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April 30, 2009

"Uncivil Obedience, Disobedience, and Civil Initiative"

This quotation is the title of an essay in Jim Corbett’s book Goatwalking, in which he compares the political theory of Thomas Hobbes and Henry David Thoreau to the philosophy and practice of civil initiative that he developed over a decade of human rights struggle. I’ve just written a short article about civil initiative over on the Opus journal, and I wanted to mention it here because Corbett’s thinking seems distinctly free liberal.

To illustrate, take my grossly oversimplified summaries of Hobbes, Thoreau, and Corbett:

  • Hobbes: Human life without states is nasty, brutish, and short. If we concede to protection by the Leviathan, we are it’s subjects, and must obey its commands. It’s kind of like Cthulhu. Sorry, but that’s the social contract. If you want to renegotiate, your only recourse is revolution.
  • Thoreau: The individual’s sole duty is to conscience, not government commands. States are too often the agents of injustice, and their laws are an obstacle to justice. Questions of right can’t be resolved by democratic legislation, but only by conscientious individuals, who must choose between respect for law and respect for right. When conscience conflicts with law, your options are conscientious disengagement or revolutionary disobedience.
  • Corbett: The common law is formed not by states, but by communities through the exercise of natural rights. Sometimes one must choose between obeying the law and obeying the government—not because the law is an obstacle to justice, but because the government is shattering the legal order by violating human rights. When communities must violate government statutes to protect human rights, their actions must be germane to victims needs and accountable to legal order.

For Hobbes, the fulcrum of social change and civil order is the benign, legitimate sovereign. Thoreau’s fulcrum is the individual conscience. For Corbett, liberty and community are interdependent primaries: masterless communities form the basis for accountability to legal order, which is defined by the protection of natural rights. Naturally ornery, I find Thoreau’s individualism appealing, but I agree with Corbett that only a community can integrate, outreach, and outlast individual acts of conscience.

What kinds of activism have you been involved in?

Different kinds of activism divulge their constituting principles. Lobbying recognizes the sovereignty of states in making law. Conscientious disengagement and revolutionary disobedience repudiate human law in favor of individual conscience. Civil initiative refuses either to forfeit legal order or to plead guilty for resisting government statutes that violate human rights.

I’d like to hear your thoughts and experiences. I welcome you to read about civil initiative, and leave your questions and comments.

John Stephens is a Quaker, artist, teacher, and designer in Virginia. You can find him at Design Opus where he works on media for social entrepreneurship and community peacebuilding.

Posted by johnstephens at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

Car Dealerships and Hedge Funds

Mack McClarty writes about the risk of bankruptcy by GM and Chrylser to the car dealerships in today's Washington Post.

Sorry Mack, but perhaps the time for dealerships has passed. The franchise system was, in part, a way to shift product risk from the manufacturers to small business and part to prevent their sales and maintenance forces from unionizing. Neither strategy seems to be good at this juncture.

Perhaps it would be better for the dealers to sell out to the manufacturers, trading inventory and assets for stock and allowing the employees to join the UAW. In Chrysler, this would make them owners as well. It is telling that these workers were not mentioned in your piece at all.

The AP is reporting the the President will announce at noon that Chrysler is going into a short period of bankruptcy, which will allow them to deal with much of the outstanding debt held by Hedge Fund operators who refused to accept the deal proferred by Chrysler and the Administration.

Do they think that they are going to get a better deal from the bankruptcy judge? It does not seem likely. Do they seriously think that the Obama Administration is going to bail them out when they have to write these assets off when they did not play ball on Chrylser? I think not. Luckily, none of my assets have any holdings in these funds, because they are about to go south. They fought off any type of regulation in the 1990s and that decision is about to bite them hard. My advice to hedge fund managers is to leave the Lamborghini at home when going to court, because the judge may seize it as an asset for your investors. Given that the Administration is working to go after tax, and presumably asset, havens in the Caymens, et al, it doesn't take a fortune teller to see that the end is near.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2009

The Chrysler Deal

Chrysler is about to be reorganized, going from an essentially privately owned firm to a firm owned by a combination of private firms, its employees and the federal government, with the UAW controling 55% of the pie. The actual compensation of the ownership has not yet been released and will be interesting. The last obstacle to the deal seems to be a ratification vote and an agreement by all bondholders to take less than face value (as compared to the zero they would get if the company failed).

