“The plan’s perfect… it will work this time”

Drug Policy, Immigration, Police Statism, Victimless Crimes, Vulgar Politics
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Back when Barack Hussein Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for telling the Armenians to get over it (genocide at the hands of the Turks), I cautioned that “The continuing collapse of Western Civilization is going to produce a multitude of similar ridiculousnesses, so be prepared.”

Well, today I watched one such unintentionally hilarious (and notably revolting) “ridiculousness”: a John McCain television ad encouraging completion of “the danged fence.” In case you haven’t seen it or you have but want another snicker at McCain’s expense, here it is:

I often wonder the process by which commercials and political ads with such phony, contrived premises are approved for release to media markets. Does anyone really take seriously an actor dressed in doctor’s garb explaining the health benefits of the drug he or she is touting? Is this ridiculous, pretend, scripted conversation between McCain and some (possibly authentic) jack-booted tax leech any different? I picture some advisor or media consultant pitching the idea to his team, and instead of being laughed out of the room, those around the table exclaim, “Oh yeah! That will work!” and the project leader green-lights it with a confident “Let’s make it happen!” Somehow the commercial makes its way past the politician’s consultants and advisors without being vetoed, and finds itself in front of a focus group which… responds favorably? Unbelievable. I find such ads insulting prima facie. The contrived nature of the commercial combined with the claim that “the plan’s perfect” and “it will work this time” comprise its “hilarious” aspect.

The revolting aspect, of course, is the call to militarize the border (with National Guard troops), add another 3000 Border Patrol Agents, and wall up the border. This “perfect plan” fits with what I warned about in this post, specifically:

If there is one thing every libertarian should know about government it’s that government cannot efficiently or effectively perform any “service” without resorting to totalitarian police-statism. When the government minimizes costs (don’t laugh), it performs at woefully substandard levels. Think of the levees around New Orleans which failed during Hurricane Katrina, for instance. For adequate quality of service, for instance the Hoover Dam or those stretches of elevated interstate cutting through the marshes and swamps of Louisiana (very fine work), the government has to overpay enormously. The systemic defects inherent in government bureaucracy cannot be overcome, as they are due (mostly) to the absence of a profit motive. The government simply cannot provide quality services at market prices; often, the government cannot provide quality service at any price. What the government can do, however, is provide brutality very cheaply, for a while.

This isn’t to say that the United States doesn’t have an immigration problem. It does; or rather, it has a problem which the mass-invasion of the Mexican lower class exacerbates, namely the massive welfare state. “Fighting immigration” is simply another misguided, alleged “solution” to yet another unintended consequence of government interventionism. It’s stunning that Americans haven’t learned how dangerous it is to empower the government to “make them safer”, given the War on Drugs, which has left the Bill of Rights decimated, led to the incarceration of more citizens than any other country (both nominally and per capita), and taken the lives of many innocent people and their pets:

It’s certainly delusional to believe that militarizing the border won’t lead to similar atrocities — violations of person and property — and for what? All this so that the insidious welfare state doesn’t have to be dismantled? How sad.

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Security, Identification, and the State

Immigration, Libertarian Theory, Police Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law, Technology, Victimless Crimes
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The fact that the state is deeply imbedded in the production of security and identification makes clear thinking on these matters difficult.

Some people think that since the use of identification cards is ubiquitous in transactions of almost every stripe (rent a car, borrow a book, borrow money or get a credit card, sign a contract, drive a car, rent videos, etc.) that libertarians are just bonkers to insist that people have a right to withhold tendering ID to a police officer. So, let us draw distinctions that matter.

When you provide ID to a private party, you have a choice NOT to provide ID. Since those parties are subject to competition, they only require ID as a condition of doing business if it’s necessary. That’s why you have to provide ID to get credit, to rent something (unless you provide a deposit of money), or when paying by check; but, you don’t have to give ID when buying groceries, eating out at a restaurant, or going to the movies.

