales go, the rules might just ever so vaguely approximate what we’d see under a free market/liability system anyway.

Although I’m an ardent supporter of gun rights, I’ll agree that a completely free market in weapons, with no manufacturer or dealer liability, is not the correct solution. What we have now is a very far cry from a free market, however, and I don’t see a consistent system of gun liability being implemented any time soon. Given that, I reluctantly support the PLCA Act as a means to stop the abuse of gun manufacturers by anti-gun groups via the court system.

[Added]: If people or local governments think they have a case based on the supposedly easy availability of guns, or the notion that guns too easily find their way into the wrong hands, (and if they don’t care about the blatant injustice and of bypassing shooters themselves in their quest for liability) the entity to sue is the federal government, since it is the one responsible for the system.

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[1] Paul Birch takes credit for the idea of having the court pay victims actual damages while collecting expected damages from perpetrators. If the charges to criminals are adjusted to include court and police costs, the system can provide a tax-free police/judicial system as well.

… As an example: while passing by our neighbor’s house and noticing that the grass is overgrown, we may, if our own yard is properly kept, be tempted to exclaim “letting grass grow that high should be illegal.” If this issue is particularly important to us, we may lobby our local council to adopt such an ordinance.

What we have failed to fully consider is the brutality with which such an ordinance will be enforced should our neighbor persist in keeping his grass taller than we believe is fitting. If he ignores the warning letters, and fails to pay the fines, it is likely that city will eventually condemn his property. If he persists yet, his property will be sold at auction. And if he then fails to vacate his home, the government will forcefully enter and remove him, in handcuffs and at the point of a gun, in front of his family.

And should our tragic landscaping criminal attempt to defend his home and family from this forceful intrusion, it is likely that he will lose his life in the process, or at best, his liberty for the next fifty to twenty years. …

To the uninitiated, maybe an example like this has some sort of emotional impact. “Geez, how ridiculous that a guy could end up jailed or shot for not mowing his lawn!” But if you actually think about this for a minute or two, you’ll probably identify some major holes in the basic reasoning. For one, the NAP advocate almost certainly has no problem using deadly force in numerous other cases, many of them equally ridiculous.

Suppose, for example, you own a 40 acre plot of land and a homeless guy decides to start camping out on the far corner. Who’s initiating force when you call the police to kick him off (or do it yourself)? What if you send in a magazine subscription card marked “bill me later” and decide not to pay even though 4 or 5 magazines have been delivered? What if your daughter baby-sits for the neighbors and they decide not to pay the $15 when they get back from dinner? Are we really going to bring in “men with guns” and possibly kill people for a $15 babysitting bill or $6.50 in magazines?

The thing is, if the perpetrator is really going to let it go that far (and everyone else thinks it’s worth bothering with), then you have to. Otherwise you’re just saying that contracts and obligations have no meaning when the stakes are small. You simply have to allow (physical) forceful responses to non-physical rights violations. I think most NAP people realize this, which leads to some (in my opinion) tortured definitions of “initiate force.” Now they have to say “well, not just force-force, but, you know, force and fraud or something… oh, and times when you’re on my property and I don’t want you there.” Thus my quip about “whatever a libertarian disagrees with.”

But why bother trying to salvage the NAP anyway? What the point really is, is that it’s okay to use force to prevent or correct rights violations. Or more to the point, it’s proper for the government to use physical force to enforce legal rights and obligations. The NAP can’t really deal with the obligations part. People are obligated to do certain things – the least controversial being to live up to their explicit obligations in legal contracts. They are also obligated to stay off of other peoples’ private property if requested to do so. And so on.

I guess the problem is that when we simply say that it’s okay to use physical force to enforce rights and obligations, it doesn’t automatically give the “libertarian answer.” After all, these rights and obligations could be anything as opposed to only the ones that libertarians seem to be pre-programmed in favor of. The whole point, it seems, is to have a one sentence statement of principle that can be used to judge the rightness of any specific law, ordinance, etc. My contention is that this is not possible; no specific set of rules is correct under all conceivable circumstances.

