ZenPolitics

Nintendo’s new gun-like zapper.

It’s pretty cool-looking:

and, if you believe some of the comments in and to the article, dangerous to our children’s minds. No, the remote is not just dangerous, it’s going to get someone killed:

The gun like remote will get someone killed…. unless it’s pink with a flag in the muzzel. Toys guns of yesteryear were red, blue and whatever… no ligitimate reason to risk anyones life. The idiot that made the remote should have his/her brain checked….if they have one — thebeav136

Well, apparently it won’t get anyone killed if it is pink with a flag in the “muzzel”. Does it matter which flag? An American flag? An Israeli flag? An Iranian flag? Where the hell was this person living that toy guns of yesteryear were red or blue? Hell I’m not even 40 years old and toy guns when I was a little kid didn’t even have that stupid orange plastic cap on them.  A little paint job and the original Nintendo Zapper would look more realistic.

Another gem:

Great, this is what we need. Children with guns learning how to aim and shoot. Then we can sit back and wonder what is happening to our country with kids killing kids……what’s next? Could we make it squirt blood, too — unattributed

But wait, is that a glimmer of hope I see on the horizon?

Besides, a video game gun won’t help them aim correctly in real life anyway.

“Recoil? What’s that? My Wii Zapper doesn’t do that. Damnit!” — hobokendan

What about parents who want no part of it? Won’t Nintendo force all children to have them? I think I read that Nintendo will hold you at the business end of the new Zapper until you give up your right to . . . not have it in your home:

I think this a really dumb thing to do.. however, as a parent.. i make the choice what comes in my home.. This will not…. Just because it is available doesn’t mean we have to buy it. — lis1063

Someone . . . employing . . . actual . . . thinking . . . skills!

Ah, but what would the debate be without someone fresh from Jack Thompson’s talking points?

The problem with todays video games is that they are too realistic. The games of the 70s-80s were so unrealistic that it wasn’t a problem. Look at all the school shooting since the mid 90’s when video games became life like. Why are we allowing young people to become proficient with guns on these simulators that are marketed to kids these days? It is a real problem that should be controlled by lawmakers. — gcom

Or, instead of preying on weak-willed politicians willing to sell loud, vocal minorities their vote (and whatever is left of their dignity), you could use your brain:

I’ve played the Half-Life series, the Serious Sam series, No One Lives Forever 2, and System Shock 2 - all first person shooters. What did they teach me about shooting in real life? Nothing.

None of those indicated to me that I’d be left handed. Aiming obviously requires more skill than moving the cursor around until it changes color. Would a gun-like controller have made a difference? I doubt it. I might have caught on to the handedness sooner, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t have experienced recoil, reloading, using a safety, etc. With the exception of System Shock, maintaining a gun never gets covered either. — slythersci

I encourage people who click through to the article to read the variety of comments following gcom’s, which make me somewhat optimistic that my generation has not forgotten completely what freedom means, although it’s kind of a sad thought that possibly what makes us motivated to speak out is a video game.

In related news, I am planning at some point to buy a Wii. The interactivity really appeals to me, and I have young kids so most Nintendo fare will be age-appropriate for them. However, having gotten very used to (well-done) mature themes and content on PC games, I am hoping Nintendo comes through for me and I can buy some games targeted at my demographic segment.

Brawl over Islam on Facebook.

I don’t delve into the religious very often, but I confess I have a fervent sympathy for atheists. I don’t consider myself an atheist . . . an agnostic would probably be more accurate. But it pisses me off when I see atheists attacked as “hating” when they are engaging in activities such as:

1. Pointing out the plainly obvious.
2. Encouraging scientific pursuits and discouraging religious quackery.
3. Engaging powers of logic against fear-mongering and cultism.

