My Beauty Best Teacher

Imagine that you lived in a state of nature- your plane crash landed on some previously unclaimed island that has no inhabitants and there is no hope of being rescued or contacting your previous home nations. Or you go to the moon, or an asteroid, or the bottom of the ocean, or some other location where there are no laws and no legal rights are written down. What sort of rights would you have?

Another way of asking this question is for you to think of things that others would do to you that you would think are wrong- that you would believe are wrong because you know that to do these things are wrong, with or without a government or any sort of legal authority telling you that they are wrong. These are what are called your natural rights.

What sort of natural rights would you have, whereby you would feel violated and wronged by others, even if there were no government or state or authority? Let's say you crash land on the island or find yourself on the moon- would you feel that you had been horribly wronged and violated if your fellow citizens didn't pay for your healthcare insurance in case you got injured? You're on an asteroid, and you demand that the other people on the asteroid buy a house for you or subsidize your loan, and they say no- have you been wronged and your natural rights violated? Of course not- you don't have any sort of right to have others pay for your healthcare insurance, house, car, food, or anything of that sort.

Imagine that you begin to work on your island, tilling a field and growing a crop, where others lay around and do nothing other than to watch you. After you are done growing your crop, they all band together in a large group and vote to have you distribute your crop to everyone, with everyone getting an equal share, even though you contributed all the labor. Were you wronged? Did someone violate your rights? Or let's say on the moon, you provide some sort of service that is essential- taking care of the banking, entertaining others by playing a sport, taking a risk and thinking up a new product- and you work hard at your service and in return others pay you some sort of compensation, that they voluntarily pay for your service because they recognize its worth; and after this, someone else comes along and demands a share of your 'money' in order to pay for someone else to conduct a study of the effects of drinking in prostitutes in China, or to build a road that you will never travel on the other side of the moon, or to cut a check to the older people stranded on the moon, or to hire a bureaucrat to supervise you and tell you all the things you are doing wrong. Would you be wronged then?

Of course you would have been wronged- your labor is yours, and the profit from your labor is yours, and the government does not have any 'right' to your labor, not unless you are a slave to the state. You are okay with voting to provide a military to protect your property from outside aggression, or police or fire service to protect it from theft or fire, or to create a court system to resolve any disputes that may arise regarding your property. But for the government to come and demand the fruits of your labor and lay claim to it is tyranny- it is your property, it existed before government, it will exist after government, and you are the only person who can lay any sort of right to that property. This in your natural right to property.

The purpose of our government is to protect these natural rights- life, liberty, and property. There is no such thing as a 'tax cut for the rich'- the government does not have any sort of claim on the rich citizens' property, so a more proper name for this would be a 'lessening of the unequal taxes levied on those earning high incomes'. You do not have any sort of right to healthcare or housing; but neither do you have any sort of right to social security or medicare- those are provided to some in our society by violating my rights and the rights of other young people in society to keep and earn property in order to provide forced charity to those who have had ample opportunity to earn and pay for their own retirement and healthcare- but they have no right to this sort of forced charitable giving.

Understanding property rights and the nature of them is important, because once the state becomes destructive to these property rights that state is on the road to tyranny. We can see it already in our nation, where our government has arbitrarily violated contracts because a car company is going bankrupt, failed to properly issue permits to energy companies who have gone through the (excessive and capricious) permit process, or the forcing someone young and healthy and full of life to buy a product like health insurance in order to subsidize the costs for others in society. Once it has been established that your property rights can be violated by a government- that rights to keep and earn property that existed before government was around and would be around even if government was not around- then the next step is to go after your freedoms and liberties, and lastly, your life.

Fight for the right to keep and earn property, and stop engaging in class warfare, because it will only lead to tyranny and injustice.

For more, check out John Locke, property rights, and economic theory.: An article from: Journal of Economic Issues or John Locke and Property as a Human Right Today: Towards a New Theory of Property Rights.

John Locke said that the purpose of government is to protect and enforce our natural rights, mainly our right to live, our right to live free from interference in our lives, and our right to earn and keep property. Here is his argument, shortened for time. Imagine that you live in a state of nature, a place where there are no laws or government. If someone killed you, it wouldn't matter if there were no laws, because it would be wrong- that means that there are rights that exist before and after government. If you went to Mars, and there were no laws, and someone put you in a cage, that would be wrong- they would have violated your natural right to liberty. And if you go into the middle of outerspace and someone robs you, that would be wrong, because your right to earn and keep property existed before government was ever around and exists even if government isn't there. These rights do not come from the government, and it is not the lawful creator or destroyer of those rights.

So, continuing the lecture, given that we have these natural rights, and given that in a state of nature they may be inadequately protected, the rational thing to do is to agree (ie, to consent) to give up our right to enforce our rights to a government, which will be better able to protect these rights. We do not give up our natural rights- we simply give up the power to enforce them. Therefore, the only reason why government exists is to protect your rights to life, liberty, and property.

That is not to say that government should do nothing. One could convince me that providing a bare-bones safety net of welfare (food stamps or medical care) helps to protect life. One might be able to convince me that liberal rights for criminals could better protect my liberty. And one might even convince me that paying for fire and police services help to protect my property better. As you can see, I'm not a fringe nut- I'm more of a Reagan Republican. That being said, think about what government does right now, what Obama wants government to do, and what your Congressman votes for government to do- do they believe that the purpose of government is to protect your life, your liberty, and your wealth?

Obama is going to give a State of the Union address tomorrow- I predict that in it, he is going to talk about how the government can take more of your property (or some other sovereign individual in our nation), control more of your liberty (or someone else's that you may or may not know), and quite possibly might let slip that he is changing the rules regarding the valuing of human lives (pro-choice and all that stuff).

Call up your Congressman and ask him if he believes that the sole purpose of government is to protect your life, liberty, and property. He better say "heck yah!", or else you better donate to his opponent next election and knock door-to-door so that you can throw him out of office.

