Capitalism and Pollution

The US has been something of a world beater in seeing a reduction in CO2 levels in recent years thanks, in part, to its growing abundance of cheap natural gas. NG emits about half the CO2 that coal does and far less sulfur and nitrous oxides. Even environmentalist sources were jubilant.

Since 2006, the U.S. has seen the largest reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of any country or region, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The report states that, during this time, U.S. CO2 emissions have fallen by 7.7 percent or 430 million metric tons, primarily due to a decrease in coal use. This decrease in carbon emissions is equal to eliminating the annual greenhouse gas emissions from more than 84 million passenger vehicles or more than 53 million homes.

NG must be doing something right when you are getting praise from the likes of Michael Mann and Roger Pielke jnr.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for "cautious optimism" about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that "ultimately people follow their wallets" on global warming.

"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado...

...Despite unanswered questions about the environmental effects of drilling, the gas boom "is actually one of a number of reasons for cautious optimism," Mann said. "There's a lot of doom and gloom out there. It is important to point out that there is still time" to address global warning.

Even AGW alarmist sources admit natural gas reduces CO2 output, they only criticise it for not going far enough.

Now I have had some AGW proponents throw back statistics from the EPA that CO2 emissions have indeed been increasing since 1990. But this omits one very important factor - the shale gas revolution has only happened over recent years. In fact up until 2001 shale was only around 1% of all gas produced compared to around 37% now. In fact the dramatic change in the ratio of oil to gas price since 2009 indicates just how dirt cheap NG has gotten relative to oil in just the last 3 years.

Whats more the astronomical growth in output of CO2 by China and India makes the question of US CO2 output almost completely tangential. In fact, here is the projected CO2 output for non-OECD countries to 2035.

But just like with nuclear energy, the environmental movement is not about to take up the mantel of natural gas even though it is much cleaner than coal. As even the New York Times admits.

There is little recognition by either side that current policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are inadequate for dealing with the threat that they pose. It is the coal-fueled growth of countries like China and India that generates much of these emissions. Unless a cheap, rapidly deployable substitute fuel is found for coal, then it will be next to impossible to safely rein in rising carbon dioxide levels around the world.

Although the green movement might at first see shale gas as an enemy in this fight, it may in fact turn out to be a friend. Broad development of shale gas resources — with proper ecological safeguards — could be the best way to achieve the quick cuts in carbon dioxide emissions that we need to maintain a habitable environment on Earth.

Chicago and Guns

In June 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that citizens in Chicago have a constitutional "right to keep and bear arms", striking down its handgun ban. In the immediate years that followed the violent crime rate dropped despite predictions of carnage in the streets. The majority of the gun owners are white, however, where most of the violent crime is committed by blacks and Hispanics.

It seems now, though, Chicago's violent crime rate is way up, reaching its 500th homicide for the year. Hard to blame on the second amendment though as it has been pinned on a spike in gang violence.

McCarthy and other officials blame the surge on a splintering of the city's traditional gangs and the rise of new cliques and factions that are vying, often violently, for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.

The spike in homicides was especially dramatic in the first quarter of the year, when murders jumped 66 percent. So far in the fourth quarter, McCarthy said, the murder rate is down 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Police have arrested 7,000 more gang members this year than in 2011, he said.

"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said.

Who would have thought tougher policing, targeting the actual criminals, would work? Especially since 91.5% of homicide offenders have a prior arrest record - maybe the revolving door of Leftist justice can now be shut?

In response to the Supreme Court decision Chicago politicians immediately enacted strict laws to limit the amount of new guns.

To comply, gun owners must acquire a state firearm-owner identification card, undergo three background checks, take a training class, practice shooting at a range, pay $100 plus $15 per gun, and register with the police department. Registrations started last July 12.

But only a fraction of those who own guns in Chicago have bothered to register. And most of those who have registered are from white, low crime areas where most of the crime is gang related and committed by blacks and Hispanics. The idiocy of gun regulations is illustrated here

But observers in Chicago say there are other factors at work here: More convicted felons—most of whom can't legally own guns—live in south- and west-side neighborhoods, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. There's also a higher level of distrust of the police in black and Latino communities, which means fewer people there are willing to register a gun with the CPD. More retired cops live on the northwest and southwest sides. And concerns about racial change, especially on the diversifying southwest side, has also accompanied anxiety about safety, some residents say.

John Lott, an economist who argues that gun control laws like Chicago's actually lead to higher crime, says the cost of meeting the gun application's training and registration requirements essentially discriminates against low-income black communities. In Chicago, the training and permit fees cost about $250 on top of the price of the gun.

"Those who are most likely to be victims of crime benefit the most from owning guns, and unfortunately, that is one very well defined group in our country, poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas such as Chicago," Lott wrote in an e-mail. "But these white, middle class areas can much more easily afford the fees to register their guns and to go through the training requirements."

Roderick Sawyer, alderman of the Sixth Ward, is skeptical of that theory. "It's like buying a car," he says. "If you want one you'll find a way to do it."

Sawyer's south-side ward includes struggling, high-crime areas in Englewood as well as middle-class parts of Chatham where residents are openly talking about getting guns because of crime concerns. He says it's appropriate to have "reasonable restrictions" on gun ownership in the city, though it's also clear that many people aren't complying with the law. He recalled an evening when he offered to walk a senior citizen home after a community meeting.

"She moved her coat to the side and showed me she was packing," he recalls. "She said, 'How about if I walk you home?'" 

(Incidentally this is also an illustration of why the US' firearm induced homicide is so high compared to European countries - they have far more warring gang factions amongst blacks and Latinos.)

Canada More Free than the US

Here

Taxes and the States

I'm not a huge Peter van Onselen fan but there are some interesting points to be made from his most recent column. His whole argument seems in favour of allowing an equal distribution of the GST in return for its increase.

The case for upping the GST is powerful. Growth in the tax has not kept pace with the costs attached to funding a host of state-based services. The squeeze is only going to get worse in the years to come.

The case for upping the GST may be viable on the grounds that it is one of the most efficient taxes because it is not a tax on production (unlike a capital gains or income tax), but the case should not be made on the basis that states are no longer able to afford the services they are providing. We already have a case where more productive states like WA - who get 68c in the dollar - are funding less productive states like Tasmania - who get $1.60 in the dollar.

A few years ago, the cost of providing government welfare (including to the middle class) outstripped revenue from income taxes for the first time in our national history. This, to be sure, is cause for a wider debate about the size of government. But, more urgently, it means we need to plug the funding gap that is fast becoming a gaping hole.

His logic seems to be backwards here. Yes there is a problem with too much welfare provision but the solution shouldn't be to up taxes but to cut spending. Yes there should be more equalisation but supplying the funds to states like NSW that produce less than states like WA will only guarantee that spending will increase even further. Politicians only confront dire fiscal conditions when they are forced to. If states were spending their own tax revenue then perhaps there would be more incentive to economize.

