Author Archives: Brad Warbiany

Brad’s Smoking and Bare-Knuckle Boxing Emporium!

If you’ve been keeping up with things, you’ll have noticed that smoking bans have become the new (old) debate. Columnist Bill Fergusen explains why a libertarian can support such bans:

That’s why this libertarian supports efforts to restrict smoking in public places not clearly designated as smoking zones. Smokers should have the right to smoke, and I should have the right to breathe clean air. That means no smoking in generally accessible areas like workplaces, restaurants, and stores, except in clearly designated, and separately ventilated, areas.

Well, this has garnered some attention for Fergusen, which was probably his intent. Of course, more type is being spent asking whether he’s really a libertarian than anything else. Stephen van Dyke takes issue with this, Sean Lynch of Catallarchy responded that fighting smoking bans should be about #258 on a libertarian to-do list, and Atlas Blogged suggested that the smoking bans should be a libertarian litmus test.

Now, I’ve posted on smoking bans before, and there’s rarely more to be said. But this comment to the post at Atlas Blogged really got to me:

My perspective then, since I believe that secondhand smoke is harmful, is that a smoker should be allowed to harm themselves but should not be allowed to harm others.

No one is allowed to randomly throw knives in a restaurant, because that’s harmful. No one should be allowed to fill the room with smoke that others have no choice but to breathe, because that’s harmful.

You might say, “You do have a choice. Leave if you don’t like it.” Then I should also just leave if I don’t like someone throwing knives. But I don’t have to worry about knives, because it’s illegal for people to throw knives in restaurants. I shouldn’t have to worry about breathing secondhand smoke in restaurants either.

The only reason the analogy may sound absurd is because you don’t believe that secondhand smoke is harmful. Get hit by a knife, you see the immediate and obvious damage. Inhale a lungful of secondhand smoke and you don’t see immediate damage, but it’s happening nonetheless (albeit much more slowly than a direct hit from a flying knife).

Should a restaurant be free to allow smokers to smoke throughout their building? On the surface, it seems the answer should be “yes.” But should they also be free to allow knife-throwing inside as long as they post a sign on the front door that reads “Knife-throwing Allowed”? No.

I think there’s another problem with that analogy. To go on with the “your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose”, what if I wanted to start my own little “Fight Club”. I buy a little store, set up a boxing ring, and everyone who wants can come in and get into a fistfight.

Assault is illegal. But if I have consenting adults fighting in my ring, are anyones rights being violated? And if so, how is the sport of boxing (or football, or any other contact sport) any different? It’s true, it might not be knife-throwing, but I think there’s undoubtedly be the occasional injury in my “Fight Club”. And the normal rules, if I remember the movie correctly, is that you come to “Fight Club”, you fight; there are no spectators.

Now, would it be fair for me to wait until someone randomly walks into my store to ask for directions, and haul off and jack them in the face? Of course not. They haven’t consented to such behavior. And the knife-throwing (or smoking) analogy fits, if someone must be exposed to that before they have the ability to withhold their consent, but that’s a pretty minor issue in the long run, at least with the smoking part.

I agree with Atlas Blogged, this makes a great litmus test for libertarians. A libertarian can support smoking bans in places like hospitals, perhaps government buildings, places where you have no choice but to consent or not consent. But I don’t see any way to logically allow smoking bans in places like restaurants, bars, workplaces, etc that people can choose whether or not to attend.

The Legitimacy of Government

(This is part two of the discussion I started Sunday with Constitutions: Why the EU Will Fail.)

On Sunday, I discussed the various ways in which Constitutions can be written to describe a government. Specifically, I discussed the American Constitution, which is a document which we are mostly able to agree forms a strong foundation for the government we would like to live under, and thus considered by most Americans to uphold a government that we consider legitimate. At the same time, the proposed EU Constitution is a convoluted mess of indecipherable legalese, trampling on what its member nations consider to be their own sovereignty. In short, they do not see the rule imposed by the EU Constitution as legitimate, and have thus voted against it.

But what makes a government legitimate? It is not simply a Constitution, although that can be a very important part. The British consider their government legitimate, although there is no single written Constitution. They consider their Constitution to be the amalgam of common law, Parliamentary acts, and judicial tradition. Earlier tribal societies likewise had no written Constitution, but yet considered their governing rules to be legitimate.

Whether or not a government is legitimate rests on one very simple basis: whether the overwhelming majority of people living under that government recognizes its legitimacy.

