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| Courtesy of FEE.org |
It is better to know some of the questions
than all of the answers.
James Thurber
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
“I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!” -—William T. Sherman, to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy (19 June 1879)It does not surprise me that "Chickenhawk" Obama is willing to intervene in yet another country's civil war; but whatever happened to "progressive" talking points about creating terrorists from collateral damage from American weapons?
Kudos to Diana Nyad, Completing Her Long-Sought Swimming Goal (US-Cuba)
64 years old; what an individual achievement!
On the Symbiosis of Labor and Capital
Oddly, one of my most referenced posts over the past 2-3 years was last year's Labor Day post. I embedded an FEE image, just like above. Perhaps it was viewed as an anti-union perspective. Let us be clear: as with other libertarians, I approve of voluntary labor organizations; what I don't like is the granting of anti-competitive government protections (e.g., of labor monopolies), including forced unionism, where union leaders or majority taxes a worker's wages and uses that money (e.g., for the union bureaucracy, political purposes, etc.) without regard to the worker's own preferences.
I particularly have issues with public sector unions, where there is a direct conflict of interest between unions and taxpayers; public sector administrators often find their hands tied by arcane work rules in trying to manage costs. I summarized a number of examples during the Gov. Walker (R-WI) union reform measures: e.g., semiskilled workers drawing six-figure compensation.
It's difficult to give a full flavor, but to give some minor examples, I remember while at UWM having to wait days to get a burned out overhead office light replaced, and I once volunteered to help (along with other faculty members) to move a few items between rooms: somehow the union found out and basically charged, for their own pockets, a high fee plus penalty for the effort. There were times when I had to deal with abusive administrators violating due process that I sometimes wished I had someone to represent my interests, but I could never tolerate protecting another professor, say, whom had engaged in sexual misconduct with students and was placed on paid leave.
And that's a key point to my nuanced perspective: when you look at attrition rates, they are much lower in the public sector than in the private sector. There's a reason why some of my relatives had to wait months, even years, to get a shot at "underpaid" government employment. And, not to be provocative, but I have met government workers on almost every contract whom were grossly incompetent and whom I would never recruit for any position in the private sector; it is no accident Reagan allegedly said, "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."
What I gain from my labor efforts is my property, and when I invest that property or capital in a company, I am expressing my confidence in the company as a profitably going concern.
Cato Event, "After the Arguments: What’s Next for Marriage Equality?": Thumbs DOWN!
First of all, I realize that this presentation is a few months old, and in fact SCOTUS published its relevant opinions several weeks back. But I only become aware of the event podcasts a few weeks back and have been working my way through a backlog. I knew enough about Cato Institute's pro-gay "marriage" viewpoint, with which I strongly disagree, that I would not care much for their familiar talking points and discussion, but I often read or listen to what the other side is saying. (In fact, I often understand their arguments better than they do.) It's part of my own discipline.
Familiar readers know that I have a research interest in measuring IT attitudes and beliefs. There was a famous computer user satisfaction measure published in the relatively prestigious CACM in the early 1980's by a couple of U Minn. graduates and an NYU colleague, based off an earlier measure in an Arizona State dissertation, later summarized in Management Science (also prestigious). I had done some cursory critiques of the research papers during doctoral seminars, but it really wasn't until I got into the nuts and bolts of designing my own measure (of a different construct) that I realized that the methodology was crap. You need to understand, I didn't start out with the idea of attacking the research; it was far easier to defend my own research if I emulated a methodology that had the implicit imprimatur of two reputable journals. But on the way of developing my own measure I read literally hundreds, if not thousands of articles in applied psychology and other reference disciplines, and the original researcher's arguments were definitely idiosyncratic and unconvincing. I felt like the boy whom noticed the emperor was wearing no clothes. Still, I realized as a young researcher without established bona fides it would be a heavy lift criticizing the work of senior academics, never mind scores of MIS academics using a variation of the measure in their own research. I did write more of a research note on this and other methodological concerns (my real intent was to spark a healthy debate; I was particularly concerned about academics using the measure without a published critical appraisal) but was not really surprised when the reviewers resorted to ad hominem attacks in rejecting the paper. You can't take it too personally; academics need a bit of a thick skin.
It takes discipline to let an opponent have his or her say. Democrats like Wasserman-Schultz are notorious for interrupting and talking over an opponent, whom patiently let her have her initial say without interruption. Still, Mary Bonauto was so over-the-top (in my opinion) obnoxious, mocking traditionalists, that it bordered on unprofessional behavior.
I will try not to be overly judgmental or constantly repeat the same points I've made in prior posts. First, there is the hyping of polls; let's point out 31 states have rejected liberalized (non-traditional) marriage laws; I don't see those being reversed at the polls in the near future. In the case of MD, out-of-state residents may not realize that the Democrats own the legislature and the governor's mansion, which had already passed "gay" marriage legislation into law. Traditionalists forced the matter onto the ballot--and it barely won a majority, even though traditionalists were vastly outspent and the pro-gay side was misleadingly presenting the issue as a referendum on religious liberty. The Cato analysts can put as much lipstick as they want on this pig, but I never saw even one gay couple featured in any of the ads I saw. Others falsely implied that traditionalists were trying to ban gay relationships.
As to whether some Republicans crossed over, this is hardly one of the top issues for Republican voters (in fact, Republicans include a number of pro-abortion choice voters), a lot of libertarians will vote Republican, and Maryland Republicans are hardly representative of the national GOP membership. And even though black voters support traditional marriage, you don't hear ominous warnings about the Dems' losing the black vote over the issue. I have thought it's odd that Cato has been stressing popularity on a rights issue (and don't get me started on the methodology of the polls); I think the real story is that they feel SCOTUS will issue a more definitive ruling when they feel most Americans are behind the issue. I wouldn't hold my breath; I think the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
Now let's deal with Ms. Bonauto's sneering polemics against traditionalists and the argument of procreation. She thinks Justice Kagan was "clever" by pointing out older couples (past the age of menopause) can't procreate. Let me once again point out the obvious: marriage is the socially normative context for procreation and family. Even in my schoolboy days, I knew that calling someone a "bastard" was considered an insult. Gender differences are a necessary but insufficient basis for procreation: both partners must also be fertile. But 'family' goes beyond personal fertility: it can also include stepchildren (e.g., marrying a widow) or raising grandchildren.
The problem I have with the Cato Institute and other libertarians on this issue is they are going beyond advocating non-interference in consensual adult relationships. Traditional marriage is not some arbitrary institution that was created de novo by the state to discriminate against gays in the 1990's. It was the law in each state from the start; it is an institution that has spanned thousands of years across nations and cultures. And I want to point out it's not a ban against gay "marriage" any more than it is a ban on polygamy, adult-child marriages, etc. I think DOMA was devised mostly to defend traditional state regulation of marriage. It should not have been an issue if the courts were not activist and respected the tenth amendment.
That being said, I would not currently support an amendment to trump state regulations on the issue and I would prefer that the Feds get out of the marriage business.
Political Cartoon
re: Obama's Syria policy....
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and IBD |
Martha & the Vandellas, "Heatwave"
