Archives: December 2005

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A Message From the Birthday Boy

Join the Molinari Safari

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Just a reminder that the Molinari Society will be holding its second symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City next week, December 27-30, 2005. The topic is the relation between “thin” libertarianism (i.e., libertarianism understood as a narrowly political doctrine) and “thick” libertarianism (i.e., libertarianism understood as essentially integrated into some broader set of social or cultural values).

GIII-8. Wednesday, 28 December 2005, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
Molinari Society symposium: “Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin”
Morgan Suite (Second Floor), Hilton New York, 1335 Avenue of the Americas

Session 1, 11:15-12:15:
chair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
speaker: Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo)
title: “Libertarianism: The Thick and the Thin”
commentator: Charles W. Johnson (Molinari Institute)

Session 2, 12:15-1:15:
chair: Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska - Lincoln)
speaker: Jack Ross (National Labor College)
title: “Labor and Liberty: A Lost Ideal and an Unlikely New Alliance”
commentator: Charles W. Johnson (Molinari Institute)

News From Nowhere

This is a good month for sf dvd releases. Obviously there’s the delightful Serenity and the gut-wrenching first half of the second season of the new Galactica, but what I’ve just learned is that one of my favourite series from the 90s, Nowhere Man, is also being released.

The show’s about a professional photographer, Thomas Veil (the name’s not chosen accidentally), who finds he has unknowingly recorded evidence of a government cover-up, or ... something. Suddenly he discovers that his life has been erased; his wife and friends no longer recognise him, his credit cards don’t work, his job no longer exists – and some shadowy government operatives seem awfully eager to get their hands on his film negatives. So Veil has to solve the riddle of what seems like a massive global conspiracy, while questioning his own sanity and staying one step ahead of ruthless agents who will stop at nothing to get ... whatever it is they want. The series – which feels like a cross between The Prisoner, The Fugitive, and The X-Files – is very well done, largely thanks to a hauntingly excellent performance by Bruce Greenwood as Veil. (And while I wouldn’t call it a libertarian show, it certainly has libertarian appeal, as stories of one-honest-individual-defying-powerful-authorities tend to.)

Frustratingly, the series was cancelled after only one season, and so the mysteries are never fully resolved. Certainly by the end of the season we have a much better idea what’s really going on than we did at the beginning, but there’s still plenty left unexplained. They’re calling this Nowhere Man: The Complete Series, but it’s “complete” only in the sense that it’s all there is of it.

So don’t expect closure – but it’s still well worth a watch. (And if it does well enough in DVD sales, who knows? – it might build momentum for a follow-up, as happened with Firefly/Serenity.)

Left Behind

In the back of each issue of Liberty magazine is a section titled “Terra Incognita,” which consists of news clippings inane or horrific or both. So I must assume that someone at Liberty found the following item inane or horrific, since it’s the third featured item in the latest (January 2006) issue’s “Terra Incognita”:

Port Townsend, Wash.

A glimpse into the objectives of a modern-day peace movement, from the PTforPeace “cultural statement”:

“Knowing we have all internalized the violence, patriarchy, white supremacy, and alienation so prevalent in our society. Knowing that dismantling these systems of oppression involves becoming aware of where they are hiding in our own minds, and that day-to-day patterns of oppression are the glue that holds together systems of oppression. Cultivating gratitude toward the person who points out where we may have internalized oppression without being aware of it.”

Little Red Book

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I see that the print version of Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, an updated statement of Benjamin-Tucker-style individualist anarchism, or “free-market socialism, ” can now conveniently be purchased via PayPal (at least for shipping within the United State of Amerika).

I highly recommend Carson’s book – which, as it happens, is the subject of an upcoming symposium issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything in the book; on the contrary, as a more-or-less Rothbardian I firmly disagree with two of its most central theses: the labour theory of value (though Carson’s version of that theory is certainly far more defensible than the Marxian version) and the no-absentee-landlordship theory of property rights. But where I agree with it I think it is an excellent defense of the sort of anti-corporatist, pro-labour, left-libertarianism I embrace; and where I disagree with it I think it makes intelligent arguments that deserve careful consideration.

So go buy it right now and expand your mind. (Or if you want an advance preview, check out the online version.) Or why not buy two copies? The second one’ll make a great Yuletide gift for that libertarian friend you want to move leftward or that leftist friend you want to move libertarianward; the book has a red cover, so just wrap it in a green (or Green) ribbon and you’re all set!


