adam ricketson's blog

The danger of drug availability

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:25:46 -0800

Drugs like LSD and Salvia are powerful. Power is always dangerous.

Many people who have handled LSD have considered its potential as a weapon -- the CIA supposedly had considered a plan to involuntarily dose Fidel Castro so that he would become delusional during a public appearance. I haven't heard many drug warriors appeal to the dangers of dosing as a reason for prohibition, but it is surely one concern.

I've never known anyone who was "dosed" with a drug, but I am familiar with the urban legend of drinks spiked with alcohol, or marijuana laced with PCP. I don't know what drives people to do things like this -- is it simply a mix-up of the drugs? Is it malicious? Does someone think it would be funny to involuntarily intoxicate another person? Does some demented soul actually think he'd be doing another person a favor by slipping a drug into their bloodstream?

Those are questions for the ages, but if anyone thinks that dosing another person is harmless (especially with psychadelics), read this story, with it's quite gory details:

An 18-year-old woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, after reportedly smoking marijuana, with schizophrenia-type symptoms. She was agitated, disorganized and hallucinating. Several days later, her former boyfriend revealed that she had unknowingly smoked leaves and leaf extracts of Salvia divinorum added to her marijuana joint. The young woman had a long history of cannabis use with no untoward effects, but had never before used salvia. After increasing self-mutilating behavior in the hospital, she was involuntarily admitted to a closed ward.

I've been following the news on Salvia, and this is the first that I've heard of a person having sustained, acute reactions to it (it's dementia typically receeds in about 5 minutes when smoked). Based on what I know about psychedelic drugs*, I think that the negative effects were probably amplified by the fact that she was unaware of her intoxication.

So as libertarians, we have to consider scenerios such as the one above. Is it sufficient cause for prohibiting a drug? I think our answer would have to be "no", on the basis that the risk of using a drug as a weapon is no different than using any other weapon. But there is also an argument to be made that prohibition actually increases the risks from involuntary drug conspution: people who have experienced the drug previously may be more likely to understand what is happening to them and respond in a manner that returns them to sobriety.

Anyway, this is one more disturbing fact of the world, and something we need to face.

*for example, LSD is effective in minuscule amounts, most of the drug does not go to the brain, and its effects last long after the drug has been metabolized -- suggesting that it shifts the brain into a semi-stable alternative state, rather than simply causing a transient modification of brain chemistry.

How Democrats would reform the coal cartel

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:42:47 -0800

There's an interesting front-page article at Daily Kos, How to Save the Coal Industry. It's quite good from a policy-wonk perspective, but a couple of things jumped out at me as a libertarian.

First, the author (Devilstower) encourages Coal Industry executives to embrace regulations as a barrier to entry:

Eliminating mountaintop removal will increase the cost of mining, yes, but by raising the cost of entry and restricting mining to more specialized equipment, it will mean that the dilettantes (who also happen to be those most likely to dodge environmental and safety rules) will be forced from the industry.

The author also encouraged the mining companies to encourage/tolerate the growth of unions among their workers. He advocated this on the basis of maintaining a good workforce, but he could have also mentioned that unions can make workers feel more connected to their industry, and help them advocate for government favoritism towards the industry: this is especially important for a shrinking industry.

The last thing I noticed, is that many of the proposals dealt with the health of the industry, rather than individual companies. I wonder to what extent this is necessary -- for many aspects of business, this does seem important. Political influence is often wielded by industries, not individual companies. Workers invest in training based on the employment opportunities in the industry in general, not so much based on individual companies. Public relations (even outside of politics) often delivers benefits to the industry, as do market-expanding technologies (such as electric-cars). This issue is really just a special case of the public-goods problem.

Re-evaluating priorities in light of a Democratic government

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:54:36 -0800

I am a "Bush Democrat"--I was pushed into the Democratic party by the excesses of the Bush administration. These excesses led me to support many "progressive" institutions, such as the ACLU on the basis that they were the best suited to impede the expansion of intrusive government under Bush.

However, times have changed. The Democratic one-party government is bound to try to expand the invasiveness of government in some ways, even if it retracts some of Bush's intrusions. While the ACLU will surely provide pressure on this new government, their value to us may be limited either if they are more forgiving of a Democratic administration, or if they simply don't care about the issues where Democrats are likely to tread on our liberties.