Which brings us back to the guy who refused to mow his lawn. Apparently, libertarians are supposed to be against any law that constrains people with regard to the use of their property. But there has to be some limit. It’s only a matter of degree. Is it unreasonable to require person not to have a 4 story pile of rusting car parts in his yard, or a gigantic pile of bloated, reeking animal carcasses? Aside from a few extremists, nobody wants to live in a neighborhood where such things are allowed. It’s beneficial to almost everyone to have some reasonable restrictions, and better yet to have the correct level of restrictions.

As a thought experiment, consider what would probably happen if all land use restrictions were removed. Almost certainly, most new developments would spring up with restrictive covenants in place. Most home buyers would move to these developments to escape the possibility that the value of their home (and their own ability to enjoy it) would be destroyed by the activities of their neighbors. People in existing homes with no pre-existing covenants would be out of luck unless they could get new covenants established by the full agreement of everyone on a street, for example. A single holdout could ruin the whole deal.

The point is that most people do want to submit to some level of restriction in exchange for having the people around them constrained too. Having no restrictions is, generally, the wrong answer, as is having too many restrictions. There’s no need to go to the extreme either way. Even if libertarians succeeded in temporarily eliminating all restrictions, as long as freedom of contract remained, they would find their way back. Plus, people who want more or fewer restrictions (or different ones) can group together making everyone that much happier.

Figuring out which restrictions to put in place is difficult, but the principle of it is easy enough to understand. Let’s go back to the guy with the tall grass. In the example quoted, it was suggested that a local busybody simply lobbied his favorite bureaucrat to impose a new regulation. This is the wrong way to go about it. Why? Not because it’s wrong to send men with guns to enforce an obligation. It’s wrong because, as stated, the homeowner started out with the right to grow his grass as tall as he wanted and the proposition was to take away that right without compensation. Remember, the government is there to protect rights.

What could be done, in principle anyway, is to find out whether a restriction on grass height (an obligation to maintain one’s lawn) would make everyone happier on balance. If it would, then we know we want to impose it. At the same time though, it’s not right to take away the existing right to grow tall grass and make a certain minority of people worse off. To get around this, we can pay these people enough compensation such that they too are better off on balance. They will be paid enough to counteract either having to mow the grass or move to another neighborhood. If the new rule is truly a net benefit to all, the majority can pay these people off and feel like they got a good deal. Everyone wins and we are one small step closer to the optimal level of restrictions.

Coming up with a system to actually make this work is non-trivial, but definitely doable. One way is to use the indifference vote. Paul Birch has written an essay describing how that might work.

I’ll conclude by simply saying that a society based property rights, and rights in general, needs “men with guns,” on occasion, to enforce those rights. Men with guns are also needed to enforce obligations (the flipside of rights, as they say), which is where the NAP gets into some squirrelly territory. Rather than dwell on force and who initiates it, libertarians would do well to focus their attention on rights: don’t violate them (without compensation), whatever they are.

Suppose, within the context of some sort of libertarian utopia (we’ll leave the details to your imagination), a person, or group of persons, acquires an area of land and proceeds to break it into plots and build condominiums. These founders also write up a charter for the neighborhood, describing the rules of conduct and fees that will be paid by the occupants, as well as the procedures by which the condo association may change the rules.

Suppose (as is probably typical) each new occupant (or family) gets one vote at association meetings when new rules are proposed, and the passage or failure of new proposals is determined by majority rule. It should be clear that in such a case the new owners are not purchasing full sovereign rights in their new plot of land, but only a subset of the rights, plus the right to vote when changes are proposed. If the charter spells out certain specific rights, such as residents having the right to determine interior paint colors, then these rights are purchased in full. The charter may also say something to the effect that rules must be uniformly applied to all residents.