P.S. In light of recent events I should perhaps make clear that Kevin Carson is not paying me to plug his book. (Hey, does that mean I’m not being paid the value of my product? Iranoff and Buljanoff unfair to Kopalski!)

Journey to the Centre of Middle Earth

As I’ve previously spoken somewhat unkindly of Verne translator William Butcher (see here and here), I’m happy to be able to offer some more favourable remarks.

First: on his website Butcher, along with his colleague David Cook, provides a useful list of serious errors (see here, here, and here) in the Richard Howard translation of Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century. Butcher and Cook convincingly demonstrate the inadequacy of Howard’s translation and the pressing need for a new one.

Second: Last time I accused Butcher of being too ready to see sexual imagery in Verne’s Adventures of Captain Hatteras; and I stand by that accusation. But I’m inclined to be a bit more lenient now, as a result of reading another Verne novel, A Fantasy of Doctor Ox, which definitely contains such imagery. Here’s a sample, about a boy with a fishing rod and a girl with a needle and thread:

‘Would you like to take my rod, Suzel?’

‘I’d love to, Frantz.’

‘Give me your embroidery, then. We’ll see if I’m any niftier with the needle than with the hook.’

And the young girl took over the rod, her hand trembling, and the young man threaded the needle through the mesh of the tapestry.

Raoul can’t prolong it! You sense that an unaccustomed fire is devouring him. ... The principal clarinetist has swallowed the reed of his ridiculous instrument, and the second oboist is chewing his reed in his teeth! ... the unfortunate horn player can’t get his hand out of the bell of his horn, where he stuck it in much too deep! ... The audience, panting and inflamed, is gesticulating and howling!

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings contains troubling similarities with Hatteras: a multi-volume epic steeped in Nordic mythology and British tradition, in a fictional world based on authentic history, geography, language, and culture, with an erupting volcano the geographical and spiritual focus, meaning one deus ex machina is required to stop the hero from diving in and another to get him home again.
(Butcher’s notes to Hatteras, p. 402.)

• In both books, an un-adventurous, home-loving protagonist (Axel, Bilbo) is unwillingly swept off on a dangerous quest by a tall, thin, eccentric older man with a long sharp nose (Prof. Lidenbrock, Gandalf).



• In both books, the initially timid protagonist gradually becomes more heroic over the course of the journey, and writes a book about it once it is over.



• In both books, the basis for the quest is a centuries-old map in which a hidden message (code for Verne, invisible ink for Tolkien) has been inscribed in runes (lovingly reproduced in both texts) by someone with a Scandinavian-sounding name (Arne Saknussemm, Thror son of Dain). (The finding of more runes from Saknussemm beside the underground sea in Verne is likewise echoed, in LOTR, by the finding of Daeron’s Runes in Moria on Balin’s underground tomb.)



• The wording of the secret message is strikingly similar in both Journey and The Hobbit, directing the reader to find a hidden entrance into a mountain by attending to the direction of sunlight on a specific date:
  
  

  Go down into the crater of Snæfells Yocul which the shadow of Scartaris caresses before the calends of July, O audacious traveler, and you will reach the centre of the earth. (Verne)
  
  Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole. (Tolkien)

• The quest in Journey begins in Iceland, while most of the travellers in The Hobbit have names drawn from Icelandic Eddas.



• Both books contrast hospitable hosts (the farmer, Rivendell) with inhospitable ones (the Rector, the Wood-king).



• In both books, the protagonist is temporarily separated from his traveling companions and lost in complete darkness in an underground cavern, a “labyrinth, whose multiple meanderings criss-crossed in all directions.” And the situations are described in the same terms: Axel’s head “bounded against a sharp rock, and [he] lost consciousness,” while Bilbo “bumped his head on hard rock, and remembered nothing more.” Axel observes that whereas above ground, “in the middle of the darkest nights, light never entirely gives up its rights,” for “however little remains, the retina ends up receiving it,” below the earth “ [a]bsolute darkness made me a blind man in the full sense of the word”; similarly, “[w]hen Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut.” Axel’s “last hope had just broken against this granite wall,” while Bilbo’s loss of his matches “shattered his hopes completely.”



• Finally, Bilbo’s surprise at exiting the Misty Mountains on the opposite side from where he entered may be an echo of Verne’s travellers’ surprise at exiting the Earth in Sicily when they had entered it in Iceland.