In the middle of the 18th Century, the American colonists were increasingly feeling as if the British crown was ignoring their rights as Englishmen. They were heirs of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, and yet the King was increasingly infringing upon their affairs with taxes and regulations that they considered onerous. In short, the King and Parliament were treating the colonists as if they were subordinate to Englishmen, not as if they were Englishmen.

Now, at the time, it is not that Americans though taxation was illegitimate. Americans were not searching for anarchy, they were searching for a just, legitimate government that respected and protected their natural rights. They didn’t object to taxation, they objected to taxation without representation. They didn’t object to being under the rule of a government, but they objected to the arbitrary rule of men.

The situation of the Americans under British rule really wasn’t all that bad. America was a frontier, where many of the edicts of the British couldn’t reliably be enforced. The taxation of the Crown was nowhere near the levels of taxation in almost any major nation. But the colonists rebelled against one of the world’s two superpowers, barely winning independence, because they refused to live under a government they considered to be illegitimate.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years, and look across the globe to Iraq. Much like the American colonists who wouldn’t submit to British rule, the Iraqis of today won’t submit to American rule. It doesn’t matter whether that rule is better for them than things were under Saddam. It doesn’t matter if we were to set up the means to ensure that they’d have a Bill of Rights protecting the very same freedoms that we have here in the United States. To the Iraqis, we are, and always will be, an occupation force. And as long as they perceive themselves as living under foreign rule, that rule will be considered illegitimate, no matter how well-intentioned.

For us to succeed in Iraq, the Iraqis cannot see the endgame as America’s success. For the Iraqis to consider the government they live under to be legitimate, they must see it as an Iraqi government, not an American government. It’s a dangerous razor-blade we must walk. We must constantly show that we are turning over government and security to the Iraqis, but we cannot do so before they’re ready, as the power vacuum will be filled by the terrorists and insurgents. The Iraqi people won’t consider the rule of people like the now-neutralized Zarqawi to be legitimate, but tyrants often take power, and the Iraqi people may have little to say in the matter.

So that brings us to a major point. Governments must have certain aspects to be considered legitimate. The experience of both the American revolution and the Iraqi occupation show us that a government, to succeed, must be accountable to its citizens. Governments who are not accountable can only preserve their place– as we saw in the Soviet Union or Iraq under Saddam, and as the British attempted– by force.

And that forces us to look at our own government. When the notreason folks ask us minarchists and classical liberals where our own government draws its legitimacy, we tell them that it draws its legitimacy from the fact that the vast majority of our populace has agreed that it is legitimate. While that doesn’t mean that the social contract is something every individual agreed to, it does mean that if they are to damage that legitimacy, they must convince a critical mass large enough to get the rest of the majority to doubt the legitimacy. Once that doubt is there, their job is half won.

But it cuts both ways. We classical liberals ask why it’s legitimate that our government should have an income tax, or why it should allow things like Kelo to stand. We ask why our government has the authority to replace our private charities with their own distribution of our tax dollars, or why our government thinks it is their responsibility to control education, or health care, or the stock market, or anything else they’re shoving their grubby hands in.

Why is it legitimate? Because our populace largely believes it is. While we classical liberals expect our government to live within the means provided in the Constitution, the majority asks for bread and circuses, and act as enablers for the power over which the statists lust. Our government has been accountable to those who demand more government.

But times are changing. I believe that recent approval ratings for our Congress show that the majority are starting to believe that the government is becoming increasingly unaccountable. They see that government has become accountable to furthering its own power and to satisfying the wants of special interests– not of helping ordinary citizens. And as information and media are increasingly dominated not by big interests, but by individuals, I think that feeling of unaccountability will increase.

In my estimation, we’re on a tipping point in society. The feeling of ordinary Americans in the legitimacy of their government is failing. While they ask their government to protect them from terrorists, the government is arguing ceaselessly over gay marriage and flag desecration. And as we fight against this stupidity, I am reminded of something. History isn’t written by the majority, it is written by small groups able to sway opinion. This is as true today as it was when Samuel Adams suggested it 2 centuries ago:

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.

The American people all revere the Constitution, but cracks are forming in the government that has grown out of control and exceeded the specifications that document lay out. Those cracks aren’t simply in its ability to do its job, but they are cracks in the publics belief in the legitimacy of that government to continue to exist. How do classical liberals and minarchists make changes? We don’t need to dynamite the structure. A few well-placed stresses with crowbars will open those cracks up and bring the whole thing down. The revolutionaries had pamphlets, and we have blogs. Both are proverbial crowbars, and they’re working better every day.

