I have written a lot about the economic consequences of bad laws, about the way not just criminal laws, but restrictions on trade, limitation upon the right to contract, trade quotas, restrictions on the practice of trades, licensing, even something as simple as improper taxation cause both economic loss and a decrease in the total satisfaction enjoyed by society. However, one thing I have failed to examine in sufficient detail is the second half of the picture, the way that such laws manage to distort our perceptions of the law, twist the shape our society takes and generally disrupt society. And so, today, I want to take a look at those consequences of improper laws, the consequences not tied directly to the costs imposed upon those whom the law directly effects, at the bigger picture, the way bad laws touch those outside of its immediate effects.

Of course, we cannot start looking at the bigger picture without understanding the smaller. I think the best place to start would be my essays "My Vision of Government" and "My Vision of Government Part II ", as they lay out the most basic rules of governing. Or, to be accurate, they lay out the rules which government most of what we call laws. As the essay suggests, criminal law is easy. The government exists to protect individual rights, those being life, liberty and property. That is very simple. When criminal law sticks to those principles it is valid, when it goes beyond, there are costs.

However, government is not just criminal law. There are civil courts, and the policies which control them. There is administrative law, governing things such as citizenship. And so on. Even a minimal government is more than just police and an army, there is, no matter how small, no matter how little power it is granted, an administrative apparatus which creates regulations and administrative law. There are also civil and criminal courts, and, beyond the law, rules of procedure for those courts. And, sadly, the basic rights of man does not tell us when these rules and laws are good or bad, when they are valid and invalid.

For purposes of civil and administrative law, there are many considerations, probably too many to examine here, but there are four which seem to provide the best guidelines. First, the arguments made in "In Praise of Contracts", that the more left to private agreement the better, law should never take from the private realm to make a matter public unless absolutely necessary. Second, as I argue in many places, such as "Traffic Lights, Predictability and Conservatism", "In Praise of Slow Changes" and "Predictability", the law must be predictable, even if the predictable answer seems "unfair" -- such as the old policy of caveat emptor -- as a predictable outcome, even one which satisfies no one, is always better than even the most well meaning inconsistency. Third, as in "Simplicity and Freedom", the law should not distinguish between any two categories unless there is a very good reason. The more we can treat things in the same manner, the fewer laws we need, and the less opportunity exists for corruption. Finally, as argued in "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government", the law must be symmetrical with regard to citizens, unless it is absolutely impossible. In many ways, this rule is just the last rule applied to people, but it is important enough it deserves its own mention.

Let us try applying this to an example that will appear later in our essay, see how these rules determine whether a law is valid or not, and then demonstrate that in administrative law, as much a sin criminal law, such legislation causes economic woes. Afterward, we shall move on to our argument proper, and examine how bad laws cause many non-economic problems, be it criminal or civil law.

Shortly we will be looking at the way petroleum is taxed, specifically how identical gasoline is taxed differently depending on whether it is intended for automotive or nautical use. Clearly, by the standards set above, this is a bad law. I am not normally a fan of sales taxes, but I will not go so far as to call sales taxes inherently improper¹. Even granting the propriety of sales taxes, this tax clearly violates one of the basic tenets of civil legislation, it treats two types of fuel differently when not only is there no reason for the distinction, but the fuel itself is identical. So, from our perspective, this is clearly a pointless distinction and an invalid law.

Many may ask, what sort of harm could this do? Yes, it is silly to tax at two different rates, but how could it cause harm? In this case, there is actually a very well known non-economic harm, but we will deal with that in the proper location. For now, let us look at an economic problem. To prevent one fuel from being sold as the other, as they are the same substance, the government requires dye be added to nautical fuel, so it can't be used as automobile fuel. This means that at the stage in the distribution cycle where the taxes are assessed (and I admit to not knowing if this is paid at distributor or refiner level), one type of fuel effectively becomes two, and a good that could previously be substituted for another no longer can.

Perhaps a simple example will help. Let us suppose the tax is paid by the refiner. As the fuel leaves his refinery, he has to decide  whether it is boat or car fuel. He bases his judgment on a wealth of past information, and likely, in most cases comes pretty close to the actual demand. So, let us say he has 100,000 gallons of fuel, and decides to sell 20,000 as nautical fuel. Now, let us suppose after that decision is made, there is a serious fire at a storage tank and 50,000 gallons of automotive fuel is lost, leaving only 30,000 gallons to fill 80,000 gallons of demand. He will certainly begin refining additional fuel as quickly as possible, but, for the moment, prices will probably more than double. Of course, if there were no tax and dye, he could shift some of all of the 20,000 gallons of nautical fuel, reducing the impact somewhat. But now he cannot.

Of course that is a dramatic example, but in a smaller way it does the same thing every day. By forcing what is one good to become two, it prevents many small adjustments that could result in lower prices, greater profits and more satisfied consumers. As success in the market tends to hinge on having the right good at the right moment, making the company treat one product as if it were two is a constant drag on profitability. Of course the dyed fuel will eventually sell, but, at times, it would certainly bring more profit had it not been dyed. And it is in that way that what seems a silly distinction made for tax purposes can have an admittedly small, but constant, impact on the economy.

Having shown how even tax laws can have an economic impact, I think I can skip the obvious introduction, demonstrating the economic impact of bad criminal laws. After all, I have written about them enough times already, and, as I have said, our focus is on precisely those effects which fall outside the realm of economics. And so, without any additional introductory comments, let us move on to the argument proper.

As we have already mentioned nautical fuel, let us continue with that subject matter, and look at the first non-economic impact of bad law, the creation of completely new crimes.

The best example of such a crime would be smuggling. Without bad laws, smuggling simply cannot exist. Smuggling, in itself, in no way matches the definition of a traditional crime, it does not violate any individual rights. It only exists because the government is trying to prevent individuals from obtaining something they want, or else is taxing it so heavily that it is worthwhile to pay the heavy risk premium charged by a smuggler. I admit, in practice smugglers may end up committing theft, battery, murder and other crimes, but smuggling itself exists only because of the passage of bad laws. In a similar vein, bootlegging exists only because of government attempts to keep individuals from fulfilling their desires².

As my belief that the war on drugs is improper is a controversial one, let us look instead at something less contentious. Perhaps we can return to my example of nautical fuel, as it has a rather notorious legal problem. You see, nautical fuel is dyed so that inspectors can tell it from automotive fuel, but consumers very rarely actually look at their fuel, so some unscrupulous types try to sell nautical fuel as automotive fuel, selling at a small discount to sell it quickly, and then pocketing the difference in taxes, less the discount. It sounds like a perry scam, but with taxes on petroleum running, between state and federal taxes, up to ten times the profit seen by retailers, removing even half of those taxes can have a significant impact on profits.

Actually, tax discrimination is a source of many crimes. For a long time, for instance, organized crime and others ("Paved With Good Intentions") have made a tidy profit smuggling cigarettes between states, or simply forging state tax stamps, in order to undercut other suppliers, while pocketing the remaining tax savings as pure profit.³ Despite claims by Maryland that punitive state cigarette taxes would not cause smuggling, they closed down, in the first year of the tax, a multi-million dollar smuggling ring with alleged ties to terrorism. So, obviously, there are tremendous impacts to taxes which are applied in a non-uniform fashion⁴.

Another effect of many bad laws is the universal tendency to ignore such laws, and the consequences such behavior has on individuals.

I can give a simple example that almost everyone can understand. Think of everyday life, you generally think of the police as beneficial people who come to help resolve problems. You may have specific complaints with your city's police, or maybe memories of some bad specific officer, but in general you have a pretty positive impression of the police.

Now, imagine you are driving on a highway. Unless you are one of those who scrupulously obey the speed limit, think of how you now conceive of the police. The police man is the enemy, someone to avoid, as he will stop you, make you late, make you pay a fine. And why this change of mind? Because you are used to casually breaking the law when driving, and thus think of those enforcing the law as enemies. Worse, because you believe you are justified in breaking the law, you now think of the police as foolish and malevolent, as they have to enforce a law you find senseless. Even when stopped, you have a tendency yo lie to them, or try to otherwise deceive them or appease them to get out of the ticket. Your behavior is completely different than it would be were a police officer to knock at your door. The context of casual law breaking has changed your perspective completely⁵.

The same happens with more serious laws, and even when the number breaking it is much smaller. For instance, drug use is still common to a minority of Americans, but a substantial minority. If we include all those who ever used drugs, it is quite a large minority, perhaps, at times, even a slight majority. Not all of those who ever used drugs think it was a good thing, but many who used them do not understand why this drug, or that drug, is illegal, and this they see drug laws as foolish, and have that same attitude toward drug busts drivers have toward speeding tickets. Similarly, those who currently use drugs have a worse situation. As they are at permanent risk of arrest, or something close to it, they spend their entire life with the attitude of someone doing 80 on a highway, seeing every police officer as a potential threat. Obviously, this is true of all criminals, but the problem here is that we created a law which a large minority continually ignore. The same is not, and could never be, true of murder or theft⁶, but because drug laws basically make criminal an action which takes place among consenting individuals, drug use can continue for a long time without arrest.

Some may wonder what the harm is in making law breakers fearful of the police, and were the law breakers more narrowly defined, I probably would not have a problem. The problem here is that we have made law breakers of a considerable part of our citizenship, and that has serious consequences.

For example, I have written before of the romantic philosophy which is causing so many problems for our society⁷. One element of that romantic philosophy is the elevation of the "outlaw"⁸. Thanks to our creating of a considerable criminal class, and a large part of that class being involved in our cultural institutions, be they academic or artistic, Hollywood or Harvard, MOMA or MIT, we have created a culture which has turned the law breaker, the outsider, the man who breaks the rules and stands outside of cultural norms, into the ideal. We need only compare the ideals of the 1950's to the 1970's⁹. Or, for fans of westerns, say Shane to Django. Or The Searchers to High Plains Drifter¹⁰.  It is easy to see, if you just look, how this lack of respect for the law was translated into a veneration of the law breaker, and that has had some serious impact¹¹.

The most serious impact of the new found respect for lawbreakers has been a need to increase prison sentences. Back in the late 1940's, Ludwig von Mises wrote a very telling passage, describing how the increasing shame with which arrest is viewed has allowed civilized nations to impose ever less strict sentences, as the shame is enough to stop many crimes. Unfortunately, he was not prescient enough to see that such a trend would reverse in the next half century, to the point where we need special laws to handle those who commit three felonies. Yet that is precisely what happened¹². Thanks to a lack of respect for the law, and a veneration of law breakers, it is no longer shameful among many groups, to have an arrest record, and so the fear of arrest is not a factor in preventing crime, not unless coupled with the fear of a considerable sentence. This has helped to fuel our prison overcrowding issues¹³, and paradoxically resulted in earlier release for many thanks to civil rights suits about overcrowding.

There is another side to this as well. Allow me to offer up an example.

Many people mock IRS auditors as men obsessed with finding violations, who are so single minded that they see tax cheats everywhere. And, in some ways, this is true. However, there is a good reason for it. Audits are selected two ways, those that meet certain criteria indicating and a set selected randomly. However, this means that a large percentage of those the auditor sees are preselected to have a high percentage of irregularities. Which makes an auditor far more likely to see someone whose taxes are wrong than right. Now, whether the result of cheating or error, this means the auditors is expecting to ind something, and as everyone claims their error was accidental, since no one wants to say they are a cheat, to his ears, all excuses sound phony. It is the natural outcome of his constant exposure to a high percentage of bad tax returns.

As the son of a police officer I know this all too well. My father was not a Baltimore City police man, but he was assigned to the county in areas very close to the city, and so, every time we drove into the city when I was a child, all I heard were stories about thefts, stabbings, shootings and so on. And it definitely colored my view of people. I came to imagine that most people were innately dishonest, my family an friends being the rare exceptions. I eventually outgrew with mindset¹⁴, but it is easy to see how police officers in urban or otherwise high crime areas could quickly come to see lawbreakers everywhere and develop an adversarial attitude toward everyone, imagining we are all liars and everyone is hiding some serious crime.

And that is how this expansion of the number of criminals leads to the creation of new problems among police. The problems this mindset created among police in high crime areas now tend to occur everywhere, as these changes have created higher crime in even previously crime free places. Granted, there still remain areas where crime is very low, even with new crimes in existence, but they are much less common than they once were.

Lest people think I am solely concerned here with creating legal drugs and eliminating nautical fuel tax differentials, let us look at another problem of unneeded laws, corruption, and corruption of all kinds.

The most obvious is, of course, the birth of crime empires. Be it smuggling, drug dealing, tax differential schemes or what have you, all create funds that criminal need to spend. These tend to get invested into legitimate business that then launder other criminal funds. However, they have one other effect, they keep criminals in business even when we shut down their illegitimate enterprises. For example, when prohibition ended, the criminals who bought into legitimate businesses then took that money and branched out into new crimes, allowing them to persist even after their primary source of revenue had vanished.

And that is the big consequence here. Not only do criminals end up owning businesses, they corrupt those businesses, using them to launder funds, to fund other crimes, even use them in the commission of different crimes. And in so doing, criminals tend to corrupt otherwise law abiding citizens. A man who would never commit a crime may be willing to allow his boss to deposit some money in the business account under a false description and thus launder funds. Or may let him withdraw money for illicit purposes. And once he has allowed some small crimes, it becomes easier to continue, making it very easy to take a criminally owned business and slowly turn it into a fully corrupt bsuiness¹⁵.

But that is the obvious corruption, there is much more subtle corruption, or corruption we do not recognize as such.

For example, lobbying is basically corruption made legitimate. A lobbyist is effectively offering bribes for favorable laws. And he can only do so, only wants to do so, because laws can strike constituents unevenly, and so they pay to have the law most favorable to them. Were laws limited to protection of rights, there would be no reason for lobbyists, and no chance for politicians to accept the bribes of lobbyists, be they legal or otherwise.