Listen to a great interview with 760 WJR's Frank Beckmen as he speaks with Amity Schlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History at the Council on Foreign Relations, about Obama and if he is repeating Roosevelt's mistakes, and you'll see why I am getting so upset about property rights violations by the Obama administration.

Life, liberty, and property. Remember those words.

One of the cornerstones of modern-day conservatism is the belief that America's energy resources can and should be responsibly exploited. This means that the United States should allow private companies to drill for oil, mine coal, build nuclear power plants, tap into natural gas reserves, get shale oil, and utilize whatever other energy resources that these companies wish to use, provided that they respect the property rights of others.

Oh, I know what liberals and left-wingers will say- the horror of pollution! But the faults of energy development do not lie with the companies themselves, but rather with the government for not establishing clear and defined property rights- for example, rather than having the government act as police to safeguard public water, the water rights should be more clearly defined and if companies destroy or harm the property (the water) of others, they should be forced to pay in a court, much as if they destroyed other private property. The faults with 'pollution' then lie not in the companies for breaking ever expanding government rules and regulations over ever expanding public lands, but for the government for not putting in place limited and clear rules regarding private property rights and then divesting itself of public lands by selling these lands off to private entities that can then do a better job of protecting. Like most problems in our society, the solution is less government, not more.

With the main liberal concern out of the way, our nation would be free to exploit and use its vast resources- enough oil for 30 years, enough natural gas for 575 years, enough coal for 500 years, etc. With oil, gas, and coal be utilized to its fullest extent, our nation will have cheap and plentiful energy, enabling it to develop some of the most amazingly energy intensive industries there are- 'renewable resources'. The horse needs to go before the cart here- we  need to have cheap and plentiful energy in order to build the energy intensive operations and industries like building solar panels, developing batteries, building geothermal plants, etc. A wealthy, productive society thriving on cheap energy can afford to become environmentally friendly, as opposed to a cheap, declining society that the liberals and Democrats appear to be pushing us towards with their anti-energy policies.

In a free market, one in which the government is not subsidizing any of the industries (and this includes cutting subsidies for oil and gas and coal), the most efficient energy resources will be developed in an environment that encourages private property ownership and protection. American can be great again, if it moves away from the liberal model of public ownership of lands and public protection of the environment with restrictive regulations and rules and taxes on energy production combined with subsidies for 'favored' industries and campaign donors. It can be great again if it moves towards a more conservative model of private ownership of lands and private protection through impartial courts of the environment, with few restrictions and regulations and subsidies on energy production, encouraging the most efficient producers and users of energy in a free market.

Via Powerlineblog's post AMERICA’S VAST ENERGY RESOURCES I read this quote from the Institute for Energy Research. IER describes the problem (and the opportunity) bluntly:

Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.

As it turns out, many of the problems of energy scarcity and rising costs in the United States have been caused by the government itself. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that outlined many of the policy and regulatory constraints that impact domestic energy production. While the report focused on natural gas specifically, many of the laws and procedures also represent roadblocks to any form of safe and responsible energy production. The list of energy barriers included the following policies, all of which can limit access to U.S. resources, increase delays related to exploration and production, and/or increase costs of development:

(John from Powerlineblog)The list of statutes and other legal impediments that follows is three pages long. Only liberal politicians stand between the American people and development of our vast energy resources.

Big Government reports about a new human rights curriculum that was recently introduced to middle schools and high schools all across New York. So this is what your tax money goes to- this controversial curriculum that promotes leftists values was funded and designed by the taxpayer-supported Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and the teacher-dues supported New York State United Teachers union. These two groups came together and used precious education resources to create lesson plans for teachers that focus on corporate “greed,” landmine awareness, Chinese labor camps, and abolishing the death penalty.

The general agenda of this program is typical teacher-mumbo jumbo speak that seeks to hide a real leftist agenda of dumbing down students while they learn to submit to learned authority. It says that the goal of Human Rights Education, or HRE since it quite obviously needs an acronym to shorten it into an unrecognizable subversive element, is to:

Explore the development of protected human rights from a historical perspective as well as present-day declarations, conventions and covenants and the continuing evolution of human rights knowledge, the various challenges to the full enjoyment of human rights, and the factors that contribute to human rights abuse, and develop critical understanding of real life situations, questioning the barriers and structures that prevent the full enjoyment of rights and freedoms.

Yeah, I like human rights too- the kind of human rights that we are all born with, such as the right to live and not be aborted or killed, the right to live in freedom and make choices as we see fit on a range of issues from healthcare to what we eat, and the right to keep and own property free from government interference and seizure. I like human rights such as the right to speak freely without the government interfering in it, the right to carry a firearm able to deliver deadly force to those who would take my rights from me, the right to be secure in my possessions from snooping government agents, and other rights guaranteed to me by the US Constitution.

Browsing through the so-called 'Human Rights Education' curriculum, I get the sense that students who follow it and learn from it are not going to respect my human rights because they, in all their great wisdom, will feel that other people's human rights are not being protected or supported or fully embraced until I lose all my rights and am reduced to the state of an animal, hunted because of my conservative beliefs. The HRE education is hostile to the US Constitution, hostile to the Bill of Rights, and hostile to natural rights philosophy, instead embracing the Universal Declaration of Rights, embracing a strong government that will redistribute wealth, and embracing communist philosophy.

The fact that tax-payer supported institutions helped build this curriculum and the fact that schools are implementing it makes me sick and once again hammers home my points about education being a universe that is dominated by liberals and leftist views. Although I am a strong supporter of public education, if my students went to a school that implemented this sort of garbage I would pull them out and homeschool them rather than expose their minds to this sort of pollutant trash that is the Speak Truth to Power curriculum.

For those who are interested, check out Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling or The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.

UPDATE: Welcome readers from Doug Ross! Wander around my site and enjoy some of my blog entries- I'm sure you'll see I have a real niche in the blogosphere that you are sure to enjoy!

