Ken's Weblog

People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.

Month: November 2008

  • The Social Contract

    The following was originally posted on my Radio Weblog on August 27, 2003. The flaky script that I used to export my Radio posts apparently didn’t export all of them, and this is one of those posts.
    From a mailing list I subscribe to:

    Social Contract [ Text by Joseph Knight, modified by Mike Blessing ]

    SECTION 1: I will surrender a percentage of my property to the Government. The actual percentage will be determined by the Government and may be based on my income, the value of my property, the value of my purchases, or any other criteria the Government chooses, and is subject to change at any time. To aid the Government in determining the percentage, I will use a government identification number.

    SECTION 2: I will limit my behavior as determined by the Government, consume only substances permitted by the Government, limit sexual activities to those permitted by the Government, and forsake religious beliefs that conflict with the Government’s determination of propriety. I will use my property only in a manner determined by the Government.

    SECTION 3: Upon demand, I will surrender my liberty for a period of time to be determined by the Government. During that time, I will serve the Government in any way it chooses, including military service in which I may be called on to kill or to sacrifice my own life.

    SECTION 4: The Government will permit me to seek employment, subject to the limits it determines. These limits may restrict my choice of career or the wages that I accept.

    SECTION 5: In consideration for the above, the Government will offer various services to me. The nature of such services will be determined by the Government and such services are subject to change at any time. The Government may attempt to protect my life and property, but is not liable if it fails to do so. The Government may prohibit me from protecting my own life or property.

    SECTION 6: The Government will determine whether I may vote for certain officials and will determine which candidates are offered when a vote is permitted. The influence of my vote will vary inversely with the number of voters and I understand that it will typically be minuscule. I agree not to hold any official liable for acting against my best interests or for breaking promises, even if such promises motivated my vote.

    SECTION 7: I agree that the Government may change these terms at any time and hold me fully liable if I fail to abide by these or any other terms. The Government may enter, search, or seize my home and other property without my consent or knowledge to ensure compliance, and the Government may confiscate or destroy my property, imprison me, or kill me with impunity at any time.

    Signature is optional. Existence as a life force is presumed consent.

    SIGNED __________________________________________________________

    DATE ______/______/_______

    WITNESS _________________________________________________________

    DATE ______/______/_______

  • Ektar 100 out

    A few weeks ago I learned about Kodak’s new C-41 film, Ektar 100. It’s out now–Samy’s in LA had a big pile of it. I bought a couple of rolls to try out.

  • Radio Weblog posts imported

    I finally got around to solving the problem that interfered with importing the posts from my old Radio UserLand weblog when I switched software. The import wasn’t perfect–I had to delete a whole bunch of duplicates. There are also some formatting oddities with the imported posts. Radio didn’t require titles for posts, so all the imported posts now have titles automatically generated from the first few words of the post’s content, and also block quotes were broken in the original export and came through as “bq” in front of a regular paragraph of text.

  • Also, the sun will rise in the east

    New at Reason: Nick Gillespie Makes Three Predictions About Barack Obama’s America.

    Will Barack Obama be a game-changer in American life when he takes office in January? Or will he be more of the same that we’ve seen over the past eight years? And will we stop using the term game-changer?

    Nick Gillespie prognosticates. Read all about it here.

    [Hit and Run]

    Here are the predictions from the article, which goes into considerably more detail and is worth reading:

    1. America’s political and pundit class will go through a clinical bout of ideological amnesia that will be dizzying and appalling for those of us with memories of life before January 2009.
    2. The Culture Wars will be reignited and, as always, the main casualties will be children, the truth, gays, and that evilest excresence of capitalism since novels, nickelodeons, comic books, and video games. And Obama, like Bill Clinton, will be far more conservative on this sort of thing than anybody on either side wants to admit.
    3. Liberals and conservatives will continue to try and define everything in terms of right and left when the proper lens, now more than ever, is choice versus control.

    My own prediction is somewhat simpler: Democrats and Republicans will reverse all their positions (again), and nothing will actually change.