So is it time to emphasize different alliances? For example, perhaps any material support for the ACLU should be redirected to the Institute for Justice. I appreciate how the IfJ tries to make the world easier for artisan entrepreneurs, they remind me a bit too much of John Stossel. I would like them to have a broader outlook, picking some economic issues that might be considered "leftist", such as non-compete clauses that limit an employee's job opportunities (even if he was fired without cause-see comment for details).

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

What I expect from Obama's Presidency (no-brainers)

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:17:04 -0800

Cross-posted to Swords Crossed

Some issues are big and scary and complicated (like war and our financial system), and I can understand how I'm not really in a position to specify expectations for how the government will address them.

However, some other issues are so straightforward (even if they aren't 'big') that I can confidently say that if the new Democratic government does not address these issues, then they will be guilty of negligent government.

I'm sure that many issues fall into this category, but here's are two issues that I expect the new government to take care of in fairly short order:

Medicalize marijuana: Marijuana should be recategorized from Schedule I to Schedule II, so that it is no more restricted in its use than Coca or Opium. This would not allow Americans to buy raw marijuana, but it would make it easier for drug companies to investigate and commercialize marijuana extracts and their derivatives. (I intend to write a full-length argument for rescheduling in the near future)
Recognize civil unions at the Federal level: According to Glenn Greenwald, Section 3 of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (1996) "prohibits the Federal Government and all federal agencies from extending any federal marriage-based benefits, privileges and rights to same-sex couples", causing great hardship on same-sex couples. This needs to end, and Greenwald makes a good case for this being a political no-brainer, let alone a moral no-brainer.

Here comes President Obama!

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:51:11 -0800

The ball is now in the court of the Democrats in Washington. Obama's first act was to offer his Chief of Staff job to Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel seems like a typical Democrat, with nothing in particular to recommend him from the libertarian perspective.

McCain's ACORN conspiracy theory

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:05:32 -0700

McCain: We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

McCain made this serious accusation during the third presidential debate. It has also been propagated by television advertisements, and extensive editorializing by Obama's opponents. However, if we look into the specific accusations against ACORN (let alone the actual evidence), they do not add up into the grand conspiracy theory that McCain is promoting.

Others have addressed the vapidness of trying to link Obama to ACORN's alleged grand conspiracy, and also some of the facts behind the allegations. I'm going to limit myself to a critique of how the grand-conspiracy claim cannot be built up from the specific allegations, and how the alleged voter-registration fraud would not be a reasonable act of someone involved in this grand conspiracy.

Before I get into the details, I want to point out that the ACORN conspiracy theory (or scapegoating, perhaps) is even broader than these baseless accusations of voter fraud. McCain is even trying to blame ACORN for the fact that Wall-Street bankers failed to manage their risk properly (see the TV commercial)--as if this relatively tiny organization could pressure the banking industry into destroying its own foundations at a time that it was raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits each year (FWIW, Greenspan places much/most of the blame on investor demand for mortgage backed securities).

Let's look at the traits of this grand conspiracy theory being promoted by McCain and his campaign:

It is national: McCain implies this during his debate tirade, by focusing on a national organization (ACORN) and emphasizing the vast scale of the conspiracy. His TV advertisement explicitly refers to a "nationwide voter fraud".
It relies on ACORN's infrastructure.
It begins with fraudulent voter registration, and will be consummated with actual fraudulent votes being cast in swing states.

Consider how many people must be involved in this. First, there are the people who actually filled out the fraudulent forms, then there are their supervisors (up to the national level), and finally there are the individuals who will actually cast false ballots (with some sort of false identification).

I'm guessing this would involve hundreds of people, and law-enforcement agencies have apparently caught tens of people from that first group (registration fraud)--yet not a single person is alleged to belong to either of the other two groups (national coordination, and vote fraud).

Look at the propaganda I linked to above, and any other source you know of. Please let me know if any person has been charged/accused of participating in national coordination of registration fraud, or any sort of vote fraud.

