Site Additions

I have a cold. I'm all hyped up on sudafed so this post'll be a bit ramblin' and I'll probably cringe when I look back at it after the sudafed's worn off. It's been a long time since I last had a cold and I'd forgotten just how annoying they can be. This particular cold has the particularly annoying feature that without any notice whatsoever, my eyes completely tear up and blind me. As a result, I decided not to drive to work today, thereby saving the lives of many of my co-commuters. They should be eternally grateful.

The blindness from tears was just frequent enough that I couldn't do any serious work from home either. So, instead, I hacked at this blog's template. The first thing I did was to finally update the blog links to include the Post-Judd Alliance, of which we're very proud and flattered to even be thought to be included in such a list of blogosphere luminaries. In the process of doing so, I discovered (I think?) that "Susan's Husband" is the same person as "Annoying Old Guy (aog)" at Thought Mesh. (Yes, I am sometimes embarrassingly slow on the uptake). Now I'm so confused that I'm wondering just who is Susan anyway (other than Susan's Husband's Wife's Husband's Wife's Husband) and just how old aog is anyway. He's got kids, so he can't be any older than me, and I'm not old. Am I? AM I?!?!?

Next, I noticed from David's Secret Blog that it's possible to subscribe to the comment stream of a blog or individual post so I added that feature as well. If you click on the subscribe to comments link, your browser (if it's reasonably modern) will probably add some sort of "feed" bookmark for you (at least that's what Firefox does). Nonetheless, I heartily recommend using bloglines instead. If you do use bloglines, then right click on the link, select "Copy Link Location" (or equivalent), and then paste it into the bloglines subscription form and then you'll be notified when any new comments come in for this blog. You can also do this on a post-by-post basis also, by clicking on the subscription link just above the comments on the post's individual page. We have low comment frequency here so I'd recommend just one subscription to all comments for this blog.

This ability to subscribe to comment feeds is very important to me. The problem this solves is that I tend to forget what posts across the various blogs I read that I'm currently commenting on. It's not that I'm commenting on all that many posts at a given time, but I just space it out. Ya know, with work and all kinds of annoying real life distractions. With the ability to subscribe to comment feeds, I won't have to do any work to keep track of it anymore. I'll be automatically reminded. A second advantage is I can feel more comfortable to take time and think about responses to comments and posts on other blogs without having to rush. Rushing often causes me to write something stupid. The reason I rush is that comment threads seem to die after a couple of days so I'm in a hurry to have my say before that happens. It happens partly, I think, because people move on to new posts, but partly because it's hard for everybody to keep track of everything . This will help. I think it has the potential to raise the level of discourse and extend discussions to new heights.

All of the Post-Judd Alliance except Thought Mesh and The Daily Duck have this capability (at the post level, anyway). Thought Mesh isn't using blogger and might not be able to add this capability easily. The Daily Duck is using blogger so I hope they add it soon, especially since there's four of them posting and they are relatively prolific.

Note that there is a substantial delay between when a comment is posted and when bloglines picks it up. This delay seems to be on the order of several hours so this method is mostly useful for the more extended, less frenetic comment threads.

The last addition to this site's template is the Recent Comments column, the idea again coming from David's Secret Blog. I'm not sure how useful it is, but I figure it's worth a try.

In closing, I'll note that we've just had our 10,000th page view since I installed the statcounter. Unfortunately, I can't remember when I installed it so I have no idea what rate of readership that implies,
especially since probably 9,000 of those views are Howard and I checking the formatting of our posts. It's admittedly rather feeble no matter how you look at it since Instapundit probably gets that many views every few minutes. Nonetheless, it's always fun to pass a round number, so I'm celebrating. A round of sudafed for everybody in the room on me! Let's Party!

Kid Lit

I must be entering my second childhood even though I haven't even reached the half-century mark yet. I'm finding modern adult fiction, both movies and books, increasingly tedious and unenjoyable. At the same time, I'm enjoying children's books and movies more and more.

Adult books and movies seem so repetitive, dull, and onerous to me. Lots of sex and violence, lots of weird relationships and lifestyles, plenty of pedantic bloviating, but little if any true creativity that I can detect (perhaps I just miss it). I know that this is a gross over generalization, but I'm just so tired of slogging through books that bring me no enjoyment whatsoever. I might as well stick to non-fiction if it's not going to be for pure enjoyment.

On the other hand, books for kids are just great these days (or at least I think so). The latest thing I've read to my daughters is Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson and its sequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves. These books were startlingly enjoyable, intense fantasy adventures interspersed with humor and plenty of suspense. Total page turners - I ended up reading for four hours straight on Sunday to my seven year old to finish Peter and the Starcatchers. We just couldn't put the book down, right to the last page. Dave Barry was a humorist/columnist before he decided to start writing children's books. I've no idea who Ridley Pearson is, but the pair of them did a great job on this series. I hope they write another one.

Peter and the Starcatchers has lots of rave reviews on Amazon. The only negative reviewer wrote: "Many of the characters are one-dimensional." I would say that they're not so much one dimensional as not too overly constrained. In other words, do the authors really need to give an in depth description of all the characters? Or, by reading about the characters' actions, can we use our imagination and immediately build our own personalized understanding of that character and how they fit into the story? I greatly prefer the latter, but obviously different readers have different tastes.

There are also numerous other books I've read to my children that I've loved. Harry Potter, of course (I'm really looking forward to Book 7 which will be out in less than two months). The Bartimaeus Trilogy (which I've mentioned before on this blog) is a great series. Magyk, and also Flyte by Angie Sage (she also has a third one just out called Physik which we haven't read yet) are also wonderful fantasy adventures. And many more, all of which have been pure enjoyment.