Note that it is not necessary for each successive resident to sign a contract explicitly agreeing to the current rules. The previous resident did not own full, unrestricted rights in the property, so they are not his to sell. All he can sell is the rights and property he currently owns, including his voting right.

I will assume that the reader accepts the legitimacy of condo association rules; people cannot rightfully move into such a neighborhood, deny the legitimacy of the condo association and ignore the rules.

Is this a good analogy to a state? I fear most libertarians would instantly say no, because it adds some legitimacy to the state that they despise so much. Although I had the same initial reaction, I think the analogy is very strong.

I think the first response to this would be that nobody ever voluntarily signed up to be subject to the rules or procedures associated with a state. This may be true in some cases, but in many cases, most notably the case of (legal) immigrants, people do agree to be bound by the laws of the land. And in any case, to go back to the condo analogy, if I move into the neighborhood described above, I don’t have to agree explicitly to the terms; the terms go with the property. Or, as I put it above, the previous owner did not own full, unrestricted, rights in the property anyway, so they aren’t his to sell. If you inherit property in the neighborhood, the same reasoning applies.

What about people who are born in this hypothetical neighborhood? Can they rightly be subject to rules they never consented to? I think they can. Remember that all the land within the neighborhood is jointly owned and subject to the rules as determined by the association (following specified procedures). If the charter does not specifically grant a right to individuals alone, then it is jointly owned. The rules could, for example, forbid people with facial piercings from entering the neighborhood. This applies no less to children born within the borders of the neighborhood than to guests of residents or complete strangers.

Another possible objection to the analogy is that state land was obtained unjustly (perhaps by military conquest) and therefore claims of joint (government) ownership are invalid. Attacking the legitimacy of government on historical grounds, however, is a dead end. All claims to ownership have an uncertain past, and the road to current ownership will almost certainly contain injustice if we trace back far enough. Indeed, if we required ownership claims to have a perfect historical record all the way back to first appropriation from a state of nature, the entire idea of property ownership would have to be thrown out the window. I can think of no reason why personal claims of ownership should be held to a lesser standard than government claims.

Of course I am not saying that just ownership should boil down to mere possession. If property is stolen, the victim of that theft is due restitution by the thief (restitution may include the return of the stolen item, but there’s no reason that it has to). The dispute, however, is between the thief and the victim, and third parties should respect the property rights of thieves no less than the victims. What is the alternative? Should we take as our own anything with a shady past, and then claim that our ownership is just? You could call that the “two wrongs make a right” theory of property rights.

Going back to our analogy, we could certainly assume that in many cases neighborhoods, such as the one described above, are built on property with an uncertain history and/or with money acquired unjustly. In such a case, would anyone honestly believe that they have the right to ignore the rules of the association? If you steal a grape from the grocery store, does that give me the right to trespass on your property? Clearly not.

It is an undeniable fact that the current arrangement is such that government owns a substantial fraction of rights in property that is nominally privately owned. This is our current starting point. Generally speaking, libertarians would prefer that more rights be privately owned (in the strict sense), but we can’t simply discard a subset of the current distribution because we don’t like it. It would be blatantly hypocritical to deny the ownership claims of others and expect ours to be respected.

If this analogy holds water, where does it leave libertarians? We are so fond of taking everything to the extreme, claiming that our rights are being violated because we are forced to pay for public garbage collection. What we might have now is a world full of condo associations. Our only alternatives are to find one we like as is, or find the best one and work within the system to change it to our liking.

I think the reason it is easy to accept condo associations within our imaginary libertarian utopia is because we imagine them to be limited in scope, such that you only have to live in one if you want to. But are they any less legitimate if the whole world is covered by them?

I’m afraid that this argument does moderate the libertarian position somewhat. It’s not to say that the state doesn’t routinely violate rights; the state violates rights every time it takes actions in violation of its own procedures to the detriment of citizens. But claiming that the state is no more than a band of thugs preying on the population is a bit of a stretch.