But that is a little broad, and would require a massive change of our government to correct, so let us look at lesser corruption.

A simple example would be import duties. In general, I oppose these laws as they serve no purpose but to attempt to exclude foreign goods, and thus they definitely violate our principles for good laws, as they serve no purpose in protecting individual rights. And not only do they create smuggling, but they make it easy for corruption to exist among the supposed enforcers of the law.

Now, most will object that anyone can bribe the police, robbers, murderers and arsonists as well as smugglers or drug dealers. And that is true. However, most of those crimes which directly harm someone, such as murder and robbery, tends to be harder to convince police to accept. They tend to be much more open to accepting bribes for "victimless" crimes. In addition, whatever the profits of a given robbery or murder, the real money tends to come from repeatable, regular crimes, such as drug dealing and smuggling, and thus are far, far more likely to create the possibility of regular bribes. (The only comparable real crime is fencing of stolen goods. I did not say traditional crimes made corruption impossible, just that inventing crimes makes corruption much more likely and far more lucrative.)

And corruption goes beyond the criminals and the law and the politicians. When crime becomes commonplace, even regular citizens can become involved, or at least become oblivious to crime. We need only think of the many children employed as drug lookouts, or the many otherwise respectable citizens who in the past acted as sellers for neighborhood underground lotteries. And, as mentioned earlier, each of these citizens, in some small way, is likely to begin to see the law with a slightly jaded eye, leading to an ever increasing lack of respect for law, and an increasing veneration of law breakers.

Finally, bad laws have one final consequence I discussed before¹⁶, the tendency to require more laws. For example, the SEC required that specific information be provided to investors. When firms found ways to make that information meet SEC requirements, but present a misleading picture, the SEC passed still more regulations. Under a private system, firms would print what reports they wished. Consumers would decide which reports would govern purchases, and firms would tend to favor those. If they later proved unreliable, market forces would change how they are presented, without the need for more and more laws.

Another example would be the many laws created to seize assets of drug dealers, as well as to make prosecution of high level drug dealers possible. As the criminals learn how to insulate themselves, these laws become necessary. However, this is mostly because drug dealing and manufacture is more like a business than a crime. It is hard to imagine theft or rape or murder being run in such a remote manner, but drug dealing lends itself to such distributed organizations, necessitating more and more laws, many of which endanger individual rights (eg property forfeiture).

Actually, rather than this entire lengthy explanation, it probably would be as easy to characterize the consequences of bad laws in two broad groups. First, the acceptance of crime and criminality, and then the growth of government. I think almost everything we mentioned can be included in one or the other. Even seemingly unrelated items, such as the growth of lobbying can be seen as acceptance of crime, since lobbying is, in essence, accepting that politicians are open to undue influence and bribery of one form or another, and then allowing organized pressure and bribery. And so, I think I will leave us at that. When the law passes beyond the minimal bounds it should follow, then we begin to see people accept crime and criminals, while losing respect for the law, at the same time the state continues to grow.

It is clearly a topic which needs more explanation and thought devoted to it, but for the moment, I think this brief look will provide a good outline of the more significant consequences.

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1. I know the FairTax is popular among many libertarian types, but I have numerous problems with it, as will be mentioned soon. Sales taxes strike me as a bad idea for several reasons, foremost among them that such taxes are terribly regressive, as most poor people spend a higher percentage of income on consumption than the rich. In addition, if it taxes only consumer goods and not wholesale or producers' goods, that creates many confusing areas ripe for exploitation (as will also be discussed), and if it does not, it has the punitive effects on manufactured goods that a VAT does. Not to mention that it implicitly says there is something wrong with consumption or trade, that requires it pay a special fee, a message we don't want to emphasize. I intend to write more about taxes very soon, but for now I recommend "An Interesting Analogy, "Why I Dislike the FairTax ", "The Best Argument Against the FairTax "" and "The FairTax's Liberal Assumptions" on the fair tax, and "The Foolishness of Corporate Taxes", "What we need", "Making Taxes Hurt", "The Benefits of Federalism", "Reframing the Debate", "One Sided History" and "A True Conservative Platform" on taxes generally.

2. I know there are many who still support the war on drugs despite otherwise supporting small government, but I have addressed that topic so many times I won't bother repeating it here. For those interested in my arguments against the war on drugs, including my belief that supporting this type of law which protects us from ourselves leads inexorably to full blown authoritarianism, see "Slippery Slopes", "Socialism on the Installment Plan" and "Drug Legalization".

3. The same has also been done with liquor in states where liquor taxes rose too high, though cigarette scams seem to predominate, probably because of greater tax differentials, and the higher profit per unit of volume. With alcohol taking up so much more volume, the profit is going to be much lower. A fifth of alcohol and a carton of cigarettes take up the same size, but thanks to high cigarette taxes, the cigarettes cost more than all but the most costly alcohol, and it is far easier to sell a carton of cigarettes, together or pack by pack, than very costly alcohol.

4. Differences in state taxes are obviously not an improper discrimination, but rather one facet of federalism. I offer them only to show that tax differences can provide massive profits. On the other hand, under a truly federalist system might see such crime. On the other hand, the increase in crime that comes with such smuggling may serve to inspire states to lower their taxes, yet another benefit of federalism.

5. I won't bother discussing whether or not speed limits are good or bad laws, as I do not believe in public roadway (""...Then Who Would Do it?""), so under ideal conditions the question would be moot. I do think the Carter era move down to 55 on highways designed for safe use at 75 was a bad idea, inspired to show some green sensibilities, and failing even there. (At that date, it was estimated best fuel mileage for the average car came at about 63, not 55.) However, it seems that many states have agreed and allowed the speed limit to creep back up on highways, so perhaps there is a place for common sense in the law after all.

6. Obviously there are career thieves and professional killers, but were nay crime against person or property carried out on the scale of drug use, or with the same frequency, it would quickly cause society to collapse. Not to mention that the sheer number of criminals and crimes would make it almost impossible not to arrest a fair number of them. Just imagine if everyone who smoked marijuana instead mugger someone every time they thought of lighting a joint. The number of muggings would drive everyone from the streets. Crimes against persons and property simply cannot operate at the same rate as crimes such as drug use and prostitution.

7. For some examples see "Cranky Old Man?", "Faux "Maturity"", "Catastrophic Thinking, The Political, Economic and Social Impact of Seeing History in the Superlative", "Pushing the Envelope", "I Blame the Romantics", "The Adoration of Youth", "In Defense of Standards", "Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"", "Deadly Cynicism", "Juvenile Intellectuals", "Congratulations, You're a Victim!", "Trophy Spouses", "O Tempora! O Mores!, or, The High Cost of Supposed Freedom" and "Self-Serving Cynicism and Our Cultural Immaturity".

8. Lest anyone think this is simply about drug use, there are a host of bad laws that have had a similar impact on society. The criminalization of homosexuality, though it was less oppressive here than it was in some other nations, still had an influence on some segments of culture. Similarly, though it has been exaggerated, the impression created by the  HUAAC did the same. We can discuss the HUAAC as a reality versus perception another time, as I know Ann Coulter wrote a rather spirited defense, with which I partly agree and partly disagree. Still, the perception in certain circles that the HUACC was criminalizing beliefs -- whatever the reality -- left its mark as well. And I could probably go on.

9. I skip the 1960, as there is a subtle transition to romanticism many miss. In the early 60's, I grant, most of the 50's sensibility remained, but there was already a hint of youth worship in our adoration of the Kennedys and the birth of beach movies emphasizing irresponsibility and youth. Yes, it was innocent wish fulfillment, but it set the stage for the later 60's and not trusting anyone over 30. But as the early change was not as overt as in the later 60's, it is easiest to skip from the 50's to the 70's in our analysis.

10. I don't mean to criticize either Django or High Plains Drifter, I adore both, but I am also aware there is a very different cultural sensibility implicit in these two films, and I know very well I would much rather live in a world ruled by a John Wayne sensibility than a Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" sensibility.

11. It is interesting that there is a parallel to this lack of respect for the law taking place in universities. Those universities which have been foremost in the pushing of the PC movement have seen their administration mocked, and the respect for those normally viewed kindly, liberal professors and administrators erode. What is even more interesting is, now that a generation raised mocking PC in college has now come of age, the lack of respect for PC verbiage has entered the cultural mainstream, to the extent that mocking college administrators and professors has become quite common. (Actually, it has been common in more cutting edge circles for longer, but that is because the avant garde tents to come from younger writers and actors, the mainstream tends to lag a decade or two.)

12. There is more than just the romantic philosophy at work, though that is a major factor, and the other influences draw strength from our romantic tendencies. For example, as described in "How to Become a Victim of Crime" and "The Important Lesson of Racism", many racial minorities, currently mostly blacks and Hispanics, but also, at one time or another, Irish, Italians, Russians, Armenians, Chinese and others, have adopted an insular philosophy which preferred member sof that community over the police and came to see the police as adversaries. As with the romantic philosophy, this resulted in the veneration of outlaws and thus had the same outcome. As romantics tended to side with such groups, seeing in them "authentic outsiders", the romantics tended to emphasize the injustices they suffered and exacerbated the situation.

13. Overcrowding is not just the result of longer sentences, and in fact predates longer sentences. The first, and greatest causes, were the explosion of arrests arising from drug laws, especially when stricter policies tried to jailer smaller dealers and users for longer times, and, most important of all, a combination of lack of funds and local opposition to prison building which prevented the construction of new buildings when populations rose. However, when backlash against increasing crime rates did cause longer sentences, they did increase the crowding problems.

14. In some ways this early exposure to "us and them" thinking may have led to me realizing that liberalism is nothing but an extension of that sort of thinking. On the other hand, while many police officers seem to share this mindset -- not all, but a number I have met -- they seem to be less liberal than the general population. Of course, this same mindset can also support a number of other, non-liberal authoritarian belief systems, so this is not necessarily a paradox, nor does it mean they are more pro-freedom despite their beliefs.

15. Granted, many businesses are actually kept away from crime, so as to serve as fronts for all the income, but most are used at least to launder income. And some certainly are involved in crimes of all description.

16. See  "Recipe For Disaster", "The Endless Cycle of Intervention" and "Grow or Die, The Inevitable Expansion of Everything".

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POSTSCRIPT

I apologize if this essay appears a little disjointed. I am afraid it was written in a few parts, before, during and after my recent illness, and suffered as a consequence. In addition, I realized as I wrote that I was drawing far too many examples from drug laws, mostly because they provided the most dramatic examples. I tried to add others, but I seemed to come back, as drug laws seemed to always produce the flashiest results. I didn't want this to become a drug legalization piece, but it does have that sound.

POSTSCRIPT II

When I discuss removing legal prohibitions on drugs or prostitution, people tend to imagine that every street will become Skid Row. However, the evidence does not support that. In addition, it ignores one great tool available which we have forgotten how to use.

First, the evidence. When Prohibition was in effect, alcohol was sold in seedy dives by criminals. They killed one another over turf or unpaid bills. People had to deal with all sorts of unsavory types to get alcohol. (Excluding those lucky home brewers who made their own. In the interest of disclosure, apparently my grandfather was quite adept at making a high quality "apple jack" after leaving the Navy.) Once Prohibition ended, alcohol was old in a variety of venues, from dives to four star hotels, and all the shooting and violence and criminals disappeared. Disputes were settled in courts and alcohol was made and sold by businessmen. I doubt heroin or cocaine will follow the same course, were they decriminalized, but marijuana might, as it has more mass appeal than other drugs. Still, without the need for criminals to smuggle it, the need for violence to settle disputes, and legitimate firms manufacturing, importing and selling drugs, I don't see the drug culture remaining the same. (One need only think of the laudanum addicts or the 19th century, or opium addicts, they lived in unsavory areas, but did not spread everywhere, despite the drugs being legal, either explicitly or de facto.)

Which brings me to my second argument. Why did historical opium addicts clump together in certain areas? Why did drunks and other unacceptables do the same? The tool we have forgotten how to use, disapproval. (See "Government Versus Culture - A Forgotten Distinction") We are so accepting, even on the right, that we have forgotten how to use shame and scorn to change the world. Yes, there are people who can ignore criticism, but by and large, even the worst drug addict, most dedicated frequenter of prostitutes, anyone you can name, does not want to be told he is wrong, that what he is doing is bad, shameful and detestable. If enough people show disdain for a group, even though the group may start by putting up a defiant front, they will eventually move on.

And it does work. Just ask why some neighborhoods in cities become drug markets and others do not. In large part, it is because of the indifference of many neighborhoods. The residents may not want drug dealers, but from fear or indifference or simple familiarity, they do not express their objections, and the drug dealers continue.

It may not always work, but by and large, social disapproval is a very simple way to keep away things of which we do not approve. And if not disapproval of the sellers, then disapproval of the buyers. Eventually, in one way or another, scorn can change a place. We may have forgotten it, but it does work.

I suppose this is another topic which deserves its own post, the use of societal pressure versus the use of government power. It is important to recognize the pros and cons of both, and recognize how often the former was used in the past. (Though, to be fair, at one time there was less distinction, as local government was a less formal affair. In our over litigious age, that sort of informal governance and blurring of social and government functions could not be made to work.)

I know it is not on topic for my blog, but Happy Birthday to my son. He is seven, so unlikely to read this today, but since the internet archive will probably record this for all eternity, I figure he may stumble upon it sometime in his teens and be amused. So, happy birthday, Julian. Enjoy your day at school and we'll have fun when  you get home tonight!

I now return you to our regular subject matter, and far more relevant posts.

