Freespace

A new Daniel Hannan speech

Danniel Hannan, my favorite British politican, has a new speech out. It's in two parts:

Heller's Ayn Rand

I just reached page 100 of Anne C. Heller's new biography of Ayn Rand (to be published in October), and I am delighted to report that it is excellent. Honest, admiring but objective, and best of all, exceptionally well written. Heller's prose style is smooth and elegant and unobtrusive, and everything a biographer should strive for. I'll have a full review when I'm finished, which probably won't be long.

From the commonplace book

O fleeting joyes
Of Paradise, deare bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay
To mould me Man, did I sollicite thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious Garden? as my Will
Concurd not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust,
Desirous to resigne, and render back
All I receav'd, unable to performe
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penaltie, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? inexplicable
Thy Justice seems; yet to say truth, too late,
I thus contest; then should have been refus'd
Those terms whatever, when they were propos'd:
Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions?

John Milton, Paradise Lost 10:741-759

Furloughs are tax increases!

Californians are getting used to the idea of “furlough Fridays”: due to the state’s fiscal self-destruction, state employees are being told to stay home two or three times a month. The upside is that the freeways are a lot easier to drive on here in Sacramento.

But the downside—and something I don’t hear anyone mentioning—is that these furloughs are tax increases. And I suspect they’re a particularly regressive form of tax increase, as well.

John Q. Taxpayer used to pay X amount in taxes, and get in exchange for that a Department of Motor Vehicles that’s open on Fridays. But now he’s still paying X, and in exchange he gets only four days a week when he can go to the DMV. He doesn’t get a refund of that one day’s worth of taxes. That money’s still taken out of his pocket—and going somewhere. For him to get less of what he paid for, for the same amount of money, is every bit as much a tax increase as if the government demanded more money from him.

When he has to stand in longer lines the rest of the week, that tax increase is transformed into a real, obvious cost for him. When he can’t get hold of a state employee to get business done like he has to, that’s a tax increase. It’s as much a tax increase as inflation is—it transfers more wealth from one party to another—only through a mathematical trick instead of outright confiscation.

I suspect that this burden falls hardest on the lower classes, as they probably spend more time depending on the workaday tasks of government offices than the upper classes do. And it’s probably harder for them to take time off from work to get things done on days when government offices are open. This decreased efficiency probably matters less to those who can afford to go elsewhere or can afford to wait an extra day to get things done.

Recent silence

I’ve been delinquent in blogging lately for a combination of reasons. Most of my writing time has recently been occupied by other things, such as life. I know I promised to continue my analysis of Justin Logan’s foreign policy views—but waited so long that it just seems uninteresting now. Knowing that I ought to be blogging about that is partly responsible for my silence, too. Blogging’s supposed to be fun, not about meeting deadlines. So I’m dropping that. (You win this time, Logan, but I’ll be back!)

Here’s something sad I just learned—a year after the fact. Esbjorn Svensson died last summer in a diving accident. Svensson was the brilliant piano player for the jazz trio E.S.T. Here’s a sample of his work. His talent will be missed a lot.

In the meantime, if you’re in the mood for interesting law blogging, you should check out Pacific Legal Foundation’s new PLF Liberty Blog, which combines the various different PLF blogs into one convenient location.

 

More lying to teachers

Casey Luskin, never what you might call intellectually honest, published an article recently in the Hamline Law Review purporting to assist public school teachers in knowing what they can and cannot teach about evolution in government classrooms. The article, of course, is all centered on the basic misrepresentation in all that the Discovery Institute does: namely, the lie that “intelligent design” is a “scientific” approach or constitutes a “scientific critique” of evolution.

The Onion on Star Trek

Oh, god. The Onion has hit me personally this time...

HT: a loser

The greatest journal article ever

Joshua Hall, Homer Economicus: Using The Simpsons To Teach Economics, Journal of Private Enterprise.

Baby porcupine

Irresistible cuteness at Zooborns.

The War on Dishsoap

Black markets flourish with government restrictions on cigarettes, just as they already flourish in the War on Drugs. And now Oregon is witnessing the rise of dishwasher detergent smuggling. Spokane County banned dishwasher detergent containing phosphates, and of course, the replacement detergent doesn't actually get your dishes clean. Hence the predictable consequences:

[T]here has been a quiet rush of Spokane-area shoppers heading east on Interstate 90 into Idaho in search of old-school suds.

Real estate agent Patti Marcotte of Spokane stocks up on detergent at a Costco in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and doesn't care who knows it.

"Yes, I am a smuggler," she said. "I'm taking my chances because dirty dishes I cannot live with."

(In truth, the ban applies to the sale of phosphate detergent - not its use or possession - so Marcotte is not in any legal trouble.)

Marcotte said she tried every green brand in her dishwasher and found none would remove grease and pieces of food. Everybody she knows buys dishwasher detergent in Idaho, she said.

Supporters of the ban acknowledge it is not very popular.

"I'm not hearing a lot of positive feedback," conceded Shannon Brattebo of the Washington Lake Protection Association, a prime mover of the ban. "I think people are driving to Idaho."

There's an interesting lesson here (for those who care to learn it) about the regressive effects of prohibitions like this. Wealthier folks--people who can afford to go so far out of their way or to pay the higher black-market prices--will still get clean dishes. The poor (and the law-abiding) are stuck with dirty dishes. It's funny in a case like this...mostly because so much of what environmentalists do is ridiculous...but when similar restrictions are applied to more products, the same phenomenon happens on a broader scale, and things get less funny real fast. In the end, you get a nomenklatura class who can always get the black market luxuries (clean dishes, a luxury!), and a proletariat class that can get none of them.

And of course there are the delightful uintended consequences, also:

For his part, Beck has taken to washing his dishes on his machine's pots-and-pans cycle, which takes longer and uses five gallons more water. Beck wonders if that isn't as tough on the environment as phosphates.

"How much is this really costing us?" Beck said. "Aren't we transferring the environmental consequences to something else?"