Stop Saying “Drug Violence”
Drug Policy, Police Statism, Political Correctness, Victimless CrimesStop Saying “Drug Violence” Read Post »
Should Parents Need a License to Procreate? A Moron Says Yes.
Corporatism, Nanny Statism, Victimless CrimesHugh 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.
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. ↩
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. ↩
Should Parents Need a License to Procreate? A Moron Says Yes. Read Post »
Denver police officer assaults man for talking on phone
Police Statism, Technology, Victimless CrimesThe brutality exhibited by the police in this video is so unwarranted, so vicious, and so totally despicable, that not even the usual “defend-the-police-no-matter-what” automatons are putting up a fight in the comments section. Of course, the “Safety Manager” maintains that the fine officer who obviously assaults a man for absolutely nothing, deserves to keep his job.
Before the video was discovered, the police officer simply made up a story that the assaulted bystander was trying to strike the police officer. The DPD, however, believes that police who lie and attack the public unprovoked should be kept on the force. Your tax dollars at work.
Note also how the video camera, being operated by a police force employee, immediately pans away from the action after it becomes apparent that excessive force is being used.
Denver police officer assaults man for talking on phone Read Post »
Erecting Entry-preneurial Barriers
Business, Protectionism, Victimless Crimes
The caption accompanying this NY Times article picture of a street vendor selling bottled-water reads “Many sidewalk peddlers are doing record business, though the city considers it against the law to sell water without a license.”
I think Brad Spangler’s timely Facebook status update expresses how one should react to this:
Note carefully that states will be glad to bust down doors, “sweep streets” and so on in order to combat the problem of child prostitution. What states will not do is stop making the only choice for many prostitution or starvation, by impoverishing the populace with taxes, regulation and the sclerotic choking off of economic opportunities other than prostitution.
Erecting Entry-preneurial Barriers Read Post »
Cultural preconditions for liberty
Police Statism, Victimless CrimesFour women and eleven men have been convicted of “mingling” at a party, in Saudi Arabia. Sentence? According to the AP, “flogging and prison terms.”
The men, who are between 30 and 40 years old, and three of the women, who are under the age of 30, were sentenced to an unspecified number of lashes and one or two year prison terms each.
The fourth woman, a minor, was sentenced to 80 lashes and was not sent to prison.
We don’t really need to ask why this was done. We all know. The Sauds follow the Old Time Religion, and it’s pretty darn strict. (The AP explains it as follows: “Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam that prohibits unrelated men and women from mingling.”) It is also amazingly illiberal, in almost all of the senses of the word.
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Cultural preconditions for liberty Read Post »