At the moment, it looks like I won't be finishing any of my currently unfinished posts until tomorrow, at the earliest, so I decided to write a little note about posts coming soon, and ones to expect afterward.

Right now I have three posts I am completing:

1. There ought to be a Law: Examining the many ways to determine whether a law is valid or invalid.
2. The Consequences of Bad Laws: Looking, for once, at the non-economic consequences of bad laws
3. Accepting Misfortune: A look at how our unwillingness to accept that bad things happen ruined our government and courts, as well as distorting our outlook on life in general

In writing those posts, and a few previous ones, topics arose which have inspired me to write "I need to write about this more". And so, in the interest of getting all those topics in one place, here is a list of the more recent such topics:

1. Immigration - I need to really think this through. For several years I have promised to look at the topic (eg. "The Limits Of Immigration Reform"), but never have, at least beyond giving a generic vote of support for open borders. Still, that avoids a lot of procedural questions, as well as how we will work our way from the present state to the ideal, so there is a lot to cover.
2. Administrative law - How civil procedure, admin law and the rest will work in my ideal government, as the "force, theft and fraud" mantra doesn't answer that one so well
3. Indian Reservations - A really thorny question, mainly due to how it has been handled from our founding onward, how will reservations be handled under my ideal state (and what we did wrong all along the way that brought us here)
4. The UN- A comprehensive look at the UN, and international law as a whole, incorporating my earlier thoughts on Geneva ( "Goodbye Geneva", "Why Nuremberg?", "Last Thought on the Topic", "I Was Right", "Civilian Casualties","Guilty Until Proven Guilty", "Somehow The Media Missed This", "Questions Raised by Boumedine", "Confirmation, If It Is True", "A Very Quick Thought", "Not Geneva Again!", "Notes on a Future Post")
5. Intellectual property- All sides of the debate on copyright and patent, as it is a complex issue and one for which I don't claim to yet have an easy answer (see "Some Thoughts on Copyright, IP and the Law")
6. Sales Tax - My thoughts on this popular topic, though I won't limit myself to the Fair Tax specifically. A look at why I find sales tax a questionable source of revenues. It will include some of my criticisms of the FairTax, obviously. ("An Interesting Analogy, "Why I Dislike the FairTax ", "The Best Argument Against the FairTax ", "The FairTax's Liberal Assumptions")
7. Taxes - Since I am knocking sales taxes, what I think are valid taxes, or sources of revenue in general, incorporating my earlier thoughts on corporate and other taxes ( "The Foolishness of Corporate Taxes", "What we need", "Making Taxes Hurt", "The Benefits of Federalism", "A True Conservative Platform", "Reframing the Debate", "One Sided History", "Minimal Reforms")
8. As mentioned in my recent post "A Brief Thought on Poverty", I need to go back and look, in a comprehensive manner, at the differences between being lower class and being poor. In the US we have a lower class, by definition any nation which does not have absolute income equality will, but we lack what is traditionally considered poverty, at least for the most part. It is an important distinction, and looking at the efforts to blur these lines to keep alive the "War on Poverty" -- along with silly things such as the old "Rural Electrification" laws (which long outlived their usefulness) and other laws aimed at "rural America" (most dating from the 1930's) -- would make an interesting essay.

There may be more, but for now I think that is plenty of material to keep me busy for a few weeks at least.

Apologies to my regular readers for not only failing to post, but not even responding to comments. I would normally respond, even if I were simply ill, but it seems over the last two days I had one of the worst episodes of porphyria I ever experienced.  (Or so I assume, I suppose it could have been something else, but I doubt it.) It started off as a strange pain, it shifted around my gums from place to place -- I must have brushed my teeth a dozen times trying to dislodge a mysterious "something" that wasn't really there -- then involved my face, hands and feet. After a few hours of that, things just got worse. I will spare you the gory details, but I spent most of my time going from nausea to unconsciousness and back. Still feeling a bit groggy and unbalanced, but not nauseated, and have stayed awake over two hours without even a little unconsciousness, so doing fine now.

So, now that I am functioning again, I will try to reply to all comments, and post my half finished essays, in the next few hours.

I wrote in "One More Meaningless Word and Its Consequences" that many terms, though they seem to have a definite meaning, really depend entirely upon perspective. It is hardly a new topic, I have been discussing it since "Two Perspectives" and  "The Right Way", continuing through "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism" and on to the present. However, though I have discussed it often, it is a very important concept and one that people seem to fail to understand. Time and again, people talk about the importance of satisfying needs rather than wants, they denounce the waste of capitalism and so one. All of these arguments are founded, not on an objective understanding, but upon a mixture of ignoring many factors, and applying one's own prejudices to a situation as if they were absolute truths. In fact, for most people their inability to understand the free market and minimal government is the result of such misunderstandings. ("Misunderstanding the Market", "The Danger Inherent in Banning "Bad Ideas"")

Since it is such a simple concept, yet one that people still seem to fail to grasp, I decided to provide a mundane example. It is based upon arguments I have had with any number of people, my ex, my mother, friends and others, yet does not mirror, well not completely, any real life situation. Yet it is commonplace enough, I bet many readers will feel a bit of familiarity with it.

Let us imagine a married couple, Bob and Jane. Jane is a clothes horse, she owns enough clothes to fill two walk in closets. There is nothing she likes better than finding the perfect outfit. On the other hand, Bob is a normal male, who owns three pairs of shoes --- black, brown and casual --- and just enough dress clothes for work to get from one wash day to the next. He can't imagine why anyone would need to own more than two or three pairs of jeans, and even the jeans he owns he can't tell apart other than dirty and clean.

On the other hand, Bob is a book buyer. Despite the move to e-books, he still can't get over the desire to own a physical printed object. (Ok, I admit it, Bob is a bit like your author, though Jane is a composite of old girlfriends and my mother -- to be fair to my ex, she was not a clothes horse.)  He has shelves full of books, and often has small piles of books on his desk, as he is reading two or three at once, sometimes more. It is a habit which, for some reason, drives Jane crazy.

One day, when she is looking for space for her clothes, Jane begins to complain about all the space Bob's books take up, how he wastes so much room hoarding books. In her mind, after you have read a book, why keep it hanging around. Bob takes the complaints in good grace for a while, but finally, getting a bit frustrated, decides to point out that his books take up no more room than her clothing, and he needs his books as much as she needs that fortieth pair of shoes.

This is a silly example, I will grant, but it points out something we often forget, many things are important only because we make them so. Your necessity may be my luxury or even irrelevant to me. There is nothing that says one good is more or less important than another except the significance we place upon it. Yes, in a few cases, physical need makes us value some goods highly, but even then it is still a choice. There are people who go hungry to fulfill another desire, so it is not as if even physical demand is an absolute measure.

Thus, when someone argues we need teacher more than athletes, or policemen more than hairdressers, they are telling us nothing but their own priorities. ("Why Do They Earn So Much For Playing a Game? ") Granted, they may think their own priorities should be shared by everyone, may even make detailed arguments to demonstrate as much, but the fact remains, all of those arguments rest upon their hierarchy of values, if I value things differently, then their arguments are pointless.

This is not to say there are no rules in economics or politics, that there are no guidelines we must follow. What this says is that the goals, the choice of what we should pursue, is a given, based upon each individual's wishes at a given moment, and is not subject to argument, assessment or judgment. We see this when someone tries to tell us it is rational to prefer carrots to peas, but somehow we forget it when it comes to more complex desires. Yet the principle does not change, the goals we pursue are subjective, and not subject to argument.

We need to bear this in mind when we listen to arguments about how much better life would be if we would just restructure the economy, or change the government, so it would stop pandering to the masses and instead produce what we really need. Such plans always amount to nothing more than the speaking forcing his own set of priorities upon the rest of the world, and are no more likely to produce more satisfaction than would happen were Bob to begin collecting clothes, or Jane to fill shelves with books. ("Utopianism and Disaster", "The Threat of Perfection", "Life Is Not Fair - And Trying To Make It So Makes Things Worse")

I have written a lot about misleading, or even meaningless words ("The Most Misleading Word", "Luxury and Necessity") and talked at great length about the way in which these poor definitions are used to mislead or to guide us into incorrect assumptions ("Protean Terminology", "Semantic Games", "Confucius, Aedes Aegypti, Pluto, Sub-Species, Conservatives and Republicans", "Misunderstanding Arbitrary Definitions"), but apparently in all my writing I have only scratched the surface, as I continue to find new examples of the same error. For example, I just recently wrote ("A Brief Thought on Poverty") about the way in which the intentional blurring of the line between true poverty and simply belonging to the lower class is often abused to make it seem lowering subsidies to the lower class will result in starvation. (Though I wrote on this before, see "We Have Won the "War on Poverty"".)  And, more recently, I was reminded of another error I discussed once before ("The High Cost of Not Wasting Food") while watching a cooking show on television.

It is the perpetual "stand by" story for newscasters, especially on cooking and food related programs, whenever they want to feel they are performing a civic duty and need to feel elevated above mere entertainment, they will dedicate a segment, perhaps an entire show, to denouncing the waste of food. Perhaps they will highlight the "freegan" movement, silly eco-hipsters who live on food they scrounge from four star dumpsters. Or maybe they will show mounds of "perfectly edible" food thrown out by supermarkets or restaurants or food processors. There are countless variations, though the message is always the same: "We waste too much food."

In a way it is kind of funny, newscasters feeling so clever for repeating the old standby of every frustrated mother: "There are kids starving in Ethiopia, so you better clean your plate." But repeat it they do, and feel so special for doing it. Sadly, no one ever stops them to ask them the question muttered by so many surly children "How does it help them if I eat my broccoli?" (That one got me in some trouble throughout my youth.) Or, even better, and more practical, "Well, why don't you send them the food I don't eat?"

While it is amusing to imagine newscasters being stumped by the responses of moderately clever elementary schoolers, there is actually a lesson here, or more than one. In part the lesson actually is just the same as that voiced by frustrated children, but the rest is a bit more complicated, containing a slightly more sophisticated mix of economics and linguistics, but in the end they both point to the same truth, that "waste" is a term which means nothing without a very clear context, and what some see as waste is often something else entirely. Or, to be more brief, sometimes what you see is not all the truth there is. (Cf "Two Perspectives", "Bad Economics Part 11", "Problematic Arguments", "Why"Negative" Economic Indicators Are A Good Thing", "Monetary Issues Made Simple Part I".)

Let us look at an example of waste, and see what I mean when I say that what is obvious may not be all there is to understand. The milling of wood, turning raw timber, relatively uniform segments of tree trunks, into boards, is a process where waste is relatively easy to measure, or, to be more precise -- as "waste" is an emotionally charged term -- the amount of material lost is easy to determine. All we have to do is measure the total volume of wood fed in and compare it to the amount lost as scraps or sawdust, as such material is, for the most part, unusable. (For purposes of this essay, we will ignore the commercial uses of sawdust, and assume sawdust is simply lost.)

There are any number of ways to turn wood into boards, and all of them produce some amount of waste. As we are starting with a generally round cross section and trying to cut it into rectangular objects, obviously some loss will occur no matter how we proceed. Those rounded sections which need to be sheared off will be wasted no matter how we work. Where the amount of loss varies is in the process we choose to cut the remaining material into planks. Manual methods, such as pit saws, tend to produce the least sawdust, and the greatest number of planks, but they are much slower. Circular saws and other automatic milling methods create more sawdust but tend to be much faster.

So, the question is, why would we choose a method which produces so much more waste material? If we can produce board with 80% efficiency, why produce them with only 40%? Why accept that waste?

The answer is that waste is not the sole measure of productivity. If we need to produce 100 boards an hour, an automated mill can do so with only 4 laborers (for example), while manual work may require 10 or 20 times as much labor. So, while we double the waste of lumber, the manual process "wastes" 10 or 20 times as much labor. Even if we are not interested in speed of processing, the manual method is still much more labor intensive, and will always require more laborers than an automated solution.

And that is where these examples of waste often fall apart. They focus on one type of resource, be it food or wood or metal or oil, and ignore other resources such as time, or labor. Sometimes they even ignore the waste of other physical resources, such as electric cars that save oil, but use up tons of nickel and lithium and other rare minerals that environmentalists usually demand we conserve. (And, as batteries do have a limited functional life, it is not even a "one time investment", those batteries will need regular replacement.)

That trade off, which is so rarely recognized, is why the term "waste" is so meaningless. Waste would only exist if one sacrificed a good for no benefit, giving up something when the same goal could be achieved without that sacrifice. In other words, when there are, say, two ways to make a car, both identical in every respect, but one using 2 tons of steel and one using 3 tons. If we then chose the three ton solution, that would be waste. But that would also be economic suicide. if such a choice were made, the individual would be choosing to give away goods, to sacrifice profits, and would soon be driven from the market by competitors.

What critics call waste is actual an economic decision, a tradeoff, with which the critic disagrees. If we throw away food because it may be spoiled, deciding it is more cost effective to simply replace everything rather than use manpower and time to pick through it to find what is and is not still useful*, that is an economic decision, and consumers and the market will decide whether or not we chose right. What it si not, is waste. We have chosen to sacrifice some usable food in order to save time and labor, to pick the alternate route, could, if we were to use the critics' terminology be seen as a waste of labor.

