::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

No tax, no vote

Political ·Wednesday May 20, 2009 @ 23:25 EDT (link)

In researching this note I was reading about poll taxes, which it turns out mean two different things: the most common in the United States refers to a tax to vote (used in the past to prevent the poor from voting) and before that, refers to a capitation or head tax (i.e. a fixed amount paid by every person). The Constitution forbids a poll tax (capitation clause of Article I and Amendment XXIV)*. This does not mean it is not an excellent idea.

* Determining that while a poll tax is forbidden, an income tax is just dandy is pretty sneaky; you've got to hand it to them.

In the past I've thought about and discussed offline the idea of restricting voting franchise to people that are net tax payers, i.e., if you get more from the government than you pay, you don't get to vote. This could be interpreted strictly as denying voting to government employees, who of course would receive more from the government than they pay (although it could be counter-argued that at least some return commensurate labor; and of course it would be wildly unpopular to disenfranchise the entire military; nevertheless, we are trying to appeal to reason and not emotion). I recently came across these passages in Henry Hazlitt's Man vs. the Welfare State (Arlington House, 1969) that put it more eloquently than I could (pp. 93-4):

Clearly the great problem today is how to keep relief from getting out of hand. But how can we withhold relief from those who would merely rest idly back on it as a permanent way of life, and yet extend it to those who would use it to get back on their feet and once more become productive citizens? This is the baffling problem that I cannot hope to deal with here in detail. Our cities may find themselves compelled to return to some of the safeguards of former days that they perhaps too lightly abandoned—careful tests of needs and means and resources; aid in kind rather than in cash to make sure that the relief meets the particular needs it was intended to meet, particularly of children; a restoration of a residential requirement, to prevent people from moving to a city just to get immediately on its relief roll and to get more than in some other city; an obligation to do some sort of useful work in return for relief until a suitable private job can be found.

But there is a further way to hold down the relief rolls, and outstanding liberals of former days did not hesitate to recommend it. In 1914, A. V. Dicey, the eminent British jurist, asked whether it is wise to allow recipients of poor relief to retain the right to join in the election of a member of Parliament. And John Stuart Mill, writing in his Representative Government in 1861, did not equivocate:

I regard it as required by first principles that the receipt of parish relief should be a preemptory disqualification for the franchise. He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects.

In fact, Mill went much further, and insisted that no one should have the right to vote unless he paid direct taxes:

It is also important that the assembly which votes the taxes, either general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize…. It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into other people's pockets for any purpose which they think fit to call a public one.

In the political climate of today, anyone proposing that the right of franchise be suspended even for those on relief and merely for the time they remained on relief would be derided as having lost touch with political realities. Yet as long as the great and growing army now on various forms of relief and welfare programs retain the right to vote for those who promise them still more of other people's money, we may expect to see relief and welfare programs grow to the point where they eventually undermine the currency and bring on national bankruptcy. The reader will not find it difficult to think of countries where this has already happened.

And again, this quotation from p. 71 is also apropos:

What the guaranteed-income advocates are really saying, behind all their high-sounding phrases and humanitarian rhetoric, is something like this: "Look, we find ourselves with this wonderful apparatus of coercion, the government and its police forces. Why not use it to force the workers to pay part of their earnings over to the non-workers?"

He also expends a chapter (14) criticizing the (so-called) progressive income tax, which I've written about in the past with the conclusion that the fairest tax is in fact a head tax: people (or corporations, for that matter) that make more don't generally use more services, so any income tax, even "regressive" (i.e. a fixed rate, like the flat tax), or a national sales tax (including the fair tax, while better than the current mess, are still proportional to something that has no bearing on services used. The statists have stolen a march by moving the goal posts: far from admitting any more that any tax proportional to income or spending is unfair and punitive, they are even unhappy with the current "progressive" system.

My suggestion is somewhat of a compromise (although it won't seem so in the current climate): divide up government cost into an equal share for everyone (as in the other post). This will be high at first, but as politicians are replaced by new ones that want to reduce spending and allow people to opt out of expensive programs (which they will no longer have to pay for), it will come down. This is the cost to vote ("vote" meaning most likely voting for representation as now). (Better still: let people vote on whether they personally want to contribute or not.)

What about bills that don't involve funding? Shouldn't those on welfare be allowed to vote on them? First, I challenge you to find one (even making minor adjustments to a law moves money around at some level): but if you could, there are several choices. I favor the first: include it with the others: you can participate in government when you contribute to its cost. Another would be some sort of alternate set of representatives (or alternate direct democracy). Extending this, we could go deeper and not allow government employees to vote on government appropriations or military to vote on military appropriations. These are all the worst conflicts of interest: people voting to spend, as Mill put it, other people's money on themselves; they "have every motive to be lavish and none to economize."

One objection is that the young may contribute in future, or the old in the past: but they may not have sufficient funds at the time. From the young (if they're not claimed as a dependent, and it is possible to be of age and a dependent for tax purposes), the government will make loans if they are in school or other useful training, payable when funds are available, possibly with interest suspended while they are progressing towards a degree or certification. Voting should be valued, and a college youth can make a choice to be heard and pay in future, or be silent. For the old, since the cost of voting will be fixed, they can for the most part plan ahead and save for voting in their later years, if they so desire. (They may choose not to, especially if the government has become ideal, that is, libertarian, and is no longer stealing from anyone.)

After the initial sticker shock of a ($X trillion ÷ 200 million or so adults) tax bill, the expectation is that the current crop of bums would be voted out and some real tightwads—exactly what you want when they're spending your money—will be voted in. Programs will be cut, or made optional. An octogenarian, or college student, or disabled person won't find himself owing $20,000 but more like $200 for the few services he needs and has opted into: and if they still can't pay, it's reasonably likely that good neighbors will take up the slack. The idea here is not to charge everyone a whole lot, but to converge to the libertarian ideal of paying for what you use, and to re-empower people and local government to be responsible.

Books finished: America Alone.

Now you're cutting with gas

News, Technical ·Sunday May 17, 2009 @ 19:38 EDT (link)

I finally broke down and got a gas mower: a Toro 20333 (from Home Depot, and I was fortunate to buy it during a 10% off sale on Toro power lawn products). I read several reviews and comparisons online; I considered Honda and Craftsman as alternates, but read a few bad reviews about Hondas (such as tipping them causing them to fail, and my yard is slanted in places), and Toros were conveniently on hand at my local Home Depot (Redmond). The lawn and garden guy there (Wendell) was very helpful; the first time I went there their system shows 21 in stock but nary a one to be found (there had been one when I called the day before, but it sold); but they got them in the next day.

I manhandled it down from the shelf (the employee wasn't allowed to help me; maybe store or union rules?), paid, and wheeled it to the car on a trolley; getting it to the car in a cart was easy; getting it in less so. I got it into the trunk as far as I could (it still stuck out a ways). I also considered putting it in the back seat, but even with the seat forward there wasn't space to get it in (2-door). So I went with the back, and used a bungee cord to hold the trunk down. It was pretty solidly in; I wasn't all that worried. Even Novelty Hill and Stephens presented no danger to stability. (Yes, a truck would have been easier. I don't have a truck. Maybe if I move back to the South.)

Putting it together was simple: pull out the handle, pop the blade brake handle into the handle, then remove two knobs from the body, put the handle on, and tighten the knobs. I added the provided oil, and picked up some regular gasoline later on (it appears to take about a quarter gallon, and I had a gallon can I'd bought for a rented pressure washer a few years back).

It started first pull (as advertised—I think they have a guarantee to this effect), and I mowed a path through my lawn, which was 18-22" today (I'd ignored it for a while). Even this new mower had some trouble with that (I was going to bag, but the first strip mowed filled the bag; tried to "recycle" the clippings (mulch) but it kept stalling, so eventually I put on the side discharge chute and all was well (carved up the grass like a knife through butter), although I'll need to rake the several inches of clippings covering the lawn later.

I tried out both the blade brake clutch (BBC) (also called the blade override system, BOS): it disengages the motor from the blades. For the same price I could have gotten an electric starter, but I think I made the right choice: disengaging the blade allows for clearing out grass that would normally require stopping the mower; the mower starts easily; and electric starter systems have a reputation for going kaput.

In short, this mower is insanely great; my electric mowers would have died after hitting the first patch of grass. As Tim Taylor says: "More power!" was needed, and obtained. (Certainly I don't generally expect a mower to be able to cut almost 2' high grass, but it's not normally that high and I still have to make several passes with my electric mower; the rechargeable one can't even do my small lawn before dying, and managing the cord for the other one is no fun at all; I'd rather pay for gas.) Further updates (maintenance etc.) as events warrant.

PSCU book club #3

News, Political ·Sunday May 17, 2009 @ 19:03 EDT (link)

Honey and I attended the third meeting of the PSCU book club (we missed #2). We're ostensibly studying The 5000 Year Leap, but it ends up being a conservative (and libertarian) discussion group. Honey and I each contributed what I thought to be some good points, and I may have swayed some people in the libertarian direction. As I noted, Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny, subtitled A Conservative Manifesto, is actually an enumeration of libertarian principles—but conservative will sell more books, and libertarian manifesto was already taken by Ron Paul's book Revolution.

There was a good group; an even dozen including us; we had the back room at the Family Pancake House (on Redmond Way). The meeting started at 1600 and we arrived late at around 1630 (since I wanted to finish the lawn, more about which later), but it didn't matter much: the "meeting" (informal discussion) went on until we left at around 1815. I sat next to Mark, who showed interest in the Facebook Visible Vote application I mentioned (but who I unfortunately can't find on Facebook, due to the number of people with that name; I gave him a business card, perhaps he'll find me by email address). Alan was there again, and Jay and Cindy, and Dan the organizer, and several other people I'd seen before.

Another attendee, Vietnam veteran Scott Johnson, is considering mounting a senate campaign against Patty Murray. His goal, should he be elected, is to create a conservative/libertarian caucus that both sides will need to satisfy in order to pass legislation. I gave him a business card and volunteered my services for his campaign, primarily in technical areas such as creating a website. Of such ambitions as his great things are made, and I wish him well.

Government, enemy of adoption

Political ·Sunday May 17, 2009 @ 02:03 EDT (link)

My wife and I were walking around the neighborhood in Duvall today and a thought came to me (probably from something we were talking about): governments—at least, socialistic welfare states like the US—have no incentive to support adoption.

If a single mother who is unable to care for a child adopts it out, the state loses in several ways:

The welfare rolls lose the mother (since she can now work, or at least go to school and become productive later on: and if she has the intelligence to give up a child for which she cannot care, she probably has the motivation to do so). Government programs hate to lose clientele, because it could reduce their budget and influence. Statists like people to be dependent, because they will vote for more theft to feed their addiction to Other People's Money. If someone joins the civil society as a productive member, they will not look kindly upon redistributionist theft of what they worked to earn.
Other welfare departments lose the child, or child benefits, from their rolls. Their influence, power, and budget also takes a hit.
The child will go into foster care or likely a state-run orphanage; if the child from there is adopted into a family that can care for him, the foster care system will also lose power and prestige: if they stay in the system, the department and the state will be able to justify taking more from the people.
Since having a single parent is the largest predictor of juvenile delinquency, crime, and other failures in life (including ending up on welfare), adoption to a stable home breaks the cycle of dependency. (And given this fact, it is not heroic for a single mother to keep the child: it is in fact cruel.)

(As an aside, what a disgusting creation is this welfare government that depends and relies on increased human misery for its existence and propagation? Consider the entrenched autocrats of these fiefdoms, whose increase requires that the people of the United States become yet more and more miserable, that they depend on government theft to feed and clothe them: how miserable and twisted are their souls, as they strive and grasp to handle, skim, and give away yet more of the American worker's labor!)

This is why fees for adoption are high: it is not due to some sort of "You value something if you pay for it" lesson—bringing up the child will be cost enough, but most adoptive parents will pay it gladly. It is to discourage good, honest people from attempting to adopt a child and stop a cycle of governmental dependence which they use to justify robbing hard-working taxpayers. It is not to ensure people can afford a child: the finances of adoptive couples are scoured already; their lives are examined far more closely than birth parents ever suffer (unless they incur the wrath of the local child services bureaucracy). No wonder would-be adoptive parents go to foreign countries to look to obtain a child: those countries usually aren't rich or foolish enough to subsidize out of wedlock births, and look upon relief of the burden of more uncared-for children as a positive, since there is no opportunity there to rob the people to subsidize dependency.

How would a libertarian society handle teen or out of wedlock pregnancies? There would be no welfare state or redistribution, so a parent (or couple) unable to handle a child would not profit from keeping the child: they would in many ways ruin their lives and the child's (but it would be their option as long as the child was safe—libertarian government will prevent harm—and they could do it given a good support network). Private organizations would handle adoption: either charitable organizations, or organizations funded by placements. In either case, adopting out more people to good homes would benefit them, and they would be accountable to their donors/shareholders, to the adoptive parents, and to the children if placement caused harm.

For charities that did choose to support single mothers, no cycle of dependency can be entered, because these charities will be narrowly tailored (it's not one government behemoth; for example a charity may choose to support only single mothers with infants, so it doesn't profit them any if the child becomes a juvenile delinquent—they don't get any more power if more people go to jail—so insofar as they can, they would want to help the mother raise a good citizen), can do far better means testing than government (the previous charity could choose to sponsor someone only if the mother has no other income, passes drug tests, and consents to periodic home inspections: the government can't do this, but a private charity could require this contract or take its money elsewhere), and if the donors are unhappy with a charity's work they stop their support or replace the board of directors.

Returning again to the parents that cannot care for a child and want to adopt it out: since adoption is a contract, and they could choose among several private agencies, they could find an agency and contract that specified open or closed adoption, or even had a provision for them to re-adopt the child at a later date (so perhaps more foster care than adoption), all parties consenting.

Books finished: Liberty and Tyranny.

Photos from the University of Washington

News, School ·Thursday May 14, 2009 @ 21:49 EDT (link)

On Tuesday when I got to school I took a few photos while walking from the central parking garage (C5, under the Central Plaza, a.k.a. Red Square) near Gerberding down to the Drumheller Fountain to the Allen Center (Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering); I also took a few inside and a few of the classroom in the Electrical Engineering basement (EEB 037).

The past few weeks the cherry trees were blossoming and the sun was shining and the mountain was visible; but of course, I didn't have my camera then. Regardless, these are a few shots of the small piece of the school I see on my way to class; when I get to school I sit in one of the lounges of the Allen Center and set up my laptop and VPN into work until class (using the UW or CS&E wireless network); in class, I also set up my laptop so I can ~~surf the web~~ take notes using OneNote and look at the slides.

Every alias is the geek alias!

Technical, Work ·Wednesday May 13, 2009 @ 23:21 EDT (link)

A thread in a political forum (alias) morphed into a Star Trek thread; someone asked:

"I thought this was CLAMS, did I accidentally join the geek alias?"

In response, JD replied:

"You work at Microsoft. Every alias is the geek alias!"

It's true. Some days I see more code, pseudo-XML, algorithms, and technical arguments (and bad puns) in the non-technical aliases than the technical ones. But that's one of the reasons I'm here. It's good to be among fellow hackers, people that get it, that think in code and breathe mathematics and algorithms.

Books finished: A Brief History of Time, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

GoodReads: old books

Technical ·Tuesday May 12, 2009 @ 22:17 EDT (link)

I did some more hacking on my perl GoodReads interface, making it easier to add a book read at an unknown (null) date; I have a lot of old books I'd eventually like to catalog in my system and on GoodReads. Had to alter my database schema and make allowances for null/undef/false parameters a few places that (intentionally) didn't used to allow it.

The GoodReads API seems more stable now; it used to have a lot more random OAuth failures; I haven't seen one for a while now. It may even be safe to call the GoodReads add from my web-based update code, rather than (for example) queuing a request to a daemon to ensure that the data isn't lost if GoodReads' API fails.

Watch battery

News ·Monday May 11, 2009 @ 20:40 EDT (link)

Honey picked up a watch battery for me today, since my watch was making dying motions, and I installed it, since Fred Meyer didn't do installations. I didn't have a small enough Phillips driver, so had to use a same-size flat head.

Celebrity Apprentice: Annie was robbed

News, Media ·Monday May 11, 2009 @ 00:14 EDT (link)

Honestly, did the audience, judges, and Trump not watch the show? Let facts be submitted to a candid world!

