Stop Saying “Drug Violence”
Drug Policy, Police Statism, Political Correctness, Victimless CrimesStop Saying “Drug Violence” Read Post »
Should Marriage Licenses Be Restricted to Heterosexuals?
Corporatism, Libertarian Theory, Nanny Statism, Political CorrectnessOne of the hot button issues in recent years has been gay marriage. Socially conservative people may well object to calling a gay union “marriage. That is, of course, completely understandable. Marriage and religion have been closely intertwined, and the most popular religions in the world today do not generally regard a same sex union as a marriage. I was considering the various positions taken by libertarians on gay marriage. I have seen opinions from libertarians that marriage licenses should not be issued to gays because a state marriage license enables aggression against third parties. That is true. Also, some, such as Stephan Kinsella, argue that it is a good that gays get the legal protections which come with a marriage license.
Second bests are divisive issues for libertarians. We all wish for the state to leave people alone, but we are all too painfully aware that it frequently does not, and that there are political debates raging around us where policies are promoted which have real world consequences for us all. Many of us seek to minimize the harmful effects of these policies by stating a preference of one over the other. Such is the case with gay marriage. Libertarians of varying stripes, mutualists, paleolibertarians, anarcho-capitalists, all agree that the state should get out of the way and not interfere with free interactions among people. Yet different ideologies among libertarians often cause us to differ wildly on what state policy we would prefer, from the likely choices being supported by the public.
I have long been of the opinion that state licensing should be extended to the point that it is meaningless. However, a license which allows aggression against others should give any libertarian pause. In order to consider the problem more effectively, I did a thought experiment involving a much more severe form of aggression than those normally associated with a marriage license: murder.
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Should Marriage Licenses Be Restricted to Heterosexuals? Read Post »
Ecofascism in the Name of Fending Off Ecofascism
Corporatism, Democracy, Environment, Nanny Statism, The Left, Totalitarianism, Vulgar PoliticsMicah White at The Guardian writes of the growing danger of ecofascism or environmental authoritarianism. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock and Pentti Linkola, want to put democracy on hold and/or return humanity world-wide to a primitive state of existence in order to combat global warming. Ironically, his proposal to fend off this growing danger is itself an example of the very thing he fears, though perhaps his proposal is motivated not entirely by environmental concerns but also by an independent dislike of consumerism.
White’s solution is to end the culture of rampant consumerism in the West. How does he propose to do this? Ah, now there’s the rub.
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A Reprieve from Bureaucrats
Nanny StatismOur friend Fester writes:
The other day a friend on Facebook commented on the show “Hoarders”. In this show they have a psychologist and a junk clean up crew come into a house and clean it up. She was upset because she did not feel as if the crew helped the people they cleaned up because they only spend about a week at the house and she didn’t feel like this was enough time to address the deep psychological issues these people have.
While I agree that these people probably have mental issues that are not being addressed by the show, if you watch the show you will notice that almost all of the people who ask to go on the show have a legal issue surrounding the hoarding. These people are being pursued by code enforcement officers, by child protective services, by fire marshals, etc. They may not be getting the psychological help they need, but they are getting a reprieve from the evil government officials who would kick these people out of their homes, or steal their children away from them, etc. It may only be temporary, but if it gives them another year of peace from the bureaucrats then the show is doing a good service to these people.
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Mileposts on Environmentalism’s Road to Hell
Environment, Nanny Statism
Will there come a time when firefighters have to consider saving an endangered species over someone’s home? One wonders:
Lost in the images of aircraft dropping giant red plumes of retardant on a Colorado wildfire this week is the fact that the practice may not be legal under federal environmental laws.
A federal judge in July declared that the government’s current plan for dropping retardant on fires is illegal, and he gave the U.S. Forest Service until the end of next year to find a more environmentally friendly alternative.
The issue appears to hinge more on how the retardant is used than on the retardant itself, but when human lives and property are on the line, should it matter at all if some fish and plants are put at risk? Plants grow back and waterways recover, even from the worst disasters. People’s lives and homes aren’t so easy to reassemble.
Then we have the Federal government’s futile attempts to spark the “green economy”, which has succeeded primarily in shipping jobs overseas (h/t Jeffrey Tucker):
The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s….
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
Bastiat weeps! Of course the unintended consequences are never considered by policy makers when The Future of Civilization is at stake (or at least when cheap political points can be scored). A few hundred people’s livelihoods, consumers’ freedom of choice: small sacrifices on the environmentalists’ altar. Maybe Mother Earth will thank us in a few million years.
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