Keynesian Economic Policy Is a Negative-Sum Game

Humor, Nanny Statism, Taxation
By / / 1 minute of reading
Share

Keynesian economic policy is a negative-sum game: They essentially believe that you can take water from the deep end of the swimming pool with a bucket, carry it to the shallow end while sloshing water out onto the deck along the way, dump it back in, and somehow the water level of the swimming pool will rise.

(HT Robert Higgs, +Steve Ciciotti, and +Manuel Lora. I “stole” your ideas and remixed them.)

Keynesian Economic Policy Is a Negative-Sum Game Read Post »

Super-statists Love The Super State

Anti-Statism, Firearms, Political Correctness, Racism, Totalitarianism
By / / 3 Comments / 2 minutes of reading
Share

After a horrific and murderous weekend in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg, frustrated that folks determined on committing crimes are ignoring those magical incantations and spells enacted by local legislators, does what must necessarily follow in the mind of the statist: call the feds.

“We cannot tolerate it,” Bloomberg said while speaking at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. “There are just too many guns on the streets and we have to do something about it.”

New York has the toughest gun laws in the country, but Bloomberg said the city alone cannot stop the onslaught of shootings. “We need the federal government to step up,” he said.

The problem of crime is that it finds a way. And prohibitions are, at best, marginal; but they are totalitarian nonetheless and have no place in a free society. To try to control the means of the few by subjecting the entirety of society to the dictate of a despot is a symptom of desperation. After all, not every place experiences the same level of overall crime or the same numbers of crimes committed by firearms.

And then there is the elephant in the room. As Robert Wicks points out, “‘getting guns off the streets’ is just code for ‘getting poor urban minorities to disarm themselves.'” Indeed, NYC’s own government report on crime shows that minorities both commit and experience a higher percentage of crimes. Yet because most minorities are not criminals but potential victims, gun disarmament leaves minorities in a greater situation of peril. Of course, politicians do not understand economics or how incentives work so they would never think that ending drug (and gun) prohibition, welfare, taxes, zoning and licenses, rent control and compulsory education would radically lower crime across the board.

As for Bloomberg, his policies, and the policies of Albany, are–let’s face it–pretty much an epic fail. The last thing anyone needs is the federal government coming in to “fix” things.

 

Super-statists Love The Super State Read Post »

Getting Guns “Off the Streets”

Firearms
By / / 2 minutes of reading
Share

Manuel Lora pointed me to this article on the “success” of last year’s Kicks for Guns campaign. Talk show hosts and various promoters of these programs love to talk about taking guns “off the streets,” as if a person who makes a living as a criminal, using a gun, would trade it in for a pair of shoes. As others have mentioned, these programs generally only result in a bunch of old, fairly useless guns being turned in in the first place. But I want to address the notions behind the rhetoric.

It seems apparent to me, based on the places where these events are staged, that “getting guns off the streets” is just code for “getting poor urban minorities to disarm themselves.” The main people who would turn in a functional gun in an inner city are 1) drug addicts who are just looking for something which can be converted into cash for drugs or traded directly for drugs and 2) people who try to avoid using guns. Obviously, people of type 2 are not much of a threat in terms of gun crime, but even 1) is really not a threat. A drug user who feels that a gun is better used as currency for drugs, rather than used as a tool for robbery, is exactly the kind of drug user who is no physical threat.

This is just an angle for the anti-gun lobby. Unfortunately, it is one which resonates with the “law and order” gun lobby. Black liberals have often accused conservatives of using racist “code” when addressing minority issues. “Getting guns off the street” is code embraced by liberals of all colors, and all-too-frequently resonates with conservatives as well.

Getting Guns “Off the Streets” Read Post »

Parallel Justice in Germany

Democracy, Legal System, Police Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law
By / / 2 Comments / 1 minute of reading
Share

According to Deutsche-Welle, Muslim communities in Germany are often seeking private arbitration in criminal cases, in opposition to the state “justice” system. This apparently alarms some people. It is a common cry among the politically active conservative set that the liberal embrace of multiculturalism is leading to a fragmented Europe. Consider this note from the article, however:

“When a serious crime is committed, German police step in to investigate what’s happened,” he said. “But parallel to that, special Muslim arbitrators, or so called peace judges, are commissioned by the families concerned to mediate and reach an out-of-court settlement. We’re talking about a tradition that’s more than a thousand years old in Muslim societies.”

I wonder how long it will take for someone to claim that the practice of a 1000+ year old tradition is the result of modern liberalism’s undermining of European values? I’m sure they’ll work out a way to prove that in centuries past, Muslims (and other religious groups) in Europe deferred to secular, socialist democracy.

Parallel Justice in Germany Read Post »

Scroll to Top