Constitutions: Why the EU Will Fail

This will be part one of a two-part post (part 2 is here), discussing the legitimacy of government. In all senses, government is intended as a voluntary social contract in which citizens give power to the government in exchange for protection of rights. In the case of modern government, this is typically done with a Constitution.

But what goes into the making of a Constitution? What determines whether a Constitution will be successful or unsuccessful? To help illustrate, let’s look at two examples.

First, the United States Constitution. We, as Americans, look back upon this document as if it was holy writ, with the virtues of all that is good in the world shining down upon the Founding Fathers as they wrote this document. And, in many ways, when you see the incredible speed and stability with which America has found her place as the leader of the free world, you glorify those Founding Fathers as if the document itself is perfect.

But is it? Ben Franklin didn’t entirely think so:

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

As I’ve pointed out before, the men who founded our country were not perfect, nor did they expect government to be perfect. Nor, then, do they necessarily think the document they were creating was perfect. It is well known that at the time of the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the creation of the Constitution, that many of its proponents had a moral qualm with slavery. How a document asserting that all men were endowed by their creater with the right of Liberty be drafted in a place where slavery was practiced? How could we have an official Constitution which declared some human beings only 3/5ths equal? Even a slaveowner like Thomas Jefferson understood the hypocrisy of declaring all men equal while holding some in bondage. But to create the best document and best government they could, they had to make compromises. And they left open the amendment process, to fix their unfortunate compromises in the future.

I look at the United States Constitution as the foundation for a house. When you build a house, you don’t need a foundation that drives 100 feet into the soil. Nor do you need 3-foot thick concrete walls to support that house. You look at the reasonable size of the house you’re trying to build, and develop a foundation which will support that house. And in the future, if you want to build an addition, you may need to extend the foundation, which we do through the Amendment process.

If anything, the current problems we have in this country stem from the fact that we have tried to build a house (government) too large for its foundation (Constitution). Instead of understanding this error, and making sure that the Constitution is amended to strengthen that foundation, we have simply started adding weight, completely disregarding the Constitution. As such, that foundation we started with is crumbling, and threatens to take the entire structure with it.

Our Constitution, while not perfect, gives a very strong foundation for the sort of government the Founders intended, one of limited power and scope. It is not strong enough to support a government that provides cradle-to-grave sustenance, a fact that has been ignored for the last century.

Now, compare this to the Constitution proposed by the EU. I should warn before you click over that it’s a nearly 2-megabyte, 485-page PDF file. 200 pages or so define the EU itself, and then another 200 pages are devoted to protocol related to previous treaties between the member nations. What the United States accomplishes in a document that will fit in a pocket requires a volume for the EU.

If you compare the US Constitution to the foundation for a house, you must then compare the EU constitution to plans designating its floorplan, exterior, and window treatments. In short, you have created something that is nearly impossible to agree upon. While the US Constitution largely defines basic rules of government that are easy to form consensus, the EU asks you to look at an entire house and determine if you like it.

What happened when the French and the Dutch voted “No” on adopting the Constitution? Basically they were saying they prefer a split-level ranch with stucco exterior as their house, and the Constitution was offering them English Tudor. When your constitution moves beyond basic structure of the government, stepping into the realm of minutiae, you’re quickly going to find yourself alienating constituencies that disagree with a bit of minutiae that harms them in particular, even if the rest of the government is to their benefit. And when you have a 485-page Constitution, it’s going to be clear that nobody can even truly understand the whole implications of agreeing to it, which also works against its potential adoption.

However, there is even a more fundamental error. As I pointed out, there are 200 pages of the document devoted to protocol on former treaties of the member nations. This is akin to trying to build your house on a foundation of sand. If the EU wants to write a successful constitution, it must be written not based upon these treaties, but based upon making all these treaties obsolete. What needs to be written is a Constitution that tells the member nations that what the Constitution provides is beneficial to all, and is better than their previous treaties. In addition, it needs to say that these treaties are no longer acceptable, because the rules between members of the union should be decided by the union itself.

The EU is trying to become as powerful as the US, but doesn’t understand that to do so you need to trample on sovereignty a bit. In some ways the United States became successful because our Constitution designed a union that all States must be bound by, and as a part of this Union, did all it could to make travel and commerce between states as easy as possible. The EU is trying to simply codify each nation’s particular rules and protectionist practices.