Even if the state itself is not wholly illegitimate, we can and should be highly critical of government policies that are abusive and inefficient. The procedures of the U.S. government allow all kinds of legislation to be passed that is harmful to individuals and to society as a whole. Just because people are within their rights to pass such legislation does not mean doing so is morally correct. We can certainly condemn politicians who pass damaging legislation just the same as we can condemn someone who drives past an accident without dialing 911. An action isn’t right just because you have the right to do it.

There comes a point in every superstar’s development when he realizes that he is no longer like other people. On account of his fantastic physical beauty, outstanding personal charisma, and tolerable thespian talents, he is no longer on the same plane as other mere mortals. When this time comes — when the superstar is able to reflect on his greatness with absolute clarity — the path forward becomes clear: he must assemble an entourage and take a well publicized tour of third world poverty.

What is Live-8? As far as I can tell, it is (or was at this point) simply the latest pet project of a bunch of self important celebrities, most of them washed up “classic rock” types who it is doubtful made it through the 60’s with half their original brain cells intact. It seems that a few of them must have taken those celebrity vacation tours through the most impoverished parts of Africa. Now they feel bad about it and the remedy is to abuse their celebrity influence by shoving non-solutions down our throats and making things worse for everyone. Amazingly (or not, I don’t know anymore), more than a few foolish follower types jumped right on board with their silly rockstar idols.

Cynicism temporarily aside, I’ll try to explain what Live-8 is supposed to be about. Well, what Live-8 is is a bunch of rock concerts coinciding with the G8 conference in Scotland. What the Live-8 people want is to dump more money into poor African countries in the form of debt relief and outright free cash, and to promote “trade justice.” Now, if you can tell me what “trade justice” means, I’d really like to know. I tried to figure it out on the web, but to no avail. The Live-8 site says this:

It’s an obvious solution - challenge and change the rules so they work for poor countries. Re-write them so poor countries can develop, build their own industries, grow stronger, and one day compete as equals.

Totally obvious, eh? Maybe they want free trade (which “works” for everyone), in which case I’d probably be behind them, but I seriously doubt it. You might think there’d be more info if you clicked on “learn more,” but you’d be wrong. What you’ll actually find is a bunch of pointless verbage like this:

… the rules are rigged - loaded in favour of the wealthiest countries and their business interests.

and then the previously quoted section is repeated verbatim. So, they either have no real idea what they want, or they don’t want to tell us. More on that later.

Celebrity Myth: The opinions of famous people are more valid than those of the unwashed masses or even trained experts.
Truth: The opinions of famous people are often more important than those of the unwashed masses or even trained experts.

The most annoying thing about the whole Live-8 deal is the complete anti-credibility of the people leading the charge. Who the hell is Bono or Paul McCartney to lecture us on politics or economics? These people are rock stars for crying out loud. I doubt half of them graduated high school. Most of them aren’t even particularly talented in their chosen line of work.

“Our guest speaker today, speaking on international macro-economics and trade policy is: Brad Pitt.”

Give me a break.

Of course, I’m criticizing these people as though they had a rational argument at all. We all know that what this is really about is celebrities stroking their own egos and abusing their ability to get in front of the camera. Maybe some of them really want to “make a difference” and this is the best they could come up with; rock stars don’t normally have to use their limited intellectual prowess to contemplate complex subjects (except maybe the one about the entire universe being contained within the toenail of a giant — I hear this is fascinating to ponder when stoned); they see starving people and conclude that we should buy them food. Brilliant!

The thing is, these jerks aren’t trying to raise money for their supposed cause. If they were simply asking for donations, or donating concert proceeds, it really wouldn’t matter. What they’re really doing though, is lobbying the government. So if they get their way, we all have to pay. Government money isn’t free; if the “government” gives money to Africa they’ll get it from us either through taxes or inflation (or carry it along as debt and make our kids pay for it later). Which is great if you want a bunch of money to go to some special cause and you don’t want to have to pay for it yourself — get the cost spread over the whole population and you only have to pay a fraction. It’s a nice scam if you can pull it off, but pretty shady if you ask me.

