Gay Marriage Already Resulting In Less Freedom

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

Florist sued for refusing service to gay couple | Local & Regional | KEPR CBS 19 – News, Weather and Sports – Pasco, WA.

One of the primary objections to gay marriage from social conservatives has long been that, once established as a “right,” institutions and individuals, both religious and secular, will essentially be forced by the government to serve gay couples and be generally accepting of gay lifestyles.  The advocates of gay marriage have loudly and vehemently denied this is the case.  They have personally declared to me, over and over again, that there is absolutely no intention by anyone to have the government force people to associate with homosexuals against their will.

Not only is it false to claim that this won’t happen eventually, it’s false to claim that it isn’t already happening.  The state of Washington has currently filed a lawsuit against a flower shop for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.  Putting aside the question of why a gay couple would possibly want to patronize a business that does not approve of their lifestyle, the proponents of gay marriage are now forced to admit – the exact thing that social conservatives said would happen, is in fact happening.  And what has been the reaction of the gay community to this story?  Outrage that their wishes weren’t followed and that the religious freedom of this flower shop wasn’t respected?  Hardly.  This coercive action of the state is being celebrated as both necessary and proper.

While I personally do not approve of discrimination (both on moral terms and as an effective business practice), the simple fact of the matter is that every human enjoys the natural right of freedom of association.  Compelling someone to associate or not associate with someone else, against their will, is immoral.  Regardless of the good intentions behind “anti-discrimination” laws, in reality they do nothing but restrict our natural rights, and produce a ridiculous sort of society where entrepreneurship is heavily discouraged due to the fear of running afoul of various laws designed to segregate humans into groups.  Whether you think it’s for the best or not, we all have to admit – the social conservatives got this one exactly correct.

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We Have To Balance Our Commitment To Freedom Of Speech With…

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

Alternative sign: MY OPINIONS ARE THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ONES

Whenever you hear this phrase, you can be sure that you are listening to someone doesn’t actually believe in free speech whatsoever.  Because usually, the thing they have to balance their “commitment” to freedom of speech with is their desire to squash and silence all speech they disagree with.

Most often, this comes from a university or other entity (often public) who is being pressured to fire someone who has said something “offensive.”  In this case, it’s the University of Rochester regarding Steve Landsburg and his rather odd hypothetical discussion of rape in the aftermath of the Steubenville case.  While I disagree with his analysis (and would of course recommend my own instead!), he has every right to have a calm, civil, and rational discussion/thought experiment with the readers of his blog about sensitive issues without being met by an angry mob demanding he instantly be fired.

Not to beat a dead horse and repeat a point that has already been made a million times before, but “offensive” speech is the only speech that needs protection.  The concept of “free speech” is only relevant to the extent that it applies to speech that many people don’t like.  In order to have truly “free” speech, that protection must be absolute.  There is no sort of compromise or balancing act to be performed here.  You cannot “balance” the protection of speech with the silencing of it.  It simply does not work that way.

Regardless of how silly, stupid, or lacking in logic Landsburg’s comments may have been, he certainly does not deserve to be fired over them.  An institution that would punish him for these comments in any way would simply be declaring to the world that they absolutely do not believe in free speech at all.  That they believe in regulating and silencing any opinions that may lie outside of the accepted and politically correct mainstream.  This is one of those hidden secrets among many public institutions.  Something everyone knows, but can never be said.  That they don’t really believe in free speech at all.  Only speech that they agree with.

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Portman, Palin, and the Newtown Parents

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

By now, this is an old story, so I’m not going to spend all that much time on this post.  The long and short of it is, Rob Portman, a GOP Senator, recently changed his mind and came out in favor of gay marriage for the sole reason that his son is gay.  Even those in favor of gay marriage were reluctant to see this as cause for celebration, because most people understand this to be pretty terrible reasoning.

Bob Murphy made the pretty excellent point that this is essentially the exact same method being employed by the parents of victims of the Newtown shooting, and those who would use them for political purposes.  They are essentially saying “I favor gun control because gun violence happened to me.”  The core logic is no different from Rob Portman favoring gay marriage because his son is gay, or Sarah Palin favoring lavish government spending on special needs children because she happens to have one.  In all cases, the logic is quite poor.  Unfortunately, Dr. Murphy (presumably because, unlike myself, he has some credibility to care about) was unwilling to criticize the Newtown parents.