Movies for kids? Same thing.

Are these stories for kids great literature or cinema? No, of course, not. But they're effortless enjoyment, unlike what's written and produced for adults.

I don't know what I'm gonna do when my kids grow up. I guess I'll have to rent someone else's kids.

The Tail of the Wife

I'll move on to some more interesting topics shortly, but I'm still participating in the discussions over at Cafe Hayek regarding the banning of trans-fats in restaurants in Montgomery County. Yesterday, I quoted Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia to lend support for my contention that Nozick (a libertarian luminary) would have no problem at all with a local community imposing restrictions on its members. Russ Roberts indirectly replied with the following very (in my opinion) cryptic post:

... Meanwhile, those of you invoking what is reasonable and not so reasonable to decide democratically (and those invoking Nozick's name to justify local regulation) might look at this. ...

I was the only one invoking Nozick's name, so that'd apparently be me. The "at this" is the Tale of the Slave (also in Anarchy, State, & Utopia) which follows:

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.
3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.
4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.
5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him three-sevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.
   
   Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.
   
   
7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.
8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.

The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?

I'm guessing that the inference I'm supposed to make is that everyone in a community is a slave if the community has the power to impose restrictions on any of its members, even (or perhaps especially) if the community is democratic. I think this makes light of the horrors and oppression that real slaves experience, but hey, I'm willing to go along with it. I pointed out that later in the book that Nozick supports individuals selling themselves into slavery (after all, if you're truly free, your free to do something as stupid as that as well), and so I still contend that Nozick would support the concept of a community, such as Montgomery County, imposing restrictions on its members, such as a ban on trans-fats.

For amusement, I've also rewritten the above parable. I call it The "Tail" [sic] of the Wife:

1. There is a husband completely at the mercy of his brutal wife's whims. He often is cruelly denied sex, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The wife is kindlier and denies sex to the husband only for stated infractions of her rules (not fulfilling the honey do quota, leaving the toilet seat up, and so on). She gives the husband some free time.
3. Not applicable.
4. The wife allows her husband four days on his own and requires him to work only three days a week on her honey do's. The rest of the time (3 minutes per month) is his own.
5. The wife allows her husband to go off and work in the city (or anywhere he wishes) for wages. She requires only that he let her spend six-sevenths of his wages. She also retains the power to recall him to the plantation if some emergency, like a clogged toilet, threatens her land; and to raise or lower the six-sevenths amount required to be turned over to her. She further retains the right to restrict the husband from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten her financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking, flirting with other women.
6. Not applicable.
7. Though still not having the vote, the husband is at liberty (and is given the right) to enter into the discussions with the wife, to try to persuade her to adopt various policies and to treat him and herself in a certain way. She then ignores him and goes off and decides upon policies covering the vast range of her powers.
8. In appreciation of his useful contributions to discussion, the wife allows him to vote if she can't make up her mind; she commits herself to this procedure. In the eventuality that she can't make up her mind on some issue, she'll consider his vote and do the opposite (er, um, gee, I think the slaves do better than the husbands at this point). This happens nearly continuously.
9. The wife throws the husband's vote in with hers. If they are exactly tied her vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.

Clearly, the first thing that libertarians should do if they ever get power is to outlaw marriage! Easily the most freedom restricting institution ever invented!!!

My belief is that most people have a need to be bound to a wife, to a community, even to a nation and are willing to put up with the resulting restrictions. I'm a great a fan of federalism, but for me libertarianism is more a direction than a destination. In other words, here we are, if we need to evolve in some direction or other, moving somewhat towards libertarianism is fine, but I don't think society would do well with a strict libertarian form of government. I certainly don't think that switching over suddenly to a libertarian form of government would work at all.

I think Hayek would agree.

Tyranny of no Tyranny

update: oops, for some reason, comments were turned off. I've enabled them 'cause I know you're all just dying to post a comment :-)

Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek is apparently getting more negative feedback on his post condemning the trans-fat ban in Montgomery county than he expected. In today's post he writes:

I think it is a big deal for many reasons. But before I make my case, I'd like to hear you make yours on either side of this issue.

Here's my response...

Russ,

I'm generally in complete agreement with nearly everything you write here at Cafe Hayek. However, in my opinion, your post regarding the Montgomery County trans-fat ban crossed into territory that I feel could lead to a sort of a libertarian tyranny.

This ban is a local community (Montgomery County) imposing a restriction on its members. The idea that all communities should never be able to impose even a relatively mild restriction on its members by duly elected representatives is too extreme for me.

I also consider it to be beyond the libertarian framework. Consider the following passage on page 320 of the paperback edition "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by Robert Nozick (a prominent libertarian thinker):

"The operation of the [libertarian/utopian] framework has many of the virtues, and few of the defects, people find in the libertarian vision. For though there is great liberty to choose among communities, many particular communities internally may have many restrictions unjustifiable on libertarian grounds: that is, restrictions which libertarians would condemn if they were enforced by a central state apparatus. For example, paternalistic intervention into people's lives, restrictions on the range of books which may circulate in the community, limitations on the kinds of sexual behavior, and so on. But this is merely another way of pointing out that in a free society people may contract into various restrictions which the government may not legitimately impose upon them. Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will."

In other words, while Nozick just spent the previous several hundred pages of his book explaining why the "central state apparatus" must morally be libertarian, he's very quick to agree that communities themselves, need not be at all.