But the critics will not recognize that there is anything like cost-benefit analysis, or that tradeoffs can make sense other than the solution they choose. Like those who declare nature an "absolute good", or proclaim they have identified the perfect solution, these critics are convinced that anything other than picking through the refuse heap looking at every slimy, rotten bit to see if some of it could be saved is wasteful. ("Absolute Values", "The Right Way", "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism") And that is the problem with such arguments, they not only refuse to recognize that there are many ways to approach a question, they refuse to recognize there is a question at all. They do not want to let the market decide, because they already have, and anything other than their own prejudices must be wrong. ("Misunderstanding the Market",  "Utopianism and Disaster", "The Threat of Perfection", "Life Is Not Fair - And Trying To Make It So Makes Things Worse")

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* There is a subsidiary issue here, which makes waste worse. It might be possible for those throwing away food which is simply a day or two old, to offset the charges of "waste" by giving that food to the homeless, to shelters or others. However, should anyone become ill after eating that food, doubtless the liability cases following, for not just those made sick, but those made fearful they might be sick -- don't laugh, similar cases for fear of exposure to radiation and chemicals have won -- would bankrupt he company, so giving away food with even the slightest risk is itself too risky, in a legal sense. (See "The Perversion of Liability Law" and "The "Right To Sue" As Our Only Right". See also "Real Life and Regulation", "The End of Private Action" and "Business Licensing and Regulation" for a few brief mentions of the many silly health regulations governing food donations to the homeless and other absurd interventions.)

I have written on this topic before, but thought about it again and could not resist a brief comment.

Poverty is, ostensibly, a lack of money. Of course, in the US today, poverty is not a lack of money, but simply having less money than one's fellows. In other words, our problem is not poverty but relative poverty.

In evidence, I offer one proof I have not previously put forward. Historically, and worldwide, the health problems most common to the poor are starvation and infectious disease. And that makes sense, if you have no money, you cannot eat, and you cannot see doctors. What you find to eat is often garbage or spoiled food, and thus a disease risk, and the shelter you can find, when you have any, is substandard, and thus tends to favor diseases, with overcrowding also favoring infection.

In the US, what are the diseases from which our supposed poor suffer? Obesity. Drug abuse. Alcoholism. The effects of smoking. All of these are unusual from a historical perspective as all involve the expenditure of money. The poor historically and in most nations cannot afford to suffer from those diseases. Those problems, well alcohol and drug use, were problems of the lower class, not those in poverty. (There is a difference.) However, we have now so poorly defined poor, that we regret even having a lower class. We pretend taking away money from them will leave them starving in the streets, but the truth is, we conquered poverty long ago, and did it with capitalism, not government. Our problem now is that the liberals, and some conservatives, can't accept the existence of the lower class, or any income inequality, and they are mistaking low income for poverty.

Which is why the rhetoric of the "war on poverty" so offends me. The rhetoric pretends we have third world or historical poverty, while in truth we a re a very rich country, and yet, thanks to this deceptive argument we end up throwing away a fortune, impairing our economy, and stopping additional growth, all because we have been misled about the true nature of wealth and poverty in our country.

Obviously, as I have so often written about this topic, I will need to revisit this in some detail in the future. Perhaps it merits a lengthy examination of all the issues I have raised. So please keep watching the blog, as I shall be returning tot his topic once again.

I make no secret of finding Wikipedia a dubious source at best, and have made my case many times. (Cf "Why I Won't Be Contributing to Wikipedia", "The Taxonomy of Trivia", "The Tragedy of the Creative Commons") However, I can still be surprised at how far some sections go in passing off suspect information. And this morning I stumbled across one more example.

I never really thought much about the etymology of "Gaul". It seemed obvious that "Gaul" was related to the Roman name "gallia", which derived from the same Celtic root as "Gael". It had long been so written in many of the older works I read, and it was so obvious as to seem a truism. However, today, I was wondering exactly how the word "oui" came to mean "yes", as it seemed to out of character with either Germanic (ja, yes) or romance(si, sim), that I was curious where it originated. And, in the course of tracking down an etymology, I ended up reading Wikipedia, where I found this bizarre claim:

The English Gaul and French: Gaule, Gaulois are unrelated to Latin Gallia and Galli, despite superficial similarity. They are rather derived from the Germanic term walha, "foreigner, Romanized person", an exonym applied by Germanic speakers to Celts, likely via a Latinization of Frankish *Walholant "Gaul", literally "Land of the Foreigners/Romans", making it partially cognate with the names Wales and Wallachia), the usual word for the non-Germanic-speaking peoples (Celtic-speaking and Latin-speaking indiscriminately). The Germanic w is regularly rendered as gu / g in French (cf. guerre = war, garder = ward), and the diphthong au is the regular outcome of al before a following consonant (cf. cheval ~ chevaux). Gaule or Gaulle can hardly be derived from Latin Gallia, since g would become j before a (cf. gamba > jambe), and the diphthong au would be unexplained; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille in French which is found in several western placenames

Not just that claim, but I found it, supported by the same handful of citations on every page related to Gaul, in almost the same wording.
 
Now, this struck me as pretty far fetched, as it meant that the French decided to use an obscure Germanic word to describe their land, which just happened to match precisely the Roman and pre-Roman name for that land. That is like claiming the Angles settled in England, but it is so named, not because of them, but because of the sharp corners found at Land's End and Cape Wrath (Angle-land).

Since there was one citation to a philologist, and a cite to the OED's etymological version (though the link just went to a wiki page about thew book, not an actual page with content), I began to doubt myself just a little. But, even if the Frankish word was the origin, which I doubted, didn't it seem likely it was a Frankish derivative from Gallia, rather than an independent word? The coincidence is just too much. Many words are similar, but usually they have different meanings, or, if they are the same, there is usually a common ancestor. The few exceptions, such as Greek "theou"/"theo" and Aztec/meso-American "teo" both meaning "G-d", it is simply because they are very short words which are used for common concepts or objects. So, while it is not completely impossible for this etymology to be accurate, it seemed VERY unlikely.

And so, I decided to search outside of Wikipedia, as it seemed that Wikipedia had either a single editor with a particular fixation, or else, as I have seen elsewhere, a single side in an academic dispute has gained currency, and thus is presented as established fact. Whatever the case, I decided to search a bit more.

And the first etymology I found convinced me I was right:

Gallic

1670s, from L. Gallicus "pertaining to Gaul or the Gauls," from L. Gallia "Gaul" and Gallus "a Gaul" from a native Celtic name (see Gaelic), though some connect the word with prehistoric W.Gmc. *walkhoz "foreigners" (see Welsh). 

Now, this recognizes the possible Frankish origin, but presents it as a minority opinion. And that sounds right to me, as it does seem highly suspect, and the few claims about how Roman words MUST be imported into French seemed as trustworthy as all such claims. (Such as the impossibility of a tie between Gotar, Goth, Getae and Geat because of linguistics, which some academics support and an equal number claim is nonsense.)

Now, I am not saying that the second etymology is correct, nor am I arguing that the first must be wrong. As I said, it is possible the first is right, though it seems to me the second is simply much more believable. But this does point out the problems of Wikipedia, to be precise two of them.

First, an editor with a strong viewpoint on an issue which matters to few enough others can run the show, inserting his pet issue into the encyclopedia at will without any criticism, and without anyone insisting he present the other side. Which means anyone looking up the topic, which most do because they don't know anything about it, will be either misinformed, or at least given a very one sided perspective.

Second, it is sometimes impossible, thanks to Wikipedia's bizarre rules of evidence, to support common sense positions. It is easy to find citations for the odd Frankish etymology, but, though I found one citation, it is much more difficult to find citations for facts which are simply self evident. As I said, it may be hard to prove, to Wikipedia's satisfaction, that things fall down not up, as it is so well known no one bothers to record that fact in a source which we can cite, leaving us with just the "Original Research" of our senses, which Wikipedia finds unacceptable.

Not that this is the worst of Wikipedia's sins, but it does show quite well how Wikipedia, unlike most commercial encyclopedias, can easily give a misleading, one sided, yet seemingly authoritative impression, leading those who use it as a reference to think they know the truth, when they simply are quit well informed on a minority position, or, in some cases, on a position held by only a handful of cranks, though cranks who publish often enough to have a ready source of citations.

POSTSCRIPT

I have one final objection to the "foreigners" etymology based on simple logic. The Celts/Gauls controlled most of central and western Europe for several centuries before the Germani tribes were pushed westward in that specific wave of migrations. In almost every other historical context, the people who immigrated into a region did not call the established residents "foreigners". If anything, the migrants accepted that appellation themselves. (Look at the waves of invasions in Greece, for one example.) As the Franks continued to migrate westward, moving into central Germany, then the lands of the Belgae, then into Gaul proper, it seems far more likely they would be seen as foreign, rather than see non-German speakers as "foreign".  The designation of all others as "barbarians" or "foreigners" is more a trait of settled groups, such as Greeks, so it just seems odd that the Franks would so designate the Gauls. (Though, I suppose it is possible if the Gauls were the first foreigners they met in Europe, they would describe all foreigners as Gauls, as the Moslems in the near east called all crusaders "franj" as they met the French first. But then this word derives from the Gaulish word for "Gaul" in the long run and makes this silly etymology moot.)

In "Why I Am Not A Libertarian" I argued that I did not support libertarian programs because¹, by imposing liberty from the top down, they allowed for the reversal of all those reforms with a single act. To make that more clear, say the Supreme Court rules that the federal government cannot regulate private commercial transactions, what guarantee do we have that when we get a new justice, or even when one of the existing justices changes his mind, that ruling will not be reversed, and we will be back where we are today? It takes a decision by a single person to end freedom. In "The Benefits of Federalism", "Consolidation and Diffusion", "Redundancy as a Protective Measure" and elsewhere, I discussed how distributed power solves this problem, as decisions established over a long period of time, based on trial and error, and enacted in multiple legislatures create a tradition of liberty that would be very hard to uproot. (Eg. It took the government almost a century to uproot state free banking laws, and they had only been in place for about 20 years. -- See "Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 26, 2011)", "Stupid Quote of the Day (January 7, 2012)" and "Those Greedy Bankers.)

However, it struck me recently that there is another problem with the libertarian top down approach, a problem it shares with government centralization, the need to micromanage everything. If the libertarians were to achieve victory, and try to impose freedom from above, they could start by passing some broad policies, but they would then have to face the daunting task of applying those great generalities to a million particular laws and programs², and eventually drown in a sea of details. I am not saying it is impossible, that a top down approach could never work, I just think it would require a superhuman effort and a tremendous amount of time, and in the end it would still be far too easy to overlook many programs or laws, leaving remnants of interventionist policies which could eventually be used to justify renewed regulation, forming the nucleus of a new authoritarian system. Or, at the very least, would create policy inconsistencies which critics could use to try to undermine the libertarian regime³.

Federalism offers an alternative which requires only minimal intervention, though it will take time. Then again, as the libertarian plan would take quite some time to track down and revoke every law and regulation, I don't see the slow nature of federalism as a problem. In addition, federalism offers interim solutions as well. While most people do not want to leave the US, even if they disagree with its laws, many are willing to leave a given state, or locality, and so, even as the country is moving piecemeal toward freedom, individuals can better their lot by moving from less free to more free states, counties or cities. And the pace of change will likely be faster than under libertarianism. A single citizen is invisible to the federal government, even hundreds of citizens are. But on a state level, those hundreds may be heard, and on a local level, even a single voice my have some influence. The more distributed the power, the more influence a single voice might have.

However, my purpose here is not to contrast libertarian and federalist policies, but instead to explain just how minimal the changes are that we need to enact to implement a federalist solution. I grant that they are going to be difficult, as they not only go against many years of accepted practices, but many involve repeal of constitutional amendments, but compared to the scale of the micromanagement involved in a top down libertarian solution, it does not seem so daunting. And, in any case, most libertarian solutions will require constitutional amendments and the repeal of long standing laws as well, and considering the fragility of libertarianism imposed from above, it seems much more worthwhile to follow the federalist agenda.

Before I go on, why don't I simply list the changes I feel are necessary, after which I can go into a little detail explaining why each is needed. The list will be in three parts. First, those changes I see as essential. Second, those changes which are not essential, but which will speed transition and prevent the government from avoiding the return of power to states and localities. Third, there will be a few additional changes which are not required, but which might be beneficial in one way or another, or which might achieve goals which are not, strictly speaking, part of the federalist agenda. (Note, the sequential number is simply for ease of reference in future comments, it does not imply any sequence of events, any order of precedence, nor does it suggest they all need to be enacted. I use it only because, I originally had numbered each list independently, and realized how difficult it was to then tie comments to individual items.)

First, the essential changes:

1. Repeal the 16th amendment
2. Repeal the 17th amendment
3. Repeal the 14th amendment (in part or in its entirety)

Second, those changes which will make the transition easier and more rapid:

4. Disband the Federal Reserve, and leave banking as a private institution
5. Eliminate federal law enforcement

Finally, laws which may be beneficial for reasons not strictly part of the federalist agenda:

6. Repeal the 12th amendment rules for vice presidential elections
7. Return all non-essential federal lands to the states in which they are located
8. Enact an amendment limiting commerce clause action to striking down restrictions on trade
9. Recognize either substantive due process or civil ex post facto on a federal level
10. Strike the general welfare clause, or add an amendment clarifying the meaning of that clause.

The second and third categories could be expanded considerably, but as I am trying to demonstrate how little is required to start us on a path to a free federalist government, I thought it best to keep the lists short. Any other laws or changes to laws would probably speed the transition, or change the direction which reforms take, but as our emphasis is on allowing changes to be directed by the citizens themselves in an organic manner, and to rise from the bottom to the top, with the best ideas being adopted voluntarily by other localities and states, it seems best to try to meddle as little as possible.

So, with that thought in mind, let us look at the ways in which I believe the first three, or at most five, changes will not only improve our government, but I believe will set us on the path to a free market, minimal government and a a truly liberal (in the traditional sense) nation.

