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Text of the page (random words):
es how the mandate is beyond the power s of the u s federal government and that the supreme court would be right to strike it down those same commentaries however then concede that the same federal government does have the authority to raise taxes and then use that money to provide health care a la social security two thoughts immediately come to mind if the commentary as described above is correct why is there such an uproar about the mandate if the federal government really does have the authority assuming it does so via the proper means to force health care on every person within its jurisdiction wouldn t it be far less injurious to individual liberty to allow people to choose from which provider they will get their insurance and the terms of that insurance furthermore wouldn t it be far more economically efficient if individuals purchased insurance for themselves saving the cost both monetary and bureaucratic of the government having to hire more irs agents to collect the money and more functionaries to manage it isn t the real problem that the u s constitution is all but worthless at this point that is if the mandate is such an affront to individual liberty but the constitution allows the government to achieve the same ends via different means what good is it as a protector of that liberty 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels constitution economics government insurance liberty obamacare social security taxes 27 march 2012 unjust laws for some reason today the quote alongside the picture of martin luther king jr got me thinking the phrase unjust laws in particular struck me what is an unjust law who makes the determination king s quote is not new it was said before by aquinas who was in turn drawing on augustine quoted as saying an unjust law is no law at all i tend to agree with the sentiment as i imagine most people would but the rub occurs of course when trying to determine exactly which laws are unjust based solely on this quote it seems that king is suggesting that humans have the ability to determine for themselves what is just and what is unjust if this is the case then we can infer that laws are completely unnecessary in the first place for if a law is unjust then no one is obligated to follow it if on the other hand it is just then there was no need for the law in the first place because people would have acted accordingly on their own this latter point is predicated on the idea that humans are by and large innately interested in living in a peaceful and just society i believe this to be true simply because society exists at all because no social system whether anarchist or statist can work at all unless most people are good in the sense that they are not all hell bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors if everyone were so disposed no amount of protection whether state or private could succeed in staving off chaos the idea of no laws probably conjures images in people s minds of masked marauders throwing molotov cocktails in the streets i ll make the leap of suggesting that this is objectively unjust i m skipping ahead with that assumption but we ll circle back in order to right this injustice we need to haul the perpetrators into court and try them without laws however the court whether by judge or jury is helpless to judge the actions of the defendants in fact any judgment against them should probably be tossed on the grounds that it would be based on the imposition of an ex post facto standard since the law didn t exist before the crime was committed no one can be convicted of having broken it but look we ve tossed the conviction based on the idea of ex post facto laws being unjust an idea clearly introduced into our theoretical justice system ex post facto clearly we need laws if only to codify what is believed to be just whether these laws must be promulgated by a single authority the state or whether society can adopt them on its own is the subject of another article instead this article is concerned with the idea of un just laws aquinas doesn t leave us hanging fortunately he lists three things all of which must be true in order for the law to be just the law is created for the common good the law does not exceed the authority of the lawmaker the law burdens all equally for the sake of completeness aquinas also describes a law as being un just if it is opposed to the divine good in this way he is adding a fourth requirement that for a law to be just it must not oppose the divine good as dictated by aquinas particular religion this point violates the third point if we wish to allow for the possibility of the existence of other religions or even the right of individuals to choose not to observe any religion therefore this requirement must be rejected let us now consider the remaining requirements first the common good the phrase itself suggests that this good can be objectively known and that there is some good or end to which all people subscribe the only end to which we can confidently assert that all people are working toward is the preservation of their own lives we know this because any who are not working toward this end presumably would have killed themselves thus any remaining people can objectively be said to value life over death therefore all just laws must be made in the pursuance of the preservation of life second we consider the authority of the lawmaker this must start by determining from where this authority comes in the first place the simplest way to do this is to conduct a thought experiment in which one person and subsequently two people exist in isolation from anyone else this has been covered before the conclusion of this experiment is that each person exclusively controls his her body if one of these two people is to become the lawmaker he or she can only assume that role with the consent of the other that is a lawmaker s authority extends no further than that which is given by those who would be subject to it given this we can now determine the extent of that authority in practice the lawmaker can have no more authority than any individual for an individual cannot grant authority that he himself does not possess it is worth noting that the logical extension of this is that two individuals have no more authority than one nor four more than two etc in order to determine the limits of individual authority we return to the thought experiment in which we ve already concluded that each person has the exclusive right to control his or her body in order to maintain this right it is necessary that neither person engage in aggressive as opposed to defensive force against the other this simple rule the golden rule is all that is necessary to maintain that status quo thus the authority of the lawmaker is limited to the prevention of the violation of the exclusive control of bodies the use of aggressive force between a person or people against another person or people finally there is the idea that the law to the extent that it burdens any must burden all equally given the narrow constraints on the law created by the first two requirements equal burden of the law is not a topic that requires much if any investigation except to say that the law must apply to all including the lawmaker failure to apply the law equally such as it may be under the first two requirements would be to allow an individual or