Author Archives: tarran

Green Mountain Senate Punishes Utility For Producing Too Much Green Energy

I stumbled across this little tempest in a tea-pot going up in Vermont. I have a lot of affection for the state – away from the cities, they are a pretty self-reliant, likeable people. Plus, the manager of this fine store tried to sell me a rifle when I was 12 years old (my parents, being fanatical supporters of victim disarmament, refused his offer).

Vermont politics is pretty distressing, since it is in many ways a very socialist state. I won’t go into all the reasons (especially since I don’t understand them all), but it is a bizarre result of New Yorkers in the cities interacting with locals who are xenophobic about outsiders.

This article highlights one of those bizarre situations. There is a nuclear power plant in Vermont. Like all nuclear power plants, it is the product of the political economy, simultaneously subsidized and taxed by various governmental agencies, its fortunes weakly coupled with the free-market.

Recently the state senate was considering an attempt to make Vermont more “green”. In effect, some state senators feel that their neighbors use too much energy, and want to stop them. Rather than going after the consumers, though, they want to make it more expensive for everyone to purchase electricity. So, they want to tax energy producers.

Of course, telling people who live through the cold winters of Vermont that they should use less heat and light might get those people angry at the senators. The senators, though, decided to use an old political trick, one which can get people to support policies that harm them directly. They fan feelings of jealousy and envy: » Read more

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

Jail, … Huh! … What Is It Good For?

A recent Boston Globe article caught my eye: “Correction system ‘mess’ held inmates past their time – Man imprisoned four years too long”

Now, this story is a pretty sad one. A man suffering from schizophrenia is sentenced to 30 years in jail for various assaults, is released on parole, re-arrested for drug possession, released again, rearrested again etc. As a result of his bouncing in and out of parole, and an out of date algorithm in the computer systems used to calculate sentences, he serves 12 years instead of 8 (if I read the article correctly).

Now, it is tempting to go off on a anti-state rant about the indifference of state officials to doing their jobs properly. It is also tempting to attack the drug war in that, as best I can, tell he never actually harmed anyone to prompt his rearrests; he is in jail for a political crime, collateral damage of the War on Some Drugs. It was allegedly stated that he was also wanting to get in contact with a Santa Ana Bail Bonds service to be released from jail, and arrange his defense accordingly before his time comes to reappear again in court.

However, I have a more fundamental question: why do we bother with jails anyway? After all, it was an arcane court ruling that changed how sentences should be calculated. If he had never been on parole, or if the court had never made that ruling, the jail time he had served would have been “correct” and there would have been no scandal. This sad man would not have a lawyer preparing the inevitable law-suit. He would be facing a life of poverty, mental illness and probable future arrest or involuntary commitment during his periodic psychotic episodes, and the Boston Globe would not devote tens of inches of precious column space detailing his life. Sometimes people even get wrongly convicted or get double the jail time they deserve. If this has happened to you then you may want to contact someone like this philadelphia criminal lawyer for legal help.

My question is, what purpose did those extra four years in jail serve? Did they make him a better citizen? Probably not. Did they somehow reimburse his victims for those crimes committed two decades ago? No. Who, other than the prison guards employed at tax-payer expense to restrain him, actually benefitted?

Up until a few hundred years ago, prisons were comparatively rare, and people rarely were imprisoned for more than a few months at a time (prior to the 19th century, prisoners were so poorly treated than surviving more than a year of confinement was pretty much impossible – one of my ancestors apparently lasted less than 6 months on a British prison ship in the early 1800’s). Most crimes were punished either by execution, corporal punishment, public shaming or fines.

The modern prison or penitentiary is the product of an idea that criminals could be reformed by establishing a conducive environment. They would be locked up alone so that they were insulated from corrupting influences or temptations for wrongdoing. They would be fed and well cared for so that they were not distracted by physical distress. And, they would be handed nothing but a Bible to read. Their boredom would lead them to read God’s word, and thus open their hearts to redemption. This idea was so attractive that it was rapidly adopted throughought the western world in the 19th century. Certainly it was more civilized than lashing a prisoner in front of a jeering mob.

However, the modern reader will recognize that prisons do not have this effect. I doubt you can find anyone arguing that a modern supermax prison does anything to civilize people. A longer jail term does not lead to more godly behavior. To the contrary, prisoners are routinely hardened, learn new tricks from fellow inmates and have a better than even chance of landing behind bars again. So why do we bother with jails?

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

Review: The Production of Security – Part 1

The seminal work of free-market anarchism is commonly held to be Gustave di Molinari’s The Production of Security. This document was one of the many great analyses of free-market economics to come out of France during the first half of the 19th century, and questioned the truth of the fundamental belief that

… to secure [their rights], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed (1)

The essay is broken into the following segments:

I – The Natural Order of Society
II – Competition in Security
III – Security an Exception?
IV – The Alternatives
V – Monopoly and Communism
VI – The Monopolization and Collectivization of the Security Industry
VII – Government and Society
VIII – The Divine Right of Kings and Majorities
IX – The Regime of Terror
X The Free Market for Security

This is a fairly long essay, written in a different era, in a different language. Thus even the best translations can require a great deal of effort to read. However, I think it is a useful essay to walk through. Since it is so long and so radical, I thought I would break the document into little chunks and provide commentaries on one chunk at a time. This post will be a commentary on the first two sections, “The Natural Order of Society” and “Competition in Security” » Read more

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

Were the Federalists Really Lying?