On my drive home from work today I listened to an interview of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (Democrat, Wisconsin) on the Ed Schultz Show (1310AM in Detroit). The good Congresswoman described what was happening in Wisconsin as an attack on the rights of workers that was beyond the pale of what is acceptable politically in America. She said that this was an attempt to silence workers at the bargaining table and make it so that they would be treated with disrespect at the bargaining table. Let's address both of these questions by asking two important questions.

What is a Right?
According to natural rights philosophy, on which our nation is based and built on, rights are claims that we as people have to certain things because those things have always existed and will always exist, no matter which state governs us. Even without states, in a state of nature, people would still have the right to live, the right to live in freedom, and the right to keep and own property. These rights could not be taken away by any government, although they could be violated, because government does not provide these rights or create them- rather, these rights are created by God and given to everyone since we are all made in God's image. Or in other words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Note that rights are clearly not privileges that are granted to certain groups in society by government. If that is the case, than these privileges could easily be taken away, in which case they were never a 'right' but rather a 'grant'. Clearly this is the situation in Wisconsin, where the government granted to certain groups in society certain grants of power which it now can no longer afford to give and so is taking those grants away. This situation is nothing at all similar to any sort of patriotic fight, but is instead just selfish and short-sighted angry grabbing after power that was once granted but now is being taken back.

Even when discussing rights, Congresswomen Baldwin had trouble because she knows on a deeper level that she doesn't know what she is talking about. She jerks back from any mention of where these 'worker' rights come from or how they are in reality 'rights' and not just privileges granted to politically favorable groups by government. She instead just repeats that they are rights and that these rights only belong to government-approved union workers and that everyone should stand with these favored groups and protect their rights. It is surprising that voters put her in office when she has clearly failed to study or think about these important issues, even though she went to college and law school where natural rights philosophy should have been taught. It appears all she learned from her law school was how to go about suing people and spin falsehoods.

Who does Labor sit down with at Bargaining Table?
Public labor unions like those in Wisconsin who would lose their special privileged rights that they had been given by Democratic governments of the past would be forced to sit down in the future with elected officials and taxpayers and determine what their future benefits would be. Congresswomen Baldwin and Ed Schultz both talked about the need for unions to negotiate with evil businesses who did not care about working conditions or workers pay because they were only after profits for their shareholders- but this is clearly not the case when public employee unions negotiate with elected officials and taxpayers, who are not driven by profits, who are responsible to voters if they mistreat workers, who would be liable to large lawsuits if they had poor working conditions, and who are put into office by citizens to represent citizens to hire those people to work for citizens. They are not 'hostile' any more than the average public would be 'hostile' to unions, and if the average voting public is 'hostile' to unions, that is an indication that unions have been 'hostile' to the interests of the average voting public.

When it comes down to it, when pushed and goaded by the fascist thug Ed Schultz, Congresswomen Baldwin fell back on class warfare and tried to argue that what had put her state in such financial trouble were not the generous salaries, pensions, and benefits that workers had bargained from the state over the last several years, but rather tax cuts to the rich or tax breaks to job creators that were given in the last month, and that her state should have just continued to pass the bill on to future generations and papered over the debt with trickery and shell games. After all, that's what she encourages the national government to do with her votes in Congress- she votes in favor of massive deficits that are passing huge debts and liabilities and obligations down on our children and grandchildren, and she does this all while pretending that she is not selfish and short-sighted and a tool to Big Labor.

For more information on natural rights philosophy, check out Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration.

Of course, no holiday in my family could be complete without long discussions on nerdy topics such as who really legally owned the One Ring of Power from the Lord of the Rings. Via The Volokh Conspiracy:

Property Acquisition in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

Literary critics have unaccountably ignored the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings was written for the purpose of explicating the different modes of property acquisition under the common law. Nonetheless, a close examination of the work demonstrates that nearly all the different methods of acquisition are described in detail, and their ethical implications examined. During the course of the story, a variety of characters acquire possession of the Ring of Power using every conceivable legal device.

I. Acquisition by Creation.
The Dark Lord Sauron forges the Ring of Power with the help of knowledge gained from the elven smiths of Eregion. His right to the Ring is thereby based on creation. The claim may be tenuous because it is not clear whether he made illegal use of the elves’ patented production processes (the suspicion of illegality is strengthened by the fact that Sauron made every effort to keep the elves from finding out what he was doing).

II. Acquisition by Conquest.
The Last Alliance of Elves and Men defeats Sauron in battle. The human King Isildur cuts the Ring off of Sauron’s finger (along with the finger itself), thereby acquiring it by right of conquest. Even assuming that the conquest was legitimate, it is not clear whether the law would support an exclusive claim of ownership by Isildur, without any rights simultaneously vesting in the elves (who played an equal role in winning the battle).

III. Acquisition by Find.
On his way home from the war, Isildur is ambushed and killed by orcs. The Ring is lost. Centuries later, it is accidentally found by the hobbit Deagol and his brother Smeagol (AKA Gollum). Deagol claims a property right based on his status as finder.

IV. Acquisition by Adverse Possession.
Gollum kills Deagol and takes possession of the Ring, which he retains for many years. Over time, he comes to think of himself as the real finder of the Ring, and he is strengthened in this opinion by the passage of an enormous length of time. Because Gollum’s possession of the Ring is open and notorious, under a claim of right, and for an extremely lengthy duration far beyond the statutory time period, he may have a claim based on adverse possession. However, Gollum’s claim is defective because a claim of adverse possession cannot succeed if it resulted from a criminal act by the claimant. In addition, adverse possession cannot normally establish title to personal as opposed to real property.

V. Acquisition by Agreement.
Gollum loses the Ring to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in a riddle contest in which the Ring was a mutually agreed stake.

VI. Acquisition by Gift.
Bilbo gives the Ring to his nephew Frodo Baggins. His intention to give Frodo the ring is clear (though he waivers initially), and he hands the ring over in person, thereby effecting proper delivery.

VII. Temporary Acquisition by Necessity.
While Frodo lies unconscious, his servant Sam Gamgee temporarily takes possession of the Ring in order to save both of their lives from imminent danger.