Aside from the fact that we have no evidence of the most important components of this grand conspiracy, there is also the problem that this conspiracy would be the most asinine, bumbling conspiracy that I've ever heard of. Look at the allegations from the NRO editorial:

First, the foot-soldiers in this conspiracy are "lazy crackheads"--as if such people could be relied on to keep their mouths shut about a conspiracy.
ACORN illegally employed felons on work-release--no allegation that they were involved in any fraud, or that they would be reliable participants in a conspiracy.
They registered "the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys" and Mickey Mouse -- as if using celebrity names wouldn't obviously attract attention to their activities.
"21 separate voter-registration applications were filed for a single voter in Miami"-- again, a pretty obvious red-flag.
"attempted to register untold numbers of dead, underage, imprisoned, imaginary, or otherwise ineligible voters ...apparently pulled out of the phone book at random" -- this might actually be useful for voter fraud, but there'd be a major risk of getting caught when you actually try to impersonate someone who has already voted (or who should be in jail!).
"registrations...filed from nonexistent addresses"--another red flag; and how would the importers get their voter-registration cards?
"forged signatures"-- bad, but no indication of intention to commit registration fraud.
"In July of 2007, five ACORN activists pleaded guilty to fraud in Washington State for submitting nearly 2,000 phony voter applications"--and yet they did not provide any evidence of a conspiracy to commit electoral fraud.

I'm thinking about this from the perspective of how this conspiracy would play out in Pennsylvania. We have pretty lax ID laws, but we are pretty stringent on absentee ballots. If I were to submit a fraudulent registration, I would not know of its success until I received my voter registration card at home. Furthermore, to vote absentee, I would need to have the ballot mailed to my home. This makes it worthless for me to register at other people's addresses, and it would be pretty obvious if a large number of "voters" registered from my house.

Finally, why would an electoral-fraud conspiracy submit it's fraudulent applications in a big package (i.e. the ACORN submissions). Knowing that many of their fraudulent registrations would get caught, they would want to avoid any indication that their registrations were connected to each other. The obvious way for them to submit their application would be as if they were regular individuals just registering to vote as a regular order of business--not part of a transparently fraudulent voter registration drive.

The only reasonable strategy I can think of for voter-side electoral fraud would be to register a large, ineligible population with a strong preference for one party or another -- yet I haven't heard any allegations of the type.

So overall, there is no basis for McCain's claims about a grand conspiracy within ACORN, and it really only takes a little common sense to see through his BS.

Cross posted to Swords Crossed

The early voting phenomenon

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:32:53 -0700

I just want to bring your attention to the prevalence of early voting in this election. As I understand the situation, a few states just implemented it this year, while a few had early voting in place back in 2004 (here's a table of the impact in 2004, and another with current laws). From what I hear, Democrats are really capitalizing on it, partly in the hope of preventing long lines from forming in heavily Democratic districts. It also allows activists to "take care of business" ahead of election day so that they can help get others to the polls on Nov 4.

We've got some data already, most shocking was this fact:

COLORADO
Early voting is high at the moment; with 13 days to go, early votes are 22.2% of 2004 overall turnout.

I wonder if this will make election-day exit polling harder or easier to interpret. Between this, touchscreen voting, and new voter-ID requirements, it seems like voting has changed a lot since the 2000 election.

Why is our government creating cartels?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:51:56 -0700

In today's commentary on Marketplace, Robert Reich articulated some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head since the government started bailing out financial firms: Maybe 'too big to fail' is just 'too big':

We seem to have forgotten that the original purpose of antitrust law was also to prevent companies from becoming too powerful. Too powerful in that so many other companies depended on them, so many jobs turned on them and so many consumers or investors or depositors needed them, that the economy as a whole would be endangered if they failed. Too powerful in that they could wield inordinate political influence of a sort that might gain them extra favors from Washington.
Maybe the biggest irony today is that Washington policymakers who are funneling taxpayer dollars to these too-big-to-fail companies are simultaneously pushing them to consolidate into even bigger companies.

These companies aren't quite monopolies, but the fact that they are "too big to fail" seems to imply that they are involved in a form of market manipulation, whether intentional or not.

The prospect of corporate mergers leads me to ask "what is a corporation": it is a legally binding agreement among producers to regulate the production, pricing, and marketing of a good. This is the definition of a cartel, except that a corporation is treated as a single legal entity rather than a collection of entities. The fact that the maintenance of the corporation is legally enforced (shareholders cannot withdraw their capital) is important, because cartels are unstable in the absence of legal enforcement.

The very existence of a corporation (a creation of the state) implies the need for rules regulating how large a corporation can be. We've become very lax in this regard, and I think we're getting screwed for it.

ACORN: the Republican's funny conspiracy theory

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:03:20 -0700

McCain: We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

Does McCain think that ACORN is a front-group for the Illuminati or something?