The state proclaims ownership over roads, and sets all policies on those roads. For this reason, it was the state that came to be the issuer of drivers’ licenses, which claim to serve as proof that the driver is competent to drive and that the driver has corrected or uncorrected vision of a certain standard. Since almost every adult in the US has a driver’s license, they have also come to be used by many private companies as definitive proof of identification, and are also used by police for the same purpose.

Technological advances in computing and printing have made counterfeiting of IDs less costly and more successful, especially in the last decade. It is well known that just about any 19 year-old college student can get a fake ID to drink.

When the state requires the presentation of identifying documents (or more broadly, an inquiry into the identification of someone), some purposes are legitimate, but most are illegitimate. This is because some of what the state does is legitimate, but most of what it does is illegitimate.

On the legitimate side of the register, it deploys police to patrol to prevent crime, respond to crimes, and nab the bad guys. In the course of nabbing a bad guy, they “book” him, which is a procedure of identification (taking fingerprints and pictures, finding out where he lives by asking for a driver’s license, etc.). Of course, private security can and does nab bad guys, too. They don’t typically do the “booking” of a bad guy because they are required by law to turn him over to the state.

On the illegitimate side of the register, the state enforces a number of malum prohibitum offenses. Among these are the supposed crime of living and/or working in a country without the state’s permission and possessing contraband. Both of these supposed crimes are difficult to enforce, since they are victimless crimes. Because of this, states have evolved low standards of detention and search of people, including the requirement to show ID to officers.

Nowhere is this farce more ludicrous than in the crackdown on security at airports since the September 11, 2001 attacks. IDs are now checked 2, 3, or 4 times in the course of checking in, entering a screening area, passing through a metal detector, and boarding a plane, all with a government-issued ID — either a driver’s license or a passport. Even people as young as me, now 39, can remember a time (before the TWA flight 800 disaster) when showing ID at an airport was not even done once. This hyper-scrutiny of ID documents assumes that the IDs shown are not fakes, which is not at all a credible assumption.

Likewise, with the recent passage of the unjust law Arizona SB 1070, I expect that the industry of producing fake IDs will boom. Who will benefit? Well, some good guys will benefit, being able to evade the state’s crackdown on the non-crime of illegal immigration. But the burgeoning industry will probably cause the cost of fake IDs to fall, giving lots of bad guys these benefits as well.

So, SB1070 will probably cause an increase in “identity theft” and other acts of fraud.

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Counterfeit Property Rights

IP Law, Protectionism, Victimless Crimes
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One of the reasons to oppose intellectual property is that it assigns partial ownership rights to real, tangible, and already-owned property to non-first-comers. For example, that copy you made of Microsoft Office, although you own the disk, you are restricted by law in how you may use this disk, e.g. installing the program, or selling it.

In some cases, IP laws assign a complete ownership, as demonstrated this week when Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes obtained the permission of certain trademark owners to redistribute seized counterfeit clothing items which didn’t belong to either party on condition that their trademarks and identifying labels be removed from the articles.

What I would like is to hear an explanation for is this inconsistency– if there was a counterfeited Nike ‘swoosh’ label once attached to this sneaker, now that it has been removed, why is the sneaker still being treated in the eyes of the law as the rightful property of Nike?

Honestly, I find the concept of IP laws to be illogical in any of its various manifestations whether copyright, trademark, patent, or otherwise. This is not to say that I condone either fraud or misrepresentation, both of which can be reduced to theft– the obtainment of property without the consent of the owner. But merely producing and offering for sale an article of clothing that resembles the output of another producer doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights, even if for the sake of argument we were to concede with sloppy semantic quibbles that it “harms” the potential sales of the other party, since the other party does not enjoy a right to not have his sales diminished by competition.

This is all beside the point that in the common arrangement where counterfeit goods are offered for sale, both the buyer and seller are well aware that the goods are knock-offs, and we can safely assume that no fraud or misrepresentation has transpired.

To conclude, after being robbed suffering a coerced charitable giving, the de facto owner was made further victim to kidnapping and is now serving a seven month prison sentence. As is usually the case, existing positivist law has enshrined principles antithetical to property right in the name of property rights.

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