In light of recent extreme gun violence happening all across the USA, it would be nice if we could see some graphs of lead and gun violence placed together. Better yet, the crime level and lead level graphs for the Newtown, Aurora, Columbine and so on.
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
181–190 of 201 posts
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would that work?
The same way any private industry works. People or organizations offer services, and individuals choose which services to pay for.
So, I'd pay a private company to arbitrage between me and the company which caused my lead poisoning?
And what happens when the private company doesn't agree with the arbitrage result?
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In fact, violence can be very profitable. It can be, sure, but it's extremely expensive and extremely risky. That was my point. Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence. Reality does not bear out your claims that turning everything over to private parties would magically solve the violence problem. In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are s…
> Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence. Not true. Government law enforcement obviously contributes, but the tendency for people to defend themselves (and for third parties to intervene against perceived injustice) is the primary source of risk. > In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are strong evidence that violence would increase tenfold…
Those are interesting pieces, and I feel as though my time was well spent reading them.
I can't see what they have to do with this argument though. The first one is basically a speculative essay with little to support its ideas, interesting though they are.
The second one is more rigorous, but it seems to me that it works against your argument.
It contends that Law and Order is provided by Xeer, Somali customary law, which is a tribal artifact that has developed over centuries, and depends on people being recognized as having loyalty to a tribe because it makes the tribe responsible for harms done its by members to other tribes. Thew piece also states that although private courts exist (funded by successful businessmen), Shari'a courts perform an instrumental function in creating legal order.
Both pieces also state that the Somali central state, when it existed, was weak, rampantly corrupt and never successfully displaced these tribal and religious institutions.
All this really seems to be saying is that, just like everywhere else before the emergence of the nation state, Somalia was governed by tribal law and religion. In the case of Somalia, a functioning nation state never really emerged, and so it fell back to tribal law and religion.
This turns out not to be as bad as the failing central state, or the horror stories portrayed by the mainstream media, but although falling back to tribalism and religion might not be as bad as the media portrays, it hardly seems like a model for how to improve on what we have.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
So is a law banning certain allergens from food a regulation or a protection from violence for those to whom the allergen is poison? What about law requiring those who give others food to warn them about potential allergens? What about a law requiring that warning to be stated in a clear, easy to read manner (rather than hidden fine print)? (say the allergen is soy, which is not an obvious ingredient in say, ice crea…
I don't know what point of mine you are trying to disagree with, or what you are getting at. You seem to be missing the forest for the trees. Everything you have asked about has a very straightforward answer, but you lack the philosophical context to see that. It's like asking a chemist to explain molecular bonds, when you don't even know that atoms exist. As I've said, the proper principle of government is to protec…
It's not clear whether you are actually advocating this kind of interpretation of Ayn Rand's position or not.
It seems to me that the principle of government being solely to protect individuals from the initiation of force by others is a great one, and should be the primary one. For bringing this idea into my consciousness, I am grateful to Ayn Rand and those who propagate her work.
However, "sophacles" doesn't seem to be arguing against the principle. He or she seems to be arguing against a simplistic interpretation of its implications.
For example you say: "correctly applying this principle means that if something is always a poison to everyone, it's not a legitimate product. There is no legitimate use. Producing it and selling it is simply initiating force."
Who decides what is a poison to 'everyone'? Well since by the correct application of the principle, it is the government's responsibility to protect individuals from this initiation of force, it must therefore be the responsibility of the government to recognize these situations.
Does that mean that the government needs to set up a science infrastructure to decide what is harmful to 'everyone'?
If so, how is it to staff this infrastructure with scientists, and how is it to decide who is qualified to do the work? Perhaps it needs to establish an education system for this purpose. Given that working as a government scientist by necessity means giving up a lot of time that could otherwise be spent securing shelter and provision for the future, perhaps the government should set up a way to house and provide for its employees in their old age... and so it goes on.
I'm all for the principle, seriously. I just don't see how it helps to offer unrealistically simplified interpretations of how to apply it to people who are interested enough to engage.
Unless you really do think that Ayn Rand had a perfect and complete prescription for the best of all possible societies...