Death By Government

I was planning to blog on the Tookie Williams execution, but Charles Johnson has already said pretty much what I wanted to say, only better, here. But let me add a couple of thoughts:

For me, the chief philosophical case against the death penalty is just an instance of my more general opposition to retributive punishments as such. If, as we libertarians maintain, force is justified only in response to another’s aggression, it’s hard to see how we could be justified in using more force than is necessary to constrain the aggressor.

But there are special problems with the death penalty, over and above its mere status as retributive force. For one thing, if you find you’ve imprisoned the wrong person you can still make some partial restitution, whereas if you find you’ve executed the wrong person there’s nothing you can do to make up for it; and as Randy Barnett points out, since any system of punishment is fallible, endorsing the death penalty means accepting the inevitable accompaniment of some executions of innocents. For another, if as libertarians we’re concerned about abuse of power, the death penalty is a power that seems especially liable to abuse, and especially dangerous if indeed abused. And anyway, it just seems unnecessarily cruel, and so objectionable in much the same way that torture is objectionable.

For a more literary case against the death penalty, see George Orwell’s classic essay “A Hanging” (from his marvelous collection Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays – why not go read the whole thing online right now?).

Even libertarians who support the death penalty, however, should agree about the Cory Maye case, about which see here, here, here, and here. Executive summary: Maye is on death row because he defended himself and his infant daughter with a gun when armed strangers kicked down the door into his bedroom in the middle of the night. Turned out the armed strangers were police, breaking unannounced into the wrong home by mistake. Maye is black. The cop he killed was white, and the son of the local police chief. The jury: mostly white. The location: Mississippi. You do the math.

Blogs are organizing against Maye’s execution; spread the word.

Vast and Cool

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

The latest amazing feature from Google is something called Google Earth, which allows you to zero in on any portion of the globe, via satellite photos. Large urban areas tend to be shown in higher resolution than small towns or rural areas; check out the detail on this view of Chicago:

Freud Conquers the Arctic

Look, it’s not like I have some sort of vendetta against William Butcher, who I’m sure is a fine translator. But he keeps on saying the silliest things about Verne. Lately it’s his notes to Verne’s Adventures of Captain Hatteras, in which Butcher displays an apparently obsessive compulsion to read sexual (primarily phallic) imagery into everything Verne writes – with the result that Butcher’s analysis often sounds more like the adolescent mentality of junior high hallway banter.

For example:

Verne’s text	Butcher’s commentary
You said to me some ... very flattering things about my style which is getting better ... But I wonder, in some corner of my noddle, as you say, if you didn’t want to sweeten the pill slightly. I assure you, my good and dear Director, that there was nothing to sweeten; I swallow easily and without preparation. So I wonder if you really are as pleased as you say ....	Verne .... humorously uses the language of love: ... ‘pleasure’, and the obscene ‘I swallow easily and without preparation’.
At this spot a magnetic needle, suspended as delicately as possible, immediately adopted an approximately vertical position under the magnetic influence; the centre of attraction was therefore very near or immediately below the needle. The doctor performed his experiment with care. But if James Ross could only find an inclination of 89° 59´ for his needle, it must have been because of the imperfection of his instruments or because the true magnetic point was a minute away. Dr Clawbonny was luckier, and a short distance away he had the huge satisfaction of seeing his inclination at ninety degrees. ‘This is the exact Magnetic Pole of the earth!’ he exclaimed ....	Verne .... is also making phallic jokes, as shown by Clawbonny’s ‘huge satisfaction of seeing his inclination at ninety degrees.’
Suddenly Bell looked at the doctor with fright; then without a word, he took a handful of snow and energetically rubbed his companion’s face. ... ‘Yes, Clawbonny, you were completely frostbitten; your nose was entirely white when I saw you, and without my vigorous treatment you would have lost that ornament, inconvenient while traveling, but necessary to existence.’ In effect, the doctor’s nose would soon have been frozen; with the circulation restored just in time, thanks to Bell’s forceful rubbing, all danger disappeared. ‘Accept my gratitude, Bell, on condition I do the same for you.’	[T]his scene, with much reciprocal rubbing of ‘that ornament, inconvenient while traveling, but necessary to existence’, abounds with innuendo.
A rubber dinghy in the form of a piece of clothing, which can expand as much as wished.	Verne inserts a phallic-inspired footnote in II 1, explaining that the boat ‘can expand as much as wished’.
With a single night, in a strong north wind, the thermometer fell nearly forty degrees .... And when Bell put his nose outside in the morning, he almost left it there in the extreme frost.	Verne is again making play on similarities between body appendages.
The mountain, in full eruption, was vomiting a mass of burning boulders and slabs of glowing rock; it seemed to be repeatedly trembling, like a giant’s breathing; the ejected matter rose to a great height in the air amidst jets of intense flames, and lava flows wound down its flanks in impetuous torrents ....	[A]s well as the digestive imagery, the land is alive with sexuality.
‘Captain,’ said Johnson, ‘we only followed orders, and the honour belongs to you.’ ‘No, no,’ replied Hatteras in a violent outpouring; ‘to all of you as much as to me! To Altamont and all of us and the doctor as well! Oh, may my heart blow its top in your hands! It can no longer contain its joy and gratitude!’	[M]ore sexual innuendo, stronger in French due to the homonymy between ‘coeur’ (‘heart’) and ‘queue’ (‘tail’ or ‘prick’).

