Should Parents Need a License to Procreate? A Moron Says Yes.

Corporatism, Nanny Statism, Victimless Crimes
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Hugh LaFollette, “Licensing Parents Revisited,” Journal of Applied Philosophy.1

The premise of his article is that the legitimacy of professional licensing is well-established and the practice should be expanded to parents.

While one could argue that it doesn’t follow from professional licensing being applied to various professions that it should be expanded to parents, this article is really illustrative of why libertarians should oppose professional licensure outright.

It’s a slippery slope from licensing florists to licensing parents, be it for procreation or raising children after the fact.2 Once you concede the legitimacy of some licensing, then more outrageous nonsense inevitably follows.

  1. Anytime you see the words “applied philosophy” or “applied ethics” together and the article isn’t written by a libertarian, it is safe to assume it contains some nonsense like environmental socialism, Big Brother or nanny statist stuff like this or national health care or other social-welfare programs, calls for government to make businesses more socially responsible, and so on. ↩

  2. No offense, my home state of Louisiana. Why we need to be protected from bad floral arrangements is beyond me. What professional licensing is really about is restricting competition in order to protect existing players in the market; which, not incidentally, is what the state-granted monopoly privilege called intellectual property is about too. Licensing procreation will effectively be a eugenics program. And requiring a license to parent will amount to a massive social engineering project controlled by the politically-connected few. ↩

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All Your Tubes Are Belong to Googlizon

(Austrian) Economics, Business, Corporatism, Democracy, Nanny Statism, Technology, Vulgar Politics
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Googlizon with Chrome eye beam What you say!!!1

There has been a lot wailing and gnashing of teeth recently over a joint announcement by Google and Verizon of a legislative-framework proposal they’ve been working on.

Now, I’ve seen this variously referred to as a backroom deal or pact, a secret treaty, or a set of regulations Google and Verizon are imposing on the internet. The FCC is shamefully abdicating its responsibility to regulate the internet! Nevermind that the D.C. Circuit court determined recently in the Comcast case that the FCC has no such regulatory authority over broadband internet; hence, the calls to disastrously reclassify broadband internet access in order to place it under the same regulatory rules as regular telephone service. Some are even intimating that Google and Verizon are trying to “own” the internet. Net neutrality activists are up in arms about this proposal, viciously attacking Google for selling out and reversing its longstanding defense of net neutrality, and calling for people to stage a silly boycott of Google products and services. If you don’t join the herd, you get labeled a Google-Verizon apologist or it is insinuated that you are on their payroll (see comments on the CNET articles linked below, for example).

So what should libertarians make of all this?

…

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  1. Confused by this sentence and the title? The title is a mash-up of a few geeky internet memes. Know your meme, and also check out this Wikipedia article and this YouTube video. ↩

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Christianity in Action — the Obama Presidency

Imperialism, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, War
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Ever wondered what Christianity looks like in practice? Look no further than… President Obama!

Obama - Christianity in Action

I saw this on August 9 at a demonstration at UT-Austin in front of Gregory Gym and the library. Of all the ridiculous things I’ve seen in the past year, I think this takes the cake.

I asked the gentleman how Obama could be “Christianity in action” if it requires aggression against a neighbor to act. His response, I kid you not, was that back in the first century they had despots as leaders, and now we have representative government. After laughing hysterically, I then proceeded to ask how he justifies his task of blowing up the Middle East, I mean, they’re still his representatives of Christ, right? On the contrary: “Love for neighbor cannot be delegated” said Pope Benedict XVI.

I just can’t wait for Obama to go back to DC so he can put more Christianity into action!

Come back to TLS tomorrow for the full report on the demonstration. Thanks to Heather from LP-Texas for taking the picture. Heroic!

Crossposted at LibertarianChristians.com.

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Drinking and stage diving don’t mix

Nanny Statism
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At least not according to Washington state booze-acrats:

In the middle of the Tripwires’ performance at the Sunset Tavern last October, guitarist Jim Sangster noticed his cocktail had gone missing. “I had a Makers Mark and a beer on a road case beside the stage; I turned around and they were gone.” Sangster’s drink had been confiscated by a representative of the Washington State Liquor Control Board. Sangster was in technical violation of a provisional rule, WAC 314-11-015, that forbids drinking by “any person performing services on a licensed premises for the benefit of the licensee.”

As nanny statists sink their hooks ever deeper into the still-twitching corpse of American individualism, their rules manifest themselves in increasingly ludicrous ways, with judicial commentary to match.  Consider that last year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the state’s smoking ban included on-stage actors, claiming that public health concerns trumped freedom of expression.  The lone dissent opined that “character and plots would lack depth and expressive force without such effects as smoke hovering on stage or an actor’s poignant puff.”  Hell, never mind mentioning property rights; now judges have to be theater critics, apparently.

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A Government Program Which Works?

Business, Finance, Nanny Statism
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Apparently 13.2% of you have some of these in your wallet.

Is it possible? Has free-market anarchist and Austrian School Economist Michael Barnett finally discovered a government program which appears to be achieving its stated goals? Yes, my friends, I think I actually may have done just that. Now look, I understand that correlation does not imply causation, but I think there’s a strong case to be made here. I’m talking, of course, about the multitude of state and federal outreach efforts over the last two years to spread awareness of and encourage participation in Food Stamps Programs. Record numbers of Americans are receiving food stamp assistance now, more than ever before. Illinois, Oregon, Florida, and Idaho are just four of many US states which have never had so many people dependent on government to feed them. I wanted to make a play on the words “superpower” and “soup lines” (souperlines? souperpower?) to describe America’s new position in the world, but my joke writers aren’t as good as Jay Leno’s.

The world's only souperpower? See, it just doesn't work.

Specifically, according to the US Department of Agriculture 40.8 million Americans are recipients of “supplemental nutrition assistance.” Subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April. Participation has set records for 18 straight months. Well, there’s an economy in recovery! I think a little perspective is in order.

Suppose we created a new country out of every recipient of government food assistance programs in the US and named it The Stiglitzian Commonwealth of Krugmania. This new Commonwealth would be tied with Kenya as the 32nd most populous country. It would have more citizens than (in no order) Argentina, Sudan, Poland, Iraq, Venezuela, and Malaysia, just to name a few. It would have twice or more as many citizens as Chile, Niger, Netherlands, Cameroon, Angola, Cambodia, and Kazakhstan just to name a handful of the more than 160 countries which would fall into this category. But what about America’s Neighbor-to-the North? The United States has 6.5 million more people relying on food stamps than Canada has people period. My first instinct is to call that hilarious, but as that comparison sinks in, it’s rather revolting. This must be the economic recovery I kept hearing about.

Don’t despair, people. Let’s not forget the silver lining I launched this post with: we may just have discovered a government program which achieves its stated goals. That’s something, I guess.

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