This was actually the easy part. The hard part is how this new firm will getting people to buy cars again and as importantly how the firm will be managed. The new firm will learn about quality and participative management from Fiat, which is a good sign from my anarcho-synidicalist viewpoint, since European participative management will impact the day to day functioning of Chrysler in a way that will reduce both cost and increase human dignity. The impact of that may well be less of a need for governmental regulation. The anarcho part of me likes that a lot.

The acid test will be how profit, wages and positions are divied up. If Chrysler is run the way United is run, the experiment will be a flop. If it is run along different social assumptions, however, it may well make it, although it is a hard row to hoe. it is not easy to move from a top-down hierarchy locked in a death match with a top-down union to a more economic and egalitarian model. I have a few ideas along this line. Anyone in either management or the Union who is interested in these is free to contact me. They are laid out on my Iowa Center for Fiscal Equity web page at www.geocities.com/iowaequity/governance.html and the companion piece at www.geocities.com/iowaequity/payequity.html.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2009

FBI workers spy on teen girls' dressing room

Why does the FBI have a mall in small-town West Virginia wired with cameras?! Not to mention the dressing rooms?! Hopefully these questions will be answered as the story develops.

Here's an excerpt from the AP story:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall.

The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday.

Gary Sutton Jr., 40, of New Milton and Charles Hommema of Buckhannon have been charged with the misdemeanors and face fines and up to a year in jail on each charge if convicted. Sutton has been released on bond, Wilson said, and Hommema is to be arraigned later this week. Wilson did not know Hommema's age.

The workers were described in a complaint as "police officers," but prosecutors did not say whether the men were agents or describe what kind of work they did.

FULL STORY -- http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97MF9I00&show_article=1

Posted by JamesPlummer at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

Gloom Antidote

Deaf, dumb and blind as we each are in our little Matrix cocoons, we sometimes miss the Big Picture.

Check this video for a quick reminder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2009

They Just Don't Get the Tea Parties

The tea parties are now the issue of the day. What do they mean? Were they a true grassroots efforts or simply top-down "astroturf" as Nancy Pelosi said? For my part, what I saw in Albuquerque was a group of people organizing from the grassroots, with housewives who had never done anything political before leading the charge.

This is why neither side (neither Republican nor Democrat) understands what the tea parties mean. For starters, there is Eugene Robinson whose column appears in both the Washington Post and the Albuquerque Journal. Robinson leans to the left and denigrated the rallies, claiming they were "generally small, and the only thing they proved conclusively is that that some Americans don't much enjoy paying taxes."

Then there is former Bush right-hand-man Karl Rove who wondered in his column how Republicans can harness the movement. At the same time, Rove didn't attempt to explain and never really questioned why the tea party movement has arisen at this moment since we hadn't seen a federal tax hike for 15 years until Obama's tax hike on tobacco recently.

First and foremost, both writers miss the point. The rallies, while they did take place on tax day, were not really about taxes. Rather, they were, I believe, an expression of frustration at Republicans and Democrats, both of whom have supported out-of-control spending, bailouts, government takeovers and subsidies of private business, and unbelievable increases in indebtedness levels for the better part of the last decade. The unfortunate truth is that the Obama Administration has simply continued and expanded upon many of Bush's policies and the people who work every day and make this country great are not happy. That is the message I got from the tea parties (at least in Albuquerque where politicians were specifically kept out of the limelight).

I wasn't able to go to other tea parties because I did four hours of live radio (available here) from Albuquerque, but if the other tea parties had anywhere near the grassroots leadership that Albuquerque's had, April 15 was the start of something big.

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)

April 16, 2009

Obama backs Bush position vs habeas corpus

Magna Carta? Who needs it?

Posted by JamesPlummer at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

Libertarians, Republicans, and teabagging

Free Liberal's own Stephen Gordon discussed the focus of the disparate tax day tea parties on MSNBC:

Posted by JamesPlummer at 03:11 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

Obama declares war on privacy?