Many people simply want to have restrictions imposed on themselves and others. To insist that every community such as Montgomery county not impose restrictions is paradoxically, in my opinion, the tyranny of no tyranny.

Libertarian Poison - Part II

In the previous post on this subject (Libertarian Poison), I asked if government intervention was appropriate if restaurants hypothetically added a poison to foods to make them taste better without the patrons of those restaurants knowing they would be poisoned. In the comments, Oroborous immediately nailed it - the situation isn't actually hypothetical. Poison is actually being added to foods at some restaurants and the patrons have no way of really knowing whether or not they're being poisoned. However, I realize that there's easily room to disagree on whether the particular substance I have in mind actually qualifies as a poison. That's why I wanted to keep it in the hypothetical realm to start the discussion.

The poison (as revealed by Oroborous) is partially hydrogenated oil. I believe the health risks are sufficiently established to call partially hydrogenated oil a poison, albeit a mild one, without being too hyperbolic (maybe just parabolic). Restaurants can add this substance to food (or use foods where it's already been added) without bothering to tell you. I happen to be particularly sensitive to it, so I often ask, when at a restaurant ,whether or not they use it. The response is usually a blank, uncomprehending stare, or an "I dunno, beats me".

The answer to whether or not the government might intervene in this case was a resounding NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! from the libertarians at Cafe Hayek. I was completely skewered in the comments section for saying that I could see both sides of the issue (always interesting commenting in an echo chamber as the lone dissenting view). Indeed, it was put forth that if I could support the tyranny of government to ban trans fats, then, well, it would lead to, and I'd support, the tyranny of government to perform all kinds of atrocities! Here is a somewhat typical (though slightly more hysterical than average) comment in response to mine:

Now that you've opened the door [by banning trans fats], what is to prevent government from flinging it wide open? It's already busy seizing private property under "eminent domain" laws ala Hugo Chavez. Do you think you'll be asked for special permission if we were to, say, send the Japanese to "special" camps for any reason? In thinking about public policy, it behooves you to think beyond stage one.

Wow, talk about an exceedingly slippery slope!

In response I asked:

Each situation requires its own analysis. Are strict libertarians really not allowed to consider each situation individually?

To which a commenter named Matt C. responded:

Smart libertarians don't.

Well, there you have it. A smart libertarian (according to Matt C. anyway) is not willing to distinguish between the level of tyranny required to ban trans fats at restaurants in a single county and the level of tyranny to "send the Japanese to special camps". Obviously, this is an extreme view. It seems at least as rigid and extreme as any of the views on the democratic underground. And smart (and extreme) libertarians wonder why their candidates get almost no votes and they have extremely limited political influence.

The thing is, I'm moderately (slightly?) libertarian in my viewpoints and voting record. I usually opt for the free market to do its job. I usually don't support legislation like this. But that's because usually the information is distributed and at least a significant subset of consumers are making at least adequately informed choices. Free markets are the best aggregator of information in that case and provide the best choices to consumers.

However, in this case, the consumers do not yet have the information regarding trans fats. The information is relatively new. Before about ten years ago, it was assumed that there were no problems with trans fats. Indeed, once upon a time, things like margarine (which is pretty much pure hydrogenated vegetable oil) were thought to be healthier than their natural equivalents (in this case butter). As a result, the vast majority of consumers are going about making their consumption choices with incorrect information. In this one case, I think that the information (that I happen to believe is correct) is concentrated and that allowing a centralized authority (i.e. government) to act upon it is going to be superior to letting the markets take their course.

I agree that I may still be wrong. There may be disastrous unintended consequences that result from this ban. However, the ban is being enacted in only one county in the entire country. This is a small local experiment. We can see how it goes and learn from it. Because it's so localized, if the overall effect due to unintended consequences are net negative, at least they will be limited. Because of this limitation, I'm very comfortable taking this gamble.

I just wish San Diego (where I live) was where this experiment was taking place.

Libertarian Poison

Let's say that there is a hypothetical poison that makes food taste great. It's not a very strong poison, so it mostly doesn't kill anyone immediately, rather it takes repeated doses over a period of time before it kills. Let's say restaurants use it regularly to flavor the food. The poison is slow enough acting so that no one ever dies while still in the restaurant.

Let's also say that the effects of this poison aren't widely known: the patrons of restaurants don't know that the restaurant is using this poison and aren't even really aware that this substance is a poison; the restaurants and the employees don't really know that this substance is a poison either, just that it tastes good.

Finally, let's say that it's difficult to disseminate information about this poison throughout society because of naturally occuring constraints on communication of this sort (which I won't describe in this post).

Would a libertarian support any government action to try and stop the poisoning of the populace? An example of a possible action might include banning the use of the poison. There are other possible actions as well. However, assume that education of the populace (another possible government action) would take many years.

Would you support any government action to try and stop the poisoning of the populace?

Reading Glasses

I bought my first ever pair of glasses. The final straw was that my youngest daughter had a splinter in her foot that I just couldn't get out. After 25 minutes of hacking at it with needles, tweezers, razor blades, scissors, a chainsaw (just kidding), and a magnifying glass, I had to admit defeat and took her to an urgent care facility where the doctor had the splinter out in about two minutes. The doctor, of course, had several advantages. The most important advantage was that he knew what he was doing. Other advantages included a local anesthetic so she stopped squirming so much, a very sharp scalpel to cut through my daughter's impressively tough calluses on the bottom of her foot, and, last but not least, he had cool stereo magnifying glasses.