Below was my response in the comments of his blog:

Allow me to be “that guy” and insist that we absolutely *should* criticize the Newtown parents. And Portman. And Palin. Their arguments are all based on emotion rather than an intellectual understanding of the issues. Surely we can all agree that emotion is not a valid basis for crafting public policy. The fact that the Newtown parents went through some ESPECIALLY bad emotional trauma is not a valid basis for granting them a free pass on this issue. 

Now, while I believe we can criticize their methods of using emotion as a basis for public policy, that is not to say that we should judge them. I believe Jesus said something about that. I won’t say that they are bad people. Only that their reasoning is unsound, and therefore should be dismissed. As should Portman’s. As should Palin’s. “Because my son was shot” is not an intellectually reasonable argument for gun control, just as “because my son is gay” is not an intellectually reasonable argument for gay marriage. 

To concede this ground on the topic of Newtown is essentially to concede that it’s a reasonable tactic to use emotion to dictate public policy. Because where do you draw the line? This would be an absolute game-changer for the progressives, who constantly rely on appeals to emotion to advance their policy recommendations. “Imagine how you might feel if your son was gay,” has been one of their chief arguments in favor of gay marriage for some time. Portman seems to be proving that contrary to all logic and reason, it’s actually a legitimate argument. Not legitimate in the sense that it is intellectually reasonable, but legitimate in the sense that apparently there *are* significant amounts of Americans, including those with high level positions, whose only reason for opposing gay marriage was that they didn’t know any gay people. 

That said, we must still insist that this is a terrible argument. The fact that it seems to have worked on Portman doesn’t make it less terrible. The same goes for the Newtown parents. “Imagine if it was your kid who was shot” seems to be working as an argument, but it shouldn’t. That’s why those of us who think about these issues more thoroughly need to stand up and loudly declare that the issue is much more complicated than that. That gun control does not necessarily decrease violent crime, and may in fact increase it. That most of the proposed regulations absolutely would have done nothing to stop the Newtown massacre.

One last minor point on this.  I know it has become something of a conservative talk radio cliché to complain about the left in general (and the Obama administration in particular) “exploiting a crisis” but ye gods, this Newtown/gun control thing is just off the charts.  In your private life, people of every political persuasion will universally agree that making significant and important decisions should NOT be done in the heat of the moment when people are having highly emotional reactions, but rather should be held off until the intensity of the emotions subsides, and the issue can be approached more reasonably.  Not so, in this instance!  The left is demanding that all the decisions be made right now, while emotions are running high and logic and reason are the furthest thing from many people’s minds.  Why do you suppose that might be?

 

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Holmes’ doctor warned police before Colo. movie attack

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

Holmes’ doctor warned police before Colo. movie attack.

Stories like this bother me.  A lot.

Putting the issue of gun control aside for a moment, the unstated implication here is that the police “should have known” this would happen because they were warned, and that somehow their inaction on this matter led to the mass shootings in Aurora, CO.

I’m just curious, what exactly should the government have done here?  Locked this man away?  Prevented him from purchasing a firearm (established as a constitutional right)?  When he had a clean record and had committed no crime?  All because a psychiatrist said he was a danger?  Do we think psychiatrists are infallible?   Are we really willing to strip away an individual’s constitutionally protected rights solely on the word of one man that he might do something bad at some time in the future?

Is that really the American that you want to live in?

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Global Warming Saves Lives

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

It’s the cold, not global warming, that we should be worried about – Telegraph.

This just in – cold temperatures kill far more people than warm temperatures do.  This isn’t news in the sense that it is new information, but it is news in the sense that it is new information to anybody who gets their news from the mainstream media, whose single-minded purpose is to convince you that your driving a car contributes meaningfully to the eventual deaths of millions of people and the eventual extinction of all life on Earth.

Bob Murphy previously pointed out how even by the consensus, mainstream estimates, global warming will provide a net benefit to GDP for the next 50 years.  Of course, the common leftist response to such observations is “Who cares about GDP!  People are dying here because of climate change!”  What about the people dying from the cold?  Do we not care about them?  The simple fact of the matter is that all proposed “solutions” to climate change thus far have required massive state interventions that have resulted in higher costs for energy.  Higher costs for energy means less people get energy, which means more people freeze to death and die.  To briefly recap the article, in England, a heat wave was responsible for 2,000 deaths, while a relatively mild winter was responsible for 24,000 deaths.

The left loves to focus the debate on whether or not the Earth is getting warmer.  On this issue, the numbers are probably on their side (I don’t really know, as I don’t consider it especially relevant or interesting, in and of itself).  The far more interesting question, in my opinion, is “Will a warming planet lead to catastrophic harm?” and the results on this one do not seem conclusive in the slightest.  Most alarmists simply assume it to be true.  But it isn’t true.  It is not a given that the climate of the 18th century (or whenever you’d like to start where you assume human CO2 emissions did not exist on a large scale) is the absolute perfect climate that must exist throughout all history and could not possibly be improved upon.

At the risk of repeating myself, as of right now, rising temperatures save lives.  That doesn’t single-handedly prove that climate change isn’t happening, isn’t caused by man, or is a good thing.  It’s just a simple fact that it would be nice of the alarmists to recognize.  It would probably increase their ever-declining credibility in the eyes of the general public to admit that there are in fact a few issues that aren’t completely and totally decided in their favor.  But the sad truth is that global warming alarmists don’t actually care about human lives.  They are interested in pursuing an agenda and hyping up a massive coming catastrophe that could only possibly be solved by eliminating individual freedom and expanding the power and reach of government.

Keep this one simple fact in mind the next time some statist is screaming to you about how only government can stop the evils of climate change.  Casually remind them that more people die of cold than die of heat, and that right now, global warming, if it exists, is saving lives and providing a net benefit to humanity.

A far more significant threat than carbon emissions.

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Income Doesn’t Matter

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

A few weeks ago, you couldn’t swing a stick without hitting on a discussion about raising the minimum wage.  One of the more nuanced arguments coming from those in favor of raising it involved how productivity has risen, but the minimum wage has not.  In fact, these people argue that if the minimum wage simply “kept pace” with worker productivity, it should currently be at $22 an hour.  This somewhat silly notion was even half-heartedly endorsed by the Indian Princess Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Now, there are many ways to potentially refute this argument, and well known Austrian Economist Bob Murphy touched upon some of them in a blog post.  The only perspective I really brought to the table in this discussion was pointing out that income alone is a poor judge of standard of living.  In our society, we seem totally obsessed with incomes, while almost completely ignoring the real issue, quality of life.  Rising inequality is constantly vilified, while advances that have made life better for everyone are considered to be some sort of given, as if they just happen completely independently of free markets.

The simple fact of the matter is that the quality and availability of critical goods and services in America has risen dramatically over the last few decades.  For everyone.  Across all classes and levels of income.  I really don’t think there are any Americans who would trade places with someone living in the 1970s, even though there may have been “less inequality” and minimum wage workers might have received “fairer” wages.

Remember:  Incomes are merely a means to an end.  We desire a high income only because it enables us to enjoy a higher standard of living.  As technological progress occurs, living standards can rise, even if incomes remain unchanged (or even fall).  This is the real measure of how well off we are as a society – how well do our people (at any given level of income) live?  Increased productivity has led to an increased standard of living, which has benefitted all of us.

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Retailers Use Technology To Improve Your Shopping Experience

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

How Stores Spy On You – Consumer Reports

Of course, the leftists are outraged.  This article from Consumer Reports paints a picture of evil corporations blatantly invading your privacy for undoubtedly sinister purposes.  How dare they!

But let’s stop for a second and think a little bit about what is actually going on here.  Retailers aren’t spying on you because they’re just voyeurs.  They aren’t trying to stalk you for no legitimate purpose whatsoever.  They are monitoring your shopping behaviors not to make your life worse (that’s why the government monitors you) but to make your shopping experience better!  All of the “creepy” tactics that this article rails against are, in actuality, highly advanced technologies designed to gather data on your shopping patterns so that the store can construct a shopping experience more personally tailored to your own needs and desires.

What exactly is the harm in that?  That you didn’t “opt-in?”  BS.  A retail store is private property.  You have no inherent right to privacy on someone else’s property (please don’t correct me by saying that the Supreme Court says you do, we’ve already established that I don’t care about what the Supreme Court says).  Wal-Mart can install however many cameras it wants.  You “opt-out” by not vising Wal-Mart.  I must have missed the part of the constitution that establishes a right to shop at a specific retail store without being recorded.

Not only is it a certainty that retailers have no nefarious intent in collecting your “personal information” (apparently which brand of toilet paper and what kind of car you drive are deeply held secrets), but this is the type of information that could not possibly be damaging to someone in any way.  Even if a store was collecting this stuff for entirely evil purposes, exactly what evil could they commit with it?  How could you possibly be harmed by someone knowing your shopping behavior?

Of course, Consumer Reports doesn’t actually care about protecting your privacy at all.  I’ve never once heard them complain about red-light cameras, or the domestic use of surveillance drones.  They think that tracking your behavior in great detail is just fine and dandy, so long as it’s the state (an institution with a long and storied history of mass murder) doing it.  Wal-Mart tracking you so that it can set up a more efficient way for you to buy things is evil, government tracking you so that it can set up a more efficient way to kill you is perfectly okay.

I for one thoroughly endorse all of the groundbreaking technology explained in this article.  I absolutely love the idea of a store monitoring my habits within the store in order to create a better and more personalized shopping experience for me.  Wal-Mart can have all of my “personal information” it wants.  I trust them to use it to do what they do best, enhance my quality of life by offering me products I enjoy at rock-bottom prices.

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Your Feedback Is Important To Us

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

Last weekend, while I was running errands, I noticed something I found particularly interesting.  Three separate establishments sought out my opinion on their level of service.  Two were giant corporate behemoths.  The clerks at both Wal-Mart and Taco Bell made a point of informing me that the back of my receipt contained instructions for how I could complete a survey, and by doing so would become eligible for a prize drawing.  These companies valued my opinion so much they were actually willing to give me a prize for sharing it with them.  The small business I went to (a local barber shop) also valued my opinion.  They had a new barber on staff and after my haircut, the owner pulled me aside and asked what I thought of her (alas, no prize was offered).  Everywhere I went that was part of the voluntary sector of the economy, my servers made it a point to let me know that they valued my feedback.

Contrast this to the service you receive in the coercive sector, the enterprises operated (and monopolized) by the government.  Has a supervisor at the DMV ever pulled you aside and asked you how well the clerk who assisted you performed their job?  Can you imagine a police officer directing you to a customer service survey after writing you a ticket?  Would the military ever offer you a prize for sharing with them what you think of their policies and regulations?  Of course not.  All of these scenarios are laughable.  The government is wholly disinterested in whether or not you approve of their edicts.  They low-level bureaucrat could not care less about pleasing a customer.

These are primary examples of how human behavior is affected by incentives.  Wal-Mart has every incentive to ensure your shopping experience is pleasant.  If they fail to do this, you will potentially take your business elsewhere.  This will result in lower revenues, leading to fewer profits.  Improving the quality of service you receive, on the other hand, will potentially result in higher profits, thus increasing the personal wealth of Wal-Mart managers and shareholders.

The incentives for government bureaucracies, on the other hand, are the exact opposite.  To the bureaucracy, a customer is not a source of revenue, but rather a nuisance.  A pest that must be quickly dealt with and shuffled away as soon as possible.  The revenue the agency receives is completely independent from the quality of services they provide.  In fact, government agencies frequently cite low quality service as justification for receiving even greater amounts of taxpayer funding.  The progressives shout that the reason government schools are failing is because they haven’t received enough money.  Rather than improvement being rewarded, continued failure is the sure path to increased cash flow in the coercive sector.  There are no potential competitors to deal with.  Any serf who dares complain about the low quality of service they receive from the government will promptly be told that if they want better service, they should have voted for higher taxes.  Low quality service is a punishment that government inflicts on us intentionally, in order to coerce the populace into surrendering more and more of our individual wealth to the leviathan state.

This is one of many significant distinctions to keep in mind between the coercive and the voluntary sector.  Even giant, faceless, multi-national corporations desperately value feedback from their customers.  They value it so highly that they are willing to give away large prizes in exchange for it, and to set policies requiring their workers to inform you of their desire to hear from you.  They spend large amounts of resources on market research, trying to find out how to better satisfy the needs, wants, and desire of the public at large.  The government, once again, does the exact opposite.  It spends vast amounts of (confiscated) money on advertising campaigns (marketed as “public service announcements” in a method that would make Orwell cringe) designed to convince you to conform to their standards of how they would like you to behave.  Private companies try to find out what you want, while the state is in the business of telling you what to want, and demanding you adjust your expectations accordingly.

As a final point, consider how few of us actually complete these surveys.  Most of us simply throw the receipt away.  Our time is valuable and we simply cannot be bothered to take a few moments to provide feedback to a business (even one we patronize on a regular basis), even when the chance to win a valuable prize is offered.  We just expect the company to figure it out, to essentially read our minds regarding how they could offer superior service.  What a shocking and unrealistic expectation!  Or at least it would be, if it didn’t regularly happen.  Despite the fact that so few of us are willing to provide feedback, companies still find ways to regularly improve the quality of their goods and services.  We are so used to this continuous improvement that we completely take it for granted and just assume it will happen completely independently of our own actions.

In the voluntary sector of the economy, businesses just get better.  It just seems to happen, in and of itself, as if gradual improvement is a defining attribute of private industry.  Now consider your dealings with the government.  Do they continually get better?  Is improvement a defining attribute of the state?  I didn’t think so.

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Amnesty: Still A Loser For Republicans

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

 

Surely they will vote Republican as soon as amnesty passes.

Sorry, GOP! Immigration Reform Won’t Win You The Latino Vote | Mediaite.

AJ Delgado of Mediaite offers a very comprehensive argument for why immigration reform is still a huge loser for the GOP.  I’ve made many of these points before myself, but this article presents them in a more coherent manner.  It also focuses on what Republicans really care about, winning elections, while my own piece focused more on natural rights (something most Republicans have never even heard of).

This article is very well worth the time to read to help argue against the nonsense regarding how amnesty will help the GOP.  It refutes plenty of myths that the mainstream media has created about Hispanics, immigrants, and republicans.  Myths that the GOP have now accepted as the gospel truth.

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NYT Begrudgingly Admits: Being Raised By A Single Mom Is Awful

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Dude Where's My Freedom?

Alternate title: The complete idiot’s guide to raising a successful child.

As Men Lose Economic Ground, Clues in the Family – NYTimes.com.

I’ve written about a lot of controversial topics over the years, but the only time I’ve ever received threats of physical violence was when I made a message board post describing why I had absolutely no respect for those who choose to become single parents.  I don’t intend to re-produce my argument in totality, but rather to point out that the New York Times has (in a rather roundabout way) come to the incredibly un-PC conclusion that yes, being raised by a single mom is a very good predictor that, on the whole, a child will underperform their peers, especially if they are male.

This article meanders a bit, covering favorite leftist topics such as the glass ceiling, income inequality, social justice, and education.  But make no mistake about it; the overall conclusion is that the rise in single-parent homes is a primary factor in the decline in incomes for men.  If true (and they seem to think it is), this has all sorts of socio-political ramifications that I’m quite certain the NYT is not at all prepared to address.  What does this imply about religion?  About divorce laws?  About welfare and other social benefits (incentives matter)?  About the tax code?  About homosexual adoption?

One thing is for certain – it implies that I have been right all along.  That single parents by choice are not the heroes the media portrays them as.  That they are not noble and self-sacrificing, but rather, that they are engaging in incredibly selfish behavior that is absolutely destructive to the future of their children.  Being a single parent is not a legitimate lifestyle choice.  It is something that should be met with near-universal scorn and contempt by society.

 

Disclaimer:  In making these claims, I am dealing with the aggregate (y halo thar Keynesians!).  I do not need any comments or e-mails about how you were raised by a single parent and you turned out great.  Of course such things are possible.  Anecdotal evidence does not overturn statistical trends.  If you were raised by a single parent and everything was fine, you were incredibly lucky, and statistics indicate that you probably would have turned out much better if you grew up in a two-parent household.

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