It also seems just a little hypocritical to lobby to raise the taxes of people who are just trying to get ahead while you kick back in one of your fourteen vacation mansions admiring your fleet of italian sports cars. Maybe if Bradd Pitt — who made $25 million last year — gave about $24.9 million of that to starving Africans and started living like the rest of us, I’d take him a little more seriously. Well, to be honest, I still wouldn’t, but at least I’d believe he was serious.

And what’s with the “debt relief” red herring? If you owe me $10, it’s no less cost to me to cancel that debt than to simply give you $10 outright (which you could turn around and use to pay me back). They seem to want to imply that debt relief is cheaper than plain old cash. The taxpayers get soaked the same amount either way.

So let’s recap. Live-8 is a bunch of self important celebrities abusing their ability to manipulate the media in order to force the rest of us to pay for their favorite pet cause. Having said that, we can also consider whether their policy “suggestions” would even serve the stated purpose of reducing poverty in Africa. Since “debt relief” and aid are really the same thing, there are really two proposal: more aid (free money) and “trade justice.”

Let’s start with trade. As I stated above, I really don’t even know what the Live-8 crowd has in mind, but given the left slant of the people involved, I strongly doubt they want free trade; I bet they’re advocating protectionism of some sort or another. But how can they square this with sending in billions in free money? People in Africa are starving. Is the plan to send them money and then suggest that the price of imported food products be artificially raised so that less food can be purchased? If the plan is to buy food outside Africa and send it there directly, that sure makes it kind of difficult for local farmers to compete, doesn’t it? Talk about “dumping.”

If the Live-8 plan is to advocate free trade, then I apologize. I could not get that from any of the available material on-line. But even with that, local farming and industry has little incentive to grow as long as money and goods flow in for free from the outside world. It’s impossible to compete with free. And that’s not an argument for protectionism, since normally other countries don’t provide goods for free. If another country is profitably providing goods more cheaply than they can be produced at home, then it’s smart to take advantage of that. In this case though, I assume we don’t desire to continue to feed all of Africa forever; we want them to take care of themselves.

The sad fact that people need to come to grips with is that the situation in Africa is not a temporary anomaly. It’s not as though everything was fine and then a unexpected natural disaster wiped everything out. In such a case, it seems reasonable to consider aid as a means to get people back up on their feet. In the case of Africa, the status quo is poverty, AIDS, and starvation. If you send money to countries that are in this conditon, you are rewarding them and they will not change. Sending money down there without major strings attached rewards the status quo, discourages growth and encourages the existing institutions — including corrupt governments.

I contend that simply pumping money into Africa will only make matters worse, both for us and for them. At best some suffering could be postponed, but when the aid is turned off there will be more people on the verge of starvation and a larger fraction of the people will be infected with AIDS. More likely, the additional money will further entrench current corrupt governments and harmful policies, industry will stagnate, and people will continue to starve (with the population growing with extra food aid).

How about advocating policy changes in Africa that will actually have a positive effect? Since the status quo is terrible, advocate change to the underlying systems that are making it terrible. Economic freedom, capitalism, and free trade would be a great place to start. Don’t expect conditions to improve overnight. If people in Africa are willing to work for a seeming pittance for a foreign corporation, so be it. This is an improvement, and things will get better over time, as they did in the developed world.

The prosperity we spent hundreds of years attaining in the western world cannot be achieved overnight in Africa. These silly Live-8 celebrities seem to think that the correct approach is to use their celebrity status to soak us all for billions of dollars. They are mistaken. Not only is the approach shameful, it will not have the desired effect. If these people really cared about this problem, they would attack it at its source — and do it using their own personal fortunes, not our hard earned money.