VIII. Attempted Reacquisition by Self-help.
After Frodo regains the Ring from Sam, he plans to destroy it by throwing it into the fires of Mt. Doom. Both Sauron (who believes that he is the rightful owner) and Gollum (ditto) attempt to get the Ring back before Frodo can destroy it. They both resort to illegal self-help remedies rather than bringing the appropriate common law action and a preliminary injunction against destruction of the Ring before the case can be heard. Gollum succeeds in regaining the Ring from Frodo, but falls into the fire, destroying both the Ring and himself.

Moral of the Story
Much trouble could have been avoided if only the parties to this extended property dispute had properly followed the law of acquisition

Based on my own readings of property law and some guesses on other laws, I would rule that the One Ring of Power belongs to the elven smiths of nation of Eregion, who used patented processes to create the One Ring, and thereafter had an employee (Sauren) use those processes on his own to create in secret his own product. It is unclear who legally inherited the property and rights of the nation of Eregion when it was destroyed, but its survivors and descendants went to Rivendell, Blue Havens, and Lothlórien, who are ruled by Elrond, Círdan, and Galadriel, and so it is my ruling that the One Ring properly and legally belonged to one of those three elves. The claim on the One Ring was never abandoned by them- after learning of its whereabouts, they always sought to recover it. And all subsequent actions thereafter were merely the trading of stolen property.

Yet two of those three had an opportunity to reclaim the ring- indeed, it was offered to them and they turned it down and stated that the ring was indeed Frodo's. Based on this reasoning, I would rule that Frodo did indeed have legal ownership of the ring after that until its destruction. So in reality, the Lord of the Rings was simply a story of a disgruntled employee who took company property and refused to give it back until said property was destroyed.

For more information on the history of the One Ring, see The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition, The Annotated Hobbit, and The Silmarillion.

James Shikwati writes about Intellectual Property Rights "...The West have always sought systematic knowledge that can be replicated and refer to that knowledge as 'science'. It is for this reason that they have moved from focusing on natural resources such as 'land' to resources such as transistors, radios, fiber optic cables from sand. Most third world countries on the other hand have focused only on the 'visible wealth' and 'tribal organization'. This structure instead of fostering wealth, promotes war over resources.The list of inventions and innovations rarely indicates participation from Africa, falsely creating an impression that Africans are not creative and innovative. On the contrary however, long before the colonialist came to Africa, the African people had started ventures in medicine, iron smelting, arts, music, house building, and bead making and curving. The power of innovation was also exhibited in the way they preserved fire for later use, stored foodstuffs and the very fact that they could light a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
However the lack of systematic recording and beyond a collective level of property right recognition(PDF), robbed many innovators in Africa the ability to have their ideas improved upon and made economically viable. More so, the lack of a property rights regime that could measure to the countries that later colonized Africa made it easier for both physical and intellectual property to be seized by the occupying powers..."

Liberals, including those who have seized control of the modern-day Democratic Party, often talk fondly about China and its economic model. But what they fail to recognize about the economic model employed by China is  that it is inherently unsustainable because of its current methods of energy generation. Oh, I know many watermelons (people who pretend to care about the environment just to advance their statist communist desires) like to talk about China's wind power, nuclear power, solar power, or hydro-electric power, but in reality, the majority of China's energy production comes from coal.

Energy production from coal production does not have to be environmentally damaging or harmful to those who work in the industry. In nations like the United States, where there are clear property rights and freedom of labor, workers are treated better, the environment is better protected, and businesses are free to produce as much coal safely as possible in order to maximize profits. For example, there are only about 30 people killed per year in coal mining in the United States, and the United States has embraced clean coal technology which does a much better job of controlling emissions. The United States has made the difficult transition from energy generation to sustainable energy generation, and only needs to continue and expand its efforts in oil drilling, coal mining, and nuclear technology in order to become the cleanest and safest energy producer in the world.

Sadly, environmentalists in America have a different agenda. In their noble desire to make the world a better place, they are putting in place policies in America which force it and other nations to obtain energy from nations around the world that are producing energy in destructive, deadly ways. Rather than encouraging the expansion of safe, natural, and efficient methods of energy generation such as oil, coal, and nuclear, they are forcing America and nations that could be buying energy from America to turn to nations like China for energy generation and resources. And the end result of these environmentalists policies is a world that is less safe, less secure, and were more people die.

China currently generates around two thirds of its electricity from coal-fired power stations, and is the process of dramatically expanding its coal-fired capacity in recent years with the introduction of 562 new coal-fired plants- in fact, an average of two new plants were being opened every week. China uses this coal-production to satisfy its own energy needs and also export energy to other nations.

To sustain it economic growth and growing energy needs through coal power, China is paying a heavy price. Thousands of people die every year in coal pits, premature deaths due to indoor air pollution is at 420,000 per year, deaths due to outdoor air pollution is estimated at around 300,000 deaths per year, and rural populations in particular are suffering from a range of diseases related to coal production, including arsenic poisoning, skeletal fluorosis (over 10 million people afflicted in China), esophageal and lung cancers, and selenium poisoning. A report by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese government found that about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year from air pollution.

China's economic model, which people like the head of the SEIU say should be the future of the United States, is unsustainable and killing its own people. It's model emphasizes state control of people and businesses and the de-humanizing of both. It is a model which stands in marked contrast to the economic model of the historical United States, a model which emphasizes little state control, more liberty given to people to make free economic choices, and strong individual and business property rights, and is a model that embraces the humanity of life. We can see the difference in the two models when we look at China's coal mining industry and electric power generation, and see the difference in the contrasting visions.

Elections have consequences- in the coming elections for US President, Senator, Representative, or even at the local level, ask yourself whether the candidate you support has a vision of the future that pushes for more state control over people's lives or less state control. Those who push for more state control will boast of the economic growth in nations like China- while ignoring the enormous cost in terms of human life and damage to the environment. Those who push for less state control over people's lives will point to the United States, which in contrast to those with state control have much better records on life, liberty, and wealth creation- although not perfect, because man is not perfect.

And for readers of my blog around the world, this applies to you as well- although China's economy is growing, there is a real cost to humanity for their growth, and in the end its statist economy will collapse like the Soviet Union's did. Only economic models that give more power to people and more freedom to individuals and more rights to businesses and corporations and individuals are successful in creating wealth in a sustainable manner while protecting life and liberty. You have a real choice to make in your nation too- state control for short term unequally distributed wealth, or less state control for longer term more equal distribution of life, liberty, and property.

For those who are interested in reading more about China and its coal production methods and coal-powered economy, I suggest you check out an article called China’s Dark Power.

Surprisingly, Memorandum hasn't picked up this story and made it the number one story out there, but it should, because it demonstrates everything wrong with liberals and Democrats and their judicial philosophy. The story comes from Time and CNN and is called The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves:

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

If you are like me, you're stunned and shocked and angry from what you just read. My reaction was "you have got to be freaking kidding me!"

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand.

If only Pineda-Moerno were a terrorist than I am sure the court would have found something wrong with federal agents sneaking onto his property to put a tracking device on his property.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

When one reads the decision from the Ninth Circuit, one has to wonder just what the heck they were thinking, and what liberals in general are thinking. They blather about freedoms and rights, but when it comes down to it, these are not conservative judges agreeing with the government's claim that it can go on to your property and bug your car without a warrant- they are liberals. Liberal judges, appointed by Democrats, using 'empathy' and 'diversity' as guidelines, are fighting for the government to control your freedoms of speech ('fairness' on the radio or 'net neutrality' on the internet), these liberal judges are fighting to take away your right to guns (liberal dissents on recent gun cases), and these liberal judges are now chipping away at your Fourth Amendment rights.

The Ninth Circuit court is the court most closely controlled by Democrats and liberals, and thus is a great indicator of the type of society and laws that they'd put in place on us if they were in charge or get any more power.

The DC Circuit court has 11 judges on it, and 6 were appointed by Republicans, 3 by Democrats, and 2 empty spots. Since it is so controlled by Republicans and conservatives, it is a good indicator of the type of society and laws that they'd put in place were they in charge of us or given more power.

The thing is, it is up to you to decide what type of court we get. The way that our federal court system works is that federal judges are appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. Democrats always nominate liberal judges, while Republicans nominate both liberal and conservative judges (they pick liberal judges to try to be balanced and fair in a mistaken belief that Democrats will return the favor once they're in power). If you're looking for someone to blame for this decision, the appropriate person to blame is Democrat Presidents who appointed them and Democrat Senators who confirmed them, and since Democrats continue to support them, you pretty much can blame any Democrat anywhere on the ticket.

Today around the nation there were rally's held to oppose the Democrat's healthcare plan, and I attended the one in Birmingham, home of Democrat Gary Peter's. It was a great turn out, and there were quite a few notable people there- Oakland County Executive L Brooks Patterson, County Commissioner David W. Potts, Michigan Governor-hopeful Michael Bouchard, and even theplogprof. It was a good time- saying hello to friends, educating one another about various issues, and sending a message to politicians that the people are opposed to this Obamacare proposal.

There were also supporters of the healthcare plan at the rally, and like the Greeks of old or our revolutionary forefathers, I engaged these people in debate, and the crowd circled us and listened to us as we each advanced our aguments. And every time, through every twist and turn of logic that these healthcare supporters took me, I won the debate by relying on facts, statistics, history, and the core principles of our nation. And every time I won the debate, these liberals would give me the finger or yell 'f-you' at me, and I would simply say that I am trying to fight tyranny and stand up for life, liberty, and property.

My favorite debate was with a guy from England, who, over a course of several minutes, went through all of the talking points of liberals- Bush bankrupted America, spent all our money on the war, Obama needs to put our nation more in debt to dig us out of Bush's jobless recovery, etc. I really enjoyed how proud he was of having not read the bill (HR 3200)- when I started quoting from it, he started yelling that that isn't the bill he supports. I wondered what bill he does support, and he told me that one that would create a heaven on Earth, as if man could create such a thing. After a while it grew tiring to talk to this guy though- his world was a maze of conspiracies and evil capitalists- and when cornered, he quickly would turn to character-assassination- he called me a liar, another guy a stooge, another guy unintelligent, etc. Typical rules for radicals- if you can't win the argument, attack the person.

This was usually the way I won the intellectual arguments- I found it much easier to win the ethical arguments. One Obama supporter (she had an Obama hat on) told me that it wasn't personal- that all she was trying to do was make me pay for insuring more poor people and provide better coverage for those who were in need in our nation. I told her that that was personal- my property was not hers to distribute to those who she favored. Her reply was that the government already does it- she mocked me by gloating about all of the liberal projects that my tax money already funds, and mocked me by saying that now that the Democrats were the majority, they were free to take my money and redistribute it for whatever they wished. When I told her that she was proud of tyranny and gloating about taking away my liberty and property, she said "yes, we can" and turned away from the debate, as if tyranny were something to be proud of.

Recently I bought a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag, and I brought that to the rally to wave. One lady, who was holding up a 10 foot long banner supporting healthcare (paid for by a special interest group- it had the logo on the back corner), asked me what the flag meant. I told her that my position on this issue as simple- I don't want government to get in my business, to tax me any more, and to let me live my life in freedom and liberty. She scoffed at that- she said it wasn't really a free world because of all the capitalists and private companies that ran the world, and that the only way we can truly be free is if the government runs everything. I think Stalin and Mao made those same arguments.

The highlight of the afternoon came as I was engaged by a supporter of the single-payer system (that's what her sign said), and told me that my view didn't matter at all, and that I should just pay for the increased healthcare and be happy about it. I told her that I was a person who had rights, and she laughed at me, and several of her friends came and told me that I was in the minority now. I started to grow angry, so I began to yell louder and louder that I was a person, that I was endowed by God with rights that no one could take away, and that those rights were life, liberty, and property. These Obamacare supportes laughed at me, and said that I was in the minority, and I began to yell louder and louder yet- the rights were God-given and include my right to live free and to keep and earn property. Liberals may laugh about these things, but I still believe in the Declaration of Independence and the ideas it espouses- revolutionary ideas that say to fight tyranny such as this proposal.

Don't get me wrong- the overwhelming number of people at this healthcare rally were patriots who were waving flags asking to be treated fairly, asking to not pay for government programs with debt, suggesting positive solutions like tort reform or increased competition, and voicing concerns about the constitutionality of the Obamacare program. They were grandmothers and young children, teachers and car workers, and when spoken to, they were good people who frequently had a good grasp of history and economics. They understand that this healthcare proposal is bad, and they were against it, and the only thing that they are hoping that will change is that they want our leaders, our Representatives and Senators, to hear them and their concerns.

UPDATE I: theblogprof has some great pictures from the event up as well, click here to see his post. I'm visable in one of the pictures.

UPDATE II: Welcome readers from Instapundit and Moonbattery!

UPDATE III: Welcome readers from American Power!

There are certain ideas, certain beliefs, that should be the basis of every political conversation that you have, that mark your every political speech. These ideas came to us from our ancestors, who fought the most powerful nation in the world and through the grace of God won, winning more land, richer land, than any nation has ever won before or since. And it was the generations before us who toiled on this land, expanding it, enriching it, all while following the ideas of our founders.

We must never forget that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God with rights which can not be taken away, and that some of these rights- the most important ones perhaps- are the right to live, the right to live in freedom, and the right to keep and own property.

These rights existed before government, and government has no moral claim on them- only a tyrannical government can ask you to kill your unborn baby or not seek medical care when you are old, only a despotic government will take away your personal responsibility and ability to make choices, and only a bad government will pretend that it is entitled to your property.

It is very important that we remember these things, because if we stray from our founding beliefs, than our prosperity and safety will disappear. As our nation does stray into these bitter times, many our once again remembering how bold, how controversial, how radical our founding fathers were, believing those ideals so enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. It is in our hearts and souls that we know these words were correct when spoken, and we know that government is put among men only to protect life, liberty, and property, and not to provide homes, healthcare, education, welfare, or consumer goods.

Our ancestors established America and gave it to us, so that their descendants could enjoy the dream that they had won. They did not really want us adding or subtracting to the meaning and intent of their dreams- they wanted us to stick closely to the dream, the freedom, the liberty, the protection that they had won with the grace of God.

This is still a great nation, and we can keep in great, but only if we keep the Declaration of Independence in our hearts and speak it often. When in public meetings or when making a public comment, try to work in the words "all men are created equal," or "right to life, liberty, and property," or "government's purpose is to secure these rights". There is no need to re-invent the wheel- there is only the need to re-remember our Founding.

These comments were inspired by The Bible, Deuteronomy 4.

Over dinner tonight the discussion turned to politics, particularly health care. I made the bold statement of saying that I opposed Obama's health care plan, and several people at our little dinner party started to attack me. "Don't you care about people?" they asked. "Do you suggest doing nothing?" they wondered. "Bush did whatever he wanted when he was President, now it's our turn," they justified.

My argument was simple, although shocking and revolutionary. I think that government should work hardest on protecting very important things, the most important of which are people's ability to live (and live as long as they can), the ability to choose for themselves, and the idea of keeping and earning stuff. And that above all, above providing health care or fighting global warming or running automobile companies, government should not attack these important things and try to take them away. And Obama's health care plan does this.

Obama's health care plan attacks life, by subsidizing abortion clinics at birth, by denying care and treatment (through rationing and bureaucratic delays) during life, and by denying care and treatment (through 'consoling and discussion') at the twilight of life.

Obama's heath care plan attacks choice, by replacing the patient-doctor relationship with one of patient-bureaucrat-doctor, where if you choose a procedure or drug, a government employee can tell you no. It removes responsibility to work hard and insure your own self, and gives up your freedom and liberty to government run and regulated faceless bureaucrats.

Obama's health care plan attacks property, because in order to pay for it, he needs to raise money. That money is either borrowed, which lessens the worth of all other money in the system, including mine, or the money is raised, by taking it from me. I worked for whatever money I earn- if the government did not exist, I would still work for whatever money I earn and it would be mine- therefor the government is not the creator of money nor the lawful taker of it. Obama's heath care plan will take my property in the form of higher taxes, fees, or borrowed funds.

My argument to my friends was simple- that all men are created equal, that we all have certain rights, that some of the most important of these rights is life, liberty, and property, and that the purpose of government is to protect these rights. And that whenever government becomes destructive to these rights by taking them away, that government is a tyranny, and all good patriots must oppose it with all their manly strength.

My friends, sadly, did not agree with my arguments- they sided with King George instead.

As a good patriot, today I am celebrating the 4th of July like every American should- displaying my patriotism with flags and fireworks, improving my property by mowing my lawn and trimming the bushes, enhancing the quality of my life by eating great food and spending time with my family, and remembering my liberty by re-reading our founding documents and doing what I want free from government control. It doesn't matter to me what the elites who increasingly rule over me think- I'm going to eat a nice juicy hamburger made with real butter and cheese in it, sit on a chair and watch a ball game for a bit, and maybe even smoke a cigar. The fireworks I'll light off will be loud and bright and I'm not entirely sure if they are legal, if one of my kids gets a skinned knee from playing a game of touch football I'll take care of it, and we'll drive to go see our parents in our biggest SUV. I'm going to live the dream of a free man on this 4th of July and savor in the freedoms that are under continual assault by elites from the beginning of time until today.

If you haven't done so already, make sure you take a minute of your time today to reflect and read the Declaration of Independence, and don't feel silly about reading it before the BBQ or as the bedtime story for your kids tonight.

In particular, read and think about the first part of it:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

Those lines mean something, to me, to conservatives, to Republicans, and to America, and we should always remember how revolutionary those ideas are, how incredible it is to actually believe them, and how much of a leap of faith you must make to follow them. You really need to BELIEVE in those ideas- not just say them and not just work to put policies in place to govern our nation, but believe in your heart of hearts in those words that lay out truth of the human condition and the nature of government.

Those ideas needed to be fought for back in 1776, and our Founding Fathers did so in the Revolutionary War- but the ideas in the Declaration of Independence still need to be fought for today and every day, because it is the nature of tyranny to slowly strip away life, liberty, and property and to enlarge the government so that it unaccountable and tyrannical. Today, we have watched our liberties been rationalized away by our leaders, our legislators spend us into servitude and seize our own property to do so, our courts regularly mock the Constitution and believe it to be a dead thing, and especially lately, unimaginable tyranny and government control of our day-to-day lives.

You and I will always been free and independent- no government can take that away from us- but every day, our free and independent condition is lessened- with each new dollar taken from us, with each new exception to our rights made, with each life lessened, and with each regulation passed. As a nation, we are dishonoring our Founding Fathers and what they fought for and letting down our children, who will not get to grow up in a nation based on life, liberty, and property, but instead will be raised in increasing tyranny and rule of man.

So on this Independence Day, rededicate yourself to our founding ideas, enjoy your life, liberty, and property, and be sure that you spend some time reading the Founding Documents to your friends, family, and children. Happy Independence Day 2011!

As a good patriot, today I am celebrating the 4th of July like every American should- displaying my patriotism with flags and fireworks, improving my property by mowing my lawn and trimming the bushes, enhancing the quality of my life by eating great food and spending time with my family, and remembering my liberty by re-reading our founding documents. If you haven't done so already, make sure you take a minute of your time today to reflect and read the Declaration of Independence, and don't feel silly about reading it before the BBQ or as the bedtime story for your kids tonight.

In particular, read and think about the first part of it:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

Those lines mean something, to me, to conservatives, to Republicans, and to America, and we should always remember how revolutionary those ideas are, how incredible it is to actually believe them, and how much of a leap of faith you must make to follow them. You really need to BELIEVE in those ideas- not just say them and not just work to put policies in place to govern our nation, but believe in your heart of hearts in those words that lay out truth of the human condition and the nature of government.

Those ideas needed to be fought for back in 1776, and our Founding Fathers did so in the Revolutionary War- but the ideas in the Declaration of Independence still need to be fought for today and every day, because it is the nature of tyranny to slowly strip away life, liberty, and property and to enlarge the government so that it unaccountable and tyrannical. Today, we have watched our liberties been rationalized away by our leaders, our legislators spend us into servitude and seize our own property to do so, our courts regularly mock the Constitution and believe it to be a dead thing, and especially lately, unimaginable tyranny and government control of our day-to-day lives.

You and I will always been free and independent- no government can take that away from us- but every day, our free and independent condition is lessened- with each new dollar taken from us, with each new exception to our rights made, with each life lessened, and with each regulation passed. As a nation, we are dishonoring our Founding Fathers and what they fought for and letting down our children, who will not get to grow up in a nation based on life, liberty, and property, but instead will be raised in increasing tyranny and rule of man.

So on this Independence Day, rededicate yourself to our founding ideas, enjoy your life, liberty, and property, and be sure that you spend some time reading the Founding Documents to your friends, family, and children. Happy Independence Day 2010!

In a recent interview with ABC, President Barack Obama was talking about the fee that Bank of America believes is now necessary to charge customers because of recent changes to bank card fees imposed by Democrats in the Dodd-Frank bill':

“This is exactly why we need this Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that we set up that is ready to go," he said. "... (petty government bureaucrats) can stop (the fees being charged by private banks) because if (petty government bureaucrats) say to the banks, ‘You don't have some inherent right just to – you know, get a certain amount of profit. If your customers – are being mistreated. That you have to treat them fairly and transparently.”

I made some changes- I removed the word 'you' that Obama used and replaced it with what I thought he meant, and I removed the word 'it' and replaced it with what the 'it' was.

As you can see from this statement, the President does not believe that privately owned and operated companies in the United States have an inherent right to create wealth. He believes that wealth did not exist before the government was around and does not exist after government is not around- if Obama and a bunch of hard workers landed on a deserted island that was in a state of nature, he would believe that he would be morally correct to take the fruits of the labor of others since they have no inherent right to what their own labor produces. Obama thinks that government has the right to take from others, whether they created that wealth through their own actions or not, because he thinks that wealth and prosperity is created and sustained by government policies, even though all experience hath shown that this is incorrect.

America was founded on different ideals- our nation was founded on the idea that property existed before the government and will continue to exist after government, and that even in a state of nature with no government, people do have an inherent fundamental natural right to the property that they create through their actions. If a bank charges a fee and gets a profit from this, they have every right to keep that profit, as it is their inherent natural right to create and keep property in our nation, free from government intervention and threats of confiscation. Only in tyrannical governments are the rights of life, liberty, and property not protected, and tyrannical governments then are those which have less happy lives, less free people, and are always considerably poorer in property than those nations which have embraced natural rights philosophy like our founding fathers did.

As we all know, in order to support yourself through reason and stay alive in a society, you must be able to own and use the product of your labor- you must be able to create wealth and keep that wealth in order to live and live free. If the tools of your survival and the products of your hard work are subject to random confiscation by the Obama administration, then your life also becomes subject to possible random destruction- or to put it another way, the tyrannical nature of the Obama administration to target businesses as 'enemies' is making our nation more poor and bit by bit making your life more miserable and less rich in goods and happiness and freedom.

Obama is increasingly by his own statements demonstrating his unfitness for the office of President of the United States of America; 2012 can't come fast enough to get rid of this guy.

"Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires… As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed... …The absolute rights of all free men, in or out of Civil society, are principally personal security, personal liberty and private property… The Legislature has no right to absolute arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people.” James Madison

What our founding fathers knew is that in order for a free society to form and prosper, one based on treating everyone equally and treating each other decently, we would need to tolerate and support different factions of people fighting one another. These factions, whether they be political parties, interest groups, or other groups in society, are free to argue about the nature of government and government's role as much as they want, as long as they respect people's right to life, liberty, and property, since the government never has any power over these. But all other partisanship is okay, and indeed, even to be encouraged.