Annie never lost her cool in the boardroom, while Joan flung personal insults all the time, e.g. "Would spit and drown her mother in it" "Worse than Hitler" and accused her poker-playing friends of being "mafia".
Joan absolutely caused the designer to quit. She badgered him and brought in her own expert until he left and refused to work with Celebrity Apprentice, which left Annie hanging since his company was doing both sides of the hall. While it was unprofessional of him to quit, Joan's actions definitely drove him to it.
Outside the boardroom, Joan was much worse behaved than Annie. She held a grudge; Annie did not. Annie tried to reconcile with her in the last show; Joan refused to talk. She badmouthed Annie and her profession ("trash") whenever she had a chance. Annie only ever had a few insults outside the boardroom ("I hope she dies" is about as bad as she got, and that immediately after a "Joan-caused disaster"). In business, it's important to be under control; Joan was not.
As everyone admitted, Annie was far more intelligent than Joan. Intelligence is a great asset in a business.
You can't claim Annie wasn't personable: look at all the friends she had and how many were willing to donate money for her charity. Joan, for all her age and experience in the business, could only come up with about one third of the money Annie raised.
Presumably Joan is some sort of New York City icon: that explains the indiscriminate adoration of the crowd; it doesn't explain Trump and the other judges.
Annie won on the objective categories: she had signs for her charity and, as mentioned, raised three times the money. On the fuzzy, fudgable criteria, Joan won, which looks a bit biased from here. (I initially thought there were just four, and Trump was giving two points to each to draw out the final decision, which would have been dodgy but understandable.)

In all, given how well she did as a project manager, in remaining professional in the face of a catty mother-daughter team, and in fund-raising throughout the show, Annie should have been the Celebrity Apprentice, and only preconceived bias would say otherwise. I thought Trump was better than that.

Government tantrums: "Perception of a legitimate deficiency"

News ·Sunday May 10, 2009 @ 00:46 EDT (link)

Many Contra Costa crooks won't be prosecuted: "Misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts and burglaries will no longer be prosecuted in Contra Costa County because of budget cuts, the county's top prosecutor said Tuesday." Pertinent comment from LiveJournal Libertarians:

For the sake of argument, let's assume for a minute that there were legitimate and desirable functions performed by this department. The ones I spotted are shoplifting/trespass/vandalism, so focus on those.

This kind of [stuff] will make your blood boil if you think about it for too long. Basically, any time a government department has to allocate resources during a period of "cuts" (or more realistically these days, "no increases" or "increases less than expected") the resources will always be denied to the areas that most crucially need them so as to create the perception of a legitimate deficiency. These childish antics are precisely why no amount of money can seem to fix the public education system. When increases are less than expected, the department will throw a tantrum; pay raises for teachers and administrators within the bureaucracy will simply be fed first (allocated a greater share of the pool) and money for books, buildings, etc. will be last. Why? Because mom and dad can see the effects of crumbling buildings and 1980's textbooks but couldn't give a rat's ass about the teacher's new car. Same thing with infrastructure and transportation. If you're in charge of the highway department and facing a cut, the last thing y ou want to do is start fixing pot holes. You want to allocate resources as inefficiently as possible so as to guarantee the perception of deficiency.

So see if you spot the irony: a 35 year veteran prosecutor (want to take a stab at his salary?) is complaining about budget cuts that, by his account, will force his office to become redundant. Read that again until you get it. In the private sector this would be the equivalent of occupational suicide. It's a catch 22: either you fire some staff and take some other sane efficiency measures, or you can throw a toddler's temper tantrum and effectively cut off your nose to spite your face. The latter is only a viable tactic in the good old boy zero accountability land of the government.

Well said, sir, well said. Just another tactic big government uses to perpetuate and propagate itself, even in times where private enterprise, not being able to steal from the taxpayer but dependent upon voluntary contracts and satisfying customer demand, has to make tough and deep cuts.

This ties in well with the book I just read, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government (link below), where Murray examines the effect of throwing money at a cause, and how it is usually a net negative due to various psychological and sociological factors. (He makes this case based on the happiness of all concerned, without needing to appeal to libertarian principles of personal freedom and (severely) limited government, which not everyone will embrace, although I submit that those that don't must either desire power, beneficial income transfers, or are mentally defective.)

Books finished: Trading Chaos, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government.