Does Going to the DMV Hurt Worse than a Root Canal, or Is It Just Me?

Nanny Statism, Taxation
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Some time ago, having just gotten rid of a car, I figured it best to turn in my plates and get that magnanimous refund from NY State for the registration fee on my erstwhile means of transportation.  Being somewhat “unplugged” from the typical goings-on at the Department of Motor Vehicles, I decided to drop by on a Friday afternoon, the last Friday afternoon of the month to be exact. A mistake. A BIG mistake.

You see, on the last day of the month, there apparently is a big rush to get things done at the DMV.  Well, there’s a big rush for the customers.  The people working at the DMV frankly didn’t seem all that rushed.  And that’s from whence the question that titles this essay emanates.  First, let’s recap my visit.

Arrival:  1415 hours (That’s 2:15pm for those who are military-time-challenged.)

Obtaining of Ticket:  1455 hours  (That’s 40 minutes later.)

Visit with Cashier:  1525 hours (That’s 30 minutes after that.)

Departure:  1530 hours (That’s 5 minutes later still.)

Yes, it took me 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) to accomplish a 5-minute task at the DMV.  For those unfamiliar with this incredibly demeaning scenario, allow me to explain some of the subtleties.  When one arrives at the DMV, at least in my county, he is met with a line that leads to an “information counter.”  This is where they tell you where you need to go next, what forms you have to fill out before you get there, and where they also—in a stroke of bureaucratic genius—give you a ticket with a number on it.  This number corresponds to an electronic display that provides a sort of visual presentation of the “Next!” one hears at the barber shop.  On the ticket is the number for which you should look, and an estimate of how long you’ll be waiting.  You may then go to any one of the fine church-style pews to sit and wait.  Hopefully, you brought a book.

In essence then, one has waited in a line that is not hidden to wait in a line that is hidden.

The punch line:  All of this is an improvement—a vast improvement—over what used to happen at the DMV.  I’m not saying it was bad.  It was worse than bad.  If one was smart, he showed up with a lunch box, or at least a snack.  Standing on line for an hour or so on an empty stomach is tough!  Plus, once one got to the counter, he was faced with a person who himself was pissed off to be there.  A disgruntled worker meeting a disgruntled customer does not a recipe for statist happiness make.

Here’s what I’m trying to figure out:  If I had a choice of vendors for this service, would it still be so terribly inefficient and, frankly, crappy?  I don’t think it requires a degree in, or even an understanding of, Austrian Economics to emphatically declare, “No.”

Cross-Posted at the LRCBlog.

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Sexuality, the State, and the Death of Black Manhood

Drug Policy, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, Racism, Victimless Crimes
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Recently, my college friends and myself were discussing a recent article in Vibe magazine on the experiences of a flamboyantly gay man at Morehouse College, and the response of the school’s president. I shared the two articles with family and friends, and the inevitable question “what has happened to black men?” came up. It seems clear to me that the main things which have happened are the reasons I despise Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan. The war on poverty brought us welfare, which pushed a lot of black men from homes in the name of easy (or easier) money. That was Johnson. Reagan escalated the war on drugs, which further devastated the black family, especially the black males. Can anyone really claim that it is better for a black guy to be locked up for smoking or selling weed, rather than going to a community college and getting himself a job some day? Is controlling what someone does with his own body so very important? Is promoting the creation of drug gangs, then promoting the increase in the intrusiveness and violence of policing something we can really describe as “good?”

Because of these two factors, black men have fewer male role models. Many men emulate their mothers, unsurprising, as so many men are reared without fathers. Some of those mothers are educated, so that is fine as far as education goes. These men will pursue education. But they do not act like men. This is true even of many heterosexual men. Among any sufficiently large population, a number of gay people is to be expected. I do not find it surprising that a segment of the gay population would take emulating their mothers to an extreme that the straight men would not.

