ChichaPlanet

Mi hermano estuvo con nosotros el fin de semana. Con él y unos amigos, fuimos a Darien Lake, como a dos horas y media al oeste de Ithaca.

Nice people, nice places.

Fotos; Video

The latest exulted neocon with his warmongering VP.

The government of the state of New York does not want a debate:

The state's top anti-drug-abuse official spoke out Thursday against a petition signed by 129 college presidents ? including 11 from New York ? to ?rethink? the drinking age and consider lowering it to 18 again.

?The facts are that since these laws were raised to age 21, in New York state and across the country, thousands and thousands of lives have been saved. Period. End of story,? said Karen Carpenter-Palumbo, who heads the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.

She cited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics that found the 21 minimum-drinking-age laws had saved nearly 25,000 lives by the end of 2005, and the number of young people killed each year in crashes involving drunk drivers under 21 has been cut in half by the 1980s.

End of story? Can nothing more be said? Not even this?

A free society would be one where the recognition of property rights and the freedom of contract are considered as the primary basis for the interaction between its members. However, the existence of the state assures that there will almost always be a disconnect between custom and state legislation.

The video below gives us a glimpse of just one of many such disconnects. The newscasters, recognizing the silliness of what had happened, are laughing at the incident. They would not, however, would be doing so had the police officer had raped or killed. Surely they realize that smoking marijuana, or eating it in this case, did not lead to harmful effects. And even if they did support the war on drugs, they must know that at it's not "as criminal" as a crime with a real victim.

An excellent comment by Jeremy Sapienza:

"Even after Obama has demonstrated himself to be no better than a 90% evil McCain, and then of all people, took disgustingly ambitious warmonger Joe Biden as VP, you?re all still creaming your?t-shirts over this schmuck. Don?t get me wrong ? 90% of the evil of McCain is still lesser, and I am rooting for Obama, no doubt. Besides, it will be fun for the Democrats to get blamed for fucking things up ? after 8 years of Bush, people are starting to forget that the Democrats suck just as much as Republicans. I don?t know why ? the outrageous betrayal of antiwar voters in the most recent Congressional elections should have reminded you. Or maybe voting to give retroactive immunity to the corporations who work in concert with illegal government directives ? something Obama liked ? should have.

I?ll get a sick satisfaction watching the pathetic spectacle of a people pretending the powerless act of voting is transforming their country. All you?ll be doing is handing the keys to the military ? and the treasury ? to another trigger-happy, profligate thug. And the people who have real power in this country will laaaaaugh and laugh and laugh.

Go Obama."

There are the big tyrants (presidents, prime ministers, dictators, legislators, court justices ...Joe Arpaio) and then there are the small, local tyrants, the ones who often go house to house to make sure that you don't have the wrong kind of swimming pool (or a pool without fences...THINK OF THE CHILDREN!); that you have not installed anything without the permission of the local government; or even that you are not using your property in the way they want it to be used.

In the troublemaking town of Keene, NH, a resident was fined for a code violation: a couch on the yard used for birdwatching. The busybody/bureaucrat was caught on camera as the left the citation notice. A moment of hilariousness ensues when the city official repeatedly recommends voting as a means to solve problems (Yeah right!).

It would appear, according to US vs Branch (US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 8/20/2008), that the cops have been given more powers:

A federal appellate court ruled last week that police can delay a routine traffic stop as long as necessary to conduct a search for drugs. In its decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the validity of a thirty-minute traffic stop in Maryland because the arresting officer claimed the nervous driver had an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror and had previously been spotted driving in a run-down neighborhood.

"First, the presence of several air fresheners -- commonly used to mask the smell of narcotics -- hanging in the Mercedes," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote to explain the source of probable cause. "The prior traffic stop of the Mercedes in a drug-trafficking area, Branch's evident nervousness, the presence of air fresheners, and the fact that Branch was driving a car not registered to him. These factors, in combination, could form the basis for a 'reasonable suspicion' of narcotics trafficking."

First of all, the state should not be prosecuting anyone for drug crimes. Then there's that word again: "reasonable." Should the government itself determine whether its own actions and policies are reasonable? According to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "a state is an institution that decides who is right and wrong in conflicts involving itself" and thus, at least (but not limited to) in the case of victimless crimes, the state is both prosecutor and judge. It's not difficult to realize that this is a conflict of interest. State justice is an oxymoron; it is not a neutral third party.

Along Stephan's line of reasoning, the problem with state justice (or rather, non-justice) is the state. Reforms can only do so much. I <3 libertarian anarchy!