Essential Reforms

The following three reforms are those I see as the bare minimum needed to enact a federalist system. Obviously, we could enact all three and still see no changes, as any government is only as good as the citizens who make up the electorate⁴. I have described before how even those who claim to want freedom and small government can be deceived into supporting the opposite through inconsistent beliefs. However, for the most part, a federalist system lessens the impact of such inconsistencies, much more than a centralized government, and so, by enacting these policies, we have a much greater chance of establishing a free, minimalist state, or, to be accurate, an association of many free, minimalist states, rather than the more intrusive, increasingly authoritarian centralized state we have today.

1. Repeal the 16th amendment

Certainly, this is not an issue which is unique to my essay, nor even a claim unique to federalism. Many, many people have suggested ending the federal income tax, usually with the argument that "the power to tax is the power to destroy", and almost inevitably in an argument containing not just calls for the repeal of this amendment, but proposals for a new tax scheme⁵. I suppose I am not that much different, in that I will include a new proposal for funding, though it lacks a specific method of taxation, but I think in most other ways this argument is unusual, in that I am not so much concerned with the ability to tax, the damage done by taxes, or anything of the sort, my focus is entirely on the locus of power, and the ways in which the 16th amendment disturbed the balance of power.

Prior to the 16th amendment⁶, with the exception of some tariffs and a few other fees and other fiscal odds and ends, the federal government was supported by the states directly, each state contributing toward the federal budget in proportion to the state's population⁷. This meant that methods of taxation were decided on a state or local level, which provided individuals with a number of different "laboratories" where the prods and cons of each tax method and rate could be examined. In addition, if taxes rose too high, individuals could simply move, without having to entirely leave the country.

More importantly, the system put the state and local government at odds with the federal government. In modern times, the federal government distributes funds collected from individuals (or created through inflation), making it in the interest of the states to favor big spending, larger government, inflation and other harmful policies. If the states directly fund the federal government, they suddenly become champions of fiscal restraint. No state wants to rely on federal subsidies when they realize that means sending the feds $10 to get back $5. A few small states may see subsidies as beneficial, but being small, they would likely lack the votes to make it happen. And so, this manner of funding would not just make the states the champions of reduced spending, it would over time ensure almost all spending was handled on a state or local level.

In other words, so long as the federal government has no direct source of revenue, and the states must sacrifice their revenues to support federal spending, meaning increased federal spending results in either reduced services or higher taxes (and the consequences of those taxes falling on state politicians rather than federal), the states will do all they can to keep power over the purse strings in state or local hands, meaning the federal government will be forced to create more and more distributed power structures.

2. Repeal the 17th amendment

This one in many ways is a companion piece to the first. The original intent of the differing ways in which senators and representatives were elected was that congressmen would represent the interests of their congressional districts. While senators would represent the interests of the state government. This clearly went along with the way in which government was funded, as senators could be seen as keeping an eye on the purse strings, seeing how their state's money was spent, as well as ensuring that popular passions did not eliminate the prerogative of the states. At the same time that representatives (and the justices of the Supreme Court) watched out for the interests of the common man, the senators worked to ensure each state was protected against bad legislation as well.

Now that we have popular election of both, senators are also creatures of popular passions, simply representing the whole state's passions, rather than a specific district. There is no check on popular passions at all, nor is there any tool for protecting state interests, unless those state interests are strong enough to arouse public passions. And that is why I argue we need to restore senatorial election by state governments, especially if we also repeal the 16th amendment. Again, by protecting the states' powers, these new senators will make sure power is slowly shifted from the federal government to the states, and will also ensure that populist rabble rousing or sudden public passions will not move the government to enact bad laws. As they will not rely on popular election, these senators will have the distance to respond with principled positions. And as they will rely on the good will of the state government for reelection, they will also be very likely to closely follow the wishes of the state government.

3. Repeal the 14th amendment

This is not likely to win me any friends, as the 14th amendment is a piece of law mired in controversy, especially with the phenomena of "anchor babies" and other abuses of the citizenship provisions as they are interpreted. Just mentioning repealing this amendment is likely to upset both immigration liberalizers, and many civil rights activists who look on this amendment fondly. Worse, I am also likely to upset the opposite number, as I really require only partial repeal, and the section on immigration is not it.

And so, having upset all sides in the immigration debate, and many racial activists, let us look at what I truly desire.

The part of the 14th amendment I wish to repeal are not the sections on immigration, but rather the parts which apply federal constitutional safeguards to state laws.  My goal is for the states to have absolute freedom in the exercise of the legislative abilities, limited only by state constitutions, as well as the constitutional prohibitions upon restrictions on commerce and travel between states, as well as all the rules on funding and electing the federal government, granting the federal government control of citizenship and so on. Basically, I would give the states free reign as far as individual rights are concerned, except, of course, the state constitutional safeguards. It sounds extreme to modern ears, but it fits with the general principle of allowing near total freedom, so that we can discover what is best for us, even if it comes from unexpected, even troubling, places. Thus, if one of our constitutional guarantees is wrong, or is written in such a way, or interpreted in such a way, that it does more harm than good, by freeing states from that restriction, we can discover where the problem originated

Some might be horrified at the thought of states free to violate civil rights, but there is one safety valve, or rather there is one overt safety valve and a huge, implicit one⁸. The overt safety valve is the federal government's role in ensuring the free flow of commerce between states. As commerce requires freedom of movement as well, this would seem to ensure individuals would always have the freedom to relocate. States might want to go nuts and enforce a total lack of rights, but individuals would have the option of flight. And that would create the implicit safety valve. If a given state strays too far from freedom, enforces restrictions individuals find unacceptable, money, trade and citizens will flow outward, taxes will dry up, representation in congress and presidential elections will vanish, and, if the government survives the backlash, it will become a marginal power at best.

Useful Reforms

The following two reforms are not required for the creation of a federalist state. In theory, enacting only the first three changes should be enough. However, that assumes that, at some point, the pressures from individual states will result in these two changes taking place. Thus, enacting these at the beginning will save a considerable amount of time. In addition, as both of these relate to powers of the federal, rather than state, governments, these are changes that would be difficult and time consuming for a federalist system to make⁹. As a result, these reforms may end being made piecemeal, or not completely made, leaving remnants around which centralizing and interventionist changes may form, making it not just a question of speed and efficiency, but also a possible preventative measure to enact these two changes.

4. Disband the Federal Reserve, and leave banking as a private institution

Technically, a federalist government could coexist with our present Federal Reserve system. Of course, with states having total freedom over matters not related to defense, barriers to interstate commerce or or diplomacy, states could enact local banking laws, or even return to a private gold standard within the state¹⁰. In all likelihood, such changes would slowly undermine the Federal Reserve, and eventually end it. However, there are a few good reasons to hasten this process and eliminate the Federal Reserve at the outset.

The primary problem of the Federal Reserve is that it is granted the power of acting as legal tender. It is questionable how this would work under a true federalist system, as it would seem the states would have the power to create their own currencies, or their own banking laws at the very least, but doubtless the Federal Reserve would attempt to cling to this power in some form, if not remaining the sole legal tender, at least remaining the sole tender recognized by the federal government for any payments, which would grant the currency a fair amount of clout.

Provided the dollar as issued by the Federal Reserve remained a viable currency, then the Federal Reserve becomes a much bigger problem, as the ability to inflate, and the ready market for government debt, would make it very easy for the federal government to circumvent the state control over its purse strings. It may not be able to inflate enough to cover all debts, but a combination of state funding and inflation would likely leave the government able to spend as much as it wishes, and certainly would give it a great deal of freedom from state threats of cutting off funding.

Finally, there is the consequence of such inflation. If the currency remains viable, and inflationary financing is used, then there will be a general erosion of purchasing power, as well as all the other ills associated with monetary expansion. As such expansions strike unevenly, and since the government can, to some degree, control which states or regions will benefit from getting new funds first, and which will be harmed by seeing little or none of the new currency, inflation could easily distort the public impression of which state policies are working and which are not. Intentionally or accidentally, inflation could convince the public that there are positive economic benefits to policies which are actually doing harm. And thus inflation, and inflation alone, could completely short circuit one of the greatest benefits of federalism¹¹.

5. Eliminate federal law enforcement

We often forget that prior to 1934 there was very little in the way of federal law enforcement. The FBI existed for some time before 1934, but could only act in most cases if requested by state officials¹². Without a national paper currency, there was little call for counterfeiting laws, and thus the Secret Service was imply involved in presidential protection. There were military police, and some federal marshals providing prisoner transport and the like, as well as a few provisions for Indian reservations¹³, but for the most part, law enforcement was handled by states, and crimes across multiple states were handled according to extradition agreements between the states. And it made sense, as there were almost no federal crimes. If we exclude treason, even the crimes handled by the early FBI were normally just interstate versions of state crimes, such as kidnapping. Until the Mann Act, there just weren't many federal crimes to enforce, and so there was no need for federal law enforcement.

Hopefully, a highly distributed federalist system would return to the same situation. With the federal government's scope greatly reduced, there simply would not be much use for federal law enforcement¹⁴. However, that does not explain why I would suggest eliminating federal law enforcement early would be useful. After all, if there is no need for federal police, won't they just fade away on their own? What purpose would it serve to eliminate them in advance?

The reason I think it best to eliminate them early is because of the example of antitrust laws, or tax laws, or a host of other regulatory laws which went from being civil offenses to being criminal ones. My worry, is, as with the Federal Reserve, federal law enforcement can be used to do an end run around federalism and reassert control over various economic activities. With or without regulatory agencies, it might be possible for the federal government to view certain commercial activities as somehow rising to the level of crimes, and thus the existence of the federal police will be a strong temptation to criminalize civil offenses, or even regulatory matters, and retain power through the federal law enforcement role. By eliminating them in advance, it will remove that temptation and return to the states the not inconsiderable government authority related to the criminal law.

Optional Reforms:

The following five reforms are not required, but definitely will help in moving from a central to a distributed government. Some may be less directly related to federalism than others. Most of these changes are related to ensuring economic liberty on a federal level, or preventing the federal government from interfering with state independence, but a few have other motives. I will discuss each in more detail in the following individual descriptions, making a case for why each would be beneficial. However, I have listed them as "optional" because they are just that, changes that would help the government on its way to a distributed, federal system, but they are not essential, nor even as important as the two previous reforms. They would be nice to have passed, but the movement toward a federalist system could proceed without them.

6. Repeal the 12th amendment rules for vice presidential elections

This one is probably the most difficult to justify, as it requires a significant change to our manner of thinking. And, it also fights the most remote potential problem. Still, as this final section represents my wish list, I figured I should include it. Not just because I think it would be a good reform to enact, but also because it gives me a chance to discuss parties in politics, as well as a few concepts important to maintaining a minimal government.

The changes to vice presidential elections were basically a reaction to the formation of permanent adversarial parties and the birth of a two party system. The original system was developed by drafters who conceived a system either free of parties, or where, at most, there would be small, ad hoc factions which would not merit government recognition. Unfortunately, those same drafters then went on to form quite permanent and substantial parties which now play a tremendous role in politics and enjoy complete government recognition¹⁵.

I have discussed the two party system before¹⁶, mostly in terms of comparison to parliamentary systems, and almost entirely in the context of a central government. I have not taken the time to examine it in comparison to a system without recognized parties. And that is my thought here, that it might be beneficial to begin limiting the importance of our two major parties as we move toward a localized system, and this would be a good first step.

I know many are dubious, wondering why I would want to eliminate parties, and if it would be beneficial, or even possible. However, I think there is a good argument to be made.

Our two party system may have existed since the start, but looking back through history, it was not quite as rigid prior to the birth of our centralized state¹⁷. The vast majority of viable third parties existed in the 19th century, for example. Not to mention that the two major shifts in the two major parties were also during the same century. In addition, for half of the nineteenth century the Democrat party was split regionally into at least two factions, sometimes more. Only with the growth of centralized power did the parties come to solidify into their present state, and that is because, with federal issues the only ones that mattered, each party needed to have a single position, or risk losing to the other side. Previously, when state issues were more significant, local parties often differed with the positions of the same party in other states.

My thought is this. As the states become more significant, local issues will predominate, and what is important in one state may not matter in another. More, in one state, it might be common for people holding position A to support position B, while in another state, those holding position A oppose position B. With states mattering more and federal government less, it will become more and more difficult to formulate a single nationwide platform which also answers state needs. Likely, rather than national parties, a federalist system will see the birth of numerous local parties¹⁸. Likely, for purposes of congressional elections and presidential, certain state parties will form some sort of coalition, but it is doubtful whether it will be possible to form coalitions between parties in all 50 states, or anything close. And thus, it seems more than likely our federal government will see either the birth of multiple parties, or else the death of parties, with each state delegation representing the interests of the parties in that state, forming alliances with other delegations on individual issues, rather than along party lines.

And that is why I suggest this reform, as it eliminates the an implicit recognition of the two party system from the constitution. If we leave it in place, and continue to tacitly recognize the two party system¹⁹, then I foresee the two parties struggling to maintain their privileged position, impeding the growth of local parties. Yes, as central power declines, the importance of the two predominant parties will decline, but it will be much slower if they retain special privileges. And thus I would prefer to see this reform put in place.

As I said in the introduction, I don't see this as essential, but I would think that a step away from the national two party system would be helpful, in that it would free the individual states to establish their own parties independently of the historical parties that existed during our centralized, two party system.

7. Return all non-essential federal lands to the states in which they are located

Compared to the last post, this one is quite easy to justify. Federal lands are dangerous to federalism in two ways, both of which we already discussed. First, by giving the federal government control over large swaths of many states, they give the government a lot more influence over those states than it should have. In the case of some less populous and poorer states, it also grants the federal government considerable economic influence²⁰. Second, because federal lands require federal policing, extensive federal lands will perpetuate federal criminal law enforcement, which I discussed already as a danger to state independence.