My main problem was that I just couldn't see what I was doing. Either I could hold the foot far away and see it clearly, but tiny with limited help from stereo vision, or I could hold it close and then it was blurry (even with the magnifying glass). That's why I bought the reading glasses.

The glasses aren't doing me much good though. My vision is still razor sharp at three feet and fortunately I have very long arms (I think I'm part Ape) so when I read I just hold the book (or the menu or whatever) far away. My computer monitor is set to 1600x1200 using the smallest possible font, but as long as I put the monitor on the other side of the room, I can see it just fine. It's just those first few feet that are a problem, but I've adapted to not needing to see anything in that range. Except splinters in children's feet.

So I'm now the proud owner of reading glasses for which the only use I can think of so far is to remove splinters from my children's feet. Unfortunately, I'll probably lose the glasses by the time I need them.

Drug by Longs Drugs

Update: Longs Drugs ultimately reimbursed us for the towing fees. My wife kept climbing the management ladder at Longs until she talked to the director of Longs for California (or something like that) who said that it really wasn't Longs' policy to tow customers' cars who wandered off the premises for a few minutes and had the towing company refund the charges. Cool!

Drug around the parking lot and then stomped on is more accurate.

My wife and a friend (in the friend's car) with children drove to Long's Drugs, parked, went inside, shopped, bought some stuff, put the stuff in the car, went across the street to another shop, bought some more stuff, came back, and ...

... the car was gone.

The Long's employee who watches the parking lot came over and said, "I saw you put your stuff in the car and leave. You're only allowed to park here while shopping at Longs so I had you towed." My wife was informed by the store manager that it was indeed their policy to have customers' cars towed if the customers left the premises, it had been their policy for twenty years (amazing, since this particular store had been open less than ten years), and that they could do anything they damn well pleased with our car since it was parked on their private property.

The manager pointed out that there are signs posted warning us we would be towed if we left the premises. Indeed there are: little tiny signs with little tiny print that are nowhere near where my wife happened to park. So we did technically violate the warning on the sign.

Four hours and $300 later, my wife and her friend retrieved the car from Western Towing.

I'm left wondering a number of things:

1. Why the parking lot guy couldn't have told my wife and her friend that he would tow their car if they left the premises? He admitted that he saw them leave and called the towing company the second they left. It wouldn't have been any trouble at all for him to have let them know his intentions. Wouldn't you think that actual customers would deserve at least that much?

2. How it makes economic sense for Longs Drugs to tow customers' cars from a mostly empty lot? I know that my wife, her friend, my two traumatized children, and I intend to never shop at Longs again. Since we've previously spent hundreds of dollars a year there, to make economic sense either: (a) the five of us are the only (ex)-customers who would be put off by having their car towed after buying something; or (b) the parking spot (in a mostly empty lot) was extraordinarily valuable for reasons I can't fathom.

3. I wonder why the towing company "only" charged us $300 for a 5 mile tow? I've had cars towed before because they broke down, and it didn't cost nearly $300. Wouldn't they better optimize their revenue if they charged the value of the car minus a little bit? For example, they could charge $50,000 for towing a nice BMW. After all, I think in these circumstances both Longs and Western Towing have lost a (potential) customer. Why not max it out?

Anyway, be careful if you park at Longs Drugs.

She Teed That One Up

I have a set of very obscure puns in the back of my mind that I inject into conversation whenever possible. With some of them, they are so obscure that I only get a chance to use them less than once per decade. My enjoyment when I do finally get to use them is immense.

My sister and I were talking about a mutual acquaintance who is a professional cellist. We had both been sent a recording of one of the cellist's performances and I was pretty unimpressed. I mentioned that to my sister which led to the following conversation:

Sister: Well, I think she was playing a baroque cello, and I think those are hard to play.
Me: Of course a broke cello would be hard to play, why doesn't she get it fixed?

My sister then emitted a noise that sounded like a cross between choking and moaning. I hope she's okay.

It'll probably be another ten years before the opportunity comes up to use that particular pun again. I'm sure I'll enjoy it as much then.

Does anybody else have some good, but really obscure puns, that I can file away?

By the way, I'll probably move on from these personal anecdotes after a few more posts. These are just an easy way to warm back into the blogging thang.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day all, especially to my own mother!

Unfortunately, I'm reminded each Mother's Day of a quip by a friend of mine on my wife's "first" Mothers Day about fathers' (or at least his) point of view regarding wives becoming mothers: "before your first child is born you're sleeping with your lover - after the child is born you're sleeping with someone's mother (if you're lucky)!" That thought takes some of the specialness of the day away from me personally. Oh well...

Funniest Headline Ever

From digg.com:

Zimbabwe to lead [UN] Commission on Sustainable Development

As they note:

Zimbabwe is enduring the world's highest inflation, at more than 2000%, mass unemployment, and there are widespread accusations of civil rights abuses. On Wednesday it was announced that households in Zimbabwe were to be limited to four hours' electricity a day, between 1700 and 2100 local time.

I mean, you just can't make this stuff up. At The Daily Duck, Hey Skipper calls the invention of fake dog testicles the stupidest idea ever. Sorry Skipper, not even close!

Seventy Miles

As I mentioned in the last post, I was surprised to see, after taking several months off from reading the news (or much of anything), that global warming and climate change are still hot topics (so to speak). I rather thought that it was just another fad and that by now, it would be time to cycle on to the next passing fancy. Isn't it time to lambast some other global evil like the World Bank or something like that?