[Cross-posted]

I just finished reading Hans Hoppe's Socialism & Capitalism (PDF). What a great read this was. Solid and well argued. I particularly enjoyed the first few chapters of the book, as well as the ones on monopoly and public goods.

In Peru, at least when I was growing up, the news were not unlike watching R-rated movies. During the turbulent 80s and 90s, evil gangs, who obtained their finances partly through the global war on drugs, would capture, torture, terrorize and execute thousands over many years. On nationwide broadcast television there were no major qualms about showing dead bodies or airing the occasional piece of raw video. And the same would generally be true for international news, particularly images of wars. Sometimes my parents would change the channel because it was often gruesome to see smoldering bodies on a battlefield.

Things are slightly different in the US, where the squeaky clean news seem to avoid showing the results of war. I am not saying that every night we should be shown a bloodbath. They would want us to believe that war is an abstraction. But war is not only a 25-second collage of tanks rolling in and closeup of rifles. It's maimed bodies, burned homes, weeping parents, widespread destruction and poverty and misery. Let's start seeing a little more of that, if only for those on the margin to realize just how bad state wars can be.

But then again, now that we have some better, it's not a big deal if the MSM withers away.

[Cross-posted]

This time in Buffalo, where cops broke into the wrong home and threatened to destroy lives:

Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight.

The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs, and his kids have been traumatized.

And, that?s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children.

Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point shotguns at her young children before admitting their mistake and then raiding the right apartment.

The husband had to receive medical attention for a dislocated arm and other injuries.

Says the chief of detectives: ?We can say comfortably that over 1,100 search warrants were executed last year and 580 to date this year and that, with such a high volume and such a fast-paced environment, it is understandable that mistakes could happen.?

How easy to excuse your crimes. You're just too good a law enforcer!

At about 70 pages, George Selgin's Praxeology and Understanding (PDF) "argues that what Mises called praxeology is ultimately rooted in a conception of economic logic that is undeniable and not subject to the claims of those who would extend the idea of "subjectivism" beyond its appropriate bounds. Contrary to the claims of hyper-subjectivists, some things can be known to be apodictically certain."

I must admit that most of this discussion was above my own level of understanding. Maybe in a few years, once I take in more of the details and framework of praxeology, I can give it another try.

Just finished reading Harangue, by Garet Garrett. I loved it. You can read get the PDF here or buy the printed version here.

From the Garet Garrett blog:

Garet Garrett wrote one last, and truly spectacular, novel called Harangue (The Trees Said to the Bramble Come Reign Over Us). The words are from the Bible (Judges 9:15, and the metaphor here refers to the strange penchant of the rich to fund socialism that kills the rich and consumes wealth.

Garrett illustrates the strange tendency in a story of politics, economic folly, conspiracy, ideology, and violence. Published in 1926, it deals directly with the real-life attempt to create a Workers Paradise in the United States, in North Dakota from 1918 to 1921.

The plot pits two socialist movements against each other in a battle for control. The I.W.W. was the American movement of Reds ? socialist-'anarchists' who believed the violent strike would usher in utopia. Meanwhile, the Non-Partisan League was the American movement of pinks, the social democrats who wanted full socialism but with liberties (so long as they could be tolerated). They joined together in to lay siege to the governor's office, and then nationalized the mills and the banks. They raised taxes, nationalized insurance and did a thousand other dangerous things that sunk the economy and led to the recall of the governor.

The whole experience ended in calamity, of course, a fact that won't surprise anyone who understands the failure of socialist economies. In 1926, however, few understood in detail why socialism couldn't work. It wasn't until 1920 that Ludwig von Mises explained precisely why socialism cannot work: it crushes the pricing signals that are the main data that make economic calculation and therefore rationality possible.

The setting for this novel, then, is dramatic and the story wonderfully fertile for economic insight. Garrett details what happens to an economy when central planners are in charge, with a special focus on pricing problems and production decisions. He explains what happens when a bank no longer deals with the problem of risk.

But what is especially interesting is his treatment of the sociology of the rich. Garrett has an enormously insightful take on what turns the rich into supporters of the Reds.

In the story, Jael Saint-Leon is the daughter of a highly successful Wall Street trader, who dies when she is only 16. She is suddenly a mega-millionaire and internationally famous - and loathed for failing to give all her money away or discussing it with anyone. She tries her best to pretend to be bourgeois but eventually she realizes that this is impossible. So like others of her class and wealth, she turns rather to difficult task of distinguishing herself.

