The Rise of the Phoenix Society

In the first column in this series, The Apolitical Economic Superpower, we discussed the rapid growth of the untaxed, unregulated economy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it already provides an estimated 50% of the world's jobs. And in only eight short years, they estimate that two out of three workers world-wide will be employed in jobs outside the control of government, in the apolitical economy that this article from Foreign Policy refers to as System D.

By 2020, the OECD projects, two-thirds of the workers of the world will be employed in System D. There's no multinational, no Daddy Warbucks or Bill Gates, no government that can rival that level of job creation. Given its size, it makes no sense to talk of development, growth, sustainability, or globalization without reckoning with System D.

Beware the Ides of March

Caesar, beware the Ides of March... a day for all the world's autocrats, despots and grandees to ponder the consequences of their deeds.
Salman Rushdie, today, on Twitter

Salman Rushdie's tweet seems an appropriate call to this Tireless Agorist to recap those articles I've published that address autocrats, despots and grandees, and the consequences of their deeds. I'll even throw in a column or two that offers some hope for the future. I've categorized the articles for your convenience. The groupings are just rough approximations; some essays may fit in more than one category.

California's Broken Sex Registry

Meet Joe. Joe is a convicted sex offender. He will remain on the California Sex Offender Registry for the rest of his life. His crime? Consensual sex with the woman who is now his wife. He was convicted of statutory rape, defined as lewd and lascivious acts with a child, because he had sex with his underage girlfriend.

Her parents found out about their relationship and chose to press charges. She was just shy of 16. He was 18. After his jail term, and the three-year period when they were not allowed to see each other for fear of his reincarceration, they were married. They are still married ten years later. Joe and his wife deal with the issue every day. They've had to put a restraining order on a neighbor who was constantly harrassing him. Because registered sex offenders are not allowed to live within 2000 feet of a school or a park, even finding a place to live was extremely difficult. Joe and his wife now live in a trailer park, and Joe hasn't been able to find a stable job since he was required to register.

"We're together, we're married, he did everything he was supposed to do... and it's sad to live this way. I'm scared all the time." says Joe's wife. Having been declared a victim by the state, she is still being victimized by the state ten years later.

A Government Big Enough...

A government big enough to give you everything you need,
is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.
Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States, August 12, 1974.

According to a report just released by the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has almost doubled, from $940 billion to $1.76 trillion, in just two and a half short years. Dial the way-back machine to September 9, 2009, and listen to President Obama.

Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.

It's also very unlikely that this is the end of the story. In 1966, when Medicare was just a glimmer in power-hungry politician's eyes, the government projected that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual tab was $110 billion, falling just short of a factor of ten miscalculation.

Today I Beat Up Your Mom

There's apparently nothing in the world better for one's self-righteous pride than verbally threatening and mentally beating up on an older white lady who's enabling your sense of privilege, at least if you're of the mindset of the author of this Daily Kos "Diary."

"If you say one more fucking thing I'll go find your manager and all three of us can discuss this."

At that, she suddenly deflated. Now the look in her eyes was fear. She looked down and meekly mumbled "Ok. Sorry sir."

I left then, proud of myself and still full of anger.

The Diary of DuzT, cleverly titled "Today I told off a cashier who was trashing the president," is a poster-child example of Dr. Michael Huemer's essay that we recently discussed in Why People Are Irrational About Politics. Thanks, DuzT.

Pink Slime - It's "For the Children"

Take all the scraps and connective tissue left over from slaughtering cows. Throw it in a big vat. Grind thoroughly. Squeeze it through a thin tube and spray it with ammonia hydroxide. (yes, the same stuff that's in that bottle labeled "Ammonia - Do Not Drink" stored under your kitchen sink)

Sound appetizing? I didn't think so. It's banned in the United Kingdom. Even McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell, hardly bellweathers of cullinary excellence, want nothing to do with the stuff anymore, although they have used it in the past.