Colbert has been having some fun with this, including a great rant from last Thursday, both in the show from last Friday (gotta watch a commercial, then go to 3:58), and in this more recent clip:

McCain's plan for militaristic propaganda

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:05:48 -0700

During the debate, McCain suggested that the government has a special interest in getting retired soldiers into teaching positions:

MCCAIN: We need to encourage programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers where people, after having served in the military, can go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which -- or have the certification that some are required in some states.

He didn't give much explanation here, but he has gone into more depth previously:

The sense of heightened responsibility and duty to a cause greater than themselves that veterans were taught in the discipline and code of conduct of the armed forces make many of them excellent candidates to impart those virtues to our children, and help them see the value of learning as a means to self-improvement and much nobler ends,

All together, this strikes me as plan for systematically introducing militaristic indoctrination into our schools. McCain is asserting that military veterans have special character traits that they should pass on to Americas children. Bullshit!

Before anyone accuses me of hating soldiers, let me say that I have no problem with soldiers or with them taking up teaching after retiring from the military. What I have a problem with is a government program to stack the schools with people from a particular background, especially one that correlates with particular moral and political values. I also have a problem with the notion that soldiers are somehow better than the rest of us "regular" Americans, and that they should be given special treatment outside of the benefits associated with their military career.

In a society with a volunteer, professional military, a military career is equivalent to any other professional career (medical, legal, technical, educational etc.). The dangers and stresses of military service do justify certain special benefits (good insurance, early retirement) but do not make them superior role models than anyone else.

Given that the military is not a life long career, it makes sense that it may provide job-placement services to soldiers that are transitioning to another career. If many soldiers are attracted by teaching, then the military should be adept at aiding those soldiers, but it should not have any special program initiated by politicians.

On the flip side, there's an argument to be made that schools benefit from hiring teachers who have spent some time outside of the classroom. If our schools adopted such policies, we very well may find that veteran soldiers would gravitate towards teaching -- but they should not be given any advantages that are not also extended to others who have proven themselves outside of the classroom.

These comments by McCain are just part of his repeated glorification of soldiers, and the broader conservative tendency towards soldier worship. In light of how conservatives constantly harp about the ideological composition of the teaching profession, McCain's proposals can reasonably bee seen as an attempt to use government to reshape the ideological influences on the next generation of Americans.

Glenn Greenwald on post-election Democratic activism

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:18:01 -0700

Some worthwhile exerpts from Greenwald's latest post: Patrick Ruffini, the demise of the right and the Democratic alternative

[T]he option of politically empowering Democrats is the opposite of a panacea. The Democratic Party structure in Washington, and particularly its leadership in Congress, is more corrupted and destructive than anything else there is -- with the exception of the right-wing faction that has been running the country for the last eight years. Contrary to the inane conventional Beltway wisdom that bipartisanship is oh-so-tragically scarce, Democrats as an entity have, over and over, passively acquiesced to, and frequently actively enabled and participated in, many of the worst abuses of the last eight years. Their leadership in Congress is corrupt and craven to the bone in many of the same ways the GOP leadership has been -- and they're about to be far more entrenched and their power far less checked.
Moreover, it's far from clear which version of Barack Obama will end up governing...
If those who spent the last eight years vigorously opposing the radicalism, militarism, and anti-constitutional abuses of the Bush administration fail to oppose the Democratic leadership with equal fervor when they violate the same principles -- as they inevitably will -- then the humiliation of the Right and its removal from power will be emotionally satisfying, perfectly just, and a very mild improvement, but will ensure the continuation rather than the termination of most of the worst abuses of this government.

Keynesian revival

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:36:44 -0700

It looks like the Democratic Congress is going to implement an Keynesian response to the economic slowdown by using federal money to prop up state infrastructure projects. If it only supports infrastructure projects that have already been approved by state governments (as Rubin suggests), then I don't see much harm coming from it...that money would be spent anyway:

"I would put in place an infrastructure piece... bridges, water systems roads, highways, but not new projects that are going to take a long time to set up," Rubin said. "There are a lot of existing projects where states and cities are having a hard time finding a lot of financing where you could funnel that money right into existing activities where you would be able to act very very quickly."

Does this mean that Pittsburgh will remodel its combined sewage system? Doubt it.

Palin the fake

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:02:46 -0700

When I see Sarah Palin on TV, I get this odd feeling -- that I'm looking at a fake person. This is especially strange since she seems to be effectively convincing many Americans that she represents "regular folk".