At the time of the American Constitutional Convention, we had states with largely similar culture, ideals, and goals. The United States Constitution reflects this, setting up a government that each State had general agreement with. In many ways, the United States Constitution tramples on the sovereignty of each individual State, but they did so in a way that the States believed were advantageous to them. The EU has not done so. The EU has taken nations with little common culture, common language, and who each have their own nationalist streak, and tried to form them into a union that doesn’t really do what is required to unite those nations. In honesty, they are forming a treatied alliance, not a Union. And without a solid foundation, they are setting themselves up to fail.

Ditch the UN — Before it’s Too Late

Today in the Washington Post, the suggestion is that we learn from the game for skinny guys who can’t throw, and adapt FIFA practices to the UN:

Though it is difficult to envisage a FIFA-colored bulldozer forcing regime change at the UN, some parts of the organization could certainly benefit by adopting FIFA’s principles, transparency and common vision, and the Beautiful Game’s rules of fair play.

FIFA owes 102 years of success to its emphasis on fair play, which has survived numerous disputes, communism and two world wars. The UN was formed by mostly Christian, industrialized countries after World War II. Like FIFA, it seeks fair play, but in its search for “stability”, has grown and sprawled into multiple organisations. Unlike FIFA, it has lost its focus.

I’ve got a better idea: why not just leave the UN?

In the debates between minarchism and anarchism, there are two common points. The minarchist claims that the anarchist’s society will devolve into totalitarianism and rule by the strong. The anarchist, on the other hand, claims that no matter how well you set up a minarchist society, you will inevitably have sprawling government that infringes on its citizen’s rights.

Thomas Jefferson understood both points very well, when he said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” He knew, and also said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” The natural trend of minarchy is towards statism. And the only way to fight this is to keep statism in check whenever and wherever possible.

Is it not time to do so with the United Nations? All governments tend to accumulate power, and while the UN hasn’t really yet become a true government, it is slowly trending that way. They’re already trying to find ways to lobby direct taxes on member nations, looking to take over control of things such as the internet, and generally trying to be the arbiter of when and where the use of military force is “legal”. Allowed to grow unchecked, the UN will eventually become to the United States what our own federal government is to the individual states of the Union: its master.

When the United Nations was formed, it was largely a puppet of the permanent members of the Security Council, a group who desired world stability. Now it has become a forum for tin-pot dictators to be the tail wagging the dog. It’s a farce, where the UN Human Rights Commission is populated by some of the largest human rights violators in the world. The UN doesn’t serve our purposes any more, and if we don’t watch out, the UN will make sure we serve theirs.

However, we have a chance today to change this course. The United Nations has a crucial flaw, in that it relies on the United States for almost all of it’s military power, a base of operations in New York, and an enormous chunk of its budget. The United States’ withdrawal from the UN, if done soon, could cripple the organization, forcing it to wither in irrelevance.

Every day that we wait, though, the UN grows stronger. If we wait too long, the UN will be strong enough on its own to exist without us, and losing our seat at the table will be a negative. In the 1860’s, we saw what happens when a group tries to break free from a position of weakness, rather than strength. But instead of a group held together to halt such evils as slavery, we will be held in the UN by a group who exalts Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and denigrates freedom and capitalism.

I think that both the anarchist and the minarchist is correct. Anarchism and minarchism both end up somewhere we don’t want to be, although through different methods (and, IMHO, at different rates). We already may be too far down the road to stop the US government, short of expelling the blood of patriots and tyrants. But it’s not too late for the United Nations. Weeds are best defeated before they’re allowed to take root, and the UN is no exception. Let’s uproot them from Turtle Bay, make them pay their parking tickets, and get them on the first plane to Geneva.

A New Paradigm Replacing the Old

The other day, I was visiting der Eidelblogger, who was discussing the rising rents and impending demise of New York’s Flower District. He made an offhand point, about using FTD.com to buy flowers, which got a tad under my skin. I commented on his post, but there’s a lot more to be said.

The best man in my wedding spent several years working for FTD (along with one of it’s subsidiaries, Flowers All Hours). Since we regularly chat about business, and the various business models our companies followed, I have a more-than-rudimentary understanding of how FTD works. Thankfully, he’s moved on to greener pastures, so if I illuminate people as to how their business works, it’s no skin off him.

So let me make sure everyone, off the bat, understands one thing. FTD doesn’t sell flowers. They don’t make flower arrangements, they don’t deliver flowers, and they don’t own any flower shops. They are only one thing: an order fulfillment service.