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If that were true people wouldn't be killed over pocket change today. There is no organization of individuals which routinely kill people over pocket change, is there? Obviously, single individuals can and do commit nearly any physical act you can conceive of. That doesn't mean that all acts are affordable to deploy on a massive scale, especially when you're worried about earning a profit. I chuckled at your assump…
>Remember, what we call "government" is really just a bunch of people that society recognizes as the sole legitimate purveyors of violence—that's the only difference. Wrong. They are a group of people acting within a common framework of rules. These rules constrain their behavior, especially violent behavior. Part of this framework works to ensure no one person, small group or even large sub-group can act independent…
I would argue that your characterization of government is the promise of utopia that critics of anarchy (I use that term very broadly to simply mean lack of a state) always claim the anarchists are proposing. It is simply not reflected in reality. A document empirically does not have authority over government, and voting is not a realistic way to keep government accountable to the people. An individual simply has no recourse to everyday government injustices (like taxation or prosecution for drug possession). If you insist that government represents the people, fine, but it's still tyranny of the majority/plurality. If the government doesn't represent the people, then it's government tyranny.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Except for the most part, there's no such thing as "the long run", since the entire concept depends on the universe being relatively stationary (from a probabilistic/statistical perspective). In fact, the universe, and especially the economy/culture/society, is highly non-stationary, making the entire notion of "the long run" fallacious. In other words, your…
> ... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Don't be silly. The world would still be a horrible place. Heinous acts would be committed every day. People would be murdered, tortured, and raped. There would still be a lot of violence—it would just be a lot less than what we have today. > In other words, your model assumes that aggregate consumer demand for a particular basket of goods will "stay still…
The entire premise of libertarianism rests on the notion that the world will stay still long enough for market forces to weed out the baddies. Government can sometimes be the better solution because regulations can respond much more quickly to baddies (e.g., I can inspect the restaurant within a week of its opening, or we can wait 6-12 months for enough people to get sick and for the restaurant to develop a bad reputation). Without regulations, the restaurant can just close its doors if it develops a bad reputation, sell its assets, change its name, go somewhere else, and repeat the cycle.
The point isn't that "government will solve any of this", it's that laissez-faire economics can't. Bad actors can skip from exploitation to exploitation -- if there would be less government, then everyone would need to look out for themselves all the time and there would be less social trust, with all the attendant effects.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I may ask a second question: what do you think of emissions trading as a solution instead of bans on specific sources like leaded gasoline?
A lot of people like emissions trading, but I think it's a bit oversold. Implementing an emissions trading scheme is phenomenally complex, and it doesn't really reduce the regulatory apparatus required. You still have to have people figuring out what the total cap should be on a harmful substance, you still have to have people who go out and enforce to make sure nobody is exceeding their emissions limits, etc. You op…
Thanks again!
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know blog/people to follow leaning right that value also intellectual integrity? I noticed it is possible to find left of liberal media that includes facts references. But most of the right media at some point use the "market is right" or "less gouvernement is good" without arguments or sources and I find it quite annoying. So if you know smart right media in English or French please give the references.
Becker-Posner Blog: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ David (son of Milton) Friedman: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Here's a short list I'd add:
Tyler Cowen, Scott Sumner, Reihan Salam, Will Wilkinson, Conor Friesendorf.
Picking just one conservative I'd choose Cowen without blinking because he's a volume blogger with a wide net so you'll often get the best of right leaning commentary on the subjects he's interested in.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... and "in the long run" everything would work out, right? Don't be silly. The world would still be a horrible place. Heinous acts would be committed every day. People would be murdered, tortured, and raped. There would still be a lot of violence—it would just be a lot less than what we have today. > In other words, your model assumes that aggregate consumer demand for a particular basket of goods will "stay still…
The entire premise of libertarianism rests on the notion that the world will stay still long enough for market forces to weed out the baddies. Government can sometimes be the better solution because regulations can respond much more quickly to baddies (e.g., I can inspect the restaurant within a week of its opening, or we can wait 6-12 months for enough people to get sick and for the restaurant to develop a bad reput…
The false assumption a lot of critics to libertarianism (or nearly any political philosophy) routinely make is that libertarians believe their proposed system would be a utopia with no violence, no "baddies," no market inefficiencies or market failures, etc. Granted, some libertarians who aren't really educated in the political philosophy probably do claim that. But I don't. I certainly don't think that a pure free market would solve all problems. I just believe there would be more prosperity, less poverty, and less violence in a society without a government than in a society with a government.
Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drug dealers in the form you're talking about can only exist when there is drug prohibition, and it's highly unlikely that a society based on polycentric law would prohibit drugs. The economics of a lot of organized crime also can be explained government.
Even in a centralized state, the best, most efficient and reliable way to distribute illegal items would be total decentralization. Huge crime rings still exist though: where there is the opportunity to monopolize a resource, people will do it. That will only be exaggerated in your imagined anarcho-capitalist state. Even resources like water, energy, raw materials would be subject to monopolization, and very likely e…
> That will only be exaggerated in your imagined anarcho-capitalist state.
Why? This is an unsubstantiated claim, and I don't see why it's any truer than claiming that competition in the retail industry will be worse than a government-owned retail monopoly.
> Suppose I kill someone. Now you'll turn to a private law company to judge/punish me. I then proceed to kill that company's employees. Will you now invoke a third private law provider in their name? Who will pay for it?
All you're arguing here is that my proposition would not be a perfect utopian society, which I would never be foolish enough to claim. It's no different than asking "What if I kill someone, then kill the cops that show up, then kill every other law enforcement agency that shows up, then kill the entire national military?"