One of the arguments in favour of Tasmania's disproportionate share of the GST is its unique status as an island state. But the high unemployment rate and poor economic performance of Tasmania should be an incentive for people to move to places like WA where there are jobs that can't be filled. As Henry Ergas points out

While the CGC originally sought to ensure financially weaker states could afford public services to a "minimum acceptable standard", by the 80s the goal had changed to that of making the states fully equal from a fiscal point of view.

As that happened, our fiscal redistributions came to greatly exceed, in scope and ambition, those in other federal systems.

Little wonder our economy responds poorly to shifts in the geography of economic opportunity. And it is surely paradoxical that both government and opposition lament WA's reliance on importing short-term migrants while defending fiscal arrangements that discourage domestic labour mobility.

Basically, WA shouldn't be punished for collecting more mining royalties and should be a greater benefactor of more GST income to provide more services and training to attract employees for its productive sectors. If there are little economic activities in Tasmania then people should be encouraged to move where there are opportunities and our overly centralised 'federal' system shouldn't be standing in the way.

But this is John Howard's legacy. Despite being a decent PM he lacked respect for the federation. 

More on Guns in Oz

Some more useful info on Australia's gun ban

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
 
To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
 
According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
 
In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

Like Dennis Prager says: 'Its important to put clarity before agreement'. I don't know that her conclusion that there has been no effect on massacres in Australia is true. There really hasn't been any multiple-victim shootings in Oz since the 1996 legislation. Is it possible that the gun ban prevented massacres? Perhaps, but the percentage of those who die by massacre is tiny and I don't think it warrants regulation in the same way that heavily regulating or banning pools - which kills far more people than guns - is warranted.

UPDATE: The always erudite Maverick Philosopher.

Liberals routinely pose the rhetorical question, Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle?  You need to have an answer at the ready.  When 'Assault Weapons' Saved Koreatown

William Spengler, the miscreant who ambushed NY firefighters, killing two of them, was a convicted felon out on parole.  In 1981 he was convicted of killing his grandmother with a hammer.  Two points.  First, if he hadn't been let out he couldn't have committed arson and murder, outside the prison, leastways.  This supports my claim that it is liberal culture, not gun culture, that is the real problem.  Liberals have a casual attitude toward criminal behavior.  Second, as a convicted felon, Spengler illegally possessed the guns he used in his rampage.  Liberals need to reflect on the fact that criminals, by definition, do not respect laws or the rule of law.

UPDATE II:  John Lott Jnr:

With the public school shootings in Germany, it might be worth noting how hard it is to legally own a gun in that country.  New registration figures indicate that there are 1.4 million people who legally own guns in the country out of a population of 81.8 million people --- a 1.7 percent rate.  Of course, the illegal rate of gun ownership is presumably quite different.

Taxing the Rich

(Apparently Dennis Prager's wife has an 'intellectual crush' on the English writer Theodore Dalrymple. Hell I think I have an intellectual crush on him.)

With the tax regime of France (that is about to get much worse) it is hardly surprising the London is the sixth largest French city since France is hemorrhaging so many of their most productive citizens. It is especially galling to me that those fleeing France are called 'unpatriotic'; is it unpatriotic to not want over half of your wealth stolen?

Two things strike me about the French attitude to wealth. The first is how hypocritical the French are with regard to money: they are as bad about it as the Anglo-Saxons are about sex. And the second is the position they accord the state in their lives.

Although the French dislike the rich, they like money as much as anybody else, indeed perhaps rather more. Tax evasion is for them a national sport and no moral opprobrium attaches to it. To be caught by the fisc is a matter more for commiseration than for condemnation. Indeed, according to Le Figaro last week, a majority of French people "understood" Depardieu's decision.

And the journalists who are happy to criticise Depardieu sternly for his greed and lack of patriotism are rather coy about giving publicity to their own special tax regime as a result of which they pay much lower taxes than ordinary French mortals.

The Seen and the Unseen

Nice piece from the gutsy Jo Nova. There are opportunity costs to everything the government spends money on. There are only finite resources in the world. If billions are directed to carbon capture technology then that is billions not spent on other research in the western world and overseas. Warmists like to appeal to the precautionary principle; even if we are not convinced that the world is dangerously warming shouldn't we take precaution just in case? But this neglects the opportunity costs that money spent combating climate change forgoes. A dollar spent on reducing CO2 is a dollar that could have been spent on mosquito nets in Africa, or on vaccines, or eye surgery for the world's poorest.

If our government-funded climate establishment makes the wrong guess about what humidity does in a warmer world, CO2 emissions become trivial and inconsequential. But the money diverted or delayed from better causes leaves a trail of destruction that cannot be repaired. Money can always be replaced, but lives lost are gone for good.

Julio Licinio, director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University, put together a passionate, disturbing advertisement two weeks ago, a plea to stop cuts to medical research funding. His sister died aged four from a disease that is treatable today.

Which four-year-old in 2018 will die because Gillard introduced a carbon tax instead of increasing medical research funding? Which father will die in 2022 who would have lived if we had doubled our funding for medical research? It is for people such as four-year-old Fabiola that we should keep fighting for rational debate. Bad science makes for bad policy. Poor reasoning is deadly.

Scientism

Often those whose expertise are in a particular scientific domain are hopeless when it comes to basic philosophical reasoning. This has been on display by the likes of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Jerry Coyne, etc., and their musings on philosophy and religion.

Thought I'd share this particularly relevant quote from the Australian philosopher of mathematics, James Franklin. 

On the other side, mathematicians typically talk garbage when they're asked philosophical questions. The New Zealand philosopher, Alan Musgrave, said in this connection, "fish are good at swimming, but poor at hydrodynamics", and that exactly describes mathematicians who dabble a bit in philosophy in their spare time.
 

Free Trade Versus Climate Action

Bjorn Lomborg is a believer in man-made climate change. But he is a realist when it comes to what will actually work for the world's poor.

On a previous post I mentioned the latest leaks from the IPCC that reveal a far more modest warming by centuries end. But as Lomborg points out, free trade is far more likely to yield benefits for the world's poor than collective government/market action.

Climate policies so far have proven to be extremely costly ways of helping very little and very far in the future. This is especially true for the world's poor.

Maybe we should start thinking about the other Doha negotiation that started 11 years ago, on global free trade, which could help the world's poor many thousands of times more.

Models from the World Bank show that even the least ambitious agreement to liberalise trade further and reduce agricultural subsidies would generate substantial benefits. The classic argument for free trade holds that specialisation and exchange benefits everyone, because goods are produced where they are produced best.

The bank's models show that this so-called static benefit could increase annual global GDP by several hundred billion dollars by the end of the decade, with perhaps $US50bn accruing to developing countries.

Towards the end of the century, the annual benefit would reach $US1.5 trillion, with half going to the developing world.

I remember investment legend Jim Rogers recently advised people to invest in Burma because its economy was newly opening and newly opening economies experience disproportionally greater growth.

But over the past two decades a growing number of studies have demonstrated that this is only a small part of the argument. History shows that open economies grow faster. Examples include South Korea since 1965, Chile since 1974, and India since 1991.

