Should we want to be blamed?

Suppose a poll were conducted asking the American public this question: given that global warming is a real and dangerous phenomenon, do you have a preference as to whether or not it is anthropogenic? How do you think most people would respond?

The rational preference is yes because if humans were the cause of global warming, then we'd be in a position to stop it. Despite this fact, I suspect that most people would have the opposite preference. (I don't have any evidence to back up my claim; I'm basing it entirely on conjecture and my own experiences with people.) Accepting blame comes at a cost to one's ego (even if its merely by association to one's species), and I think a lot of people are unwilling to pay that cost, even if doing so would allow them to proceed to take corrective action, improving quality of life.

By now, most people do agree that global warming is caused by humans. But if this poll were conducted, I think the results would be a partial explanation of what took us so long to take the blame.

Definition of Government

I have been thinking a lot about government and how to properly define it. One concern I had was that of arbitrariness. What I mean by this is how to distinguish the state from other forms of authority. If one owns a large estate and makes rules for how the inhabitants live, does one act as a government?

I believe the answer is no. My definition of government is common governance of a collection of multiple, differently owned pieces of property. Furthermore, anarchism is the condition of a collection of multiple properties having no common governance. Revisiting the question I posed, the estate owner is exercising property-authority (authority over one's property), not government authority (authority over multiple properties).

Something else to consider: a society could be stateless yet non-anarchist. Such is the case for a lone piece of property. To demonstrate my point, imagine if there were only one man left in the world. Obviously, he would be stateless (which sounds funny to say), but would he be an anarchist? Not really. Both anarchism and the state require multiple properties.

I think that my definition is useful, albeit in a limited way. It doesn't attempt to resolve the problem of how to establish the legitimacy of property ownership, which is integral to understanding a society's government-status. For example, what if a government were to simply declare that it owned all the properties? Would the society suddenly become stateless? I think not, but for reasons which are outside of the scope of my definition. However, I might write about this and other issues in later posts.

Could Animals Be Protected in a Free Society?

The answer to this question depends on the status of animals. If animals are property, then the answer is no. However, I think that there could be a libertarian argument made for animals as being protected as parts of the environment.

For example, while I may own land, I do not have the exclusive right to the river that flows through it. Yes, I have the right to swim in it, build a bridge over it, but I would be going beyond my rights if I installed a large fishing net and captured all the fish that went through, or if I dumped toxic waste in it. In this sense, the river is common property to all the land owners whose land it flows through. The reason is that what happens in one part of the river affects the other part. It is a continuous entity.

I think the same could be applied to animals. Think of the wildlife that run through your property as the water in the river. In a similar way, you do not own the animals. They are common property, parts of the environment. Say, five people each own property bordering a forest, and each person uses the land for hunting purposes. It would be wise for them to establish a rule on how much each person could hunt per season, for fear that one greedy hunter would leave little for everyone else. And if they so desired, they could establish a rule as to how to treat the animals.

So the point is that while animals do not have rights, they are not private property either. Just as the government ought to have the right to punish air polluters, it is permissible for the government to set some standards in regard to how animals are treated. The question now becomes, where do we draw the line? If I breed the animals myself, then it'd be a stretch to say that they are still part of the common realm. In which case, the government might not have the right to intervene if I were to abuse them. However, some where down the line, the animal's lineage could be traced back to the wild. It's tricky.

Weak Anarchism Vs. Strong Anarchism

What's the real difference between anarcho-capitalism (free-market anarchism) and anarchist communism if neither ideology could advocate the use of force to implement itself in society? (If it did, then it would be advocating a form of government.) Therefore, what separates different brands of anarchism is not the government policies they advocate (which is the policy of terminating it), but their forecasts for what a post-state society would be like. The anarcho-capitalist proposes the abolition of the state, and he predicts that an entirely free-market economy would take hold, providing for all goods and services. The anarchist communist, too, proposes the abolition of the state, and he predicts that a socialist, classless society would take hold, with common ownership of the means of production.

What I propose is a new term, weak anarchism. Weak anarchism allows for a temporary government to help bring about a particular type of stateless society, whereas strict (or strong) anarchism believes the best thing the government can do at any point in time is to cease existing. The anarcho-capitalist, for example, might advocate a temporary government security force to give time for private security firms to come into existence.