A Freudian slip? Obama said this week he is "resolved to halt the rise of privacy."

Posted by JamesPlummer at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

Overstatement for (Ill) Effect

Timing may not be everything, but it accounts for a lot. Experiments, including thought experiments, are wonderful things, but half-baked ideas should not be floated at inopportune times, I suggest.

Our anarcho friends don't seem to get this. I've previously blogged in '07 that their fascination with the anarchic territory formerly know as Somalia seemed unripe to me.

Nearly two years later, we get this: Anarchy by Land Means Piracy at Sea.

But it keeps coming. Patri Friedman -- Milton's grandson -- is floating (literally) his ideas "seasteading," floating non-States.

He says: "In the modern world, however, bad policies are the result of human action, not human design. To change them we must understand how they emerge from human interaction, and then alter the web of incentives that drives behavior."

I challenge the premise. "Bad" policies look to me to be "designed," not spontaneous, invisible-hand inventions. Surely the proportion of "badness" is often generated by unintended consequences, but the prime mover is the design itself. So, for example, the looming demographic timebomb that is Social Security and Medicare were designed through legislation, made worse through more legislation.

It's all so frustrating! The growth in government leads those of us who want peace and liberty to react, sometimes rashly. Look, Somalia is paradise! Hey, let's float our own Utopia!

We seem to want to meet a dysfunctional construct (statism) with a virtuous construct (anarchism). But maybe the problem is the very idea of constructs themselves. Undoing dysfunctional constructs is slow, hard, tedious, and imprecise work.

But it seems unavoidably necessary work.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:22 AM | Comments (1)

Obama DOJ backs Bush admin state secrets, wiretapping

Posted by JamesPlummer at 01:22 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2009

Gay Marriage in Iowa

Equal protection is equal protection. When legislating against an identifiable group, such as homosexuals, one must have a rational basis for doing so. This is true in state and federal law (and a portent for things to come). As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, as soon as private consenual sodomy is regarded as essentially private and beyond the reach of legislation, there is not rational basis for denying gays the right to marry a same sex partner.

While religious leaders talk about the role of procreation in marriage, the ability to procreate is not a requirement in either civil law or canon law to marry - (Canon law requires only the ability to function - although it still regards sodomy as disordered). Of course, the very concept of disorder requires that there be a natural order outside of human experience to damage (since God cannot be damaged). If the natural order is considered a sophistry then the disorder argument carries no weight, especially given the biological evidence that homosexuality is simply a natural variation in the species.

If inability to procreate is not a bar to marriage among heterosexuals, it cannot be so for homosexuals. Additionally, marriage is not required for procreation, although it is helpful in providing a stable environment for children. Of course, the stable environment argument favors gay marriage, given that gay parents often have custody of their children.

The key role of marriage is to separate individuals from their families of origin, creating a new family. As Jesus said, when someone is married, they leave their families and cling to their spouse, and the two will become one flesh. Practically, that means that they are legally the same person, excluding the family of origin from any power formerly held, including the right to inherit property, make decisions in illness and make funereal arrangements.

The question of marriage did not come up when there were no end of life decisions to be made. People got sick and either died or got better. Now they may or may not linger and may or may not recover. There is visitation to be decided - often with estranged families excluding a person who is essentially a spouse. While civil unions are an attempt to rectify this, they are but an act of political correctness designed not to offend the sensibilities of the religious (who have not conducted themselves toward homosexuals in anyway so as to deserve an opinion on the matter).

The key legal question is this: what compelling right do families of homosexuals have in maintain an interest in the lives of their gay family members vis a vis the member's spouse when compared to those of heterosexual family members vis a vis their spouses? In other words, why do gay spouses deserve less respect than straight spouses?

Unless you can find an overwhelming rational basis for a difference, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled correctly - as will the U.S. Supreme Court when they finally see this issue.

Ultimately, Churches will see that they must celebrate gay weddings. There are two reasons. The first is that it gives them a platform to preach monogamy - a platform they do not have now by declaring all homosexual activity sinful. The second is because the wedding ceremony is a comfort for the family, not just the couple. When the famillies are rightly seen as the beneficiaries of these rites, they will begin demanding that they occur and they will be performed.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

Selling Carbon (and other Sin) Taxes

Carbon Taxes, like any pollution or sin tax, are an attempt to capture the externalities associated with a transcation that are not captured in the price. Put more briefly, carbon taxes make customers who buy products which cause global warming pay for the environmental damage caused by their use of these products. The goal behind these taxes is to lessen consumption of these products and reimburse society for the harm done. The significant danger behind such levies is that they become a cash cow, which gives society an interest in setting the tax low enough that the behavior goes on. This is called codepenency in the recovery community - and it is not good. The way out of such codependent relationships is to designate all funds collected from carbon taxes (and other sin taxes) toward government spending designed to reduce or eliminate the undesireable behavior. That way, when the behavior is eliminated, the program to counteract the behavior is eliminated too.

For tobacco taxes, instead of using these funds as a cash cow, it would be better to fund smoking cessation and heart disease, cancer and COPD (formerly emphysema) treatment and research, as well as programs to help tobacco farmers find an alternate crop (such as fish farming). If taxes are not high enough to adequately fund all the consequences, the tax would be raised. If all programs are well funded and there is money left over, the taxes would be decreased.

Alcohol taxes would fund both addiction prevention and treatment and the criminal justice systems, since alcohol is the most likely gateway drug to other substances and because it is also responsible for the vast majority of violent and property crimes. If marijuana and other drugs were made legal, they could be taxed as well - although other drugs such as meth, heroin and crack cocaine would still be considered dangerous and use considered grounds for mandatory inpatient treatment (rather than incarceration). If taxes on alcohol and drugs are too low to fund needed treatment and incarceration activities, they would be raised. While most people who imbibe do not cause negative consequences to society, a minority of users who are alcoholic or addicted consume most of the alcohol and drugs sold, so these consumers would pay most of the taxes and use most of the required services. Of course, taxes should not be so high that black market sources of supply are encouraged.

Carbon taxes hold the most promise for identifying offsetting spending programs. The way to sell these taxes is to link already popular spending programs to the tax, rather than to the general fund. Gas taxes should become a carbon tax and be allocated for both advanced transportation research as well as road building and mass transit, including Amtrack. Reforestation would also be funded by carbon taxes. All hydro-electric projects performed by the Corps of Engineers should be funded by Carbon Taxes, as well as new nuclear power plants and the Office of Fusion Energy. Indeed, carbon taxes should be increased enough to accelerate this research beyond the current timetable, since Helium-3 Fusion reactors are both absolutely save and emissions free. Once the technology is fully developed, it will be commercially viable on its own and will eliminate the need for almost all mechanical emissions of carbon gasses for power, industry and transportation. Putting the pork barrel lobby behind the carbon tax cannot but help hurry the day where this is possible.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 11:52 AM | Comments (2)

April 06, 2009

Swiss Model for Health Care?

In today's Albuquerque Journal, economist Micha Gisser (a senior fellow w/ RGF), discusses a few ways in which our health care system might be reformed with an emphasis on both free markets and "universal" health care. The basic idea of Swiss health care is to generally free Americans of some of the most absurd and silly regulations -- by allowing, for example, individuals to receive the same tax benefits as their employers do and by purchasing care across state lines -- and to demand that each American purchase a very basic plan to cover emergencies.

Gisser makes many good points in his column. Given the choice between the Swiss model and what Obama is proposing, I'd certainly go for the Swiss model. There are a few major questions before we impose the Swiss model here: 1) how do we ensure that everyone has health care and enforce that? After all America is a much bigger, more open society than Switzerland 2) How do we ensure that bureaucrats and politicians don't demand larger and more ambitious "basic" coverage as happened in Massachusetts with its "connector" plan?


Posted by PaulGessing at 01:36 PM | Comments (1)

Free-for-all (frfr-ôl) -- n. A disorderly fight, argument, or competition in which everyone present participates.

from Dictionary.com



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