How the State Corrupts Religion

Statism
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MSNBC reports on the horrifying death of a two year old. The child apparently died of starvation. This is a good example of why separating the church and state, just as separating everything else and state, is so important. The separation of church and state benefits the church more than it benefits the state. States with close ties to religion do not suffer; the religious organizations which ally themselves with the state do. They begin to take on the characteristics of the state: the lack of accountability, the lack of personal involvement in the lives of people they supposedly serve.

The lack of a genuine personal relationship? The lack of attention to detail? That does not sound like Christianity as I am familiar with it. That sounds like government as I am familiar with it. When religion and state wed, religious practice gives way to state practice, not the other way around. You do not see government unionized workers selling their worldly possessions and working to serve the poor, but you do see people ignoring their own religious tenets in order to qualify for government funds.

Involving the state in charity destroys much of the value of that charity in that it radically alters the incentives of the charity workers. It basically transforms them from philanthropists into government employees, and people like Quasir Alexander suffer for it.

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At What Point Does a Scholarship Athlete Own Anything?

Articles, Business, Corporatism, Libertarian Theory, Political Correctness, Pop Culture, Statism
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“Pryor and four teammates were suspended Thursday by the NCAA for the first five games of next season for selling championship rings, jerseys and awards. They also received improper benefits — from up to two years ago — from the tattoo parlor and its owner.”

~ Article at ESPN.com

The situations of Ohio State University Quarterback Terrelle Pryor, leading rusher Dan Herron, No. 2 wide receiver DeVier Posey, All-Big Ten offensive tackle Mike Adams and backup defensive end Solomon Thomas should be pretty well known to the sports fans in our studio audience.  The sports airwaves have been chock-full with commentary on it for the last few days.  From a sports reporting standpoint, the coverage has often been quite good and pretty far ranging.  ESPN generally, and Pat Forde and Adam Rittenberg specifically, have covered the issue and the rather obvious duplicity of the NCAA in some detail.  For the overarching view of the issues, I recommend those columns.  To get an impression of my view of the duplicity of the NCAA, I highly recommend this video from Michael Smith.  Smith and I agree completely, the NCAA was duplicitous in its application of sanctions against these players and against The Ohio State University.  But there is more to it than that, and it is upon those differences that I will focus in this brief rant.

To make a long story short, and save the reader from wading through the MSM reporting, here is the synopsis.  These players sold and/or bartered with items and notoriety they had been given or “earned” in their capacity as football players at The Ohio State University.  Those benefits included both cash and services, in the fashion of tattoos from a local tattoo parlor in Columbus.  (No, I’m not making this up.)  They have been found guilty of “receiving improper benefits.”  Their punishment is:  being suspended for five games next football season.  They will all compete in the Sugar Bowl this season.  (No, you didn’t misread anything.  That is exactly what is happening.)

There are really only two issues of interest from my libertarian perspective.  First is the issue of ownership and its privileges. One would hope that rules imposed by the NCAA would somehow reflect an understanding of private property ownership.  Let us call that Standard One.  Secondly, there is the issue of rules and regulations.  If there is a rule in place that circumvents my ownership, e.g., an agreement, either implicit or definitive, that I will not receive “benefits” from ownership until such time as said agreement is no longer in place, what punishment fits the “crime” of breaking that contract?  One would hope that penalties levied by the NCAA would reflect some understanding of punishment that fits the crime in the most obvious sense.  Let us call that Standard Two.

These are the only questions that exist in the Ohio State Affair, or Tattoo Gate, as I will hereafter refer to it.  As anyone who has witnessed the amazingly transparent actions of the NCAA over the last few months can attest, what can be generally said about the imposition of NCAA sanctions is this:  The NCAA generally opts for a punishment that fails to meet either standard.  This case is no different.  In fact, Tattoo Gate is an object lesson in how to be damned certain that one’s actions meet no discernible standard at all.

If a person owns an item, the disposition of that item should be the business of that owner only.  In short, he can do whatever he wishes with it, including, but not limited to, sell it, give it away, bury it in the back yard, or burn it for warmth.  The obvious (read:  statist) exception of intellectual property aside, this seems pretty straightforward.  Clearly then, something else must cover the case of NCAA athletes.  This is where Standard Two comes in.  The NCAA apparently believes, and I’ll even agree with them for arguments sake, that the “contract of scholarship athleticism” precludes actions that might otherwise be appropriate for an owner of real property such as a championship ring or other soon-to-be-useless whatnottery.  Tattoo Gate is not about ownership.  Tattoo Gate it is about rules.

So then, a scholarship athlete cannot sell NCAA-sanctioned trinkets while participating in NCAA activities and/or while maintaining eligibility.  To do so constitutes the receiving of improper benefits and is justification for punishment.  Clearly, the players in question broke the rules.  Just as clearly, imposing a sanction of five games—approximately one-third of a college football season—is a hefty penalty.  Why then would the NCAA impose the penalty next season, effectively allowing the players and the team to benefit from their presence in a (high-profit-generating) bowl game?  That’s a very good question, and a question that no one seems able to answer.

