The Frugal Libertarian

Just in case anyone is still under the impression that traffic cops are on the roads to promote safety, here is some more evidence that most tickets are just to generate revenue.  I guess New York City is not even trying to pretend tickets are for safety.

This is almost as bad as red light cameras.  Municipalities like to cite safety cocerns to justify cameras even though study after study has shown that longer yellow lights reduce red light violations and accidents.  I would guess that most people do not run red lights on purpose.  They just get caught in no-man’s land where stopping is not safe but either is going through.

My hometown put up cameras at the intersection up the street from my house.  I have never seen an accident at this intersection, but I have seen a couple close calls for pedestrians.   If you are a pedestrian you have to risk your life to cross because there is no crosswalk signals and the lights are set up so that there is always traffic going. (I have been darting across this intersection for years while out for a run.  I never realized how dangerous it was until I tried crossing with my baby girl in her stroller)  So, if they were really worried about safety maybe they would spend the money on some crosswalks instead of cameras.  But wait, crosswalks do not generate revenue.

At least New York City is being honest about their intentions.  I guess I can respect that.

The are many serious problems in the world, but none are as important as keeping your lawn lush and green.  At least if you live in Garden Grove, California.  This city is pondering the all important question of whether or not they should now allow residents to install artificial grass to replace their natural grass so that they can maintain beautiful green lawns without watering them.  If you let your lawn turn brown you are breaking a city ordinance.  If you install artificial grass you are breaking a city ordinance.  There is also a state order to conserve water which means you cannot water your lawn.  What is a homeowner to do?

Beyond the obvious violation of property rights (see a previous post), this is probably the dumbest thing I have read about in a while.  I actually felt my self becoming dumber as I read it.  It is illegal to have brown grass?  And, fake, $10,000, petroleum based turf is the answer?  I don’t think I want to live in a world where we dig up real grass and install fake grass just so the neighbors will be impressed.

I have aways thought watering your lawn was a big waste of money.  Grass turns brown when it gets hot and dry.  It  just what happens.  Why try to stop it?  When it starts getting cold the leaves on the trees turn brown and fall off.  I guess if I was a good neighbor I would pick up the leaves, paint them green, climb a ladder, and glue them all back on the tree.

Good thing I don’t live in Garden Grove.

The newest product from Ore-Ida has to be one of the silliest items in the frozen food section.  The new Steam-n-Mash Potatoes cost $3.83 at my Hy-vee.  What do you get for your money?  You get 24 oz of frozen pre-peeled, pre-cut potatoes.  It still takes 10 minutes to cook them in the microwave and you still have add milk, butter, and then mash them.

For about a dollar you could make the same amount of mashed potatoes using the regular unpeeled variety from your produce section.  But, what about the convenience, isn’t that worth the extra $2.83!  No way!  Paying an extra couple of bucks for every meal just for the sake of convenience could really add up over the course of a year.

Making mashed potatoes the old fashion way would really only add another 15 minutes to the process.  It might take five minutes for peeling and 10 extra minutes to boil.  If you can’t find an extra 15 minutes most evenings than your family may need to rethink some priorities.  Plus, when you really are strapped for time there is always instant mashed potatoes, which are pretty cheap.  I don’t think your children will need therapy because you fed them instant, but if they do, you can always use the money you saved to pay for it.

Throw out the potato peels, not your money.

Property rights are essential to the ideas of liberty.  Murray Rothbard explains this in The Ethics of Liberty.

“[t]he concept of “rights” only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard… for our discussion, human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of “public policy” or the “public good”.

He goes on to explain:

In short, a person does not have a “right to freedom of speech”; what he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. He does not have a “right to freedom of the press”; what he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away to those who are willing to accept it). Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. There is no extra “right of free speech” or free press beyond the property rights that a person may have in any given case.

So in a country where we say we value human rights, do we have any respect for property rights?

Eminent domain has received a lot of attention over the last couple of years especially since the Supreme Court ruled that eminent domain could be used to take land for private use if it serves public interest. (Kelo v. City of New London).  Fortunately, many of us will never be victims of eminent domain.  Most of us, however, are victims of city codes and city code enforcers.

Ian “Freeman” Bernard,  the host of a syndicated, libertarian radio talk show Free Talk Live was recently given a 3 day jail sentence (plus another 90 days for contempt of court) for having a couch that is used for birdwatching in his yard.  He was refusing to move the couch.  I have received citations for having my trash cans sitting on the side of my house instead of behind my house.  I refused to comply, but luckily no one forced the issue.  My brother recently received a warning from his city for having weeds higher than 18 inches tall in his fenced in garden.  He cut them.  (I would have gone out there every week with a ruler and cut them to 17 inches, but that is just my rebellious nature.)  These are all examples of how local governments ignore our property rights.  Why should I not be free to do whatever I like on my property if I am not harming someone elses property?

You may be asking yourself, “Well how are we to prevent blight or unsafe conditions without codes?”  Or you may thinking ” Aren’t you violating my property rights if what you are doing on your property is lowering my property value?”

First I will address blight.  Often blight is in the eye of the beholder.  A couch sitting in a front yard may look absurd to one person and absolutely charming to another.  If we lived in a more voluntary society, where the heavy hand of a tyrannical government could not be used to enforce rules only based on a few peoples’ taste, how  would that society deal with disputes of this nature.  I think one of two things would occur.  The person that thought the couch was absurd would have to address the issue directly with the owner of the couch or they would simply have to get over it.  Without the government doing their dirty work, I believe most people would just get over it.  Others would address it with the owner and if a dispute could not be settle among themselves they could take it to a private arbitrator. 

Voluntary membership in neighborhood association would also help safeguard you from having to live next to a hot pink house with lime green trim.  Even if joining was voluntary, I think it is likely most would join so that they would have a reasonable avenue to settle disputes and to prevent disputes.

As far as safety goes, there is no real reason for the government to have such codes in the first place.  In a more voluntary society insurance companies and banks would most likely have their own safety guidelines.  It is unlikely that they would voluntarily enter into a contract with a homeowner who’s electrical work was a fire waiting to happen.  If the homeowner owned their home outright and did not think he needed insurance than I guess he would be free to live in a death trap at his own peril.

The property value argument just doesn’t hold any water to me.  The are hundreds of things that others could do around you that could affect your property value.  There could be bad teachers at bad public schools (I know bad public schools is kind of redundant), a neighbor could be selling cheap so get out from under a bad mortgage, a neighbor could get foreclosed on, or a neighbor could just have a nicer house for the same price at the same time you are trying to sell yours.  None of these neighbors would be “violating” your property rights with these actions, so how could you say they were violating your rights by having a couch in their front yard.  Having your property value driven down by conditions beyond your control is just a risk of being a property owner.  None the less, for those that still worry about the value of their property being driven down in the absence of codes, I believe that what I described above would take care of most of this problem.

Arbitrary codes are not the only way that property rights are undermined.  Property taxes are completely antithetical to the idea of private ownership of property.  If a you must pay a tax in order to keep your property are you really the owner or is the local government or state the owner?  If they can seize your property and sell it on the courthouse steps for non-payment are you really an owner or are you just renting it from the government?

For those of us who value liberty, we must acknowledge that the fight for our “rights” really begins and ends with property rights.

Bruce Fein on Redistribution

Libertarian Anarchism (long but well worth the read)

How Many Zeros in a Billion?

Peter Schiff has been sounding the alarm for a couple of years now.  He accurately predicted what we are now experiencing all while being laughed at by other so called “experts”.  You would think that Congress would start to listen to the guy that predicted this mess, but they are ignoring him and have gone ahead with an “economic stimulus” plan that will only stimulate a depression.

Schiff has plenty more to say about the economy, maybe people should start to listen.  Read more about what he has to say here, here, here, here, and here.

I have absolutely no scientific data to back up my hypothesis about perfume.  It is ridiculous enough though that I am sure I could get a grant from the NSF to collect the data and if I fished long enough I could find the evidence needed to support my hypothesis.  But, that is a whole other topic.  Back to perfume.

There have been studies into how people react to other peoples pheromones.  It has been shown that people are attracted to other people based on how they smell even if they are not conscious of it.  Pheromones are subtle.  You may not even realize that you are sensing them.

For example, my family was visiting and I had this weird feeling that something just was not right.  I could not put my finger on it, but something seemed off.  My family was going to the local amusement park that day.  I decided not to go because of that uneasy feeling I had.  I could not shake the idea that something bad was going to happen.  My family was not at the park long when my mother passed out from dehydration and had to be taken to the ER.  I believe that my uneasy feeling probably came from my mother’s change in body chemistry due to the dehydration.  She probably smelled different; I just did not realize it.

So what does this have to do with perfume and divorce?  Let’s say you meet someone that you are very attracted to, fall in love and get married.  The whole time they have been wearing perfume or cologne.  Then they run out of that perfume and stop wearing it.  You wake up and find yourself not attracted to them in any way,  but you can’t quite figure out why.  You start to fight a lot and then get a divorce.  Now if they had not worn perfume in the first place you would never have mistakenly thought you were attracted to them.  You would have married someone else and lived happily ever after.

So save your future marriage and save some money at the same time.  Don’t buy perfume.  And, if you ever have an unexplained uneasy feeling make everyone around you drink a big glass of water.

Dems Target Private Retirement Accounts

Let GM go Bankrupt

Stuff Does Not Equal Wealth

Statin Drugs Don’t Save Lives

According to Obama and many liberals like him, we have a right to education, the right to healthcare, the right to be paid a living wage, the right to unionize, and the right to any other future “rights” that they deem essential to pander for votes.  But, apparently, they do not believe that we have a right not to be enslaved.

The right not to be enslaved or forced into servitude is at the core of libertarianism.  It is the core of liberty.  What good is education if you are not free to receive the fruits of your knowledge?  What good is health care if you are not free to choose what level of health you wish to maintain?  What good is a living wage if a portion is forcefully removed from your possession and then used to finance those that would enforce tyrannical rules regarding how you must live?  Aesop said it is “Better to starve free than be a fat slave.”  If you do not own yourself, than nothing else matters.

It is for this reason that I find Obama’s Universal Service plan so offensive and contrary to our most basic ideas of freedom.  The plan would require 50 hours of service for middle and high school students.

Obama’s pick for Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel goes even a step further in his book The Plan:  Big Ideas for America. He wants compulsory service for all Americans between the age of 18 and 25.  It sounds like Obama agrees with Emanuel’s vision.  He said “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.  We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”  Both ideas are nothing more than enslavement in the name of service.  They say it would be voluntary, but they call it universal.  How can it be both?  What will be the punishment if you do not wish to serve?

Service to your community should be encouraged.  It is my job as a parent to instill the virtues of charity in my child.  The government should not have the authority to arbitrarily choose the number of hours of service that makes you a good little citizen and then use coercion to be sure you perform that service.  The philosopher Martimer Adler said that “Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men”.  We must resist enslavement, no matter its intentions, and embrace freedom.

Note: When I went to link to Obama’s website for this post, the part about ”requiring” universal service had disappeared.  Just so you don’t think I made the whole thing up, I found a couple of blogs that had the original plan.  View them here and here.  Also, be sure to read the second post’s analysis about the practicality of the plan.  Even if it was not a detestible action against freedom, it would still just be a dumb idea.

Massachusetts Decriminalizes Small Amounts of Marijuana

David Bellemy Doesn’t Believe in Man-Made Global Warming

Markets Need Time, Not More Poison