C’mon, man; sometimes a rubber dinghy is just a rubber dinghy.

Self-Promotion Tango

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’m excited to announce the two latest steps on my path to world domination.

1. I’ll be giving the Rothbard Memorial Lecture at the next Austrian Scholars Conference, March 16-18, 2006. Topic: “Rothbard’s ‘Left and Right’: Forty Years Later.”

2. Then I’ll be giving a week-long Philosophy Seminar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, June 26-30, 2006. Topic: the praxeological foundations of libertarian ethics.

More details soon!

Freedom and the Firm

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

What will firms look like in a free society?

“Capitalist” libertarians often tend to assume that they will look pretty much like today’s large-scale, hierarchical firms. “Socialist” libertarians often tend to assume that they will instead take the form of small-scale workers’ cooperatives.

(Why the scare-quotes around “capitalist” and “socialist”? See this post by Charles Johnson and this one by Brad Spangler for the massive ambiguity of these terms. That’s one reason I’ve started calling myself a market anarchist instead of an anarcho-capitalist.) [A similar ambiguity besets the term “globalisation.” Exercise for the reader: read this defense of globalisation by Tom Palmer and this critique of globalisation by Kevin Carson; then define “globalisation.”]

To address this question, let’s consider what function firms serve. As Ronald Coase famously pointed out, one of the chief advantages of organising a firm is to reduce transaction costs. This in turn creates one incentive for firms to grow in size; the more operations one can move in-house rather than relying on outside vendors, the more such transaction costs are reduced. (Economies of scale are an additional factor driving growth.) The need to reduce transaction costs also creates an incentive for firms to become more hierarchical; when decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of managers, the costs associated with building consensus are avoided. (Hierarchical organisation also allows successful entrepreneurs to exercise their talents unhindered.)

If that were the whole story, we’d expect to see larger and more hierarchical firms consistently prevail. But there’s a trade-off; the larger and more hierarchical the firm, the greater its problem of internal calculational chaos; at some point the costs begin to outweigh the benefits.

What size and degree of hierarchy are optimal? I don’t pretend to know; I would guess that it varies by industry, and that it also depends on a host of further factors specific to each situation. But in a free market firms would be rewarded for approaching the optimum and penalised for deviating from it.

We don’t have a free market, however; instead we have a highly regulated market. For familiar reasons, such regulations hamper the less affluent more than the more affluent, and so successful firms will tend to become somewhat insulated from competition by less established firms, thus removing one check on their inefficiency. And as Kevin Carson points out, regulatory standardisation also decreases competition among the successful firms – a form of de facto cartelisation. Government regulation thus lowers the costs associated with size and hierarchy more than it lowers the associated benefits; it stands to reason, then, that firms in a genuine free-market context could be expected to be smaller and less hierarchical than they tend to be today. This is doubly true once one takes into account the increased competition for workers that a less regulated economy would presumably see (assuming that workers generally prefer less hierarchical work environments).

So how different would firms be under a genuine free market? To answer that question one would have to be able to sort out which aspects of today’s economy derive primarily from the market and which primarily from regulation, and that’s no easy task. So I feel confident about the direction of difference, but not the degree. And in any case the degree partly depends on what workers are willing to put up with – which is a variable, not a constant (and one of the functions of a labour movement is precisely to influence that variable).

Major Combat Operations Are Over!

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

For these 2000 American soldiers they are, anyway.

Economics Incarnate!

Who’s “the law of supply and demand made into man”?

Find out here.

Fixing the King

Wally Conger says he wishes that Peter Jackson would make a version of King Kong in which Kong fights Godzilla at the end.

Apparently Wally is unaware that Jackson has already done this. Check out the simian-on-reptilian action here.

Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left Ring Owner: Thomas Knapp Site: Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left

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