If the infractions were egregious enough to warrant a large penalty—like five games—it would seem to warrant immediate imposition of said sanctions.  If it the infraction is minor enough to allow for imposing a sanction that won’t take place until next season (when at least two or three of those players could be gone to the NFL) it would also seem to not be worth mentioning.

What the NCAA has done, effectively, is harshly punish while simultaneously not punishing.  That’s an elegant implementation of justice and a fine example of what those of us who watch the actions of the NCAA have known for quite some time:  The NCAA is, in the vernacular, FOS.  (That means, loosely translated:  Full of Feces.)  Of course, many of us knew that before Tattoo Gate.  Didn’t you?

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The Illusion That Makes the Math Look Nice

Business Cycles, Podcast Picks, Statism, The Basics
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Perhaps the greatest contribution of socialism to economics was to cajole Austrian economists into understanding just how different their theoretical approach was from the main stream of economics. At first, Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek thought they were on the leading edge of that main stream. But the two major debates that they engaged in in the first half of the 20th century — over business cycle theory and regarding calculation in the socialist society — both proved vexing. They should have won both debates. They had the better arguments. But in both cases the majority of economists sided against Mises and Hayek.

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Kinsella in Italian

IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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An Italian translation of my Against Intellectual Property was recently published: Contro La Proprietà Intellettuale (edited, translated, and with a preface by Roberta Modugno; Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, Nov. 2010).

Also, the Italian translation of my “What Libertarianism Is” will be included in “Parte Terza: Diritto Naturale e Teoria Politica,” of the forthcoming L’Anarcocapitalismo: Epistemologia, Economia e Teoria Politica [Anarcho-Capitalism: Epistemology, Economics and Political Theory], part of the Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine monograph series edited by Dario Antiseri (one of the major living Italian philosophers). I was asked to prepare an abstract of this piece for the book, which is:

Concepts and ideas such as individual rights, property rights, the free market, capitalism, justice, and the nonaggression principle are not defining characteristics of libertarianism for various reasons–most of them are based on property rights. All political philosophies have some view of property rights; what is distinctive about libertarianism is its particular property assignment rules. This article describes libertarianism’s particular property assignment rules in two cases: for human bodies, the rule is “self-ownership”; in the case of external scarce resources, the property assignment rule is based on Lockean homesteading principles). The article explores how and why these libertarian property assignment rules arise from and are related to the purpose of property rights, which is to permit conflict-free use of scarce resources. The libertarian view is that self-ownership and Lockean homesteading of external resources are the only property assignment rules compatible with more basic grundorms (basic norms of civilized men) such as justice, peace, prosperity, cooperation, and conflict-avoidance, which are adopted in part because of empathy. The article agues that civilized man may be defined as he who seeks justification for the use of interpersonal violence. A consistent application of the basic civilized grundnorms shows that only the libertarian norms, and its non-aggression principle, can be justified. Thus, libertarianism may be said to be the political philosophy that consistently favors social rules aimed at promoting peace, prosperity, and cooperation. It holds that the only rules that satisfy the civilized grundnorms are the self-ownership principle and the Lockean homesteading principle, applied as consistently as possible.

(Other translations of my writings are collected here.)

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A Drug War Mutiny

Anti-Statism, Drug Policy
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“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

— Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”

Of all the injustices perpetrated by the state, the war on drugs is one of the most outrageously evil.  Kidnapping and throwing people into cages for the non-crime of consuming disapproved substances, or for selling them to others, should be condemned by anyone with a sense of justice and morality.  It is the prime reason for using jury nullification: to acquit those accused by the state of violating an unjust law, regardless of the facts; to reject the law itself and the authority of the state to prosecute lawbreakers.

Typically nullification takes place during deliberation, when jurors simply refuse to convict, unconvinced by the prosecution’s case.  But it can be difficult to gain a seat on a jury if one’s intent is to nullify; prosecutors and judges are well aware of the growing nullification movement, and will take steps to screen out potential troublemakers.  Even though juries have a right to nullify, the state will do everything it can to empanel only those citizens who will remain “unbiased” — so long as they promise to convict the defendant if the facts warrant it.

But what if the entire jury pool refuses to hear a case?

A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.

Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt.

They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.

No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.

In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll as to who might agree. Of the 27 potential jurors before him, maybe five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.

“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess.

Note carefully how the county prosecutor characterizes the jury pool’s action:

“A mutiny,” said Paul.

What is a mutiny?  A rebellion against authority.  Paul, like any other faithful agent of the state, arrogates to himself power that rightly belongs to the people he supposedly serves, and is taken aback by any challenge to his authority.  Jury duty is an obligation, and if the facts demand it, then one’s duty is to convict, and justice be damned.

The residents of Missoula County, some of them anyway, think otherwise.  They recognize the sheer absurdity of prosecuting someone for possessing a tiny amount of a plant that has been cultivated and used by humans for thousands of years.  Would they have convicted the defendant of the more serious charge he faced, distribution of a “dangerous” drug, itself a risible claim, particularly as it applies to marijuana?  People seem to have trouble accepting the idea that if it’s all right for someone to possess a drug, it must be all right for someone else to sell it to him.

But I will take the small victories, and hope for more like them.

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