In the precapitalistic age, the rich were distinguished for what they owned. But in the capitalistic age, this is hardly possible, since most of what the rich acquire becomes available to the middle class in a matter of time. So the super rich look elsewhere: to exotica in art, architecture, music, and, finally, ideology. Radical socialist theory is something the super rich can purchase and support that the middle class will not ? and this is precisely what is so attractive about it.

Jael Saint-Leon becomes the great benefactor of the communist cause. But what is especially striking is to follow her psychology, not only during her Red phase but also following. She began to read about the history of socialist experiments.

"She turned to the literature of these experiments and was surprised at the extent of it. She read the fascinating history of Brook Farm, also that of the Oneida Community. In an obvious sense every such experiment had failed. That is, not one of them endured."

And so does she abandon socialism? "No matter," she thinks. "In a spiritual sense they had not failed. The mistake was to suppose they might succeed materially. That was neither their point nor their meaning." She turns from communism to environmentalism, setting up a collective, live-off-the-land, love-the-earth community.

Keep in mind that this novel, which closely tracks the real experience, was written in 1926! It surely must rank among the most prophetic novels of the 20th century. It certainly deserves to be ranked among Garrett's great works, not only for telling the history as it really happened but for imparting great socio-economic lessons in the process.

After months of slowly reading it at the gym (on the elliptical), I'm finally done with Hoppe's The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (PDF).

The state fails to do even the things that its supporters claim it should do: the protection of our rights. Take a look at this story or this one or this one --these abominations represent the complete collapse of the concepts of "justice" and "defense" and "protection." In true Orwellian fashion, justice now means plunder, defense means offense and protection means aggression.

It seems to me that the classical libertarians (such as minarchists and constitutionalists) have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the most important of institutions, namely the protection of our rights, and given them to the monopolist. I believe that, if it were possible, it would be preferable to have the government take care of things like entertainment and toilets instead of the "slightly" more important functions of defense and law.

Ultimately, the state cannot be reformed and the political system can only do so much. Indeed, nothing short of the abolition of statist politics --of the state itself-- is acceptable to the radical libertarian. If the government isn't fit to be my janitor or educator, it is not fit to be my police, my judge, my jury, president, prosecutor or legislator.

Says Thoreau: That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

The freedom revolution begins with one's consent. Withdraw it. It's time.

[Cross-posted]

Because the state has the power to tax and to legislate, it has no means to efficiently organize society's resources. Since there is no market and private property, governments can only pretend (or lie outright) that their spending and programs are for our own good. This is of course incorrect yet the myth lives on.

Imagine my "surprise" when I earlier today I saw this press release from the New York State Division of Budget. In it, the glorious state attempts to identify areas in the budget for possible reduction. Recently, guidelines were released that urge state agencies to be more accountable in the "core mission" of the government.

How can anyone with half a brain not realize that government spending cannot match the desires of the people? If state resources were really efficient, then if we abolished the state, the entire structure of production would remain unchanged. It's undeniably true that because taxation causes people to involuntarily relinquish control over scare sources, those resources will be used in ways that differ from what the people would have wanted. Thus, whatever their final use, it will necessarily be wasteful and thus inefficient. No internal rule of thrift or shady and highly bureaucratic guidelines can change the nature of the beast. Is this such a difficult thing to grasp?

Ultimately, every local, state and national tyrannocrat is a blind central planner who only deserves our scorn.

Thank YouTube for this headline: Rookie cop in hot water after video shows him slamming biker.

Watch as the "peace" officer attacks a cyclist:

The need to learn more about photography and acquiring new skills has led me to join the strobists.

What is this all about? Get started here:

This website is about one thing: Learning how to use off-camera flash with your dSLR to take your photos to the next level.

Here, you'll find everything you need to know about how to more effectively use your small speedlights. There are more than 1,000 articles about lighting. Over a million photographers from around the world have learned small-flash lighting techniques from this site. We're thinking you can, too.

Why small flashes? Because that's all you really need take the plunge into high-end lighting techniques.

On Flickr, there are thousands of examples of what the strobist look is like (see some here) and I want to join the fun. Midwest Photo Exchange assembles and sells strobist kits to match your camera. I've gone for the basic setup; one off-camera flash should be enough to get started. The kit contains a flash, stand, umbrella and the rest of accessories needed.

I look forward to particularly taking shots outside and using the flash to create a completely different look that is achievable through natural light.

Resources:

• Youtube videos
  
• Gear articles
  
• Shots with "strobist" tag
  

Sample strobist kit

Just a few basic tweaks in color and contrast can make a big difference.

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