FTD is a network. They work with individual florists, and when someone from, say, Massachusetts wants to send flowers to a friend in California, they contact FTD. FTD takes their credit card info, for a $50 arrangement, tacks on $10-20 in fees, plus a $10 delivery fee, and sends the order to one of the florists in their network. They don’t particularly care if the florist is wonderful or simply adequate, they’re just looking to pass along an order and get their commission. As a consumer, you’re getting a $50 arrangement for $80, but since you don’t know the florists in California, you know you’re getting an adequate product, but without having to know the reputation of the florist you’re working with. Of course, FTD constantly has to monitor their florists to make sure they don’t short their orders, since it’s rare that someone who’s receiving flowers knows the difference between a $40 and $50 arrangement. And the individual florists have ample reason to try to game the system, because they’re spending boatloads of money to be a member of the FTD network, and want to ensure it generates a positive cash flow.

Well, that business model may have made sense a few years ago, but with new information, it’s much better to simply cut out the middleman. Why use FTD, for example, when you have CitySearch? Instead of placing an order for adequate flowers using FTD, knowing for a fact that I’m being overcharged, a quick search of local florists on CitySearch can provide reviews, ratings, and an assurance that other consumers have been happy with that florist’s products. I know that instead of the adequate, overpriced arrangement I might get through FTD, I’m likely to get a spectacular and properly-priced arrangement from a florist that is trying to impress a potential repeat customer.

Five years ago, before the internet had reached its current level, FTD was an indispensible tool in sending flowers to someone across the country. Now, it’s a wasteful middleman who serves no purpose. It will take a couple years for that message to reach down to the average person like me, who– without having a friend in the business– wouldn’t have had a clue about the flower industry, but it is something that can easily change over time.

But flowers are just one facet. To see where the flower industry might end up in several years, we should look at the current travel industry. 10 years ago, if you wanted to go on vacation with your family, you’d look around for the best travel agent in your area, set up an appointment, and let the travel agent book and organize your trip. These days, however, I doubt that a single one of the readers of this blog has done so for a trip they’ve made in the last year. If they have chosen to do that, I’ll bet they’ve looked back on it with at least a small bit of regret, assuming they’ve actually done some research on their own since.

Years ago, the only way that someone could reasonably keep on top of travel deals and knowledge of destinations would be to make it a full-time job. Travel agents were a necessary middleman in the business. If I wanted to travel to, say, Montreal, I could look around at the library and bookstores for Montreal travel guides. I could call around to all the airlines to find who had the best fares, call all over the place for the best hotel deals, and then call all around to find out the best rental cars. I might spend several days compiling all this information before making a decision. Or, I could simply pay a travel agent a small fee to take care of it. I may spend a small amount of time talking to friends and coworkers to find a reputable agent, but beyond that, it’s just not worth it to do the rest of the research on my own.

These days, though, all the information a travel agent has is at my fingertips. I have a host of different web sites I can use to find the best airfare, car rental, and hotel deals, complete with pictures, ratings and reviews, and much more information than a travel agent of 10 years ago could have dreamt of. To say that the internet has empowered individuals is the only apt description, because it has given laymen the power that only professionals once had.

This scenario is being played out in far more places. Nobody needs a Zagat guide when they have a myriad of sites for restaurant reviews. Purchasing maps is slowly phasing out, with the advent of online point-to-point directions and the lower costs of GPS navigation systems. Even such things as retailing are feeling the pinch, as a greater number of items are being offered online, and a greater number of people are self-selling items through services such as eBay. The old paradigm, where local businesses acted as gatekeepers to information, is imploding. Information is both expanding and becoming more accessible at an ever-increasing rate, to the point where the cost of information– in many areas– is simply zero.

Does that mean that travel agents and FTD will disappear in the near future? No. Travel agents are still more efficient at booking vacations for large groups than the internet. For example, my company is doing a trip later this year, and to pile the work of organizing dozens of people strewn all over the country to get them to the destination onto one admin is absolutely insane. For the moment, at least, those sorts of arrangements work better with someone who is used to arranging group discounts and group trips. Likewise, for the moment, the ease of FTD is still preferable, to most people, than the hassle of searching CitySearch to find a highly-rated florist who can provide a great product, regardless of the cost savings which might follow.

But these things are changing. Just as travel agents for personal vacations and the Zagat guide are simply obsolete, services like FTD will become so soon. The world is changing quickly, and the only way to prosper is to see which way it’s headed.

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