I predicted years ago that black higher education would become increasingly gay, and specifically, effeminately so. The war on drugs has devastated the ranks of black men in black communities to such an extent that female role models are, all too often, the best role models for success that black boys have. The testosterone has been depleted from the segments of black society most in need of it. This is one of the many tragedies brought to neighborhoods across the nation by the desire to force moral choices on others “for their own good.” And, while I targeted those two presidents for specific criticism, we can hardly “blame whitey” for this one. There are lots of people who are black drug warriors. Pretty much every black politician, including Obama, is a drug warrior. Eric Holder, his pick for Attorney General, is an especially fervent drug warrior. As far as I am concerned, we should treat blacks who support the war on drugs the same as we would treat a black guy doing a minstrel show in full blackface at an NAACP meeting. They deserve nothing but derision for being essentially black slave overseers. They profit from promoting oppression.

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Announcing the C4SIF

Anti-Statism, IP Law
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I have just founded the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF). The inaugural message announcing it is reproduced below:

C4SIF

Welcome to the website for the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF), a new center formed to build public awareness of the manner in which laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. As noted in the sidebar, the Center opposes state intellectual property (IP) law as contrary to private property rights, and in particular seeks abolition of patent and copyright and other state laws, policies, and practices that distort or impede innovation. We intend to provide news commentary and analysis and scholarly resources from our unique pro-property, pro-market, pro-innovation, anti-IP perspective.

Our Advisory Panel comprises most of the leading radical, pro-market, anti-IP thinkers in the world. Our home, for now, and main activities, will be centered around this Site. Key anti-IP publications are collected on our Resources page; on our blog we intend to carry regular news and analysis, including that of many of the members of the Advisory Panel. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions.

—Stephan Kinsella

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LOL@Democrats, Obama Voters

Democracy, The Left
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The total destruction of the Democrats has arrived with Obama. Obama, that great “progressive” has turned out to be quite like his hated predecessor. Indeed, the Obama administration is appealing a recent gay marriage ruling preventing federal government ban on same-sex marriage. Between that, wars, Guantánamo, spying, severe weakening of habeas corpus, new presidential powers, threats of censoring the internet, endless banking and health care corporatism and support of the drug war, the modern Democrat has lost. By now they must either be ignorant of what is going or do not care, or think that Obama is “really trying”. Pu-leez. Vote and cover your ears. Oh hey–this is what Republicans do as well!

The problem, of course, goes beyond the president. Decades of entrenched socialism and fascism (perhaps “corporatism” is a better term), not to mention warmongering, has become the status quo. It is the state that is to blame. And there is only so much a single person can do (no offense “hope” and “change”), which today is very little given the size and complexity of the federal government.

So with that, I just wanted to ask, in a loud and ridiculing tone, “Now WHO looks ridiculous for not voting?” LOL@U, Obama voter.

(Don’t worry. I will mock Republicans soon enough. As it is always with American politics, the worst is yet to come.)

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Twitter’s Pro-Freedom Terms of Service

IP Law, Technology
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Over at the online photography magazine, Photofocus, Scott Bourne warns photographers of the terms of service they may unwittingly agree to by posting a picture on Twitter. From the article:

Ask a real lawyer (not some guy named Larry who plays one on your local camera club forum) what this means. I did. My lawyer says it means that Twitter can do pretty much anything it wants with my photos (other than claim actual Copyright to them) and there’s nothing I can do about that. Is that an issue for you personally? Maybe not. It’s unlikely it will impact you if you aren’t trying to sell your photos. But if you are, read on.

As a professional photographer, I can’t sell “exclusive” rights to any image I decide to publish on Twitter. The reason is that once it is published on Twitter, there is no exclusivity left. That could be expensive. As professionals, we need to decide whether the exposure we get via Twitter is worth that trade off. For some of us the answer is yes – for others the answer is no. The purpose of this post is to get you to understand that you will have to make some hard choices. I am hoping they are informed choices, no matter what you decide.

In the case of the Twitter TOS, it seems that the terms Twitter stipulates are exactly the pro-freedom position: you can do whatever you want with the stuff you own (stuff, not ideas) unless you have contracted some other arrangement. Twitter owns the servers. You own the photo, sure, but you still have the photo after you uploaded it. What the uploader is actually doing is using Twitter’s stuff to create a copy on Twitter’s servers. For the photographer to then claim that he has the right to determine what Twitter does with it is like going to someone’s house and using a dollar bill left on a counter to make origami, then demanding the right to determine what happens to it as a result of your pattern rearrangement. It is nonsense from the start.

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