Clearly, there are necessary federal lands. The government needs office buildings, military bases, storage for records, embassies and consulates overseas and a few other practical facilities. All other lands can be returned to the stares in which they are located, which will allow those states to decide what to do with them. In the case of parks, individual states can take them over, or coalitions of states for those which cross state lines. It is then up to the states to decide whether they are going to try to maintain parks, or sell them off to private owners²¹. All other federal lands, which include huge patches of the western states, will simply be divided among the states. In this way, we will eliminate all sorts of potential trouble.

Of course, if this reform is not enacted, most likely it will come about by default. With the exception of a few self financing parks, it will be quite expensive for the central government to maintain so much property, and the states are likely to be reluctant to allocate funding. As a result the federal government will probably begin to divest itself of the less important properties, and we will, for the most part, achieve these end results anyway. However, a few properties, such as self financing parks, will probably remain in federal hands, ratehr than state, which is why I would suggest enacting this reform explicitly, rather than waiting for it to happen through incremental federalist reform.

8. Enact an amendment limiting commerce clause action to striking down restrictions on trade

This one should not have to be enacted explicitly, in fact it should not be needed at all. However, as the government has expanded the commerce clause to mean whatever it wants, it may be necessary to define it explicitly, which would probably require an amendment. Of course, we could rely on the courts to respect this obvious definition, but they have done so badly in the past that it is risky to rely upon them acting sensibly. And so, to prevent anyone from ever abusing the commerce clause to extend federal powers again, it seems sensible to enact such an amendment.

9. Recognize either substantive due process or civil ex post facto on a federal level

Each of these principles were offered up at one time or another in the 19th century to prevent the government from enacting a law which would remove an existing commercial right. Civil ex post facto was akin to criminal ex post facto. Under the criminal version, a man cannot be tried for a crime committed before the act was made criminal. Under the civil version, any contracts or commercial ventures preexisting a regulation would effectively be "grandfathered" and allowed to continue. The theory did not enjoy broad support, and eventually ex post facto was limited explicitly to criminal matters, so a second effort was made using the idea of substantive due process, which, again, tried to protect preexisting rights by arguing that an individual could not be deprived of such rights without due process, and simple passage of a law did not constitute due process.

I would argue that recognizing either principle would be a tremendous advantage on a federal level, especially if the last reform, limiting the commerce clause, were not enacted. By effectively preventing regulation from touching existing relationships, it would make economic legislation very difficult. Even if regulation were attempted, by creating two classes, those who were in the market and exempt, and regulated newcomers, it would make regulation seem so patently unfair it would effectively end federal economic regulation.

Of course, I would also like to see states recognize this, but it would be contrary to my federalist plans to force such a regulation upon them. And so, for the moment, this would be enacted only on a federal level. I would hope that some states might adopt such principles, and, when the benefits became clear, others would follow, but, true to my federalist beliefs, I would shy away from enforcing this practice on any states or localities, leaving it to them to discover the truth for themselves, to either confirm what I believe, or prove me wrong. In either case, I am confident the best, most beneficial policy would end up getting the widest support, eventually^21,22.

10. Strike the general welfare clause, or add an amendment clarifying the meaning of that clause.

This is the other back door that was used to expand federal power, perhaps used even more than the commerce clause, though the commerce clause was used first. I won't repeat all of the debate about the true intent of the clause, as it has been covered ad nauseam. Clearly Madison thought it was limited by the enumerated powers and the rights of the states, but that does not tell us what the intent of the other signers was, so we really can't tell whether it was imagined to be a backdoor by the majority of signers or not. What we do know is that, if we try to create limited, distributed government, we cannot allow such a broad, all purpose clause to remain, at least not as long as the courts and government are willing to give it that expansive reading.

Of course, there is always the one saving grace of my plan, the state control over the purse strings. Without a source of federal income separate from the states, even with the ability to enact laws, the government might find itself without the funding to carry out the laws it enacted. So, there is hope that even without removing or clarifying this clause, it will be toothless in practice. However, there is also the risk that states will back down when faced with a standoff against the federal government, and so it may be best simply to remove the temptation entirely. But, if such a reform is not enacted, we could still see effective federal government created nonetheless.

Conclusions:

There remain a few odds and ends²³ that need to be addressed if we are going to have a truly free, diffuse government, but many will resolve themselves through the internal mechanisms of federalism. And for the few that do not will see themselves swept away as the federalist tendency toward smaller, more localized power becomes a trend and people begin to preemptively eliminate large, centralized power centers, even before the natural mechanisms of federalism would. Yes, it is an optimistic view, but the few times in history we have had largely free government, say the Jefferson through Jackson administrations, especially the Jackson, as well as the period from the end of the civil war through the 1880's, which was not free, but saw a general tendency toward less government in many areas (notably excluding banking), during such eras we have seen the movement toward freedom begin to gather momentum. Yes, in both cases I mentioned contrary forces eventually won out for a variety of reasons²⁴,  but had there not been these other pressures, it is easy to see how freedom could ahve developed a momentum of its own, and pressed us toward ever more diffuse and minimal government. And we can only hope that taking some steps in that direction will once again create such a momentum.

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1. Obviously, there are other reasons I do not support specific libertarian groups (see "The Tragedy of the Creative Commons"), such as those that espouse conspiracy theories ("The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories", "Mumia, the DaVinci Code, Full Body Scans, and Loose Change - How Conspiracy Theories Arise", "All Conspiracies Great and Small") or excessive fear of the state ("Stupid Quote of the Day (January 27, 2012)", "Stupid Quote of the Day (January 23, 2012)" and "Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 24, 2012)"), not to mention the absurd "libertarian left" ("The Libertarian Left", "Revelation From Bottom Feeding","The Failure of Wikipedia", "Copyright as Politics", "Some Libertarian Analogies") and the isolationists who call themselves non-interventionists ("Why Ron Paul Scares Me", "Stupid Quote of the Day (January 5, 2012)", "Rational National Defense", "A Perfect Example"). But I am thinking here not of specific factions so much as the mainstream libertarian policies to which almost all of these factions subscribe. (Except, possibly the libertarian left, as I can't imagine how they reconcile left wing politics with minimal government, and their writing is nebulous enough I have yet to figure out exactly what they believe, if they even know.) To see more of my thoughts on the problems with various libertarian factions see also "Reticent To Adopt a Title", "A Possible Designation" and "The Right Identity".

2. People believe passing broad laws will resolve everything, but that is far from true. Even if every regulatory agency were disbanded, the regulations would still remain. Even if laws are passed prohibiting one form of intervention or another, the laws that go contrary to those broad policy statements will not be instantly repealed, they will either have to be formally repealed, or else test cases will have to be brought to court. and in many cases dealing with regulatory matters, the nature of the regulation makes it difficult to bring a case to court. Eventually, perhaps every law could be subjected to one or the other, but until then many authoritarian policies would remain in effect.

3. If anyone doubts this would happen, read any of the professional pundits' columns and check out the comments. In every one there are a host of liberals criticizing each Republican running in the primaries by "just asking questions", pointing out supposed inconsistencies between their statements and actions, or pointing out when they had acted in a way contrary to the wishes of their conservative supporters. The same could easily happen if libertarians failed to completely eradicate all interventionist policies.

4. See  "The Single Greatest Weakness", "What We Deserve", "Who Is To Blame?", "Don't Blame the Politicians" and "Doing Something".

5. Most of these arguments recently have been centered on the FairTax, which I examine in my posts "An Interesting Analogy, "Why I Dislike the FairTax ", "The Best Argument Against the FairTax "" and "The FairTax's Liberal Assumptions". I have done this myself in my post "The Foolishness of Corporate Taxes", criticizing all taxes not assessed against individuals, as well as "What we need", "Making Taxes Hurt", "The Benefits of Federalism" and "A True Conservative Platform", arguing that the flat tax is the best federal taxation scheme, if we must have one. I also wrote "Reframing the Debate" (as well as a note in "One Sided History") in favor of the poll tax, though I somehow doubt that tax scheme will ever be revivied due to the way it was used to prevent freed slaves and others from voting.

6. As I mentioned in "Bad Economics Part 8", "The Benefits of Federalism", "Upcoming Post" and "The Best Historical Example", there was a Civil War era income tax, even without the 16th amendment, so income taxes are possible without this amendment, or at least were once seen as such. (This is important to recall when FairTax advocates mention predicating their tax on the repeal of the amendment, it is still no guarantee against the FairTax coexisting with an income tax.) As I think in modern times an income tax could not exist without the 16rth amendment, I do not make provision for an additional amendment banning an income tax, but if it should seem the federal income tax is coming back, then perhaps such an amendment would need to be added.

7. This is where many people fail to understand the "3/5 of a person" description of slaves. The number had nothing to do with the inherent "worth" of slaves, but was an accounting figure concerned with both representation and taxes. Slave states, for obvious reasons, wanted slaves counted for representation in congress and the electoral college, and not for taxes, while free states wanted slaves excluded from congressional and electoral figures, but included for taxes. Obviously, neither side would agree to the other's plan, and so, in the end, a compromise was reached which was slightly more favorable to the slave states, counting slaves as 3/5 of a person for both purposes. Ironically, while many get offended by slaves being counted as less than a whole person, had slaves counted not at all, it would have strongly favored the abolitionist cause. Counting slaves as whole persons, on the other hand, would have favored slave owners. All of which shows how incomplete (and anachronistic) understanding of issues, as well as reacting emotionally without full understanding, can lead to quite improper or even harmful, reactions.

8. This also ignores the safeguards within each state, in the form of state constitutions, whatever state judicial review exists and all the other safeguards each state chooses to build into its government. I am here assuming the worst case scenario of a state which eliminates all such protections and decides to treat citizens as property of the rulers.

9. Starting from scratch, federalist systems would make it very difficult for the federal government to obtain such powers. But working from an existing state of affairs, it is much more difficult for the federalist system to reduce the power of the central government. Control of the purse strings and senate representation helps, but it takes time and a lot of effort to enact reforms that totally eliminate federal powers. I am still counting on such reforms for most such improvements, but in these two cases, where the changes are more important than most, I think it best to eliminate them from the start.

10. Technically, states could enact whatever legal tender laws they wished, and could establish a gold, silver, platinum, technetium, or copper standard. They could restore the use of tobacco or wampum. They could even revive foolish ideas such as colonial era land banks, or adopt the policies of Silvio Gessell, or monetarist cranks who proposed money with a gradually decaying value. Anything would be possible, within the limitations of state constitutions. On the other hand, they would not be able to force this currency on other states, so there would effectively develop a competition between differing state currencies, with Federal Reserve notes being retained only for payments to the federal government, or use by whoever still found them acceptable.

11. There are many analogies in real life. For example, the partial deregulation of the Savings and Loans, after they were burdened with low rate loans during an inflationary period, and while providing them with a safety net allowing them to gamble without risk, led directly to the S&L crisis, but the blame for the collapse was laid, not at the doorstep of government, but placed on deregulation. In a similar manner, inflationary harm could be blamed on productive policies, and destructive policies could be made to appear beneficial. See "How To Blame the Free Market" and "Government Quackery", among others.

12. There were exceptions, such as kidnapping across state lines, but they were relatively rare.

13. Indian reservations remain a troublesome area for any proposal. I have long held that Jefferson's solution, creating sovereign pseudo-states within states, but without granting them full state status, was inherently unworkable. Either tribes should have been granted territories which would function as sovereign states, equal to the other states, or else the tribes should have been integrated into the states in which they resided. However, as the agreements were made, and the reservations do exist, there is now the problem of how to handle them. As they are often not contiguous pieces of land, and sometimes are entirely within the limits of a single state, creating independent states out of them would be difficult, not to mention that many reservations with very small populations would give absurdly great senate representation to a very small group of individuals. We could privatize the land, either distributing it in shares to the inhabitants, or give it in entirety to the tribal governing body, but that would create some issues as well, for example, with states which forbid gambling. So, for the time being, it remains a thorny issue, which I shall likely discuss in a future post, or series of posts.

14. As I shall discuss in point #9, federal lands are a problem as well. In many states in the southwest, federal land is such a considerable portion of the state that federal law enforcement has greater jurisdiction than state police. Of course, as I suggest reducing public lands, this may be less of a problem. What public lands remain, such as military bases, can be handled by military police. Government buildings, such as the White House and Capitol, can use their own security, and the few remaining bits of federal land can devise their own solutions.

15. Just a few examples are the way government campaign financing is distributed, the way committee seats are allocated in congress, the state organization and financing of primary election, the very existence of recognized primary elections, the differing laws for campaign contributions given to a candidate and those given to a party, and probably a few dozen more. Granted, this recognition is available to parties beyond the two major ones, but it takes quite some effort to be recognized as a legitimate party, and thus, effectively, the two party system is written into law, with a few allowances made for a third party.

16. It is mentioned in passing in "How Conservatives Defeat Themselves" and "How Not To Improve Elections", though mostly to suggest that I should write a more thorough examination of the topic, comparing parliamentary and two party systems.

17. The solidification took place at the same time the Democrats and Republicans changed their characters in the 1890's. Which also marks the beginning of large scale centralization. See  "The Best Historical Example", "A Passing Thought", "Rethinking the Scopes Trial", "The Political Spectrum", "Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution" and "Mistaken Perceptions of the Industrial Age" .

18. Our familiarity with a two party system, in addition to our preference for confrontational systems, will likely result in two parties arising in each state, at first probably even retaining the names "Democrat" and "Republican". Over time, some states may develop additional parties, see these two parties fragment, or just see the names change as the existing parties diverge too much from the tradition behind their names, but it seems likely that many states will, most of the time, have a two party system, with a few outliers experimenting with multiparty, or party-free systems.

19. There are other issues which must be addressed in this context as well, such as federal campaign funding. Of course, if we eliminate such funding, then there is no problem. There are other issues as well, such as congressional rules in a system without two parties, or what will replace primaries, but we can deal with those in another essay.