These topics really have legs! And while I think the overall topic itself (meteorology) is a real snoozer, I do find it fascinating that climate change has such perseverance in the media, especially since it's fairly clear to me that we're really not going to do all that much about it. You know, everybody's an environmentalist unless it costs them something.

I think this is case of an irresistible force meeting and unmovable object. The irresistible force is the combined efforts of the climate change fanatics and the unmovable object is the general population that just doesn't much care.

Why doesn't the public care? Because warmth is perceived as a good thing. Americans are continually moving to warmer climates. They're voting with their feet for global warming.

All other things being equal (like altitude, for example), moving south 70 miles causes the average temperature to increase approximately one degree Fahrenheit (I know climate change is usually specified in degrees C, but I'm a Fahrenheit kind of guy). I've personally moved about 15 degrees worth of distance south in my lifetime, and if I hadn't run out of country (I'm in San Diego), I would've probably gone a few degrees worth even further south. Global warming? I say bring it on! If it gets too warm, we'll all just start moving north. Canadian and Siberian property values will skyrocket! I'm intending to go buy a few acres in the great frozen north next week as an investment vehicle.

I've been told that in my lifetime, the average temperature has risen about one degree (Fahrenheit, of course). It's a good thing I've been told that, because otherwise, in all honesty, I would've never noticed. One degree over nearly a half-century isn't much. One degree over a decade isn't much either, and that's what they tell me will be approximately the rate of change this century. If we just move seventy miles north each decade, then global warming won't be noticeable at all to us.

Over local distance and short time horizons, global warming doesn't mean much. Most people, I think, live in the here and now. I certainly do, at least with respect to the weather. That's why the population as a whole is an unmovable object.

The irresistible force is just caused by the usual True Believer/State of Fear phenomena. Most people have to believe in something with religious intensity. If not one of the typical religions, then radical environmentalism will do. In this case, we'll all be in global warming hell if we don't carry the tune of the climate gods. I find it rather funny that the climate change fanatics refer to earth as Gaia, who is some random Greek god (goddess, I suppose). They apparently all subscribe to ancient Greek mythology in addition to radical environmentalism.

The good news is that I now know what happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object: nothing much happens but there's a lot of noise for a long time.

I'm Back!

Okay, not quite completely, absolutely caught up, but getting there, with enough time for an occasional comment on my favorite blogs to read (known as the post-Judd Alliance over at The Daily Duck).

Not only did I not post or comment anywhere for the last five months, but I didn't read any news at all either. Now that I've started looking at the news again, I'm amazed at how little I missed. We're still in Iraq, we haven't invaded North Korea or Iran yet, Peter Burnet hasn't posted in months, the economy is still pretty decent, global warming is still a hot topic - life goes on.

Even the news that happened elicited such utterly predictable responses. For example, the Virginia Tech shooting resulted in gun control proponents claiming that if only more strict gun control had been implemented, it would have never happened, and pro-gun folk claiming if that only concealed weapon permits were easier to obtain, the carnage would have been greatly limited. The instant I heard about the shooting I knew such bloviations would result. What I would've like to have heard was something like the following: yeah, the shooting is a shame, but the odds of dying in a shooting spree by a madman with a gun is several orders of magnitude less likely than dying in an automobile accident, so perhaps this sort of thing should not instigate any further policy actions since such actions are about as likely to cause harm as good.

I don't get a daily newspaper and I haven't had one for at least ten years. In fact, other than Technology Review, which seems to arrive complimentary because of a small annual donation I give to MIT, I haven't gotten any dead tree media for quite some time. You'd almost think I was an environmentalist or something.

Given that nothing seems to happen when I miss months of news, I feel pretty confident in the decision not to worry about news on a daily basis.

Full of Insights about Islam in the World

I found this Bret Stephens interview with former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to be simply outstanding! (excerpts)

Suppose for a moment that the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world openly says "I am for Israel." Suppose he believes not only in democracy but in the liberalism of America's founding fathers. Suppose that, unlike so many self-described moderate Muslims who say one thing in English and another in their native language, his message never alters. Suppose this, and you might feel as if you've descended into Neocon Neverland.

In fact, you have arrived in Jakarta and are sitting in the small office of an almost totally blind man of 66 named Abdurrahman Wahid. A former president of Indonesia, he is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Wahid, whose paternal grandfather founded the NU in 1926 and whose father was Indonesia's first minister of religious affairs, won a scholarship to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which for 1,000 years had been Sunni Islam's premier institution of higher learning. Mr. Wahid hated it.

As Mr. Wahid saw it, the basic problem with Al-Azhar was that the state interfered in its affairs and demanded intellectual conformity--a lesson he carries with him to the present day. In 1966 he left Cairo for Baghdad University, where he encountered much the same thing: "The teaching [suffered from] conventionalism. You were not allowed to go your own way."

What really concerns Mr. Wahid is what he sees as the increasingly degraded state of the Muslim mind. That problem is becoming especially acute at Indonesian universities and in the pesantren--the religious boarding schools that graduate hundreds of thousands of students every year. "We are experiencing the shallowing of religion," he says, bemoaning the fact that the boarding schools persist in teaching "conventional"--that word again--Islam.

But Mr. Wahid's critique is not just of formal Islamic education. He also attacks the West's philosophy of positivism, which, he says, "relies too much on the idea of conquering knowledge and mastering scientific principles alone." This purely empirical and essentially soulless view of things, broadly adopted by Indonesia's secular state universities, gives its students a bleak choice: "Either they follow the process or they are outside the process."

Hey, various abuses of reason created problems in the West too.