I think that there are few components to my "fake feeling" regarding her, and I'm comforted that some of it has been validated by one Alaskan writing for Salon.com (see below). First, there's here "beauty contestant" style, including her heavy makeup. Frankly, I'm used to women dressing more casually, or more like Hillary Clinton. Second, and probably more importantly, is her over-eagerness to connect with "regular folk"--it doesn't seem natural. It seems like she's intentionally throwing folksy expressions into her sentences. To make it worse, in the debate she referenced "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Moms". Does anybody really refer to themselves by those terms (or "Soccer mom"?). As far as I can tell, these terms were concocted by professional campaign workers to referr to various demographic groups -- and these demographic groups definitely don't include the people who made up these terms. These terms are belittling expressiosn by which the political/media elite refer to others in the country, by summarizing their lifestye and achievements with one stereotypical activity.

Anyway, now that I've got my rant out of the way, you may want to see what the Alaskan at Salon.com had to say. One section in particular stood out as relevant:

In the broadest sense, Palin is a poseur. Alaska is too large and culturally diverse (it’s only a bit smaller than the entire lower 48 east of the Mississippi, and once was divided into four time zones) to be summed up by some abstract, romanticized notion. And even if it could be, it sure wouldn’t be symbolized by Palin. “The typical Alaskan? She couldn’t be farther from it,” says Alaska House Minority Leader Beth Kertulla.
Still, Palin is a genuine Alaskan — of a kind. The kind that flowed north in the wake of the ’70s oil boom, Bible Belt politics and attitudes under arm, and transformed this state from a free-thinking, independent bastion of genuine libertarianism and individuality into a reactionary fundamentalist enclave with dollar signs in its eyes and an all-for-me mentality.

McCain's foreign policy dictatorship

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:54:37 -0700

In the debate last night, the "Al Qaeda in Pakistan" issue reared its ugly head again:

Hamm: Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?
Obama:...And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out.
McCain: ...Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly...In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan....I'll get [bin Laden] no matter what and I know how to do it. But I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Sen. Obama did. .

After all the hot air on this issue, the two candidates are indistinguishable in terms of how they would treat the borders of states that permit terrorists to operate on their territory; the only difference is in how they talk about what they are willing to do. In this case, Obama is too specific, and McCain is too vague...dangerously vague.

Obama is being too specific because he is being drawn into discussing a particular country, Pakistan. McCain is right in saying that it only aggravates the Pakistanis to discuss things in this manner. I wish that Obama would back up a step and just discuss his general principles for sending military forces into another country uninvited. If he did that, we'd quickly recognize that he isn't saying anything special--his rationale for military action in Pakistan is no different than our rationale for intervention in Afghanistan: our enemies were operating freely in that territory. Furthermore, we already have made incursions into Pakistan, so there is really no dodging of the question about whether those incursions were justified.

McCain on the other hand, wants to completely avoid talking about this issue. He says he wants to "talk softly, but carry a big stick", which apparently means that he doesn't want to lay out his principles for when military action is acceptable; instead, he just wants us to trust him to take care of things. This is problematic on two fronts: first, in foreign affairs it is the attitude of an imperialist; in domestic affairs it is the attitude of a dictator.

By refusing to specify the conditions under which we will intervene, McCain leaves the impression that military intervention will occur solely at the whims of the US President, whenever he considers it "in the national interest". On top of McCain's professed admiration for Teddy Roosevelt (and apparently, his imperialist foreign policy), this refusal to specify the criteria for intervention will lead to the international perception that the USA is a dangerous and unpredictable superpower.

Domestically, McCain's refusal to specify the conditions for intervention asks us to just "trust him". He considers these issues to be too sensitive for public discussion; consequently, they are issues beyond democratic review.

Fascist watch

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:00:02 -0700

Austria's two nationalist parties made major gains in Sunday's elections. Both parties have been lead by Jörg Haider, a man who has been accused of bearing Nazi sympathies. While Haider seems to be more moderate than had been feared, the rise of his movement to power is cause for concern.

Combined with the recent rise in anti-Roma actions in Italy, and the prospect of an economic crisis, this makes me wonder if we should be concerned about a revival of violent nationalism in Europe.

Haider's earlier rise to prominence led the anarchist band Chumbawamba to advocate "giv[ing] that fascist man a gun-shot". Needless to say, I disagree with their attempt to agitate the situation; even if Haider were openly a Nazi sympathizer, violence would have to be the last resort. However, in this situation, if I lived in Europe I'd seriously think about buying a gun...