20. Many are upset by my opposition to federal parks, but I have to say that parks are no different from welfare, social security or any other federal program. If private citizens are unwilling to pay for such parks on their own, then why should we create them for the benefit of a minority, when the majority would want to spend money differently? And if they are widely supported, then wouldn't there be a private owner who would create such parks for profit? Or charitable groups willing to contribute to buy and maintain unspoiled land? If people aren't willing to spend their own money, by what right do they seize the money of others through the government to spend on their own pet projects? Conservatives should understand that, but, sadly, when it comes to national parks, many seem to forget their principles. But just because you like something does not exempt it from the same ethical guidelines as everything else. Ethics are either universal or they are pointless. (Cf "In Defense of Zero Tolerance, or, And Examination of Law, Common Sense and Consistency")

21. Many criticize capitalism and the free market for taking too long to correct problems. This is a mistake for many reasons, not the least of which is many supposed problems are nothing of the kind. ("Misunderstanding the Market",  "Utopianism and Disaster", "The Threat of Perfection", "Life Is Not Fair - And Trying To Make It So Makes Things Worse") However, even when they are problems, it is precisely this slow pace of change which is the strength of such a system. By acting slowly, we have more than enough time to understand what side effects any given change might have, and also have adequate time to reverse course should it prove less beneficial than imagined. ("Traffic Lights, Predictability and Conservatism", "In Praise of Slow Changes", "Predictability", "Expectations", "Conservatism, Incremental Change and Federalism", "Humor and Nightmare") Authoritarian states may act more swiftly, but they have a host of other problems, so even if we decide speed is somehow desirable (though I still disagree), the speedier solution of state enacted changes is far too costly. (""...Then Who Would Do it?"", "With Good Intentions", "In The Most Favorable Light","Government Quackery")

22. A good discussion of these topics can be found in Bernard Siegan's Economic Liberties and the Constitution. The few mentions to current events are thirty or more years out of date, but, like Henry Hazlittt's The Inflation Crisis, most of the work is either history or theory, and so the small amount that is now dated is not really important. On the other hand, reading about the problems of several decades ago does make you realize how quickly and how much things have changed.

23. The first thing that comes to mind is whether the federal government can enact duties, quotas and other controls over foreign trade. Clearly, a free market would require the government to eschew such activities, but it is arguable whether such things should be banned, or whether we should wait for the federalist system to resolve the question through conflict with the central government. I admit to not having considered all such smaller questions, and so I may need to revisit this post to wrap up a number of smaller questions.

24. In the case of the Jefferson-Jackson era, there were two. First, the recession resulting from the final liquidation of the Second Bank of US was blamed on the market and encouraged a slight movement toward intervention. But much more significant was the issue of slavery, as well as the conflict between centralization and state's rights, which would continue to cause problems until both were decided in the Civil War. ("The Best Historical Example") The period ending in 1890 was sabotaged by government meddling in the financial sector. Thanks to periodic panics and other economic woes, populist movements and labor agitation gained a foothold, allowing progressives, reformers and others to create interventionist programs. ("A Passing Thought","Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 26, 2011)")

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POSTSCRIPT

My thoughts can be seen in earlier forms in "Why I Am Not A Libertarian", "The Benefits of Federalism",  "My Vision of Government", "My Vision of Government Part II ", "Monetary Issues Made Simple Part I", "Monetary Issues Made Simple Part II ", "Prelude", "What I Want in a President", "A True Conservative Platform", "An Analogy For Government", "Man's Nature and Government", "Misunderstanding Democracy", "Power and Disorder", "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government", "Consolidation and Diffusion", "Negative and Positive Rights", "In Praise of Contracts", "Greed Versus Evil", "Volunteer Fireman, Barn Raisings and Government", "Collective Action and Government", ""...Then Who Would Do it?"", "Perverting Self Interest", "Third Best Economy", "The Other 99%", "Planning For Imperfection", "The Threat of Perfection", "Utopianism and Disaster", "How the Government Corrupts Relationships", "Life Is Not Fair - And Trying To Make It So Makes Things Worse", "Government Versus Culture - A Forgotten Distinction", "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences" and "The State of Nature and Man's Rights". There are obviously many, many other essays on these and related topics, many of which can be found via the links in the essays mentioned, but some of which remain unmentioned. For those truly curious, Google provides a good alternative to trudging through several hundred pages of old posts going back almost 5 years.

Update (2012/02/02): I can't believe I forgot it, but there is one additional federal power, the control of citizenship. States can control what constitutes state residency, but the federal government controls national citizenship. There is a small problem if a situation arises where one can be a state resident without national citizenship, as it is unclear whether one could then vote for state representatives in congress (clearly presidential elections are not allowed), but those sort of details can be resolved with a simple piece of legislation. (Personally, I am inclined to deny such resident aliens a say in any federal offices, though their vote on state officials, if such a vote is allowed, does still indirectly control senate representation, but anything else, be it congress or president, seems best to reserve for full citizens.)

Having a bit of pain in my extremities today, so m y already late posts will be even later, but I had one thought that needs to be examined, and so I wanted to post some preliminary thoughts, and promise a full examination to follow. In fact, the subject may be the first topic to be examined in my series of "Devil's Advocate" or "Forced Conversion" posts (see "The Devil's Advocate").

I saw a news article on the continued uprising in Syria, and was struck by one bit of nonsense. It seems that every western nation is trying to force through a UN condemnation of the Assad regime, but is being blocked by Russia's threatened veto. Now, this points out two of the more absurd aspects of the UN.

First, countries, rather than acting on their own, often wait for the UN to speak before acting, which can easily lead to total inactivity, due to the ease with which UN resolutions can be blocked. (This also makes it unlikely these UN fearing nations will ever act on some issues, such as anything in support of Israel, due to built in UN bias.)

Second, the permanent members of the security council are a laughable anachronism. Granted, most are those possessing nuclear arms, but not all nuclear powers are represented (eg Ukraine, India, Israel) and many permanent members are, other than possessing nuclear weapons, no longer leading nations in a military, economic or diplomatic sense. And, even if they were, why should these nations have such absolute power? It made sense right after the Second World War when the permanent members still controlled the largest standing armies in the world, and were occupying much of the globe, but now? it just seems an anachronism, and a strong impediment to any hope of passing a resolution through the UN.

As I said, this is just a set of preliminary thoughts. Obviously the UN is a favorite conservative whipping boy, so much has been said about it, including in this blog. (See "A Hypothetical Situation" and "A Science Fiction Story" -- see also on the Geneva Convention and related matters "Goodbye Geneva", "Why Nuremberg?", "Last Thought on the Topic", "I Was Right", "Civilian Casualties","Guilty Until Proven Guilty", "Somehow The Media Missed This", "Questions Raised by Boumedine", "Confirmation, If It Is True", "A Very Quick Thought" and "Not Geneva Again!") On the other hand, it is a topic which has often been criticized for specific ills, or simply mocked, and not examined in detail, with methodical criticisms. So, I am considering making an examination of the UN the first of my series of Devil's Advocate/Forced conversion posts, posts in which I do my best to think like a strong supporter of a given topic, offering up the best possible defense, a method by which I hope to reveal the errors in the theory. By doing this it should be possible to reveal the mistakes in a given concept without all the weaknesses inherent in polemic essays which often contain assumptions the supporters do not accept. In this case, perhaps I will be able to demonstrate the weaknesses of the UN in such a way that even UN supporters will agree they are too grave to make the UN a worthwhile institution.

We shall see. As I said, I am not up to much writing right now, but perhaps tonight, or early tomorrow I will feel better and be able to begin on this post,a s well as complete the essay that is still waiting to be finished, as well as completing the two remaining "stupid quote" posts. (See "Changing Direction")

I know many people have problems with Gingrich, with his work as a lobbyist, or his sometimes deviations from conservative orthodoxy, or with his supposed "arrogance", and others have problems with Santorum, with his religious beliefs or some of his statements,or his role in the fight over the Specter seat, but honestly, who thinks Romney has a chance of winning? Is it not just McCain all over again?

Romney is, whatever he might claim, a moderate Republican. In fact, he was once an independent who supported Tsongas, so let us be honest and call him a liberal Republican. So, to whom is he going to appeal? Some conservatives may vote for him out of party loyalty, but most, I think, will just sit this one out, as they did in 2008. The liberals, if they are true liberals, will not vote for him, as he is pretty much a "me too, but less" liberal, and if you want liberal, why go with watered-down when you get full strength liberalism with Obama? And as far as moderates are concerned, when the two candidates are so close in beliefs, why not go with the evil you know rather than an unknown? Finally, unlike Reagan who offered a real alternative and got cross over votes*, what incentive is there for Democrats to jump ship to get pretty much the same thing?

As I said, under what theory, other than  Obama doing something suicidally stupid, could Romney win? Even if you hate Gingrich or Santorum, you have to admit, either one has a better chance of rallying the base than a blow dried, bland, dull as dishwater, former Tsongas independent who was liberal enough to win Massachusetts, and who supported a state version of ObamaCare hile in office.

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* It is a mistake of Republicans to think they need a liberal candidate popular with the media to get cross over votes and win the independents. As Reagan showed, strong conservative views  are more likely to win over the middle.

Today I began to read, for the third or fourth time, Gershom Scholem's "The Messianic Idea in Judaism". It is probably not a book most people would find to be a page turner, but I find it quite interesting in the same way I find a lot of theology fascinating. Not only does the history and theology appeal to me, but often the ideas discussed inspire me to think in different ways about a variety of topics. (See "Jacob Frank and Hillary Clinton ")  And this time was no different, just reading through the titles reminded me of some of the more idiosyncratic theories put forth by some of the more outre kabalist sects, and, in so doing, made me think of a rather interesting way to approach the topics closest to my heart, including those which I recently seem to have some difficulty explaining to my readers' satisfaction.

In an earlier post, I spoke of Sabbatai Zvi (or Zevi) and his much later disciple Jacob Frank, however, for those who missed that post ("Jacob Frank and Hillary Clinton "), I will once again explain the basics. Sabbatai Zvi was a young rabbi living in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century. At some point, he began to believe he was the messiah. Messianism in Judaism being somewhat different than Christian messianic beliefs, this did not mean he was in any way divine, and certainly not that he was G-d incarnate. (Such a belief would have been thought heresy by orthodox Jews¹.) The messiah was, instead, what messiah had traditionally meant², the rightful king of kenesset Israel³, that is the king of all the Jews. There was certainly a mystical element to messiahood, as the messiah was anointed by G-d, and was expected, at least in the 17th century, to restore Jewish rule to Israel, if not more⁴, but it was a far cry from what messiahood had come to mean in Christianity⁵.

Still, when Sabbatai Zvi began to announce his role as the messiah, a claim promoted quite vigorously by his associate Nathan of Gaza, it created a tremendous stir among the Jews of Israel, as well as the neighboring Ottoman regions, and so, as Zvi began his walk to Istanbul to meet with the Sultan, he attracted quite a following⁶. Despite some skepticism, he attracted enough supporters that the Sultan became concerned, at least concerned enough to call for Sabbatai Zvi's arrest and imprisonment. In the course of this imprisonment, Zvi was presented with the choice of conversion or death, and chose, unlike many other religious leaders, to convert. Following his conversion, he remained imprisoned in what is today Greece, but was allowed to meet regularly with Nathan of Gaza, who acted as his secretary, and correspond with those who had been his followers⁷.

As you would expect, most of Zvi's followers lost faith as the news of his apostasy spread. What is surprising is the number who did not. Thanks to some clever theological justification, and apparently quite persuasive speeches, a number of followers remained loyal, convinced the apostasy was part of a mystical mission, whereby the Lurianic doctrine was fulfilled, with the messiah entering among the "shells" to gather up the divine sparks, prior to his final redemption of the faithful. It was an unusual belief, to be sure, but proved oddly tenacious, with supporters existing to this day, at least among the remnants of the Donmeh in Turkey and, possibly, among a few remaining supporters in eastern Europe

In the generations immediately following the apostasy, after Zvi and Nathan had died and the movement lost its obvious leaders, various sects arose. Among those sects, many began to believe that the highest good one could do was a ritual apostasy, converting to Islam or Christianity (depending upon the locale), while retaining a secret Jewish faith. Few did so, though in a handful of cases entire communities, such as the Donmeh, converted en mass, but the belief persisted⁸.

Jacob frank was one such believer, the leader of a later Sabbatian community. However, Frank, and later his children, adopted a more extreme view. Adding tot he Sabbatian belief in symbolic conversion, they also adopted a common belief that the messiah would arrive only when the world was wholly good or wholly evil. As the former seemed impossible, they began to preach the importance of sin as a path to redemption. Only by embracing evil could they hurry the advent of the messiah⁹ and the redemption of the divine sparks, reclaiming them from among the evil "shells" of this world. And thus, the Frankist began to practice quite extreme deeds, though there is disagreement as to the full extent of their practices. Still, whatever their true behavior, they managed to keep alive for several generations the concept of sin as a path to redemption¹⁰.

I wrote about Frank and his followers previously because they reminded me of those in the 2008 election who argued the Republicans needed to lose so as to be driven to a more conservative position once more. It was a political position that reminded me greatly of the doctrine of "redemption through sin". Only by giving the Democrats victory could we be free of the moderate Republicans.

This time, I am taking a slightly different approach. I am not offering up Frank as an analogy for any present behavior, instead I am suggesting that I might use him as a model for my own writing. Or, rather, I am thinking that a sort of"forced conversion" may be in order, but, as with Zvi, for only the highest purposes.

Allow me to explain.