As a result, Western-style education in Indonesia has come to represent not just secularism but the negation of religion, to which too many students have responded by embracing fundamentalism.

Yes, fundamentalist version of both traditional and non-traditional religions have arisen (calling G.H.Chesterton)

"For us, an Islamic party is not a thing to follow," he says, adding that "religion and morality is tied to person, not a party."

"Only those general and abstract rules that one must take into account in individual decisions in accordance with individual aims deserve the name of morals." (F.A. Hayek) Morals are about individual conduct, not the collective field of politics.

He also believes that the "only solution" to the challenge of Islamic radicalization in Indonesia is more democracy. But what about the example of Hamas, which came to power through democratic means, and of other groups like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood that would probably do the same if given the chance? Mr. Wahid's answer is to distinguish between what he calls "full democratization" and the "hollow imitation of democracy" that he sees taking place in Indonesia as well as among Arabs in Palestine and Iraq.

"The problem is not personalities, it is institutions," he says. "For the past 250 years the Americans have had not just Jefferson's concept of the rights of the individual but also Alexander Hamilton's belief in a strong state." In order to function properly, democracy requires competent government that can effectively uphold the rule of law. It also requires a broadly understood concept of self-rule, which is missing in too much of the developing world: "Here, ordinary citizens expect the government to do everything for them."

An infantalized population has a hard time achieving and maintaining freedom.

He therefore takes a fairly dim view of Iraq's democratic prospects. "Iraqis understood that Saddam had caused them trouble," and were grateful to be rid of him, he says. "But as for the U.S. concept of democracy, they don't understand it at all." The problem, he adds, goes double in the rest of the Arab world, where, he says, the prevailing view is that being a democracy is an expression of weakness, while being a dictatorship is a sign of strength.

What's needed, in other words, is for countries like Indonesia and Iraq to find a way to combine effective government with a powerful respect for the rights of the citizen. But how one goes about doing that is itself a deeper problem, a problem of culture. "How do we follow the West without [becoming] Westerners? How do you do that? I don't know."

"Hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth learn in countries where there is technological modernity. We need to [nurture] the emergence of a new kind of people who think in terms of being modern but still relate to the past."

"Right now, the fundamentalists think they're winning," he once told a friend. "But they're going to wake up one day and realize we beat them."

Yes, but it will take quite some time.

Undermining Freedom

Reality having failed to conform to the revolutionary vision of the collectivists known as communists and socialists, they sought instead to destroy the culture of Western free society. We have visited this idea before in a Eric Raymond's post titled Gramscian Damage. Here I excerpt an article titled Cultural Marxism.

There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well.

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups.

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead.

Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.

The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture."

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history.

In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.

The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.

A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.

Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.

Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying.

"... it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force."


Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques.


At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:

"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

An interesting perspective can be had of this from a philosophical and historical view by reading Stephen Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism.
This from a review:

The socialist intellectuals were in a quandary. They ought rationally to have abandoned their views, since their doctrine was fallacious in theory and disastrous in practice; but rationality is not a trait much in evidence among the socialistically inclined. If reason speaks against socialism, is not the solution obvious: out with reason! If reason provides no access to reality, but is rather a mask for power, the critique of socialism is disabled.

How, though, can socialists claim that reason is relative and at the same time aver an absolute belief in socialist politics? Are they not here caught in a contradiction that even they cannot dismiss? Hicks finds plausible two explanations of the contradiction. On one account, "absolutist politics are primary, while the relativism is a rhetorical strategy that is used to advance that politics"; on the other, "both the relativism and the absolutism coexist in postmodernism, but the contradictions between them simply do not matter psychologically to those who hold them" (p. 185). Hicks rejects the view that relativism is primary and the politics secondary. If it were true, "then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that is simply not happening" (p. 186).

Choose freedom or choose your flavor of tranny!

See also this diagram from the book of attempts to rescue socialist thought from failure. Of course Postmodernism and it's epistemological deadend are alive in academia but this book about Michael Polanyi is helpful for someone wishing to reconnect with reality.

Also, a book I will comment on more in the future, White Guilt by Shelby Steele, makes the observation that there is a growing opposition to this undermining of the culture from people with a renewed confidence in more traditional beliefs. Well, one can hope.

Enemies of the Poor

I'm glad to see this fine documentary getting some attention. I have a copy and in my view it is very well done.

The rhetorical overkill of the response was telling: The environmental movement is clearly afraid of this film, and it should be. Mine Your Own Business, Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s clear-eyed look at the true impacts of mining and the nefarious tactics of its opponents, exposes the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental Left, putting lie to a host of deadly, anti-growth canards and revealing the smug elitism of many green advocates.

This is, perhaps, not all that surprising. The ideas espoused by many greens are farcical enough to begin with. But even for someone used to their whoppers, it’s almost shocking the lies, misrepresentations, and condescending behavior that McAleeny manages to catch on film. With great care and thoroughness, the movie deconstructs the Left’s anti-growth narrative of pastoral tranquility and replaces it with something truly shocking: actual local sentiment.

Environmentalists, of course, talk endlessly about preserving traditional ways of life, but locals don’t want to preserve poverty and hardship. They want a chance to provide a more comfortable existence for themselves and their families. McAleer catches Francoise Heidebroek, who works with an anti-mining NGO, claiming that Rosia Montana residents would “prefer to ride a horse than drive a car.” When McAleer asks locals if they’d prefer to clop about in freezing temperatures on a horse, they just laugh at him.

