Freespace

The real cost of gasoline

Here's a very telling graph and more such interesting information about the cost of gas, thanks to Carpe Diem, which concludes, "gas prices today as a percent of per-capita GDP are lower than every other previous decade."

via

From the Commonplace Book:

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuance which constitutes life’s greatest prize, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial: as the real artists of life do. The wrathful and reverent attitudes characteristic of youth do not seem to permit themselves any rest until they have forged men and things in such a way that these attitudes may be vented on them:—after all, youth in itself has something of forgery and deception. Later, when the young soul, tortured by all kinds of disappointments, finally turns suspiciously against itself, still hot and wild, even in its suspicion and pangs of conscience: how angry it is with itself now, how it tears itself to pieces, impatiently, how it takes revenge for its long self-delusion, just as if it had been a deliberate blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself with mistrust against one’s own feelings; one tortures one’s own enthusiasm with doubts, indeed, one experiences even a good conscience as a danger, as if it were a way of wrapping oneself in veils and the exhaustion of subtler honesty; and above all one takes sides, takes sides on principle, against "youth."— A decade later: one comprehends that all this, too—was youth!

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good And Evil § 31.

Huell Howser, shill for anti-property rights coalition

The Orange Punch blog has some very interesting comments on a forthcoming public television series about redevelopment in California, hosted by Huell Howser. As Steven Greenhut puts it,

Howser has agreed to host a 14-part series that is nothing short of hard-core propaganda for one of the most nefarious organizations in the state — the California Redevelopment Association.

According to a CRA statement, “The series presents an opportunity for us to tell the redevelopment story in a compelling and intimate way. Huell and his crew will be visiting redevelopment projects in cities and counties throughout California that demonstrate inspiring, positive elements of redevelopment efforts.”

How outrageous, especially since this will be on taxpayer-funded TV and the program is funded by a group that gets its funds from government agencies.

CRA is the state’s biggest proponent of eminent-domain abuse and regulatory takings, and its agencies actively drive people off their property so that the land can be handed over for pennies on the dollar to big developers. Howser will be shilling for these corporate-welfare projects but will ignore the people whose lives have been disrupted or even destroyed by them.

California's coming financial meltdown: will anyone notice?

John G. Matsusaka:

California's statewide sales tax of 7.25% is already the highest in the nation. Income taxes are also high, with the 10.3% rate on the top income bracket the highest in the nation. The highly progressive nature of the state's income tax schedule -- the top 10% of earners supply more than 70% of income tax revenue, according to one estimate -- already results in excessive revenue volatility. It also raises questions about how much redistribution of wealth is fair: Should the top 10% foot the bill for basic services enjoyed by all Californians...?

Voters are criticized for wanting more services yet being unwilling to pay higher taxes. That is unfair; Californians have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to fund valuable programs. But if spending can go up 40% and most of us can't discern any difference, can we blame voters for being hesitant to put even more tax money in the hands of the state?

c/o Virginia Postrel, who has more.

How does Southwest boarding work?

Russell Roberts takes a stab at it. I for one have wondered futilely about this for a while.

A Dissent on Hayek

One reason blogging has been light here lately is that I’ve been writing about Hayek: a critique that’s been on my mind for quite a while. I’m trying to boil it down so that it doesn’t turn into a long tirade of all the faults I find in him.

Anyway, with perfect timing, Arts and Letters Daily points to this article on Hayek by Jesse Larner. In some ways, the article is a testament to how much of what Hayek argued in The Road to Serfdom and elsewhere is now taken for granted. And in some ways, it’s telling how Hayek’s self-contradictions, omissions, and ambiguities allow socialists to bore into him and hang their conceptions on what’s left.

But what I find particularly interesting—and what has a lot to do with the thesis of my paper—is Larner’s comment that “there are all kinds of imaginative ways in which libertarian collectivism can coexist with capitalism and markets.” That is true: voluntary cooperatives and collectives proliferate in free societies; just look at the religious communes of Nineteenth Century America. Hayek would certainly have acknowledged these experiments as valid and important in the process of social evolution. What he would not have been able to do is to express any moral evaluation of these experiments. Because he confines his moral horizon to the evolution of groups following “partially different rules,” Hayek cannot offer objective standards for evaluating those rules. At the most important point of his argument, Hayek becomes a relativist. Thus Larner is wrong to think that Hayek wouldn’t recognize experiments with collectivism in a free market—on the contrary, the problem with Hayek is just that his antirationalism hinders him from distinguishing these in principle from coercive collectivism. Of course, he tried to do so anyway, by appealing to noncoercion as a value. But that value is offered basically on faith in Hayek’s work, and is not supported by any philosophical foundation. In his brilliant assessment of Hayek, Chandran Kukathas rightly observes that Hayek’s system appeals to two mutually incompatible values: on one hand, a traditionalism that says reason can’t find objective standards for judging a social order, and on the other a principle of noncoercion that must rest on reasoned objectivity.

It is absurd for Larner to say “The right-wingers have never quite known what to do with the kibbutzim”: free marketers have always said that people can try such experiments if they like (although they are probably going to fail) but that we draw the line at coercion. Hayek, though, cannot draw that line, given his antirationalism.

“[T]o Hayek,” Larner concludes,

the common law is a spontaneous phenomenon, without obvious human direction. In a sense law is related to custom in this manner, but there is no guarantee that honoring this concept of the nomos leads to an enlightened condition of liberty. Isn’t the barbaric (I use the word with no relativistic embarrassment) practice of female genital mutilation derived from this sort of nomos? Hayek is susceptible to this mistake precisely because he is distrustful of all human attempts to define authority and so prefers a mystical, holistic origin for it.... Hayek is a romantic.

That’s true, but note that Hayek does say that the spontaneous evolution of the law will lead to such barbarities at times, and that these should be corrected by conscious efforts of judges who endeavor to do right on the basis of a conception of justice: that is, in the end, Hayek is forced to accept the idea of conscious reform that he spent so much of his career attacking as “constructivist rationalism.” Hayek’s antirationalism then leads him in the direction of romanticism in a way that Larner does not explore, perhaps because it is a disease endemic to the collectivist left: Hayek, like so many modern leftists, ends Law Legislation And Liberty by claiming that the mind is the product of society and that there can be no right and wrong outside of society: that is, that the collective is the source of individual will and individual rights. Hayek’s biggest flaws are those he shares with Larner’s comrades.

Adjunctitude

The Cato Institute has named me an "adjunct scholar." I guess this means I have to grow up.

Tiny Dog Has Been Barking Nonstop for 6 Years

This Onion News Network story seems to have been filmed in my neighborhood.

Tiny Dog Has Been Barking Nonstop For 6 Years

HT:JPT

Cat video

Oh, and, don't forget to check out the brilliant new episode of Simon's Cat. Substitute me trying to read a book about socialism for Simon trying to watch TV, and you have me and Arriba the Monkey Cat (pictured below).

Simon:

Arriba:

Coalition for Secular Government

Diana Hsieh has cofounded a new organization, the Coalition for Secular Government, that deserves our attention. It's working now to oppose an antiabortion bill in Colorado, but it has a broader agenda and is based on solid philosophical principles, much moreso than other secular organizations like AU and the ACLU. (Indeed, Hseih's blog NoodleFood recently featured a good series discussing the shortcomings of the "New Atheists": 1, 2, 3, 4). The Coalition also has a blog called Politics Without God.