For some time I have felt I keep writing the same articles over and over. Granted, I discover new and more interesting ways to make the same arguments, and from time to time I have a new insight, or even completely revise an older belief to one which is more accurate. But, for the most part I am treading the same ground, or, at most, expanding upon it slightly. And most of the time it is because, try as I might, I feel as if I am failing to convince with my arguments.

As I have revisited the same arguments so many times, looked at them from as many different perspectives as I can, it strikes me that continuing to do so is not likely to yield many positive results. I refuse to repeat that aphorism about insanity, wrongly ascribed to Einstein among others¹¹, but in this case it seems particularly apt. What I have been doing is so similar to what I have done already that it seems futile to persist in it, and delusional to imagine the results will e any better should I do so.

And that is where my new idea comes in. In criticizing protectionism, I wrote two parodies¹², in which I accepted the premises of protectionism, took them to absurd extremes to show the nonsensical nature of protectionist beliefs. And, reading them again, they were some of the most effective piece I wrote. From which I got an idea.

No, I do not intend to write parodies. Nor even to play the devil's advocate (despite the title of this essay). Instead, I intend to fully go over to the other side, to put myself in the shoes of a true believer in whatever the topic may be, and to offer up the best arguments I can, to offer a complete justification, a thorough analysis, everything, attempt to persuade readers of these ideas I have rejected.

The two differences being, first, that I will still e, at heart, an opponent, well aware that I am in no way sympathetic to the cause I am advocating, and, most importantly, that unlike a true proponent I will be logical, consistent and totally honest. That is, when as idea results in a logical inconsistency, I will point it out¹³, or when a rational proves embarrassing tot he supporters, I will not hide it. And thus, by making the best case I can, but remaining brutally honest, I hope to show the weakness of various positions, mostly liberal, but some nominally conservative as well.

And that is why I put forth this lengthy description, as I feel a series of essays needs a rationale, and readers need to know it. And thus I offer up this rather convoluted explanation. Right now I have no idea what my first topic will be. I feel I should start with some well established liberal idea which conservatives dislike, so as to start with a strong essay, but I have not yet found the best topic. It should not be long before I decide upon something, though, so please keep watching.

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1. The reasons for the belief in incarnation of G-d being heretical are many, but the most basic is the belief that a divine entity existing in two persons would violate the most basic belief of Judaism, the shema. "Shema Yisroel, adonai elohenu, adonai echad." -- "Hear, O Israel, the lord they G-d, the lord is one". Christian theologians if the early church struggled with similar issues, and found responses to such objections which satisfied them, but Judaism did not accept such rationales, and so continued to believe incarnation to be one of the few beliefs which were inherently heretical.

2. Messiah means nothing more than "anointed" (as does "Christ"), referring to the practice of anointing a rightful king. In both Judaism and Christianity the terms have obviously taken on a much greater significance, but in this case, the Jewish definition, and connotations, are closer to the original neutral meaning than the Christian.

3. Kenesset Israel meaning the nation of Israel, encompassing all of the Jews, as opposed to eretz Israel, meaning the nation of Israel as a geographical entity.

4. Not just kabalists, but even mainstream orthodoxy had begun to adopt a somewhat apocalyptic vision of messiahood, akin to the vision many Christians had for the second coming. The messiah was expected by many to eradicate evil in one form or another and inaugurate a better world, though various theories differed on how it would be better and to what degree. (Please note, not all of Judaism shared this belief. It was more common among Sephardi than Ashkenazi Jews, and tended, for obvious reasons, to predominate in regions where Jews suffered the most under hostile rulers. The one exception being among the Chasidim who, in general, had eliminated messianic beliefs, or at least the apocalyptic messianic beliefs common in many other sects.)

5. Zvi had studied kabala, and Natan of Gaza had studied even more deeply, and kabalistic ideas were "in the air in the near east at that time, thanks to popular enthusiasm for the recent work of Isaac Luria and his disciples, so the kabalistic vision of the messiah as one who would rescue the divine sparks from among the qlipoth (shells) and restore the order of the universe was, if not commonly known, relatively well known among the educated, and so this interpretation of Zvi's messianic role, including its somewhat apocalyptic character, was not unusual to find in the beliefs of his supporters.

6. Support was not universal, many felt Zvi's claims were preposterous, and some charged him with heresy. But popular enthusiasm made such doubts mostly ineffective.

7. Clearly, the Sultan believed, quite sensibly, that a religious leader who converted to Islam would lose all of his support. When it happened that some supporters persisted in their faith, it is likely the Sultan allowed him to remain in contact with them in hopes that he would persuade them to convert as well. A belief in which he was not completely disappointed.

8. The theory had obvious appeal to those families in Spain who had been forced to convert to avoid persecution. Seen by many Jews as suspect for denying their faith, this belief gave them not just theological justification, but even elevated conversion to a noble act. As many such Jews had ties to Italian and Ottoman communities where such beliefs were more common, many, if not completely adopting Sabbatian beliefs, were at least sympathetic.

9. Rabbinical Judaism in general adopted as an article of faith the belief that one should not act to hasten the coming of the messiah, which seems quite prescient given how that very concept was used generations later by the followers of Frank.

10. An interesting parallel is found among some Russian Orthodox mystical sects, which argued one could not experience true salvation until one received forgiveness, and forgiveness required actively sinning, and this they began the practice of intentional transgressions, so as to be eligible for divine forgiveness. They were a small group, probably no more numerous than the Frankists, but it is interesting that the same idea of redemption through sin arose independently among two such different faiths, and based upon completely different rationales.

11. I am sure everyone knows the quote, which begins by claiming to be  definition of insanity. I have seen it most often ascribed to Einstein, though I think a few ascribe it to Freud. On line sources are just as inconsistent and unreliable, so I have given up on ever finding a true source, all I know is that every attribution I have found fails to give anything like a citation, not even a date, not even a year, or place. So, for reasons I described in "Mystery Quotes","Wikipedia Absurdities", "They're Here! Mystery Quotes Revisited" and "A Mystery Quote, Several Dubious Quotes, More Boring Quotes, and One Very Bad Conclusion", I refuse to accept these attributions.

12. These are "I Have Seen The Light" and "STOP BIG PORCELAIN NOW!".

13. I have done almost the same when writing articles for issues in which I believe. In many cases, when writing on a given topic, I noticed my own beliefs were resulting in inconsistencies, and so, rather than hide those arguments, or blur the distinctions a bit, I have stopped writing,  and refrained from expressing any positions on those issues until I could think it through to my own satisfaction. (A prototype of using this method to refute a position, though granted a bit of a simplistic one, can be found in my essay on reparations for slavery, "Some Logical Problems With Reparations".)

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POSTSCRIPT

If anyone knows this history and finds an error, please tell me. I am writing late at night working entirely from memory (as my books on Zvi and messianism are in the same room where my son is sleeping, and I don't want to wake him), so I am sure I have made some errors. Even if there is an error, I think the basic point is valid, so any details I got wrong should not change the substance of this post.

POSTSCRIPT II

This is probably a LOT more explanation than I need, as I could just say "play the devil's advocate" and people would get what I was doing, but I think I needed it as I intend to do a little more than just adopt the other side's position for the sake of argument. I intend, to the degree it is possible, to actually think the way my opposite numbers might think, to apply their reasoning and express their expectations. I admit, they would probably not publish the conclusions which cut against their position, the way I will, but up to the point where I actually disclose the failings of a given theory, I intend, to the degree possible, to become one of those whom I criticize, and to present the arguments just as they would. Which is why I bothered with such a long and involved explanation.

I know I have been planning to post several essay for the past several days, but today I had a rather sudden change of heart and decided to completely alter my plans. I have several interesting, and erroneous, quotes I still want to examine, so I will use those for quotes tonight, or maybe tomorrow. After that, I am not going to bother trying to find a quote every day, but will instead write my stupid quotes column whenever a particular quote inspires me, in that way freeing up time for anew idea I will describe shortly.

I also have an unfinished post I mentioned earlier, looking at federalism, libertarianism and the means to achieve government reform. I will try to finish that today, or, at the latest, tomorrow. In addition, there is other current post on the free market and the way it is misrepresented in the popular media, which I will try to finish by Wednesday. But beyond those, I have no essays awaiting completion, and so I will have time free for my newest idea.

I won't ruin the surprise by explaining precisely what that idea might be. Instead, I will ask readers to wait until I complete the introductory post, which shall make everything clear. I do not know precisely how many related posts I will write, I suppose it depends on how the first few go, but, regardless I am sure I will write at least a half dozen to a dozen of these posts, perhaps many more. I can;'t say much about them, except that I hope this new approach to government and economic questions will provide a new perspective which may make the topics more easily understood, and hopefully convince more that my understanding of the issues is correct.

My apologies for the missing quotes. Not only did I not post the two old quotes I had promised (for the 21st and 22nd), but today's quote is missing as well. I had originally intended to post all three today, but I ended up spending much of the day playing with my son and simply never got to it. I did do some writing, but on an unrelated topic. I will likely wrap that up tonight and post it, and then will post today's quote and tomorrows on tomorrow, perhaps along with the two missing posts. Sadly, while I have the two quotes for past days, I don't have a quote ready for today, but I shouldn't have trouble tracking down one for tomorrow.

Still, I do apologize for my poor scheduling of these things. It makes me quite glad I never decided to work for, or run, a newspaper.

As with a few previous quotes, this quote is not so much "stupid" as "misguided". However, I don't have two columns, one for stupid and one for misguided quotes, so, as with my earlier posts (eg "Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 24, 2012)"), I am just going have to call a misguided quote stupid for the moment.

This quote comes from another writer for whom I have a degree of respect, though probably not as much as I have for, say, Jefferson, Madison or Jackson. That man is Thomas Paine. While Paine did write quite a bit on freedom, I tend to think of him more as an agitator and popularizer than a deep thinker. From time to time he did print something a bit more profound, but for the most part, his writing strikes me as the colonial equivalent of sound bites. Still, his writing is quite easy to read and remains enjoyable, so I have a fairly high opinion of him. However, there is a quote from his writing, one of the best known, with which I have issues:

Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one.

I realize this quote is likely to make this post a repeat of the debate in "Stupid Quote of the Day (January 23, 2012)" and "Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 24, 2012)", but as the topic continues to arise, I think it is worth visiting again, especially as I have had time to give it more thought, and have some more ideas to offer my readers.

The first thing I realized when considering this recently is that the argument about government being a necessary evil resembles nothing so much as the arguments for gun control. Guns and government are both tools, both can be used in a variety of ways, and both have outcomes that depend upon who controls them and how he uses them. Guns can be used for good or ill, but those advocating gun control see guns being used almost entirely for ill and so suggest guns are themselves the problem, and must be regulated. Similarly, government can ensure freedom, or destroy it ("The State of Nature and Man's Rights"), but as most small government advocates have only seen government being used improperly, they decide that government is inherently evil. However, just as guns are not evil just because criminals use them, government is not evil simply because it has yet to be run properly.

Allow me to illustrate. Imagine for a moment a government which is run as pr my ideals. The laws are established by a state legislature, supplemented with a handful of local legislation passed by counties or cities. The law enforcement is done primarily by county or city law enforcement, either supplemented by a state force, or else by compacts allowing intercounty cooperation. the federal government would be concerned entirely with foreign relations and the military defense of the nation, as well as ensuring free passage between states and the elimination of trade barriers between states. Interstate crimes would be handled entirely by compacts between the states. There would be federal civil courts, but they would use federal law only to establish procedure, the substantive law would be defined by the states involved in the dispute. (Supposedly this is how many cases should work in our federal courts, but more and more federal procedure is used to smuggle in substantive law.)

As far as laws are concerned, they would be the minimum required for peaceful coexistence. Individuals would be prohibited from violating the rights of another to life, liberty or property. Taxes will be levied by individual states, with each state using its own method, with the states then providing funding to the federal government. Thus, it will be ensured that the state legislatures will try to limit federal spending, as each federal dollar spent is a dollar they will not have to spend.

I could probably continue to write something the length of Plato's Republic about this ideal state, but I am sure you get the picture.

Such a state would present quite a few restrictions upon individuals, only those which I described as rational limitations in "A Rational Approach to Punishment".  So long as the state operated on the basis I have described, most individuals would have little or no contact with the state at all. It would be as if there were no state. On the other hand, it would be superior to actual anarchy (as described in "The State of Nature and Man's Rights") as the state would be available to defend his rights should the need arise, as well as providing a deterrent to those who might be tempted to commit crime.

The reason I bring this up is that such a state is in no way evil. Yes, with time and effort it could be corrupted into a totalitarian state, but that is akin to condemning the institution of the family as it could always be corrupted by introducing a molester or abuser. A state can be turned into something bad, a gun can be misused, medicine in the wrong dose is poison, none of those make guns, medicine or states evil. And I think my description of a minimal, distributed state shows that a state can be imagined that is in no way evil. ("Consolidation and Diffusion")

I talked elsewhere of the negative consequences of seeing the state as evil, so I won't go into that here. I will just ask that those tempted to imagine the state truly is a necessary evil, ask themselves whether a state is inherently evil, or whether they are simply drawing that conclusion from their experience of bad states. Finally, I would also ask, since anarchy is obviously harmful, and they imagine a state is evil, then what could possibly be good? Or are they condemned to perpetual pessimism, as every alternative is evil?

POSTSCRIPT

I mentioned earlier that I would be posting belated quotes for January 20th, 21st and 22nd. I have posted the 20th, but the other two are still waiting. I just wanted to mention that, though I am running a bit late, I will still post those two over this weekend. I actually have both quotes already, unless, of course, I change my mind. But for now, it appears one will be on communism, and the other on labor, wages and exploitation. (I admit the second quote comes from an article by a relative unknown, but I really wanted to write about labor, world trade and the claims of exploitation, especially after "Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 26, 2011)", so I took what I could find.)