But Heidobroek’s wistful fantasies about poverty are nothing compared to those of the World Wildlife Fund’s Mark Fenn. Fenn opposes a proposed mine in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar on the grounds that it would destroy “the quaintness, the small-town feeling” that he so admires.

When asked why locals should be denied the economic opportunity that would come with the mine, he calmly explains that, although they might not have terribly good healthcare, or shelter, or nutrition, they have a stress-free life that can be valued by — I kid you not — the number of times they smile per day. Even if they did get money, he explains, they wouldn’t know how to spend it. As he tells it, they tend to blow their cash on parties, booze, and stereo systems.

Fenn’s attitude isn’t just witless, it’s sickening, and it’s indicative of the general level of smug, out-of-touch elitism that haunts the environmental movement. “Regional character,” “simple life,” “quaintness,” “small-town feeling,” “local history” — these are just warm, fuzzy phrases trotted out by anti-growth environmentalists to deny wealth and opportunities to residents of poor regions. And, as in Fenn’s case, they’re often markers of ugly condescension toward third-world residents.

Most of the world's poor want the opportunity for a better life. They don't need an ugly eco-imperialism that operates against their own wishes!

An Aspect of Defending Freedom

I've found through much experience that there is no substitute for doing the homework. Whether that involves sourcing and cross-checking data, making sense of an explanation or being aware of relevant items in order to better characterize historical events. In that light, I found this Ken Blackwell article rather intrigueing.

Second Amendment Freedoms Aided the Civil Rights Movement

Prominent and indispensable among our rights is the "right of the people to keep and bear arms." Second Amendment rights, never to be infringed, were posited by our nation’s founders as among the most essential tenets of the free and just republic they sought to establish.

As the nation reflects on the struggles and achievements of our African-American citizens, we must celebrate the actions of heroic civil rights activists known as the Deacons for Defense. In the fight for equality, these brave men utilized their right to bear arms to protect their families, possessions and liberties.

In his 2004 book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Tulane University history professor Lance Hill tells their story. Hill writes of how a group of southern working class black men advanced civil rights through direct action to protect members of local communities against harassment at schools and polling places, and to thwart the terror inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan. He argues that without the Deacon’s activities the civil rights movement may have come to a crashing halt.

As legendary civil rights leader Roy Innis recently said to me, the Deacons forced the Klan to re-evaluate their actions and often change their undergarments.

That gun rights have played such a pivotal role in racial equality makes the historical correlation between gun control and discriminatory policies unsurprising. From their beginnings, gun control measures have worked to create legal disparities, granting unequal rights to members of various socioeconomic groups.

In fact, restrictive gun laws have long been employed to the benefit of a select elite while circumscribing the liberty of populations less popular or less powerful.

As Gun Owners of America President Larry Platt shared with me this summer and wrote in 2004 regarding the Deacons, the history of gun control appears to have been one of controlling people rather than reducing violence.

Examining both our nation’s constitution and the history of gun rights in America, the right to keep and bear arms has been at the forefront of our nation’s march to liberty and equality. The Second Amendment, which empowers Americans to embrace all of the freedoms and responsibilities their citizenship entails, has been the catalyst of tremendous social progress. While some may dismiss the centrality of gun ownership to “progressive” ideals, groups such as the Deacons for Defense have shown us that a citizenry understanding of their rights to bear arms is one likely to understand and defend our basic civil rights and the principles of equality and freedom.

Amen Brother!!

From the comments section after the article:

It isn't Hollywood, but I've made a movie which has a large segment on the right to arms, the civil right struggle, and the Deacons. See http://www.secondamendmentdocumentary.com .

Savings Rate

At the personal level, savings is about deferring some consumption into the future. Say for retirement. Some individuals may not be saving enough for their own future benefit. On a national or aggregate level it's supposed to be about providing material for investment in future production. I'm not going to get into arguements about the validity of that statement now. What I have noticed over many years is that even with the reported savings rate dropping, there is still plenty of investment in this country from both domestic and foreign sources. You can waste time worrying if you wish, not me! So did you see the headlines last week?

"Savings rate at level similar to Depression"

"2006 Personal Savings Fall to 74-Yr. Low"

Really?

Or maybe not:

It seems the media and even some economists who should know better have no problem pushing the panic button over any data that suggest the economy is struggling — but studiously ignore anything that suggests we're actually thriving economically.

So it is with the savings rate. Each time it's announced, a round of tut-tutting is heard from pundits, economics wonks and policy-makers about how Americans are "spendthrifts" and "just don't save enough."

To which we answer: Nonsense. Indeed, the savings rate is one of the least useful pieces of data issued on our economy.

We've saved plenty, as shown on the accompanying charts. In the fourth quarter, we had amassed $1.8 trillion in gross savings — more than enough to fund the estimated $1.43 trillion in private nonresidential investment we made.

How could savings be so high when we're constantly told it's at Depression-era lows? Easy. The scare stories focus solely on personal savings, failing to take into account the savings of households, businesses and government. When those are added in, we have an enormous amount of money at our disposal.

Those who say a low savings rate is bad for individual households are correct. Problem is, there's no evidence Americans aren't saving much. Rather, the "savings rate" doesn't capture what they save.

But if savings doesn't matter, what does? In a word, wealth.

Net wealth — the total value of all assets, including stocks, bonds, bank accounts, houses and retirement funds, after subtracting debt — is about $54 trillion, up a hefty $16 trillion since President Bush cut taxes in mid-2003. If you divide that $54 trillion by America's 114 million or so households, you get an average net worth of roughly $474,000.

So you can see why Americans aren't putting away money at the end of the month from disposable income. They don't need to. Or they're already doing it but it isn't measured.