I unfortunately say this without having been able to locate the Facebook group in question–if anyone can identify the group so I can view it, I would greatly appreciate it. The worst the NYT article can point to is the introduction to the Facebook group that says “The Quran contains many lies and threats. Islam is false, no god exists, and someone should say that loud and clear.” I am at a loss to determine how that is “hate”, and more than it would be “hate” if “Quaran” was replaced with “Bible” and “Islam” was replaced with “Christianity”. Are fundamentalist atheists engaged in suicide attacks? Do fundamentalist atheists blame natural disasters on God’s vengeance for homosexuality and advise people to send their homosexual minor children to re-education camps? These atheists are merely stating, if not the obvious, at least what they believe can be demonstrated by fact and evidence, and not engaged in hate. Maybe there is further hate in the group not rooted out by the NYT investigative reporter, but allow me to be skeptical if that is the ace of their hand that they play in the article.

But of the broad trend of accusing atheists of “hate” and “persecution”, there are plenty of examples. Take a perusal of a few weeks of PZ Myers’ Pharyngula, or The Panda’s Thumb, for a couple of weeks. Now, I have no political reason to defend, for example, Myers–he is clearly a liberal and Democrat–but the way he deconstructs such religious gobbledygook as Intelligent Design is just flat out solid, yet he is accused of “hate”.

It similarly burns me up to see Christians in America refer to themselves as discriminated against and persecuted by secular forces (see, e.g., the “War on Christmas”, David Limbaugh’s book on “persecution” of Christians, etc.). It also never ceases to amaze me how Christians confuse making something illegal for everyone with prohibiting government propping up or advocating (intentionally or by implication) a single religious ideology. Has such a majority ever whined and complained so much about being discriminated against by the minority? Christians are usually quick to point out the percentage of Americans that believe in God, most of which are Christians of some designation, yet any victory for reason and loss for fundamentalism brings cries of persecution, as if modern American Christians have something even remotely in common with their early-A.D. brethren.

I’m not an unreasonable guy. I understand that fundamentalist Christians tend to give moderate Christians a bad name, but by the nature of all of them having the same label I think all too often moderates will defend their more fundamentalist brothers and sisters. I have a feeling is Fundamentalist Christians were part of some other religious cult that moderate Christians would have a much lower tolerance for what they spout.

I applaud guys like Richard Dawkins who actively stand up to those who still push myth as fact, who sabotage the education of children, and who actively seek to brainwash children to prevent them from seeing logic and reason.

I tie this in to my political beliefs by pointing out that libertarianism is a framework solidly grounded in logic and reason. It isn’t pushed around by emotion, and it acknowledges that there is no magic bullet to economics and society that is going to allow us against all rationality to take care of everyone, and to fix all of society’s problems. I find similar appeal in how both ideologies are constructed and framed, and it would not surprise me to find as a percentage that libertarians are more apt to be agnostics or atheists than of other political ideologies. Just a guess. Both ideologies lay the burden of responsibility presumptively on the actor, rather than a supernatural being or societal influence.

So that’s my religious rant, for whatever it’s worth.  If you’ve made it this far, I reward you with the wonderful experience of the Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan himself.  Enjoy.

Getting involved in countries you don’t understand for your own non-critical self-defense interests (i.e. economic, political pissing wars, etc.) has a particular habit of biting you in the ass.

Exhibit 1

Case closed, your honor.

Unless, of course, you want to delve even further back . . . but it only makes the interventionist case worse, not better.

Sometimes you just get too caught up in other things to keep up on a good thing, so it is with a heavy heart that I have missed most of Cato Unbound’s August discussion on Anarchy. Now, to follow up with a blog post, I am responding to content that is ancient by web standards . . . six days.

I want to revisit the exchange being had by Peter Leeson and Dani Rodrik regarding the scale-up of self-enforcing agreements. The contention seems to be that an anarchic system relies on self-enforcing agreements, and that as you scale up such economies, self-enforcing agreements break down. Therefore, self-enforcing agreements (and efficient systems of anarchy in general) only operate effectively in a small scale that may be geographically limited or involve a specific group or community where individuals know one another. Specifically, one of the problems cited is signaling–essentially in a small or closed group it is possible to communicate to the others who is trustworthy and who is not, thus creating disincentive for people to try to circumvent the rules of fair trade and dealing. How can that work on a large scale?

This may be simplistic, but I am learning more and more to trust technologies within markets. Ebay’s user group is fairly large, and is not very contained geographically, yet Ebay seems to have instituted a private system of signaling that has scaled very nicely. It does not, and does not seek to, eliminate bad deals altogether, but by enabling an easy-to-use user ratings system, those that do not abide by the rules of fair trade and dealing are identified, and thus lose out on any portion of their market that choses not to engage in the more risky behavior of conducting transactions with a user having a less-than-optimal reputation. In Ebay’s system, the beauty of the scale-up is that a user who systematically engages in dishonest behavior is actually more visible, not less. Is it possible to game the system? Possibly, but Ebay has a major incentive to monitor the efficiency of the system itself and add technologies that continue to empower users to utilize the market to maximum effectiveness.

I’m not sure exactly what I am missing regarding signaling and scale-up, but wanted to throw out this example and see if I could get some feedback, perhaps from Leeson or Rodrik. If I am Leeson, I think there are ample examples with one one can defend oneself regarding scale-up and technology, even if one cannot figure out definitively how it would be accomplished (a definitive solution which would, even in our current regulated state, make one very rich indeed).

Overall, even when thinking about a Randian system, courts exist to help enforce private agreements, and I’m not 100% convinced in today’s world or modern warfare that a large territory such as The United States could effective defend itself without a government-run standing army (despite evidence that we utilize mercenary groups in Iraq and the Middle East). But this has been a fascinating topic to follow.

I can’t exactly figure out what people see in a war that simultaneously:

1. is costly and ineffective [Washington Post via ToThePeople].

2. corrupts government up and down the chain [Radley Balko], not only putting innocent people in prison (intentionally, in some instances, to cover up ineptitude or police state wrongdoing), but keeping them in prison when law enforcement officials know they’re innocent.

Really, if you are pro-Drug War, or on the fence, would it kill you to take a couple of minutes and read these articles? These are not isolated incidents or minor policy issues, this is a government initiative that is systemically rotten to its very core, both in policy and execution.

Let me re-iterate, because this should not ever, ever happen in a free country–the FBI, in order to protect informants and continuing investigations, leaves wrongly convicted people in jail–and the FBI intentionally sits on the information that could free them. Want it better? They won’t say that they won’t continue this practice!!

If I get asked–is the answer that we just give up? YES!!! YES!!! Billions of dollars flushed down the toilet in enforcement, incarceration, foreign “programs” that turn the world against us, a war that funds terrorism (and wouldn’t if pulled into legal enterprise) . . . where is the upside? What am I missing? All this money, all the freedoms encroached, all the injustices, and have we cut consumption by a significant margin? No, what we’ve done is given drug dealers incentives to make newer and more dangerous drugs (see, e.g., methamphetamine, created during periods of crackdown on amphetamine . . . good going, Drug Warriors!).

Is it too much to ask people to speak out? Contact your local, regional and national politicians and show your support for ending this insanity.

This person needs to pay more taxes.

Why should anyone be entitled to pass along earned wealth to their offspring, or to anyone else?

Discuss–after you’ve pledged allegiance to socialism, apparently.  What’s your isn’t yours.  It’s the governments.  They’re just letting you borrow it.

I am responding here to Orac’s post “What a lot of it boils down to when it comes to antscience” at Respectful Insolence regarding libertarians and science.

I am a libertarian, and I definitely believe that some libertarians take a contrary stance with regards to science because, at least IMO, they are not willing to acknowledge some of the hard choices that have to be made. For example, with regards to second-hand smoke, if libertarians do accept that second-hand smoke is harmful then you have a libertarian conundrum–one should be free to do what they wish so long as it doesn’t harm others, except second-hand smoke is causing harm.

When I apply libertarian principles to this factual scenario, I come up with the following policy conclusions:

1. Smoking that harms others in places where they have an absolute right to be–public facilities, public land, etc. may be banned outright to the extent that science shows such smoking to have an adverse health impact on those who have a right to be in that same place. Libertarians should have faith in the market to devise a solution to this health issue–a cigarette that eliminates second-hand smoke or eliminates the adverse health impacts of second-hand smoke. Libertarians are fond of saying that the market provides solutions, and we should have similar faith here.

2. People who own businesses should have the absolute right to determine whether to allow smoking in their establishment or on their property and under what conditions. My property, my rules. If you don’t like those rules feel free to patronize , or work at, another establishment. If I value employees who smoke as well as employees who don’t smoke, I will take appropriate measures, measuring the costs against the benefits.

At least number 2 is a run-of-the-mill libertarian position . . .

I also think that even libertarians need to take a look at the challenges associated with kids and second-hand smoke. On the one hand libertarians believe that parents should have broad discretion in how they raise their kids. On the other hand, if second-hand smoke is directly harmful to their health then you run into as issue that the kids aren’t exactly capable of giving informed and free consent to being harmed in this way. I contend that it is a different issue than how parents educate their children, although it runs a fine line against how you feed your children, whether you get your children vaccinated, and other health issues. These are not black-and-white issues to me, as I’m not fully content to say that parents can subject their kids to whatever–if we’re honest about the principle of being able to do whatever you want unless and until it harms another is it fair to simply dismiss harm caused to children?

This isn’t just a “think of the children!” excuse to enact broad legislation–I’m still in favor of minimal government whenever possible, and when it is necessary it should be specifically tailored to meet a specific need, but this is just to me a sticky libertarian issue that I don’t think my kind actively engage in enough.

The environment certainly is another tough one. Ideally polluters would be taken to court and held responsible for their polluting by those who were harmed by it. But in a practical sense our society is not set up to handle this issue in that way–courts are clogged, it can be difficult in some cases to prove harm, corporations shield individuals from liability, people die, or move, or corporations go out of existence . . . it certainly present challenges. And then there’s global warming . . . in order for a private enforcement system to be effective, you have to be able to assign value to damage done, and how the hell do you do that regarding individual polluters and global warming? Who would bring the private action? How would they prove their damages? What would a court do and how would it be enforced in a logical and consistent way?

Libertarians believe that if people individually cared enough about the environment, enough to put their pocketbooks where their mouth is, that the market would correct for pollution. But markets do have weaknesses, particularly in markets where the cost of entry is high and there are few market participants.

To take it back to science though, I think as libertarians we have to deal with the scientific majority in a more honest way. We can’t just stick our heads in the sand and side with a small minority of scientists because we feel it suits our economic model. This keeps us on the fringe and out of the main public discourse, which is that these scientific conclusions are real, at least as good as we can determine at this time, and how do we incorporate them into our political, social and economic framework? Most libertarians favor minimal government, but that government does have its place, and it is not honest to reject government just because it is government.

I know that this little rant doesn’t make me the poster child for libertarianism, but to me libertarianism is sound, rational political and economic policy, and most libertarians I know are sound and rational people. To me that sounds like a great match for scientists, who base their lives on science, which is a discipline based on logic and rationality. Some days I wish it was just as easy as libertarians having a little more faith in the scientific community and scientists having a little more faith in economic principles.

Cato Unbound’s lead essay for August is on anarchy–a short survey of what it is and how it has functioned at various times in history and today. I think the logic employed by the author is solid enough to form an argument against neoconservatism, or any foreign policy with an aim to export American-style democracy to various parts of the world.

The path by which a country arrives at a certain type of government seems to me to be as important as what that government actually is. These paths take time–often the span of many generations–and they may take routes towards a more enlightened government that are dark and twisted.