  • Public schools in action

    If the express line at the grocery store is representative, there is a significant minority of Americans who can’t count to fifteen.

  • California propositions

    The results from the election are mostly in and can be seen on the Los Angeles Times website. While I voted no on all of them, I was paying particular attention to a couple that were put on the ballot by Christians: Propositions 4 and 8.

    Proposition 8 was about making it illegal for same-sex couples to marry, so it was really simple to understand. The question on the ballot could just as easily have been, “Are you a bigot?” Sadly, 52.5% of the voters are bigots. This serves as a good illustration of why democracy isn’t the wonderful thing that it’s made out to be in the public schools: it ensures that hated minorities will be oppressed by a tyrannical majority.

    I was also concerned with Proposition 4, which would have required doctors to notify parents and then wait 48 hours when a woman under 18 wanted an abortion (thus giving her parents time to torture her into changing her mind). I was worried about how this would turn out, because it wasn’t just about abortion. In this country people are legally considered property of their parents until they turn 18, and this appalling form of slavery has nearly unanimous support. As it turned out, though, 52% of the voters voted no, so apparently the pro-choice motivation was stronger than the slavery for young women motivation.

    Regardless of the outcome, the fact that these two propositions made it on the ballot at all speaks very poorly of the people of this country.

  • Quote of the Day

    Today is Election Day, and we urge all citizens to vote no with the weapon of their choice.

    Leading Edge Games

  • Another PGP Whole Disk Encryption Review

    Review: PGP Whole Disk Encryption for Mac OS X [Paul Stamatiou]

    Another good review. This one doesn’t mention Time Machine, but goes into more detail on cold boot attacks.

  • What the election is really all about

    Prepared headlines for Wednesday. It all comes down to a choice between the left-wing socialist and the right-wing socialist.

    Southerners prefer a socialist who will redistribute the wealth from the taxpayers to government employees (military), agricultural interests, and corporations with “defense” contracts. They also prefer someone who bombs lots of foreigners in the name of “national greatness.”

    Northerners prefer a socialist who will redistribute wealth from the taxpayers to government employees (non-military), the urban poor, and union members. They also prefer someone who will bomb lots of foreigners (albeit with less bravado) in the name of “human rights.” [LewRockwell.com Blog]

    That’s what presidential elections are, today: deciding which socialist warmonger you want ruling the Evil Empire. “Change” was never one of the choices.

  • Old post on the housing bubble

    I came across this old post, written over six years ago on my old weblog:

    Inflation continues to fall as buyers keep the pressure up on sellers. This also means that a 3-4% wage increase this year and a 10% increase in housing prices will have a major impact on real personal income and wealth. Another three years of this and we will have replicated the gains in real personal wealth over the last two decades (for most Americans — this is in contrast to the rapid stock market driven gains over the last 20 years for the nation’s wealthiest individuals). Nice. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

    There are some problems with this theory. The most glaring is that he’s treating inflation as synonymous with some vague statistic about consumer prices. In fact, inflation is an increase in the supply of money–this may lead to an increase in prices, or it may not, depending on other factors. The US has been inflating its money supply for years without prices going up much, because we send the money overseas to pay for import goods. That can only work as long as overseas sellers are willing to accept the dollars (or have no choice).

    The housing price increase is the result of another bubble. The Federal Reserve is still inflating the money supply, but now instead of the money going into smoke-and-mirror “dot com” stocks, it’s going into real estate. This is bad for anyone buying a house now, because when the bubble bursts, they’ll be stuck with a house worth less than what they paid for it, but their mortgage payments will reflect the inflated price.

    To me, that’s even worse than losing money buying lottery tickets disguised as stocks. At least you can just accept your loss and move on, instead of being stuck either making excessive payments for 30 years on a house or else going through the hassle of selling it at a loss.

    When I wrote that, it hadn’t occurred to me that those house buyers could legally walk away, but as it turns out they could.