So stop worrying about the plunging personal savings rate. The game's not about accumulating savings; it's about building wealth — something we Americans are very, very good at.

Don't worry, be happy!

hat tip: Will Franklin

More Deficit Shrinkage

The trend of a shrinking federal budget deficit has been in place for awhile. Now only the blind can't see it...

Politicians are typically late in picking up trends, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes Washington to acknowledge the big story in the Fiscal 2008 budget that President Bush unveiled yesterday: To wit, with a little spending restraint, Congress could balance the budget in no time.

...over the past three years the federal deficit has shrunk by 58%. The Congressional Budget Office--not the White House--is estimating that the current year's deficit (for fiscal 2007) will fall to $172 billion. That's not bad given continuing Katrina relief spending, $30 billion for homeland security, and a couple hundred billion or so to fight the war on terror.

The other news you won't often hear concerns the soaring tax revenues in the wake of the 2003 supply-side tax cuts. Tax collections have risen by $757 billion, among the largest revenue gushers in history. Receipts, especially from high-income individuals and corporations, have been growing for some two years at nearly twice the rate of spending, which explains the falling deficit. Economic growth is always the key to eliminating red ink, which is why keeping this 63-month expansion rolling needs to be the main domestic priority.

These trends have been tracked here as well.

If keeping the expansion ontrack is what we seek, this might be worth contemplating.

I guess if I suffered from BDS then it would be easy to chalk this up to the actions of the jobs and prosperity fairy, but we've seen this movie before. The good economic record happens every time tax rates on capital formation are reduced, just like the 1997 capital gains tax reduction.

UPDATE: Thought this John Ray post was a good followup.

Nearly all of the conventional wisdom about the Bush tax cuts is wrong. In reality:

* The tax cuts have not substantially reduced cur-rent tax revenues, which were in fact not far from the 2000 pre-tax cut baseline and over the 2003 pre-tax cut baseline in 2006;
* The increased child tax credit, 10 percent tax bracket, and fix of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) reduced tax revenues much more than most of the "tax cuts for the rich";
* Economic growth rates have more than doubled since the 2003 tax cuts; and
* The tax cuts shifted even more of the income tax burden toward the rich.

Setting optimal tax policy requires governing with facts rather than popular mythology, which is why it is important to set the record straight by debunking 10 myths about the Bush tax cuts.

Property, Liberty and Justice

"Where there is no property there is no justice" John Locke

A subject which brings us to this post at Don Luskin's blog:

BRAD DELONG'S CONCEPTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS From a column by Jabba the Economist in the Miami Herald:

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and the other millionaires and billionaires of Microsoft are brilliant, hardworking, entrepreneurial and justly wealthy. But only the first 5 percent of their wealth can be justified as an economic incentive to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise. The next 95 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were divided evenly among U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it.

So the entitlement that hard-working Americans can claim to the fruits of their labors requires being "justified" on the grounds of incentives? How about "justifying" it on the grounds of freedom? What possible argument in favor of stripping away property rights can come from Brad DeLong's opinion, or anyone else's, that some fraction of those fruits would make other people happier than it makes its creators? I am most assuredly not concerned with the happiness it gives Brad DeLong to appoint himself the arbiter of everyone else's happiness, and to imagine the thrill of the power that would come with deciding how everything should be distributed to maximize that happiness. Let DeLong create something of value for once in his life, and let him be in charge of distributing that.

Thanks to reader Mike Mitchell for the link.

Update... a reader who asks for anonymity thinks the headline for this post should have been "Brad DeLong's Conception of Calorie Rights," and he suggests the following rewrite:

Brad DeLong and other overweight economists earn good money from public institutions and are big eaters and obese. But only the first 50 percent of their calories can be justified as a dietary requirement for healthy living. The other 50 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were provided to starving U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it.

Update 2 [2/2/2007]... Reader Forbes Tuttle makes a good observation:

In taking up the subject of the Microsoft Millionaires, but especially the billions of Gates, Allen, and Ballmer, whose wealth is a result of the appreciation of Microsoft's market capitalization, DeLong is proposing the policy of a 95% tax on capital (wealth). As class warfare, this may get some juices flowing, but as economic policy, this puts DeLong's party--the Democrats--in league with Karl Marx, who preferred 100% of the capital to be in the hands of the state. As regards the consequences of such a policy, I'd suggest DeLong's 95% tax on wealth is a distinction without a difference, when compared to Marx's 100% state control.

On this matter I would like to present both moral and practical aspects. An post in the Market Center Blog states this:

First, the socialist candidate for the French presidency accuses Switzerland of "looting" its neighbor. But this implies that individuals belong to the government and that they do not have the individual freedom and sovereignty to choose where they want to live. Second, the European Union's Ambassador to Switzerland argues that low tax rates are a subsidy. This argument implies that income belongs to government and it creates a moral equivalence between an interest group that seeks to seize other people's wealth through the political process and taxpayers who merely want to keep more of their own money.

Along a similar vein Perry Eidelbus includes this at his blog:

As Walter Williams has said, "No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong." This thinking originated in Bastiat's The Law, in which he declared, "When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it—without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud—to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed."

Make a practice of taking away outsized gains, under any justification you wish, and see how much risk taking and progress remains... bright energetic people will focus on taking existing wealth rather than creating new wealth. They might team up with ruthless types to help them hold on to what they can or they will just leave the country.

Also, would you rather see private and social entreprenuers tackle tough problems with their wealth or place it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats?