A Geek With Guns

Last week I gave my predictions for France, most of which were pulled from the book Pictures of a Socialistic Future [PDF]. Pictures of a Socialistic Future was a took written at the end of the 1800s that property predicted many things that would happen in socialist countries. One of the predictions was the socialist state would face a massive exodus of people and would implement laws preventing unapproved departures from the country. Such laws have been implemented in many socialist countries and are put into place to keep wealth and labor in the country by force. Guess what? The United States is officially announcing plans to implement such laws:

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.

[...]

At a news conference this morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” – “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” – Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”

The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.

The process of preventing people from leaving the United States has been underway for a while. Earlier this year legislation was announced that would prevent those who owe taxes from leaving the country. Now the state is moving to make laws that will make it legal for the state to plunder a great deal of your wealth if you decide to renounce your citizenship. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t get much more blatant than this.

You are not a citizen, you are not a free individual, you are a slave according to the state. In their eyes they own you, you are their property. Honestly, if you have any wealth whatsoever get the fuck out of this country now. The ship is sinking and the state is looking to transfer any and all wealth from the people to its cronies and agents before there is no wealth left to take. Eugene Richter warned us what socialism would bring in Pictures of a Socialistic Future and nobody felt it was worth heading his warning. Right now the state is targeting the wealthy because they have the most to take but you can rest assured that laws preventing the departure from the United States will only expand.

Also, the the Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy Act? EX-PATRIOT Act? Really? Really?! Who the fuck is paid to come up with these acronyms?

I hat tip to Snarky Bytes for this revealing story.

The Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference is fairly well known by the denizens of the Internet. TED’s tagline is Ideas Worth Spreading, and the conference is supposedly about spreading new and innovative ideas. Most of my friends absolutely love to watch TED videos, and there is good stuff to be found, but the conference isn’t the open platform of ideas that many claim it to be. According to TED some ideas are more worth spreading than others:

If you’re plugged into the Internet, chances are you’ve seen a TED talk – the wonky, provocative web videos that have become a sort of nerd franchise. TED.com is where you go to find Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explaining why the world has too few female leaders, or Twitter cofounder Evan Williams sharing the secret power of listening to users to drive company improvement. The slogan of the nonprofit group behind the site is “Ideas Worth Spreading.”

There’s one idea, though, that TED’s organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”

A transcript of Hanauer’s speech can be found here. Reading it I must say that Hanauer has a better grasp on the market than most venture capitalists and almost any politician does. For example, he understands that the rich aren’t really the creators of jobs because if it isn’t for consumer demand there are no jobs to be created:

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

Trickle-down economics is an idea often espoused by “conservatives” and the idea is that tax breaks and other state benefits given to the cronies wealthy will eventually “trickle down” to benefit the less wealthy. The claim is that the wealthy will have more money to invest into business and that investment will create jobs and economic growth. This theory falls flat on its face because it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that investing all the money in the world into the creation of businesses is meaningless if nobody can buy the products. What good would Samsung be if there was nobody to buy their televisions or phones? Would Remington be able to function if nobody purchased their firearms?

Capitalism is about mutually beneficial trade. It relies on everybody being a producer and a consumer. An auto-mechanic produces working vehicles by expending his labor to repair others’ vehicles. In exchange for this the owners of those vehicles exchange the product of their labor, usually in the form of money. If the vehicle owner didn’t have a vehicle there would be no purpose for the auto-mechanic. If the auto-mechanic didn’t exist the vehicle owner would find themselves having to purchase a new vehicle every time their current one needed maintenance or repair. The agreement between the vehicle owner and the auto-mechanic is mutually beneficial, they both gain from the transaction.

Tax breaks and other benefits for the wealthy don’t give the less wealthy any advantage because it doesn’t free up any of their money to be used to purchase goods.

Hanauer’s education isn’t complete unfortunately because he still finds himself stuck in a cycle of false economic ideas:

And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.

There is no way to use taxes to grow the middle class. Taxation is money that goes to the state and the state lacks the market feedback mechanism so is unable to invest money wisely. The market feedback mechanism determines whether or not resources are being invested wisely through an often vicious cycle of finical success and failure. If you’ve invested your resources wisely, that is if you’re using resources to produce products and services consumers want, you will receive more resources to use. Apple has managed to produce products and services a large number of consumer want and have been rewarded by great deals of wealth. They have demonstrated the ability to use resources wisely and are now being trusted with more resources.

On the other hand entities that use resources poorly face financial ruin. The DeLorean Motor Company went into bankruptcy because the produced a single model car and not many people wanted it. General Motors (GM) would have followed if the state didn’t prop them up. In fact GM is a perfect example of the state’s inability to judge the soundness of investments. GM distributed their resources poorly and were punished accordingly. Their resources went into paying overly high wages, pensions, salaries of higher ups, and automobiles that weren’t desirable enough to make up for the other erroneous spending. All of this caught up to GM and they started hemorrhaging money. Continues loss of money is the market’s way of informing you that you’re doing something wrong and need to correct it. GM didn’t correct its problems and thus was facing bankruptcy. Had the market been allowed to work GM would have went under and their resources would have been put up for sale so other entrepreneurs could buy them and attempt to put them to better use. Instead the state injected a ton of taxpayer money into a business that demonstrated an inability to managed resources meaning those new resources are likely to be squandered.

The state gains its money through force and therefore doesn’t have to face the possibility of failure. When it fails to make productive use of resources it can just steal more, there is no possibility of failure until its victims run out of money. Because of this the state can’t grow anything, it can’t even create wealth. I don’t believe I even need to go into the fact that the state doles our resources to its cronies and thus the middle class will never have a crack of getting those resources.

Hanauer appears to be on the right track and may eventually learn this fact and finally rid himself of the economic fallacy that taxation of any kind is desirable. He is correct that giving tax breaks and other state benefits to the wealthy isn’t the key to creating a solid economy but he is incorrect that taxing the wealthy is a good solution. Eliminating the state’s involvement in all economic matters is the way to achieve economic prosperity. Unfortunately that idea will probably never be spread by TED if they’re not even willing to spread Hanauer’s idea.

Apparently Verizon is sick of playing second fiddle to AT&T’s general dickery. During an investor conference call Verizon announced that they would be eliminating unlimited data plans, even for customers who have been grandfathered in:

Verizon Wireless subscribers who have held onto their $30-a-month unlimited data plans will soon be forced to upgrade to a new tiered offering the company plans to launch this summer, according to the Web site Fierce Wireless.

Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology Media and Telecom conference today, Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo told investors that the company’s 3G unlimited data plans that customers were allowed to hang onto last year when Verizon switched to a tiered offering will soon go away entirely. Instead, the company will migrate its existing and new 4G LTE customers to a new “data share plan.”

Way to go guys, I think you’ve finally made a move that will gain you more hatred than AT&T generally receives. I really hope the big four carriers; AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon; thank the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for enforcing the current monopoly of cell phone service in the United States.

If the FCC didn’t maintain a monopoly on spectrum and dole it out in auctions that bring in billions of dollars the current large carriers would actually have to face competition. Unfortunately no small company can enter the cell phone market because they can’t afford the billions of dollars needed to license spectrum from the FCC so we’re stuck with a cartel of four big assholes and a small handful of other carriers (who usually license the rights to use the big fours’ towers).

Image obtained from Chris Lyspooner’s Facebook page

The state is often schizophrenic when it comes to the messages it sends. One hand of the state will tell you to do ‘X’ while the other hand demands that you do ‘Y’ and the joke is that ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are mutually exclusive:

Hidden in weeds in Detroit’s Brightmoor area, Chevilott and his Wayne County crew discovered a loaded, snubnosed revolver as they were mowing the lawn mid-morning on May 3.

“It was damaged, so it could’ve went off. Surprisingly, it didn’t kill the guy on the mower,” Chevilott explained. “It got picked up, so we put [it] in the van, waited [for] police to drive by.”

However, Detroit police never did drive by, so Chevilott finished his work day, drove the gun home and later that same evening turned it into his local police department in Garden City.

He says the cops ran the gun and discovered the weapon had been stolen from St. Clair Shores in 2005.

“They said I did the right thing getting it off the street.”

Obviously Chevilott did a good thing. He found a discarded weapon and turned it over to the police so they could determine if it was stolen and/or used in a crime. Good on Chevilott for performing such a public service. Leaving loaded unsecured weapons lying around is certainly dangerous and we should encourage people to secure them, right? Not according to the Wayne Country Department of Public Services:

However, Chevilott’s superiors at the Department of Public Services had a much different opinion. His foreman, who had knowledge of the situation, was suspended for 30 days, and after 23 years on the job, Chevilott was fired for violating department policies.

According to a Wayne County spokeswoman and the rules, employees aren’t allowed to possess a weapon on work property.

While one hand of the state, the police, encourage people to secure discarded weapons so they will not be a danger the other hand, the Department of Public Services, says doing so will cost you your job. What’s a person to do? We’re often told that we should do the “right thing” but end up being punished for it. Chevilott will probably think twice about securing a discarded weapon since doing so this time cost him his job.

It’s sad that we now live in a society where common sense and decency are discarded for absolute adherence to rules and regulations. You can’t even help a dying man without fear of violating some law and thus facing a lawsuit down the road.

I often talk about the idea of absolute, or inviolable, property rights. Theft is wrong, whether it is a pickpocket on the street taking your wallet or the state taking your home under the guise of eminent domain. Funny enough many people will criticize the idea of absolute property rights because they lead to cases like this:

A property owner has ended living in the middle of a new main road after she refused to move out when developers started construction.

Hong Chunqin, 75, and her husband Kung, who live in the two dilapidated buildings with their two sons, had initially agreed to sell the property in Taizhou, in east China’s Zhejiang province and accepted £8,000 in compensation.

But then she changed her mind and refunded the money once work on the road had started.

She and her family are insisting they be allowed to choose where they are relocated to and have installed CCTV cameras to stop the developers from trying to demolish the building illegally.

In the People’s Republic of China, during most of the Communist era, private ownership of property was abolished, making it easy for residents to be moved on – but now the laws have been tightened up and it is illegal to demolish property by force without an agreement.

Property owners in China that refuse to move to make way for development are known as ‘Nail Householders’ referring to a stubborn nail that is not easy to remove from a piece of old wood and cannot be pulled out with a hammer.

What critics of absolute property rights see as wrong I see as a beautiful thing. Is it ironic that such a thing is now occurring in a communist country while property is often scarfed up by the state in the United States under eminent domain? Regardless, not only is this happening but it’s happening frequently enough that there’s a term for it. Some may think of these “nail householders” as annoying individuals who stand in the way of “progress” but I see them as heros who are refusing to bow down to the will of large development firms.

If you want my property you can have it, for a price. That price is my choosing and if you don’t believe it is worth the price then you can go without. Likewise, minus any contractual agreement, if I change my mind before we trade the goods I am well within my rights. It’s great to see some kind of acknowledgement of such rights in the world and it’s funny that those rights aren’t being recognized in a “free” name such as the United States but in a “communist” nation like China.

In libertarian circles the phrase, “What about the roads?” has become a favorite when mocking statists. Statists believe that the government brought roads to humanity in the same way the Greek believed Prometheus brought fire. It is their belief that without the state there would be no roads so this story my be heresy:

Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii’s Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park — for free.

[...]

And if the repairs weren’t made, some business owners faced the possibility of having to shut down.

Ivan Slack, co-owner of Napali Kayak, said his company relies solely on revenue from kayak tours and needs the state park to be open to operate. The company jumped in and donated resources because it knew that without the repairs, Napali Kayak would be in financial trouble.

“If the park is not open, it would be extreme for us, to say the least,” he said. “Bankruptcy would be imminent. How many years can you be expected to continue operating, owning 15-passenger vans, $2 million in insurance and a staff? For us, it was crucial, and our survival was dependent on it. That park is the key to the sheer survival of the business.”

So Slack, other business owners and residents made the decision not to sit on their hands and wait for state money that many expected would never come. Instead, they pulled together machinery and manpower and hit the ground running March 23. Watch the volunteers repairing the road »

And after only eight days, all of the repairs were done, Pleas said. It was a shockingly quick fix to a problem that may have taken much longer if they waited for state money to funnel in.

Once again those evil capitalists stepped in and helped people. While the state claimed repairing the road would require $4 million, a massive sum they didn’t have available, business owners facing bankruptcy decided to move in and fix the roads necessary to get customers to the business. This also demonstrates one of many possible ways transportation can be provided without the state.

What good is a business if customers can’t get to it? None. Businesses need to have a means for customers to get from their homes to the places of business. Even Internet based businesses like Amazon require infrastructure to get their goods from warehouses to customers’ homes. The bottom line is transportation is needed for commerce so it’s in the best interests of businesses to ensure proper infrastructure exists.

Most people get caught up in a vicious cycle where they believe things are done the way they are done because that is the only way they can be done. Entrepreneurs are different, they see the way things are currently done as inefficient or ineffective and work to provide them better. This is why the free market works, innovators see a need and try to fulfill that need. Sometimes they are wrong and end up going broke but other times they are successful and are rewarded for their efforts by customers.

Roads are no different than any other good or service, they can be provided by any individual or group of individuals. The key difference is that, unlike the state, the reward individuals receive is based on how well they provide a good or service. If the good or service they provide is done so inefficiently then another entrepreneur will move in and provide it more efficiently. If the good or service they provide is unwanted by consumers then they go broke. When the state provides an inefficient servie the people are forced to pay for it regardless and no hope of competition exists in most cases. We get caught in a vicious cycle of being provided shitty goods and services while also being force fed the idea that the good and service can only be provided by the state, that the market is incapable of such a feat.

Many people, especially gun rights advocates, are starting to parrot the familiar phrase that this election is the most important election of our lifetime. I think this blog nailed it:

Take a breath. This is not the most important election of your lifetime. Every election is the same, and it is an airtight bet that each new president is going to be worse than his precedessor. Bamboozled voters sprint to the polls every four years, and appropriately utter the same line beggars use: “Gimme some change, gimme some change!” And like those unfortunate beggars (who also don’t see their fortunes change), each time they are left holding an empty cup.

I’m 29 and this will be the third election cycle I’ve had to experience. All three elections have been labeled as the most important election of my lifetime and nothing has changed after any of them. Although I missed being of voting age by one year when Bush was running against Gore I remember all the talk about how that election was the most important election gun owners had ever experienced. Then when Bush was running against Kerry it was the most important election of my lifetime because Kerry would take my guns. When it was McCain against Obama is was yet again the most important election of my lifetime because Obama was a gun grabbing socialist. Now I’m being told that this is the most important election of my lifetime because Obama will be free of having to worry about reelection and be in a position to potentially nominate two Supreme Court justices.

If every election I’ve experienced has been the most important one of my lifetime then unimportant elections must be extremely nonevents. Let’s face facts, nothing has changed in the last three elections (or any elections before that, but I wasn’t paying any attention to the political arena at those times so I’ll refrain from further comment). Bush didn’t change anything for the two terms he was in office and Obama hasn’t changed anything for the one term he’s been in office. Neither Obama or Romney is likely to change anything either. The bottom line is the state’s violence continues to be wielded against the people of the world. While the police state expands here at home foreign countries are being invaded and occupied.

This isn’t the most important election of your lifetime, no election has every actually been important. Honestly, I would say this is the least important election of your lifetime because with each election the state’s power grows and as it grows elections become even more meaningless (if that’s even possible).

If I have any readers in California let me extend my sympathies. Not only do you have to suffer from draconian gun control laws but your state is also a sinking ship economically. Apparently the politicians of that state aren’t content with the people they’ve already driven off by their ever increasing tax rates since they’re looking to jack up the taxes again:

California also hopes for $1.5bn in revenue over the next year after this week’s Facebook stock flotation.

In outlining the proposal, the Democratic governor said on Monday the state could not overcome its deficit by cuts alone.

“It’s taken more than a decade to get into this mess. We’re not going to get out of it in a year,” he told reporters. “But we’re making real progress.”

California residents will vote in November on an increase in the sales tax as well as an income tax rise on those making more than $250,000 yearly. Both measures would be temporary and would also increase education spending.

First of all let me just remind people that temporary tax increases have a habit of becoming permanent. With that said those of you making $250,000 or more and live in California you can rest assured that your potential new tax rate of 10.3% is likely be temporary… because your government officials will try to increase it again and again. California is the poster child for stupid economic policies. It demonstrates what happens when the collectivists get their way. As the state moves to bleed every wealth producer dry those wealth producers leave the state and take their jobs with them. While the collectivists scream “Tax the rich!” they forget that “the rich” are the ones who have enough resources to pack up and go elsewhere.

If you live in that state you should get the heck out of there now before they start preventing people from leaving.

Obama is running on his hope and change platform again. He hopes that people will just forget about his last four years of stomping the gas pedal to tyranny and accept him as a freedom loving president who supports the rights of individuals. When his campaign is having protesters arrested that message becomes a bit more difficult to swallow:

Though the NATO summit won’t officially begin until later this week, police have already ramped up their presence in downtown Chicago and, on Monday morning, they made a number of arrests at President Obama’s campaign headquarters.

After a group of demonstrators rushed into Prudential Plaza, the building where Obama’s re-election campaign is based, eight protesters were led away in handcuffs when they refused to leave the building’s lobby, the Chicago Tribune reports. Police said the arrested demonstrators would likely be charged with criminal trespass.

The group was organized by the Catholic Worker movement and, according to Fox Chicago, was attempting to open up a dialogue around ending the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan. The action is part of what activists are calling a “week without capitalism.”

While those protesters may never get their wish of ending the occupation of Afghanistan at least they’re getting their goal of a week without capitalism. As I’ve explains the only alternative to capitalism is force. Instead of mutually beneficial relationships built upon voluntary trade those protesters are getting a taste of the alternative, the force of the state, and they don’t seem to be enjoying it.

Capitalism is a beautiful system that achieves mutual benefit by relying on self-interest. People are compelled to help each other because by doing so they are also helping themselves. If you make shoes and you need bread then you and the baker can make a mutually beneficial trade, shoes for bread. Those who perform the job of satisfying fellow individuals are rewarded so they may expand their operations and satisfy even more individuals’ needs. Capitalism stands as a stark opposition to the state’s violence where mutual benefit doesn’t arise because one party, the state, steals from the other party. Instead of mutual cooperation you have threats and acts of violence.

You want a world without capitalism? Good news, we already have it and it’s called the state. There is no need to protest or demonstrate because that goal has already been achieved. Instead of entering voluntary agreements with your fellow people you now have great portions of your wealth stolen from you so that it may be redistributed to those in the state’s favor. No need to trade for the people of Afghanistan exists because the United States government is there forcefully taking the desirable natural resources. Do you know what the best part is? You don’t have to limit yourself to a week without capitalism, you get to suffer your entire life without capitalism. Congratulations, your deepest desires have been fulfilled.

Remember that the people of the Middle East hate us for our freedom:

America’s top military officer has condemned a course taught at a US military college that advocated a “total war” against Muslims.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, said the course was “totally objectionable” and “against our values”.

The voluntary course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Virginia also suggested possible nuclear attacks on holy Muslim cities such as Mecca.

I doubt suggestions of nuclear strikes on holy cities such as Mecca have anything to do with their anger. A rather interesting slide show [PDF] was obtained by Wired regarding this class and it’s worth a skim through. There isn’t anything I found too surprising in the slides but the presenter obviously has few kind thought regarding Muslims.