While some in our government, mainly Obama and the Democrats, argue that partisanship is bad and that we need to rely on their vision of selfless disinterested fighting for the people, what they really mean is that they want people to give up their struggle for their life, liberty, and property and to roll over and give in to the tyrannical vision the Democrats would subject on the people if they were not continually blocked and opposed by the most bitterly partisan of Republicans.

The White House is trying to end 'partisanship', its latest ploy being a health-care summit on Thursday. The President claims that this will restore everything to normal again, and we'll have two parties talking things out, bipartisanship flowering, order restored.

This is a vision of tyranny, and a romantic vision at that- never in our history has there been anything like this, except when one party dominated, and that was always to detriment of the nation. Bipartisanship and order restored sounds to me like a rubber stamping of skyrocketing debt and increased statist control of our lives, and in no way should that be supported.

And besides, Obama doesn't want these, any more than my Congressman, Gary Peters, wants bipartisanship, conversation, communication, openness, or any of the other stuff that they were elected to do. Obama wants to use this chance to browbeat Republicans, as he understands bipartisanship to mean the end of all opposition to his rule. Gary Peters used his townhall to only meet with imported healthcare supporters and has continually locked out any of his constituents from meeting with him, all while claiming to be open and accessible.

Partisanship is good, as long as it opposes tyranny and fights tooth and nail for life, liberty, and property rights for all.

Tutu Agyare states in The Banker:

“We advise a number of different corporations from different sectors from telecoms to mining companies. Africa is being rediscovered, if you like. Capital is flowing back into Africa; infrastructure is being built in Africa.” He puts this welcome trend down to a number of factors, singling out two for special mention. “Corporate governance in Africa, regardless of what you read in the newspapers, is growing significantly. Security of property rights is also improving rapidly, I believe, becoming more transparent and being better enforced on the continent. And there’s a lesson from history here, Agyare believes. “If you look back to Britain’s Industrial Revolution, what you observe is the abundance of cheap minerals from Africa, an excellent security of property rights and a legal system that worked. Those factors enabled private investors and institutions to grow and to prosper. And I see that happening now in Africa. Like many Africa observers, Agyare is fascinated by the new China-Africa alliance that has developed over the last year or two. “The Chinese are building new infrastructure at cost, something that has not been done in Africa for years, and although there are risks attached to the relationship in termsof neo-colonialism, the absence of skills transfers and cheap Chinese goods flooding the continent, that new infrastructure will undoubtedly allow African companies to flourish.”

via Africaincorp

David Stahle, a geoscientist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,  has just published a new study which used tree rings to add many hundreds of years to the region's climate record and has discovered that the Mayan civilization faced a severe drought for 25 years around the year 900 and accompanied the end of a flourishing era of Mayan city-states. This intense and prolonged drought was worse than anything ever seen in modern meteorological records, but the key question is, was this drought caused by human activity such as industrialization and the driving of SUV's?

"Clearly the drought in 1400 was not caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere because it precedes the industrial revolution," Stahle said. "But something caused it that stimulated very unusual climate conditions elsewhere in the world. This may allow us to determine the dynamics of drought-forcing over Mexico."

Although it may clear to this researcher that the industrial revolution is not behind the draught that led to the fall of the Mayan civilization, I am sure there are many other scientists who remain convinced that human activity controls climate patterns and that the best way to have regular and positive climate patterns is then to control humans. To be honest, I'm surprised that this tree ring data wasn't manipulated like other tree ring data to demonstrate global warming and therefore create a 'consensus' in favor of environmentalfasism.

Other findings from the study are that

...one of the most severe periods of drought occurred between 897 and 922, the researchers reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, just as the Terminal Classic period (of the Mayans) came to an end. Another 19-year drought around 1150 coincided with the fall of the Toltec state, which was the dominant civilization of central Mexico at the time. The most severe drought of the last 1,000 years, which lasted from 1378 to 1404, actually occurred though during a period of rapid Aztec expansion (possibly due to the weakness of other states?). (Also) a drought from 1514 to 1539 led up to and continued through the arrival of Cortez and the Spanish conquest. It's possible, the researchers speculate, that the climate, along with epidemic disease, led to the rapid decline of Aztec Mexico as the Colonial period began.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the climate of the entire globe is an incredibly complicated issue that is beyond the understanding or computer modeling of humans today. That isn't to say that we should not be environmentally friendly- on the contrary, the best way to protect the environment is to continue to build stronger and stronger private property rights within society and vigorously oppose efforts by governments to violate private property rights and thereby increase the tragedy of the commons. But this is to say that the Mayan civilization was clearly not destroyed by man made global warming.

In a paper about Somalia, Tatiana Nenova writes that "...the private sector has demonstrated its much-vaunted capability to make do. To cope with the absence of the rule of law, private enterprises have been using foreign jurisdictions or institutions to help with some tasks, operating within networks of trust to strengthen property rights, and simplifying transactions until they require neither. Somalia’s private sector experience suggests that it may be easier than is commonly thought for basic systems of finance and some infrastructure services to function where government is extremely weak or absent..." A discussion analysing this assertion had a number of conclusions in their introductory remarks Ian Bannon and Tim Harford stated that "...Entrepreneurs in Somalia have used three tactics to operate in an institutional vacuum. First, they have “imported institutions,” for example by using banking systems in nearby countries. Second, they have used clans and other local networks of trust to help with contract enforcement, payment and transmission of funds. Third, they have simplified transactions to a point where other tactics are not needed. How can these tactics be reinforced or defended? Are there others that can be supported? There are inherent limits to what the private sector can achieve without the support of a capable state to enforce property rights and provide basic public goods. But there is also a risk that a failed state will be replaced by a predatory one. How can fledgling states be encouraged to support, rather than predate on, entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs often need to bridge religious, ethnic or tribal boundaries to get things done. Can entrepreneurship be harnessed for peace and reconciliation?..."
Via PSD Blog