It's perfectly legal, after all. The U.S. Department of Agriculture first approved it for human consumption in 1994, and according to Beef Products Inc. more than 70% of the ground beef sold in the U.S. contains the stuff. Curiously though, a number of grocery chains, including Publix, have recently announced they do not use it, and other meat outlets are running away from it rapidly now that consumers are becoming aware of the issue.

Why People Are Irrational About Politics

Author's Note: This is one of those articles almost guaranteed to make you mad, no matter what your political persuasion. I felt the same way reading the essay that forms the backbone of this column. So please read it all the way through before collecting your pitchfork, lighting your torch, and heading off to the comment section to slay the village monster. Thanks.

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We've all had political discussions with people who refuse to think rationally about the issue at hand. In the face of overwhelming opinion, they stick religiously to their own, obviously errant, views. And of course, we've never been guilty of such transgressions ourselves, right?

Dr. Michael Huemer, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, has some distressing news for all of us. He recently gave an interesting TEDx lecture that I discovered on YouTube. The lecture is a distillation of his paper Why People Are Irrational About Politics.

Prohibition Fails Again

Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can't stop what it's meant to stop.
We like it.
It's left a trail of graft and slime,
It don't prohibit worth a dime,
It's filled our land with vice and crime.
Nevertheless, we're for it.
-- Franklin P. Adams (1931)
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to a group of Latin American leaders on Monday, demonstrated the brilliance and open-mindedness so typical of current Washington leadership when speaking of drug legalization.

It warrants a discussion. It’s totally legitimate for this to be raised. It’s worth discussing … but there is no possibility that the Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalization.

That's the best you've got, Joe? Really? It's worth discussing, but nothing's going to change? That's real progressive of you. Let's look at a few facts, since you've at least admitted that the topic is legitimate and worth discussing, shall we? Here's a nice, concise summary of my position, courtesy of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Drug prohibition has made criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens, cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, made drugs more dangerous, created powerful criminal syndicates, increased violent crime, corrupted law enforcement at all levels, and expanded the size and scope of government.

Emily Miller Wins Another Battle

The war is far from over, but Emily Miller has won her second battle for the Second Amendment in Washington, DC.

As I described in Shall Not Be Infringed?, the Senior Editor of The Washington Times Editorial and Opinion Pages first fought and won a four-month battle to legally possess a hand gun in the District of Columbia. I followed up with DC's Plantation-Like Gun Control, a look at the District's unequal privilege of protection between the politically-connected and the lower classes, including crime statistics and demographics, finally noting "The disadvantaged of the District are legally kept as defenseless as the slaves on Southern plantations."

Now, thanks to Emily's continuing efforts, the first steps toward sanity are on the horizon.

Concentrated Benefits, Dispersed Costs

The concepts of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, when applied to government, or, more specifically, to the creation of legislation, go a long way toward explaining why it is that government always gets bigger, never smaller. When examined in the light of the Cronyism Model of legislation in contrast to the Civics Class Model of legislation, these concepts also go a long way toward explaining why it seems that as government grows bigger, it tends to benefit the citizenry less and the politically-connected One Percent more. Finally, when one understands the full importance of the two concepts taken together, one recognizes the fundamental truth of Thoreaus's statement, "That government is best which governs least."

Even at the simplest level, it's fairly easy to understand why the twin concepts of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs are popular with the legislature, and in many cases, with the citizenry as well. Let's take the case of benefits for the veterans of our armed services as an example almost everyone might support. Only a small fraction of the citizenry ever belongs to the military, and this small group has shown a willingness to step forward and defend the rest of us from barbarians at the gates, so to speak. (Whether those willing to so act have been wisely deployed by their civilian leadership is a topic for another conversation.) In this case, the argument that taking a few pennies from each citizen, and thereby amassing dollars to assure the continued welfare of the much smaller group who fought in their stead becomes an easy sell. Properly packaged, even those paying for the benefit consider the legislation a good deal all around.