Lew Rockwell has an interesting essay in the American Conservative:

Maybe the authors of the Federalist Papers were liars. Maybe they were just engaged in political propaganda in order to shove through the Constitution. In secret, perhaps, they were plotting a Leviathan state with a president who can do all that the Bush administration claims he can, which pretty much amounts to whatever Bush wants to do.

If that was the case, they knew better than to advertise it. The Constitution would never have passed. Fear of a powerful president was one of the main reasons that people were fearful of abandoning the Articles of Confederation, which had no executive to speak of.

In any case, this book by Yoo dismisses the whole of what Hamilton says in Federalist 69 as “rhetorical excess.” And an article in the Boston Globe quotes him as saying that “Fed 69 should not be read for more than what it is worth.” Why? Because all presidents since FDR have used the imaginary war power to do their dirty tricks.

This is an interesting argument. It says that because some tyrants have violated the Constitution, all presidents should presume the right to be tyrants in the manner in which the Constitution’s framers tried to guard against. Now if some intellectuals set out to say that the Constitution is really just a myth, that our past doesn’t matter, that the founders’ intentions are irrelevant, that the rule of law is and should be a dead letter, that would be one thing. We would be back to the fundamental debate of liberty versus despotism.

what if the authors of the Federalist Papers were liars? This is not as crazy a theory as it might sound. Patrick Henry believed that they were, which is why he opposed the Constitution to begin with. It was too much of a risk, he said, to create any sort of president: “If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute!”

Patrick Henry lost the debate because enough people believed that Hamilton was sincere in his promises and that the president would be restrained. So let us be clear about what the advocates of executive rule are really saying. They are saying things that if they had been said to that founding generation of Americans would have prevented the Constitution from ever being passed. But it did pass. So until we can restore the Articles, let’s live up to the Constitution, and stop the dissembling, especially in the name of “conservatism.”

Worth reading in its entirety.

This matter goes to the heart of a fundamental debate that I really wish would become the centerpiece of the next election cycle. The Bush administration’s doctrine seems to be based on the old Roman model of the Dictator. In times of crisis, the senate would appoint a dictator who would run the state until the crisis was passed. he could seize goods, order armies about, issue or suspend laws, etc. The dictator was expected to relinquish power once the crisis was past, and his term was initially limited to a mere 6 months.

Practically speaking, this system did not work out so well. As the Roman Republic politically disintegrated the office was increasingly abused. After repeatedly appointing Julius Caesar as dictator, eventually the Senate appointed him dictator for life. This marked the last breath of the Roman Republic, and the birth of the Roman Empire.

It is tempting in times of crisis to embrace a strongman, a man who will have the vision and power to right wrongs and defend the community for internal or external attack. Given the power to violently expropriate goods with impunity, to force the members of the community to labor according to his will, only the strong-man’s conscience and wisdom restrain him from harming those in his power. If he is both wise and has a strong aversion to hurting people, the community can survive such a man. If, on the other hand he is unwise, or bloodthirsty, or simply uncaring he can destroy not only the society but kill thousands or millions of people.

Today, the dominant political arguments seem focused on what decrees a strong leader should make to solve the crises of the world. All to often the necessary debates to whether a strong leader is even necessary are so muted, that most people are not even aware of their existence.

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

The W-88? That’s perfect for home defense.

Often when I discuss victim disarmament gun control with its supporters, I am confronted with the question. “Do you think we should allow people to own machine guns, F-16’s or even nuclear weapons?”

I always answer “Yes, of course”. To me, the question is not how deadly the weapon, but how its owner wishes to use it. If someone wants to waste their time and money building a superweapon that they will then use peaceably, or just admire in a glass case, it is no skin off my nose. After all, so long as they don’t attack other people with them or damage other people’s property, they have a perfect right to enjoy themselves however they wish.

Are there people who wish to own F-16’s and nuclear weapons so that they can kill people? Definitely – members of the Armed Services Committees in Congress, for example. But, without tax-payer funds how many of them could really afford to commission such weapons? Even with economies of scale, an F-16 costs something like $10,000,000 to build and about $5,000 per hour in fuel and maintenance to fly. Additionally, firing the weapons systems can cost up to $1,000,000 per sortie. If forced to work productively to earn their keep, how many of people would have the free time to design, build and practice with such weapons? How many of them would settle for the reduced mayhem of a cruise missile when they can kill a larger number of people with a cheaper and more reliable low-tech truck-bomb made out of fertilizer?

Let us be realistic: without government demand for them, I don’t think nuclear weapons or even F-16’s would exist. They are expensive to build, and of limited use. They require a significant amount of industrial infrastructure, including hundreds of factories,hundreds of engineers, and thousands of workers to build, maintain and support them. In the absence of significant consumer demand for these superweapons, all those resources would be invested in other more profitable ventures, like the flying cars we were supposed to get by the year 2000.

I honestly think the legality of the ownership of squad weapons or fighter jets or ICBMs is irrelevant. A dedicated, would-be mass murderer will have an easier time killing a bunch of people with rifles, hand-guns or homemade bombs than with an F-16. It is far better that we allow these weapons to fail on the market place than to outlaw their ownership.

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
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