The same message comes from computable general-equilibrium models of the global economy: even modestly freer trade helps domestic markets to become more efficient, and helps supply chains to become better integrated and transfer knowledge more readily, thereby spurring innovation. Overall, this dynamic benefit increases the GDP growth rate.

In a recent review of the economics literature, one of the World Bank's leading modellers, Kym Anderson, showed that the long-run benefits from even a modestly successful Doha round of world trade talks would be vast.

Annual GDP in about 2020 would be about $US5 trillion higher than it would be in the absence of an agreement, with $US3 trillion going to the developing world.

Towards the end of the century, slightly higher growth rates will have yielded a cumulative increase in income exceeding $US100 trillion annually, with most going to the developing world.

ABC Leans Left

On ABC bias
In groundbreaking research in 1995 and 1998, John Henningham, a professor at Queensland University published a couple of papers on journalists' perceptions of bias and the ideological differences between them and their public.

What is striking about the research is that the journalists clearly rated the ABC as pro-Labor, indeed as the most pro-Labor of the major media outlets. In this light, indignant protests that the ABC is balanced become plain silly.

Similarly, to deny that there is a large gap between ABC presenters and their audience is simply unsustainable after Henningham surveyed 173 journalists and 262 members of the public in metropolitan Australia. He found an enormous difference between these two groups, with journalists consistently having a much more "progressive" views than the general public. The denial in the ABC has reached a point it does even bother to attempt balance. Albrechtsen has clearly outlined the major offenders. With the polls suggesting a Gillard wipeout, there is a feeling of "end of days" denial in the ABC and they, like Gillard, are going for broke.

And former ABC chair Maurice Newman
On November 24, Robyn Williams intoned to his audience on ABC's The Science Show, "if I told you that pedophilia is good for children, or asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma, or, that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, you'd rightly find it outrageous. Similar statements are coming out of inexpert mouths again and again, distorting the science". My article was given as an example of an anti-scientific position.

Really? Questioning climate science is like advocating pedophilia, abetting mesothelioma and pushing drugs to teenagers? Well yes, according to the ABC's science man. Stephan Lewandowsky, a guest on the program, asserted that those with a free market background were, according to his research, more likely to be sceptical of science. As well as climate science, "they are also rejecting the link between smoking and lung cancer; they are rejecting the link between HIV and AIDS", the professor said. Happily, it was extremely difficult to detect people on the "Left side of politics who are rejecting scientific evidence".

...
In March 2010 as chairman, I addressed an in-house conference of 250 ABC leaders. In a speech titled "Trust is the future of the ABC", I asked, "how might we ensure in our newsrooms we celebrate those who interrogate every truth?" I lamented the mainstream media's role as an effective gatekeeper. It was too conformist and had missed the warning signs of financial failure. I blamed group think and used climate change as an example. My mistake was to mention climate change.

While most company chairs would find the tenor of my talk unremarkable, Jonathon Holmes, the presenter of Media Watch, was so angry "he could not concentrate". He found it an inappropriate forum for such remarks. I was interviewed by PM and teased as to whether I was a "climate change denier or not as obvious as that?" As a further censure, that night Tony Jones read a statement on Lateline saying: "Tonight, ABC management responded to Mr Newman's speech, saying it stands by the integrity of its journalists and its processes."

The Left lives in a bubble. Many would hardly know anyone, much less engage in robust dialogue, with a different viewpoint.

The Cooling on Warming

Nice piece by Matt Ridley.

Mr. Lewis tells me that the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in "radiative forcing" (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.

The conclusion—taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake—is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).

This is much lower than the IPCC's current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F).

More on Guns

Some excellent pieces on gun control have come out recently:

On Israel's high amount of guns and low murder rates;


How, then, to explain Israel’s relatively low rate of gun-related deaths? For Lior Nedivi, an independent firearms examiner in Jerusalem and the co-author of a comprehensive report comparing Israel’s gun laws and culture to that of the United States, the answer lies far from the law books. “An armed society,” Nedivi wrote, quoting the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, “is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” It may be a bit odd to think of Israeli society as polite, but when it comes to guns it is, and for just the reason articulated by Heinlein: When everyone has a gun, guns are no longer seen as talismans by weak, frightened, and unstable men seeking a sense of self-validation, but as killing machines that are to be handled with the utmost caution and care.
***
If the United States, itself awash with weapons, wishes to benefit from Israel’s experience, it must make sure it learns the right lessons. The first and most universal one is that ever more stringent gun control is bad policy: As is the case with drugs, as was the case with liquor during Prohibition, the strict banning of anything does little but push the market underground into the hands of criminals and thugs. Rather than spend fortunes and ruin lives in a futile attempt to eradicate every last trigger in America, we would do well to follow Israel’s example and educate gun owners about their rights and responsibilities, so as to foster a culture of sensible and mindful gun ownership.


The inimitable Thomas Sowell

When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.

The few counter-examples offered by gun control zealots do not stand up under scrutiny. Perhaps their strongest talking point is that Britain has stronger gun control laws than the United States and lower murder rates.

But, if you look back through history, you will find that Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries– and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun control laws than the United States. Indeed, neither country had stringent gun control for most of that time.
…
Neither guns nor gun control was the reason for the difference in murder rates. People were the difference.

And this piece by John Fund

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany...

..

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

So what is the argument against allowing teachers to carry guns if the firearms violation rate amongst civillians is so low?

And are they really increasing?

When a mass murder occurs, it receives instant and pervasive news coverage. Unfortunately, we are prone to overestimate the frequency of an event by its prominence in our minds, and mass murder is no exception. This is a very rare phenomenon and is neither increasing nor decreasing in the US. Since 1976 there have been about 20 mass murders a year. 2003 was the most violent year for mass murder, with 30 incidents and 135 victims. Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Edmund Oklahoma, and San Ysidro still resonate in the public consciousness, however, reminding us that these events do happen. A positive counterpoint is that rates of all violent crime have significantly decreased over this same time period, from 48 victims per 1000 persons in 1976 to 15 victims in 2010. The most lethal school mass murder in US history was in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, a bombing that resulted in 45 deaths, mostly children in the second to sixth grades.

Women and Child Rearing

The Australian really is Australia's number one newspaper. No wonder the Left hates it so much. Henry Ergas writes:

Mothers have chosen that option in droves. Of women aged 25 to 44 who work part-time, 60 per cent do so to care for children; and 70 per cent of working mothers with children under the age of five work part-time.

All that contrasts sharply with Europe's highly regulated labour markets. There, restrictions on working conditions prevent the private sector from creating the jobs women want.

Public spending and public employment have therefore accounted for almost all the gains women have made, at an unsustainable cost in terms of tax burdens and stunted productivity.

No wonder, then, that in a recent survey of women's labour market performance two left-leaning American academics, Harvard professor Torben Iversen and Yale professor Frances Rosenbluth, conclude "female participation rates tend to be lower in countries with strong unions, while in economies with fluid labour markets women are better able to compete on an equal footing with men".

Two quick lessons here. The drive for women to have children and care for them is nearly universal. Women are naturally driven to maintain close contact with their children and trying to thwart that drive through public policy or feminist propaganda is futile. The second point is that free markets are more friendly towards women and their choices than unfree economies.

Food Nannies

It appears that more and more experts and government officials want to force certain dietary restrictions on the populations - usually the poor - of western countries. Cassandra Wilkinson in The Australian writes

But this didn't stop the House Standing Committee on Health and Ageing from concluding that government should act to end fatness noting it, "has the tools: legislation, policy and regulation".

The committee compared losing weight to rolling a ball up a large hill and suggested that while government couldn't change the size of the ball it could "reduce the environmental gradient".

To see what is contemplated to slim the fatness slope we can look to the Obesity Policy Coalition, a group of diabetes and heart health charities, which wants to regulate food composition (changing recipes to remove, for example, trans fats); pricing and availability and marketing (including food advertising, promotion and labelling) as well as urban planning and transport.

This affects everything from changing the recipe for Tim Tams to deliberating removing parking spaces from new housing developments to make you walk to the bus stop.

More extreme "solutions" proposed by other fat-ivists include making "fat towns" compete in weight loss contests tied to government funding for sporting and recreational facilities.

And this

Rachel Davey, the Director of the taxpayer-funded Centre for Research & Action in Public Health at the University of Canberra bas just written a piece in the taxpayer funded The Conversation arguing not just for the usual policy clap trap of banning advertising and introducing fat taxes, but has actually gone so far as to advocate food rationing. That’s right, food rationing.

But its funny when these schemes fall flat on their face like this pet project of Michelle Obama:

New rules on school meals inspired by Michelle Obama were intended to wipe out hunger and malnutrition among American students - but some are complaining they have had the opposite effect.

High schools are now forbidden from giving pupils more than 850 calories for their lunch - even if they are fast-growing teenagers or even student athletes.

One enterprising group of adolescents channelled their anger at the policy into a parody YouTube video promoting their cause entitled 'We Are Hungry'.

So they think a bunch of growing teenage boys are going to be filled on a few pieces of lettuce and rice? 

Wilson also describes more government idiocy:

Less than two years ago, Denmark introduced the world's first fat tax.

Foods containing more than 2.3 per cent saturated fat like sausages, butter and syrup waffles (which I personally would risk a small infarction for) were subject to the surcharge. The results? Danes crossed the border to buy delicious treats in Germany, and Denmark lost jobs instead of kilos. The tax was rescinded and a decision taken not to proceed with a sugar tax.

As I heard Dennis Prager say the other day: Its better to have a population that is fat and free than one that is skinny and unfree.

Do Australian Gun Laws Work?

In the wake of the tragic events in Connecticut last Friday, where 20 children and 6 adults were murdered, there has opened up the festering wounds of the gun control debate across the media and blogosphere. Australia had its own debate after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996 when the then PM, John Howard, enacted a buy back scheme of semi-automatic weapons (the weapon of choice in any mass killing as there is no need to reload between shots fired). Although there were restrictions on single shot weapons (denial of self-defense as a legitimate reason to own and gun registration), the main target was the semi-automatics.

Inevitably, once these tragedies occur there are outcries from gun control advocates for tighter restrictions on the amount of weapons in circulation amongst the public and regulations surrounding the use of those weapons. But there are important critical questions that need to be asked here.

First, it is not obvious that the Howard laws were responsible for the near absence of mass murders post 1996, as some gun control advocates like Simon Chapman have argued. As Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran point out,

It is correct that there were 10 mass shootings (four or more fatalities) in the decade 1986-1996 (four of those shootings occurred in one year, 1987). However, this was a feature peculiar to that decade. When longer time series are evaluated on the basis of available, verifiable data concerning mass shootings, it emerges that in the decades prior to 1986, there were lengthy spans of time when no mass shootings took place. Thus, the absence of mass shootings in earlier years, well before the legislative reforms, suggests that the laws cannot be attributed with preventative properties. 

There have also been plenty of mass shootings in countries with much tighter gun control laws than the US.


BERLIN, March 11 [2009] -- Residents of a small German town struggled Wednesday to decipher the motives of a teenager who burst into his former high school and went on a shooting rampage, killing 15 people before taking his own life...

...Firearms are tightly regulated in Germany, but the country has been afflicted by other mass school shootings in the past several years.

In 2006, an 18-year-old student carrying explosives and rifles injured dozens of people in the northwestern German town of Emsdetten before killing himself. In 2002, a 19-year-old former student fatally shot 16 people at a high school in Erfurt, in eastern Germany, before killing himself.

John Lott jnr., writes

Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns.

Granted, there does seem to have been a particularly sharp increase in the incidents of mass shootings in the US in very recent years and it is possible that they are now outdoing Europe, but this doesn't explain why European countries have so many incidents of mass shootings even despite tighter gun controls.

Second, the real culprit here may be the 'gun free zones', like schools, malls, and universities, that form the backdrop of just about every mass shooting in the US that has occurred in recent decades. The Columbine 1999 shooting and the recent Batman movie theater shooting were two examples. The latter was particularly telling as the movie theater picked by the gunman was the only 'gun free' movie theater within 20 minutes of his house. I wonder why he picked that one?

Indeed, the economist John Lott jnr., reports that a study of states that pass right-to-carry laws between 1977 and 1999 saw a reduction in mass shootings by a whopping 67% with a concomitant reduction in deaths. Many of these psychopaths that participate in mass shootings would not be deterred by greater sentencing or faster conviction rates as often they end up dead and probably already accept that they will be going to jail for the rest of their natural life anyway. Their only goal is to kill as many people as possible and only an armed civilian close by may thwart their intent. Further points made by Lott; unlike police, it is impossible to know who is armed amongst the public so the attacker cannot just eliminate the threat first or wait for him or her to leave, second, even if there is only a 5% chance that a citizen is armed there is almost a hundred percent change that someone is going to be armed in most public places like schools or malls.

Now what's the situation in Australia? There's been some contention on how effective the 1996 legislation has been and usually the media jumps on anything that looks like evidence in favour of the laws.

But here are some of the most salient facts

• The vast majority of firearms (over 90%) used in a murder are unregistered. In other words, most of those that surrendered their firearms during the buy back or under police monitor are law abiding citizens. There's been a massive spate of shootings in Sydney recently which suggests that criminal elements aren't so quick to give up their guns. As Jack the Insider put it; "The people who had been forced to give their guns up were never a threat to social order. Meanwhile prohibition has created yet another branch of profit for those who use guns without conscience or hindrance."
• Only a minority of murders are caused by firearm (the third most common weapon). In fact "...the most common types of weapons used in homicide in Australia are weapons of opportunity, such as knives or sharp instruments and hands and/or feet, weapon use tends to differ based on the gender of the victim." This makes sense as those intent on murdering will probably find the means no matter what. Witness the 'Razor Gangs' in Sydney, Australia after the 1927 Pistol Licensing Act; criminals merely substituted razors for guns, the 1991 Strathfield knife massacre of 7, 9/11 with box cutters and 747s, and the McVeigh bombing. Just a few days ago 22 children were attacked at a school by a man with a knife in China. Are we now going to ban knives, fists and feet? 
• Although the worst, the Port Arthur massacre, was by firearm, in terms of mass killings, only 6 of the 13 between 1989 and 1999 were by firearm. 2 were by knife, 2 by arson, and 3 by assault/blunt instrument.
• Australia's homicide rate started falling during the late 80's and continued throughout the 90's. Even if a fall in homicides can be pointed to after '96 that is no proof of the law's effectiveness if it is merely a continuation of the trend happening pre-'96.
• The head of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, is skeptical that the laws have impacted violent crime; "There has been a drop in firearm-related crime, particularly in homicide, but it began long before the new laws and has continued on afterwards. I don't think anyone really understands why. A lot of people assume that the tougher laws did it, but I would need more specific, convincing evidence …"
• Most of the research that has come out after the buy back legislation has revealed no acceleration in the pre-existing decrease of firearm caused homicide. A paper by Baker and McPhedran in 2006 found no evidence of impact from the laws. The most definitive study by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi revealed: "Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we re-analyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates." 
• Even gun control zealot Simon Chapman's own research finds that the drop in firearm homicide rates pre-'96 did not accelerate in the years afterwards, even if he concludes the opposite to his own findings. The same can be said about the Ozanne-Smith et al., 2004 paper. Interestingly, the findings of these two papers were identical to that of Baker and McPhedran (2006). Its also interesting that the research by Australian Labor Party MP, Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill (2010), that criticised the BM paper (and the models they used) did not ciriticise the Ozanne-Smith and Chapman papers that produced the identical results (this observation is made by BM's response to Leigh here).
• Weatherburn disagreed with the critics of BM's research and concluded that it was "reputable" and "well conducted". What's notable is that even Chapman disagrees with Leigh's claim that the buy back saved 128 lives a year in the forms of both homicide and suicide, but only makes the more modest claim that it ended the mass shootings.
• But as Weatherburn notes, Chapman has dishonestly claimed in an article in The Age that the laws were responsible for a decrease in homicide which he contradicts in the linked ABC interview and his own research.
• Both the claims of Chapman and Leigh that gun violence continued to drop after the once off buy back scheme is completely illogical (BM label Leigh and Neill 'disingenuous'). If the legislation had proven effective then there would have been a once off drop in suicide/homicides, not a continued drop over subsequent years. This would only make sense if there were a continued removal of weapons from circulation each year. 
• Papers here and here have also found that the buy back laws did not decrease suicide and that there was possibly substitution with other methods (most notably hanging). 

UPDATE: To see the utterly emotional and bombastic nature of the pro-ban side then watch Piers Morgan in action:

And here are some useful charts from John Lott on what happened to island nations after gun bans/restrictions were put into place. Without exception all three - England/Wales, Ireland and Jamaica - saw homicides sky rocket after the bans. Interestingly, the growth in homicides don't even seem to be a continuation of the pre-existing trend.

Douthat on Birthrates

One of the very few conservative columnists at the New York Times, Ross Douthat, has written an important piece on birth rates in the United States. His conclusion:

Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

This sounds exactly right. The west has become hedonistic and narcissistic in this day and age. Children are too much of an inconvenience now, requiring the great amount of money, time and energy that they do. There is little emphasis on looking to the future and deferring gratification. Whilst children are damn hard work in the early years they provide for more of a full life in one's twilight era. But this is irrelevant to those that live in the here and now. The same goes for abortion - its an inconvenience to live with the consequences of one's actions. The American economy is now loaded with debt and too weighted on the consumption side, producing little but receiving much from the government. Less emphasis on production means less wealth and freedom in the future.

Such are the times we live in now...

The Clueless US Fed

For some years now the US Federal Reserve has been artificially suppressing interest rates. This was a handy leg up for those gaining entrance into the housing market but it also serves as a convenient means for government to borrow at bargain prices. This means soaring debt as this great piece from the WSJ reports

Did you know that annual spending by the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion? With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to $55,000 per U.S. household.

The amount of debt is one thing. The burden of interest payments is another. The Treasury now has a preponderance of its debt issued in very short-term durations, to take advantage of low short-term interest rates. It must frequently refinance this debt which, when added to the current deficit, means Treasury must raise $4 trillion this year alone. So the debt burden will explode when interest rates go up. 

Indeed the US Fed has become such a mighty Leviathan and Marx dream of centralising money is being realised. This is going to create unprecedented inflation:

The Fed has effectively replaced the entire interbank money market and large segments of other markets with itself. It determines the interest rate by declaring what it will pay on reserve balances at the Fed without regard for the supply and demand of money. By replacing large decentralized markets with centralized control by a few government officials, the Fed is distorting incentives and interfering with price discovery with unintended economic consequences.

Did you know that the Federal Reserve is now giving money to banks, effectively circumventing the appropriations process? To pay for quantitative easing—the purchase of government debt, mortgage-backed securities, etc.—the Fed credits banks with electronic deposits that are reserve balances at the Federal Reserve. These reserve balances have exploded to $1.5 trillion from $8 billion in September 2008.

The Fed now pays 0.25% interest on reserves it holds. So the Fed is paying the banks almost $4 billion a year. If interest rates rise to 2%, and the Federal Reserve raises the rate it pays on reserves correspondingly, the payment rises to $30 billion a year. Would Congress appropriate that kind of money to give—not lend—to banks? 

As this New York Times piece points out, the Fed's money printing is going full steam ahead yet it doesn't believe there will be any rosy pictures to paint for another 3 years.

To help reduce unemployment, the Fed said it would also continue monthly purchases of $85 billion in Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities until job market conditions improved, extending a policy announced in September.

But the Fed released new economic projections showing that most of its senior officials did not expect to reach the goal of 6.5 percent unemployment until the end of 2015, raising questions of why it was not moving to expand its economic stimulus campaign. 

So what happened to Obama's great skills in handling the economy? His stimulus? The Fed's massive quantitative easing? Here's a more recent WSJ piece:

Four years ago this month the Federal Reserve began its epic program of monetary easing to rescue an economy in recession. On Wednesday, Chairman Ben Bernanke declared that this has worked so well that the Fed must keep easing money for as long as anyone can predict in order to save a still-sputtering recovery.

That's the contradiction at the heart of the Fed's latest foray into "unconventional policy," which is a euphemism for finding new ways to print money: The economy needs more monetary stimulus because it is still too weak despite four years of previous and historic amounts of monetary stimulus. In the words of the immortal "Saturday Night Live" skit: We need "more cowbell."...

...These new overt economic targets are part of Mr. Bernanke's campaign for more "transparency" in monetary policy, but they also have the effect of exposing how much the Fed has misjudged the economy. In January 2012, the Board of Governors and regional bank presidents predicted growth this year in the range of 2.2%-2.7%. On Wednesday, they predicted growth of 1.7%-1.8%, which means they are expecting a downbeat fourth quarter.

So what's the message? The economy is weak despite the last four years of massive money printing yet the solution? Print more money in greater quantities! And stimulate another housing bubble!

Sheer idiocy. This can only end in tears for the greatest nation on earth. 

Welfare and Poverty

France and other European nations are often held up as shining examples of nations that look after their poor, unlike the dog-eat-dog world of the USA. But is welfare really preventing poverty? Here's the legacy of the generous French welfare system:

First, the poverty rate: In 1990, 13.8 percent of the French population was poor; in 2009, the percentage was almost unchanged at 13.5 percent. In 20 years, poverty did not decrease, despite all the welfare payments.

Second, the “Active Solidarity Income,” which symbolizes France’s welfare system: It has replaced a previous payment called the “Minimum Income for Insertion.” These two are the same thing; only the name has changed. The latter was implemented in 1989, when 370,000 people benefited. In 2009, this “income” was given to 1,697,357 people. That is a huge increase. Failure must be acknowledged.

The third indicator is a nationwide philanthropic organization called the “Restos du Coeur.” It was created in 1985 to fight poverty. It provides meals during the winter to the very-low-income population. During the winter of 1985-86, 8.5 million meals were given. Since then, it has never stopped increasing. During the winter of 2010-11, about 109 million meals were given—a 1,282-percent jump in 25 years.
 
In practice, France’s welfare system is a failure, and there is an economic explanation for this. Welfareship does not create wealth; there are no incentives to create wealth. Despite its good intentions, welfareship has created a “poverty trap.”

Licensing and the Poor

Are government licensing laws and regulations really an unmitigated good? They are supposed to maintain standards for the industry so consumers can get value for money. But does this happen? Judging by experiences around the world the answer is, no.

As in so many cases, government intrusion ends up hurting the poor and disadvantaged the most. Economist Henry Ergas points to the exorbitant pricing of taxis licenses in Victoria:

With returns so high, licences are naturally extremely valuable. Had licences been valued in line with a normal, inflation-adjusted, return, they would now be worth $60,000; in fact, they trade for $500,000.

Underlying those valuations are hidden taxes on consumers. Their extent is chilling: on my estimates, the accumulated transfer from 1985 to today is equivalent to taking $1000 from each of Melbourne's 4,130,000 inhabitants and giving it to the 3500 owners of taxi licences.

These sorts of prices, which are really just a government produced bubble, are really only good for those who already own a license. But whilst this protects the incumbent, it prevents competition from coming into the market and thus hits the consumer with higher prices and crappy service - after all, with little competition there is no incentive to please customers - and blocks any opportunities for the poor who can't afford the license.

But can't the poor just get jobs at the major monopoly company, Cabcharge? Well yes they can, but they get paid a pittance because the standards are so low it doesn't matter if those looking for a job are new immigrants and can barely speak English, or hardly know their job properly. Remember, there is little competition so there is no incentive to pay more to attract more competent drivers (another reason the free market is better at setting wages).

In Melbourne, the cab industry involves thousands of poorly-trained Indian migrants or students who have long protested they are paid well below the minimum wage.

Taxi driver Mukesh Kumah says some drivers only make about $8 an hour.

"They make around $200 on the meter. So, out of $200, they get $100. Divide by 12 hours. It's nearly $8 an hour," he said.

Another driver, Michael Jewels, says working in the industry can amount to "slavery".

(This also takes away the market's powerful assimilating effect where new immigrants would have to learn proper English and customer service)

Government produced monopolies like this usually come about because lobbies or big businesses are contributors to political parties or else hold some sort of concentrated power over the government. In this case its hardly surprising that Cabcharge contributes to Labor and Liberal state political coffers:

There has been a steady flow of donations by Cabcharge to both major parties in New South Wales, on top of a parallel flow of funds from the NSW Taxi Council.

Cabcharge has donated $137,100 to NSW Labor and $63,853 to the NSW Liberals, while the Taxi Council has given $152,400 to NSW Labor and $162,711 to the NSW Liberals.

This is nothing unique to Australia, economist Walter Williams has pointed to the absurd cost of a taxi license in New York City (over $700,000 and climbing) preventing blacks from getting those jobs, as opposed to the cost in Washington DC which is a few hundred dollars but where lots of taxi drivers are black. Its also unsurprising to see (ex)politicians directly involved in the companies benefiting the most from government favours - polies are often the first with their snouts in the trough:

Former Labor NSW premier Neville Wran has served for 10 years on the Cabcharge board and is still a director of ComfortDelgro Cabcharge.

Bizarrely enough, in this case, we have the Greens Senator - traditionally the party that loves big government programs - Lee Rhiannon calling them to account on this:

Senator Rhiannon says its appears Cabcharge have "an enormous influence" over the NSW Taxi Council.

"We're also aware in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria, political donations have been made by the taxi industry to Labor and the Coalition parties," she said.

If the Greens can make the right noises about this then surely the NSW and Vic Liberal governments can.

Gillard's Paradox

I couldn't think of a more apt characterisation of Aussie PM, Julia Gillard. Bristling with talent precisely in areas that fortify her own power, but totally inept in actually serving the Australian public: Tim Blair:

Simon Benson explores the Julia Gillard paradox, whereby our Prime Minister is an enormously talented personal politician, easily able to smite opponents inside and outside of her party, and a completely useless practical politician, whose every policy results in ridiculous chaos. She’s a salad of sinister and circus act

Reminds me of Milton Friedman's observation that those most likely to rise to the greatest positions of power in government are those that should least hold so much power. 

Scientism

What does science tell us about the universe? An enormous amount, evidently. Indeed it has plumped to the very depths and out-skirts of reality. But is science the only source of knowledge that we have? Many atheists talk as if science is the only means by which we can have any knowledge. They believe that nothing immaterial exists and since God, or Angels, or Souls, are all immaterial things, then they are akin to illusions or fairy tales. Forget first that their crude starting point - that there is no such thing as the immaterial - is not on as solid ground as they thought (many philosophers believe that numbers, sets, propositions, universals, mental properties, etc., are all immaterial/abstract entities), the question is whether it is acceptable to find in science the one and only source of knowledge?

Many New Atheists only want to accept what science wants to teach them. The atheist philosopher Peter Atkins puts it

Philosophers too, I am afraid, have contributed to the understanding of the universe little more than poets … They have not contributed much that is novel until after novelty has been discovered by scientists … While poetry titillates and theology obfuscates, science liberates. (2006; 123)

But this is like making a defensive remark about one's stance on labor laws by saying you are in favour of 'politics'. 'Politics' is such a nebulous term that has all kinds of philosophical connotations. So too with 'science'. For example, take nature's laws. What are they? Can science answer that question? No. It can only describe and reveal the laws themselves. There is ample room for philosophy and metaphysics to have input on what is the nature of the laws. Are they real or purely theoretical? Do all the laws reduce to some fundamental base law? How do our scientific concepts and natural kind categories interact with the real, mind-independent world? These are all subjects for philosophers, not physicists.

The philosopher Stephen Mumford writes:

But there is never a full and general account, provided by science, of what it is for something to be a law and what, if anything, a law of nature is supposed to do. Such accounts that we have been given seem to be metaphysically inadequate. One authoritative account, for instance, says that a law is ‘a descriptive principle of nature that holds in all circumstances’. If by a ‘descriptive principle’ a statement or proposition is intended, then this would be inadequate as our subject is what in nature is a law. If something in nature is intended, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how ‘principle of nature’ is any more enlightening, or anything different at all, from ‘law of nature’. A reason for this apparent failing, on the part of science, may be that the questions I am asking are specifically philosophical ones. For example: does a law determine nature or is a law entirely exhausted by its instances? Is a law of nature anything like a moral or legal law? If these are specifically philosophical questions, we could hardly expect science to answer them. Despite their expertise in some areas, we cannot expect scientists to be better at answering metaphysical questions than are the metaphysicians. The above questions look more metaphysical than scientific. (2004: 5)

One example of where philosophy has significant input is concerning the natural necessity of laws. As Nancy Cartwright, and other philosophers like Roderick Chisholm and David Armstrong put it, laws are prescriptive and not just descriptive. Science will describe a law but that is it. It has nothing to say on why laws are prescriptive like moral laws. It has nothing to say on why, under certain circumstances, we expect certain laws must manifest. But what gives laws such a status? That the necessity would hold even if no law is manifest. Take, say, the laws of chemistry. Those laws seem no less necessary even if there are no chemical reactions, like in the first few minutes of the universe's existence. Laws are either, as Brian Ellis sees them, the dispositions of ordinary objects, or they are, according to Isaac Newton and David Hume, imposed from outside the objects themselves.

Laws aren't just necessary but immaterial and universal. Borrowing further from Mumford's work, the law of gravitation is described thus:

The law of gravitation states that objects with masses M1 and M2, and having distance apart d, are attracted with force F GM1M2/d 2. This equation involves the constant G – the gravitational constant – which has a value of 6.67259(85) 10 11 N m2kg 2. (2)

As can be seen, laws are described in the language of mathematics and are, hence, abstractions. A more obvious example of this is in the idealised state of most laws. Philosophers of science, like Cartwright, Ian Hacking, and Ellis, have acknowledged that it is very rare, perhaps impossible, for a law to be perfectly manifested anywhere in the natural world. Essentially what happens when describing the manifestation of a particular law is that certain ceterus paribus clauses need to be added in to cancel out other intervening causes that prevent the absolute manifestation of a law. For example, a falling rock fails to perfectly manifest the law of gravity because there are other forces, such as wind resistance, or friction, that intervene. Thus we must abstract away intervening forces in order to calculate the true mathematical statement of the laws of which the physical realisers are only approximations.

What does this all mean? Cartwright argues that the prescriptive force of laws are only possible if God exists and yet she rejects both. But I don't understand how we can even explain how it is that we have immaterial and necessary laws of nature if the universe is the sole product of chance or natural necessity. The latter explanation is circular whereas the former can't explain why it is that the laws are orderly in the first place. There doesn't seem to me to be any prima facie reason why there should be laws as opposed to just random chaos.

This is why its such a straw man for New Atheists and Old Atheists (like Bertrand Russell) to claim that God is nothing but a being in space-time, susceptible to the laws of physics like everything else (Russell's 'celestial teapot' and Dawkins' 'flying spaghetti monster' come to mind). This treats the Judeo-Christian conception of God as if he exists just beyond the reaches of the most powerful telescope or else something akin to the ancient Greek or Nordic gods. On the contrary, God is the very grounds of the laws of nature, the reason why A following B according to some law isn't just an unaccounted for happenstance. God is the reason why the universe is governed by universal, immaterial laws that can't be directly perceived. He is responsible for the very being and existence of the universe and its laws.

Are the New Atheists Cowards?

Ok its a provocative title and will get plenty seeing red, but there is a legitimate point to this post. Often when arguing with those of the New Atheist variety, the especially militaristic type (not your brother-in-law that happens to identify as a non-believe in God), they like to deny that they have a positive belief system. Many will say that all atheism stands for is the non existence of God - there is no general metaphysical picture on origins or the meaning of life or what ever. Atheism is an entire belief system parasitic on Christianity.

But such a retort is cowardly. There is endless material from the New Atheists on how the biblical account of creation is non-scientific nonsense and how it is that a loving God can explain all the evil and suffering in the world. But often they will dodge any responsibility to explain anything but put the onus purely on the believer to come up with proof of God's existence.

Where this leads is New Atheist types sniping at Christian creeds but refusing to put out their own account of how the universe and life began (I suspect because materialist/naturalist alternatives are so obviously ridiculous fantasies of their own). Its easy to attack other people's beliefs but it is another thing to put your own out their as a viable alternative.

The second charge that can be laid at the feet of many the New Atheist type is hypocrisy. They revel in charges of bigotry, intolerance, homophobia, racism, at Christianity and its history, yet their own bigotry towards Christianity outstrips even the most wide eyed fundamentalists. They have no problems discharging all kinds of insults and put downs on scripture and believers. Many of them attack a silly caricature of the Christian God - as if he is some bearded old fellow in the sky - or just parrot NA talking points. Their number one charge is 'intolerance' but they are the most intolerant people of all.

And they are not bad at forcing their beliefs on others as this story illustrates.


Moanalua High School students in the award-winning orchestra have proudly raised $200,000 over the last 6 years through their annual holiday concert.

These students, who have performed at Carnegie Hall in New York three times, don’t keep the money to buy new instruments, travel abroad or help their school.

Instead, they send $30,000 they raise every year overseas to a well-known charity, Mercy Ships, which is current housing American doctors in Africa on a medical mission. These doctors help the poorest of residents – some who have never seen a doctor – with urgent medical and dental needs.

It is the students’ gift to the world during the holidays and their chance to make difference for others in need.

The seventh annual fundraiser was set for this weekend, and students have been practicing for months to ensure their performance was perfect.

But an atheist activist, who has shown up to protest city hall Christmas tree lighting ceremonies as well as city council hearings and legislative events where there is prayer, has turned up as their Christmas Grinch and put a stop to the kids’ best-laid plans just hours before the show.

Social Justice

Superb video by philosopher Matt Zwolinski on social justice. Social justice is often spoken of in the context of where goods and services are distributed in an economy. But its assumed that a central distributor is at work. As argued by philosophers Robert Nozick and Friedrich von Hayek, this makes no sense in a market economy where billions of people decide every day where their money should go at any particular point in time. If Michael Jorgan gets millions for every game of basketball he plays then this is because there are millions of people that want to put up the price for a ticket to watch him play or watch him on T.V.

Justice presupposes the just state of the agent responsible, but if there is no agent determining wealth distribution then it cannot be labelled just or unjust. Therefore it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about social justice in the way that Socialists and Leftists do. And there is no way to label a free market economy 'unjust'.

Are Libertarians Naive on Evil?

The Left is mostly secular and even the religious Left is secular in substance. This goes a long way to explaining their profound naivety when it comes to evil. For example, the rage of the Palestinians can't be because of an irrational hatred of Jews but because of economic hardship, or lack of rights, or whatever.

Now I'm a fan of Ron Paul's domestic policies, like ending the Federal Reserve, deficit reduction, etc. But I wonder if they have a myopic over emphasis on freedom and economics and could the same disease - naivety towards evil - infect libertarians?

Like Greenwald, Paul doesn’t hold Palestinian terrorists accountable for initiating and perpetuating the violence; he only paints a picture of American and Israeli collusion to oppress Palestinians in what Paul calls the “Gaza tragedy.”

Of the most recent Middle East conflagration, Paul writes in his op-ed that “it feels like 2009 all over again, which is the last time this kind of violence broke out in Gaza.” Note the convenient passivity of that phrasing, “violence broke out,” which enables Paul to avoid placing responsibility where it belongs. That violence wasn’t a nonhuman natural phenomenon like a thunderstorm; it didn’t just spontaneously “break out.” That violence, like the more recent one, was the result of relentless rocket attacks and terrorist activity by Palestinians, which necessitated a too-patient Israel to move in and put a stop to it. But that doesn’t fit Paul’s anti-Israel narrative.

Jim Sinegal and Hypocrisy

What is it with high tax preaching rich people? They love to preach how others should pay higher taxes yet they themselves do everything they can to avoid it - such as Warren Buffett's taking advantage of every loophole in the book to avoid paying more taxes than he is required to or Hollywood's moving their business outside of California and sometimes the US to avoid paying high state and federal taxes. 

Jim Sinegal is the CEO of Costco and was a big campaigner for Obama and his calls for higher taxes on the rich. Yet the WSJ exposes him and his company for paying an advanced dividend to their clients in order to avoid paying more taxes when the Bush tax cuts expire next year. 

One of the biggest dividend winners will be none other than Mr. Sinegal, who owns about two million shares, while his wife owns another 84,669. At $7 a share, the former CEO will take home roughly $14 million. At a 15% tax rate he'll get to keep nearly $12 million of that windfall, while at next year's rate of 43.4% he'd take home only about $8 million. That's a lot of extra cannoli.

This isn't exactly the tone of, er, shared sacrifice that Mr. Sinegal struck on stage in Charlotte. He described Mr. Obama as "a President making an economy built to last," adding that "for companies like Costco to invest, grow, hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires something from all of us." But apparently $4 million less from Mr. Sinegal.

The Lottery and Happiness

The recent news of Missouri grandparents winning a whopping $294 million dollars is hard for us Aussies to understand given we are only used to hearing lottery figures of $40 or $50 million or so. But whilst none of us would knock this money back it is necessary to ask how much happiness it would buy us.

Before asking how do lotto winners fare, the more important question should be; how do lotto ticket purchasers fare? Well its an incredibly lousy bet for starters. In fact you are probably better off playing the roulette tables at a casino. According to this New York Times piece

But it’s not. On the contrary, lotteries may well be the single most insidious way that state governments raise money. Many of the people who buy lottery tickets are poor; lotteries are essentially a form of regressive taxation. The odds against winning a big jackpot are astronomical — far worse than the odds at an Atlantic City slot machine. The get-rich-quick marketing — by government, let’s not forget — is offensive. One New York Powerball ad shows a private jet emblazoned with the words “Kevin’s Airline.” The tag line reads: "Yeah, that kind of rich."

 What about those who win?

Oh, and let’s not forget the fate of the people who win. They may be “that kind of rich” on the day they hit the jackpot, but, more often than not, they don’t stay that way. People who suddenly fall into extreme wealth — whether because of an insurance settlement, a professional sports contract, or a lottery win — rarely know how to handle their new circumstances.

There is, to take one of the most prominent examples, the story of Jack Whittaker, a West Virginia businessman who won a $315 million Powerball jackpot in 2002. A decade later, his daughter and granddaughter had died of drug overdoses, his wife had divorced him, and he had been sued numerous times. Once, when he was at a strip club, someone drugged his drink and took $545,000 in cash that had been sitting in his car. He later sobbed to reporters, “I wish I’d torn that ticket up.”

I read about Whittaker, and a host of other sad stories about lottery winners, in a recent e-book written by Don McNay entitled, “Life Lessons From the Lottery.” McNay is a financial adviser and newspaper columnist, based in Kentucky, whom I’ve gotten to know over the years. He specializes in helping people who have come into sudden money. He is convinced that the vast majority of people who win big-money lotteries, like the recent Powerball prize, wind up broke within five years. “The money just overwhelms them,” he told me the other day. “It just causes them to lose their sense of values.”

Lesson learned? Happiness must be earned. People don't get happy when they are given things on a plate, whether its lottery winning or government handouts. According to some studies many of the things that make us the most happy are the little pleasures in life and times of extreme joy or tragedy in our lives often snaps back to equilibrium after a short while;

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don't see any long-term increase in happiness.

As the great thinker Adam Smith put it;

“the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.”

See these brilliant Prager University videos:

Free Speech in the Classroom

George Will on the lack of freedom on college campuses in the US. If you want to see a microcosm of the sought of society the left will run then college/university is the place to look.

Sexism in the Classroom

Its well known that girls out perform boys at school but could it be because there is a gender bias amongst teachers? I'm guessing this is the kind of sexism that little will be done to correct though.

Female teachers mark male pupils more harshly than they do their female students, research has claimed.

Additionally, girls tend to believe male teachers will look upon them more favourably than female teaching staff, but men treat all students the same, regardless of gender.

The study, released on Thursday, told 1,200 students in 29 schools to place financial bets on who would give them higher grades: external examiners or their teacher.

Conducted by professors Amine Ouazad and Lionel Page, for the London School of Economic's Centre for Economic Performance, the report said:

"Male students tend to bet less [money] when assessed by a female teacher than by an external examiner or by a male teacher. This is consistent with female teachers' grading practices; female teachers give lower grades to male students.

"Female students bet more when assessed by a male teacher than when assessed by an external examiner or a female teacher. Female students' behavior is not consistent with male teachers' grading practices, since male teachers tend to reward male students more than female students."

Additionally, the results showed the students' beliefs tended to increase the gender gap in investment and effort. Having a male teacher increased the efforts of female students whereas a female teacher lowered the efforts of boys.

But, more encouragingly, the study found no significant evidence of ethnic discrimination.

"Our results suggest that students from low-income families and minority ethnic backgrounds do not believe in systematic teacher biases. This result is significant given that in some countries, including the United States, studies have found that minority students state beliefs in detrimental teacher biases."

Hat Tip: Dr Helen

A Tribute to Communism

Hat Tip: New Zeal