Take China. I don’t know what the future holds for China. Some people believe China is going to be the 21st century superpower, others believe China’s prosperity is not sustainable. China’s Communist government has been among the bloodiest in history, and they are still certainly not saints today. However, there is little doubt that some in governance in China have learned from past mistakes–China has moved towards some free market reforms (more markets, more private ownership) in order to better position itself moving into the next century. Is there backsliding? Sure. Can we guarantee in the short term that there won’t be a relapse? Absolutely not. But as our ability to record history improves, as the flow of information becomes harder to suppress (and remain competitive in the world), markets and freedom seem poised to flourish, having proven their success relative to their alternatives.

For impoverished and developing states, it could very well be that periods of anarchy develop the kind of qualities that the people need–culturally–to buy into and sustain a more forward-thinking, enlightened government. As the examples Mr. Leeson’s lead essay uses demonstrate, one or more periods of sustained anarchy may cultivate innovation to address the needs of business, which in turn improves the quality of life (perhaps only from dismal and hopeless to still dismal and hopeless but not quite as much). It proves to the people the value of reputation, trust, and one’s word. These are similar conditions to, at least for times, many parts of the United States in its colonial and expansion days. It may be the underpinning for how we value freedom.

When we go in and set up a government in a country, and the cultural underpinnings are not in place, we have seen how disastrous it can be both for our image in the world and also for the peoples involved. If culturally the value system has not developed and is not robust, then even the most well-intentioned of nation building is doomed to failure. We cannot force that change, and we risk quite a bit even attempting to hurry it along.

That is my take on this month’s Cato Unbound lead essay–a great topic that all libertarians must grapple with IMO because it forces us to confront the same arguments we use against other political philosophies. A libertarian might say to a liberal–if government is so good at procuring services and is such a public good, then why not go completely communist? What is their argument about drawing the line? Same with Republicans–where and how do they draw lines regarding civil liberties? If security is the sole public good and government may be explicitly entrusted with unlimited powers to spy on us (and thus access to unlimited amounts of information), then why have limits at all? Take it a step further, and why have civil liberties at all? We must be aware and knowledgeable to arguments about our own line-drawing, and I look forward to the discussion this month.

Air Force Officer Nick breaks it down for you.

Nick’s blog is worth a thorough read.  He’s got a good head on his shoulders (volunteering for a tour in Iraq notwithstanding), and writes in easy-to-digest entries.  And while it is true that not everyone is in a position to do what he did in order to reduce his debt load–reduce his expenses significantly and simultaneously increase his income, his fortitude should serve as an example to all of us still in the rat race.

I got to Nick through Mint.com’s blog, which I got to through Lifehack.org (I also recommend lifehacker.com, where I usually find something useful at least once a week).  It’s amazing what you find when you click through a few pages and see where you end up–and I recommend all of the above.  Make sure to give Nick an encouraging word when you get a chance.

Democrats cave in to Bush’s demands, continue raping civil liberties.

My favorite part:

Democratic leaders there were working on a plan to bring up the Senate-passed measure and vote on it Saturday in response to Bush’s demand that Congress give him expanded powers before leaving for vacation this weekend.

Oh, no, the President has threatened to veto our bill, what do we do?? Guess there’s nothing left to do but bend over and take it up the can!! Thank you, Mr. President, can I have another??

How about you grown a goddamn pair and tell him to stuff his veto pen where the sun doesn’t shine!!

I mean, who is under the most pressure here? A court had ruled the existing program Unconstitutional, so continuing it without Congressional approval would be in violation of a lawful court judgment. Democrats should have told Bush to take it or leave it—dare him to veto a bill protecting the civil liberties of Americans. Why is a Democrat Congress afraid of a man whose approval rating is lower than the average number of points the Indianapolis Colts put up during the regular season last year??

This just really pisses me off. Do either of these political parties stand on anything resembling principles any more? First Republicans abandoned anything resembling fiscal responsibility, now Democrats abandon civil liberties. What a joke.  Watch for more updates as the President seeks to expand the next version of the bill to provide corporate immunity for anyone that helped with illegal surveillance.  Unreal.