individuals to act contrary to aquinas second provision and as already discussed this authority cannot properly be granted by anyone if the discussion had turned to taxes a debate could be had on the equality of burden created by progressive vs flat tax systems but the imposition of taxes by the law again falls outside of at least the second of aquinas first two requirements to sum up we find under aquinas modified requirements remember the fourth was dropped that just laws must be enacted to preserve life that the scope of these laws is limited to the prevention of the use of aggressive force between persons or peoples and that all must be subject equally to said laws having arrived at these requirements through the objective observations of human actions we can now return to the earlier statement that the masked marauders throwing molotov cocktails were acting unjustly to the extent that these actions are against people they are objectively unjust a discussion of the propriety of such actions with respect to property is purposely excluded from this article given these limitations on the law we are led to the perhaps not so startling conclusion that nearly all laws on the books today are unjust 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels anarchy courts justice religion taxes 13 january 2012 bruce schneier 3 s tsa yesterday bruce schneier wrote a blog post about abolishing the department of homeland security it was based in large part on a cato report calling for the same citing that dhs has too many subdivisions in too many disparate fields to operate effectively agencies with responsibilities for counterfeiting investigations border security disaster preparedness federal law enforcement training biological warfare defense and computer incident response find themselves under the same cabinet official this arrangement has not enhanced the government s competence americans are not safer because the head of dhs is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics schneier agrees citing his own writing from 2003 our nation may actually be less secure if the department of homeland security eventually takes over the responsibilities of existing agencies security is the responsibility of everyone in government we won t defeat terrorism by finding a single thing that works all the time we ll defeat terrorism when every little thing works in its own way and together provides an immune system for our society unless the dhs distributes security responsibility even as it centralizes coordination it won t improve our nation s security but schneier takes issue with cato s suggestion later in the above linked report that the tsa should abolished instead he believes abolishing the tsa isn t a good idea airport security should be rolled back to pre 9 11 levels but someone is going to have to be in charge of it putting the airlines in charge of it doesn t make sense their incentives are going to be passenger service rather than security some government agency either has to hire the screeners and staff the checkpoints or make and enforce rules for contractor staffed checkpoints to follow it would be very easy at this point to attack schneier on the basis that the tsa is a colossal failure however that tsa is not a failure of epic proportions is not what he is arguing in fact schneier himself is the progenitor of the idea that exactly two things have made flying safer the reinforcement of cockpit doors and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers furthermore just this week he penned an article calling the tsa irrelevant so let s look at exactly what he did say that airline security should return to pre 9 11 levels with the government being in charge of it either directly government hired goons staffing the checkpoints or indirectly private contractors acting under government regulation if we hearken back to the pre 9 11 days we find that his statement is redundant prior to 9 11 the government via the faa was in charge of airline security and what schneier is suggesting is exactly how we arrived ignoring the reason s for the attacks themselves at 9 11 in the first place before addressing schneier s claim that putting the airlines in charge of airport security doesn t make sense let s start with why his own solution doesn t make sense first there is the empirical evidence as i just pointed out 9 11 happened on the government s watch while i agree that airline security should be rolled back to pre 9 11 levels putting leaving the government in charge of it is ludicrous and the reason for that is that the government s interests do not align with that of the traveling public ostensibly both care about flight safety but in reality as schneier himself points out relentlessly the tsa fails to provide this on any level just last month a vanity fair writer explained how schneier helped him circumvent tsa security to meet schneier at the gate when his flight arrived then there s my own personal experience after leaving the screening area without being screened the tsa demanded that i return because they feared that i may have an explosive device on my person why would they usher me back to the most crowed area of the airport if they feared that i had explosives in reality the government s interest s lie in an ever increasing role in security this provides not an actual increase in security but an ever increasing ability to funnel money to favored contractors and further ratchet up the police state apparatus for the same reason the other reason that having the government in charge of airline security doesn t make sense is the same reason that letting the airlines manage their own security does the profit and loss test the basic idea is that when a business produces a product that consumers want at a cost that is less than what consumers are willing to pay then the business profits if any of these conditions are not met the business suffers a loss if the business does not change then it goes out of business government intervention notwithstanding let s apply this test to the government s handling of airline security it is producing a product that consumers want namely security it is producing it at a cost of approximately 8 8 billion per year according to the federal government s 2011 budget but this is where the profit and loss test ends for the tsa or any government entity the profit and loss test requires that consumers of a product voluntarily pay or not pay for it the government is funded via compulsory taxation therefore the government need not concern itself with whether or not it is producing a product that people want or more importantly in a way that they want that the government acts in exactly this way is borne out by reality the tsa s budget during its first full year of funding in 2003 was 4 8 billion it s current budget only 8 years on is a near 100 increase from that initial budget this comes despite repeated tsa bungles including sleeping on the job physically harassing passengers allowing criminal activity to bypass security stealing from passengers the list goes on and on if the tsa was a private corporation consumers would have put it out of business almost 10 years ago instead its costs are higher than ever and rising with no end in sight in fact the tsa s only measurable goal is total security something that requires an absolute police state despite the desire on the part of the traveling public for total security i d wager that ...