In my opinion, weak anarchism is the only way for the various branches of anarchism to have any meaningful differences between each other.

Internally Inconsistent Argument Against the Welfare State

Many conservatives/libertarians have made the argument that the welfare state has "destroyed the black family". Under the welfare system, single-mother families were nearly on pair, in terms of financial viability, with traditional two-parent families. In other words, participant fatherhood wasn't particularly rewarded in black society as it would have been absent government intervention. This, as the argument goes, had a lasting cultural impact.

This may or may not be true, and, indeed, if it were true, it might be a good argument against the welfare state. However, from a libertarian perspective, this would be problematic. If libertarians wanted to argue against welfarism on account of the taxation that is required to fund it and the economic and moral issues that are resultant from that, then I wouldn't see a problem. The problem arises when they argue against the giving aspect of welfarism.

Imagine a wealthy organization that is funded entirely through voluntary donations. Now imagine that this organization gave money to the would-be welfare recipients instead of the government. Wouldn't the socio-economic/cultural impact be exactly the same? If so, then the implication would be that these people do not know how to spend their own money, and it might even be wise for the government to step in and ban this organization from giving them hand-outs (which of course would be anti-libertarian).

The way I see it is that the government never forced the recipients to choose between the traditional family and welfare handouts. And if it were so that fatherhood was beneficial for more than financial reasons (which it is believed to be), then they should have recognized this fact and acted accordingly. To say otherwise would be oppose financial personal responsibility, a tenet of both libertarianism and conservatism.

Ron Paul Should Run Third Party If He Loses The Nomination

Ron Paul's bid for the Republican nomination to be president has generated a lot of enthusiasm over the past few months. The amount of donations Paul's campaign has received has rivaled that of his opponents. Paul's campaign also can claim to have a lot more grassroots volunteers than any other campaign.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Ron Paul has made some considerable progress in the polls recently, winning the nomination is still an uphill battle. He's still below 10% in Iowa and New Hampshire, and their primary elections are less than a month away.

Ron Paul's best shot at winning the White House would be for him to run on the Libertarian Party ticket. It is rare for a third party candidate to win, but Ron Paul has a lot of things going for him that other third party candidates didn't.

1. Money
Think back to '92. Ross Perot was able to get 19% of the popular vote. Why? Because he had a lot of money. So does Ron Paul. (And he'll get a lot more by tomorrow.)

2. Message
In my view, the reason why Perot didn't win the election was that he didn't have a strong message. He had broad stances on things which many people agreed with, but he didn't seem knowledgeable of the issues, nor did he have a consistent philosophy. Ron Paul has both. I would even say he is inspiring. How rare for a politician!

3. Disaffection
This is probably true for every election, but the people are sick of the two party system and having to choose the lesser of two evils. If the election comes down to Hillary v. Rudy, then the voter doesn't have a real choice. I mean, is there any real difference between the two?

4. Broad Appeal
Ron Paul gets almost as much support from liberals as he does from conservatives. His stances transcend the political spectrum. A lot of voters have libertarian views, but are frustrated because there are no viable candidates that can represent those views. Ron Paul would be such a candidate.

Regardless of all of this, Ron Paul himself needs to be convinced to run. So far, he's nearly ruled out a third party candidacy. Although if he does lose the nomination, I'm sure there will be a huge push to get him to run. I hope it's successful because he's the only chance this country has at being the land of the free again.

Georgia Governor Holds Prayer Vigil on State's Capitol

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue yesterday, along with a large crowd which included many other fellow lawmakers, held a vigil on the steps of Georgia's capitol to pray for rain. Georgia has been suffering a horrible drought in the past few months, and I guess this is the good governor's solution.

Read more about it here.

This is pretty sad. I mean, forgetting about the fact that it was a blatant violation of the separation church and state, it's sad that elected officials even have the desire to take part in this nonsense. Why doesn't he just do a rain dance? No, we laugh at silly tribal rituals like that, even though we're not much better.

In the article I linked some residents were quoted as saying that they didn't think the prayers would do any good, but that it was good that it was uniting people. So unity is good even if that which unites you is bad?

Unity has the effect of strengthening that which fosters it. In this case, the unity strengthens the religious sentiment in their society, which is bad. If they can't find anything good to be united by, then their society is in a pretty sad state, and they just shouldn't be united at all.