Dec 7, 2015 | Politics
Imagine each state in America was a country like Europe. Here are the two extremes in America. Wyoming is the state with the most guns per capita. District of Columbia is the least -- yet Washington D.C. has the most gun murders. Simply banning potential victims from having guns will not stop criminals from using them. It will only leave the victims disarmed. Further Reading:
Great Quote:
"Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade." -- Sam Harris: The Ethical Importance of Guns
Dec 5, 2015 | Politics
From the egalitarian ("social justice"), partisan, left-wing Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law:
Today, the national crime rate is about half of what it was at its height in 1991. Violent crime has fallen by 51 percent since 1991, and property crime by 43 percent. In 2013 the violent crime rate was the lowest since 1970. And this holds true for unreported crimes as well. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, since 1993 the rate of violent crime has declined from 79.8 to 23.2 victimizations per 1,000 people. Americans who lived through the 1960s and 1970s remember the fear associated with a real surge in violent crime. In fact, the violent crime rate increased by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970, and by 64 percent between 1970 and 1980.
[...]
Government statistics show that, except for some small blips, serious crime has decreased almost every year from 1994 through 2013. For over a decade Gallup has found that the majority of Americans polled believe crime is up, contrary to the fact that crime rates have plummeted in almost every small and large city since the 1990s. This is not to say that all cities and areas are experiencing decreases in violent crime year after year, but the overall rate of violent crime is significantly lower than historic levels.
[...]
As with the Gallup polls data, the narrative of violent crime -- at least in the popular press -- doesn't have much to do with the crime reality. Crime across the nation is at an all-time low. We need to recognize that and embrace effective policies to keep it even lower. Just as with the case of airplane crashes, the public may see the extraordinary event as representative of the norm when it is not. [America's Faulty Perception of Crime Rates]
Hat Tip: Violent Crime Rates -- US Statistics | National Review Online
Dec 5, 2015 | Politics
From The Riddle of the Gun: Sam Harris
Most of my friends do not own guns and never will. When asked to consider the possibility of keeping firearms for protection, they worry that the mere presence of them in their homes would put themselves and their families in danger. Can’t a gun go off by accident? Wouldn’t it be more likely to be used against them in an altercation with a criminal? I am surrounded by otherwise intelligent people who imagine that the ability to dial 911 is all the protection against violence a sane person ever needs.But, unlike my friends, I own several guns and train with them regularly. Every month or two, I spend a full day shooting with a highly qualified instructor. This is an expensive and time-consuming habit, but I view it as part of my responsibility as a gun owner. It is true that my work as a writer has added to my security concerns somewhat, but my involvement with guns goes back decades. I have always wanted to be able to protect myself and my family, and I have never had any illusions about how quickly the police can respond when called. I have expressed my views on self-defense elsewhere. Suffice it to say, if a person enters your home for the purpose of harming you, you cannot reasonably expect the police to arrive in time to stop him. This is not the fault of the police—it is a problem of physics.Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade. The hesitation of bystanders in these situations makes perfect sense—and “diffusion of responsibility” has little to do with it. The fantasies of many martial artists aside, to go unarmed against a person with a knife is to put oneself in very real peril, regardless of one’s training. The same can be said of attacks involving multiple assailants. A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time. A world without guns, therefore, is one in which the advantages of youth, size, strength, aggression, and sheer numbers are almost always decisive. Who could be nostalgic for such a world?
Until a better form of self-defense like a blaster that can be set to stun comes around, a gun is the ethical weapon of self-defense when the police are not there to protect you.Thoughts?
Dec 4, 2015 | Philosophy, Politics
On December 2, 2015, the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property released a new white paper, Copyright Principles and Priorities to Foster a Creative Digital Marketplace, by Sandra Aistars, Devlin Hartline, and Mark Schultz.As Congress continues its comprehensive review of the Copyright Act, the authors suggest how the law and the institution responsible for its administration–the U.S. Copyright Office–might be updated and restructured to better support a thriving, creative digital marketplace. They offer several organizing principles, as well as several areas to prioritize for action, for Congress to consider as it revises the copyright law.The authors also give a brief overview of the constitutional origins of copyright protection, explaining how the premise of our copyright system–that authors’ rights and the public good are complementary–comports with the dominant natural rights philosophy in the early American Republic. They then examine several ways in which the copyright system fulfills its purpose, as envisioned by the Founders, by driving innovation in the creative industries.To download the full white paper, please click here.
Dec 3, 2015 | Business, Politics, Sci-Tech
A half century ago the famous philosopher Ayn Rand identified the principle that motivates the haters of success. In her essay “The Age of Envy" she called it the "Hatred of the good for being the good":Today, we live in the Age of Envy.
“Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.
Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. ...That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree.... Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
As a concrete illustration of this principle, ponder the envy-filled "progressive" "social justice" warrior Devon Maloney's response to Zuckerberg's donation of 45 billion dollars to charity:Studies have shown that billionaire altruists like Zuckerberg are increasingly directing the course of American science, for example, and can supercharge research that has otherwise been bogged down in public sector and governmental bureaucracy – thus saving thousands if not millions of lives. But it also means that the rich are still effectively buying the future they’d like to see, no matter how selfless their intentions may be.
Apparently they should build a future that Maloney wants to see.International philanthropy and the western world’s desire to eradicate poverty and disease can’t ever truly rid themselves of their imperialist roots; as many critics have pointed out, the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture. When you have an extra $45bn lying around, nothing you do with that money will come without strings, whether you craft those strings or not. Simply by creating and overseeing the world’s largest social network and one of the most influential corporations on Earth .... Mark Zuckerberg himself continues to reproduce the inequality he and his wife are taking aim at with their pledge. [...] if it took Max Chan Zuckerberg’s birth to give her parents the courage and determination to destroy their own ivory tower for the needs of the many, we should all be praying that she’ll get a few more siblings in the coming years.
One wonders what kind of Ivory Tower of envy and hatred Maloney lives in.Zuckerberg and other entrepreneurial businessmen have the ability to create values (like Facebook) and make money at the same time -- Maloney has little or none. Ergo the "white industrial complex/ivory tower" (capitalism) is wrong and must be destroyed.Quoting from Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged:They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.
Dec 3, 2015 | Business, Politics
Two views on the Zuckerberg donation.Complains Jesse Eisinger on How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself at the NY Times, "superwealthy plutocrat" Zuckerberg's charity LLC will allow him to donate money to charity and avoid paying taxes on the money donated to charity.Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money. In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.
... I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Mr. Zuckerberg. I am self-aware enough to I realize many people would disagree with my choices.
... Mega-donations, assuming Mr. Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because [if] that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.
Compare this to the eloquent Ross Kaminsky on Not Giving Back, Just Giving | The American Spectator:Still, when the uber-wealthy promise to give away their fortunes, there’s a part of me that can’t help but anticipate with some annoyance the inevitable fawning reactions of the commentariat that the particular billionaire is “giving back” — as if he or she had taken something, as if depleting a fortune is more newsworthy or praiseworthy than earning it (even though earning it seems more difficult and a precondition for giving it away).
... the Chan-Zuckerberg letter betrays an unfortunately collectivist mentality, discussing their “moral responsibility” and urging people to “collectively direct our resources,” as if resources are “ours” instead of “theirs” or “yours” or “mine.” Unless a person inherited or stole his riches — and I don’t believe that anyone mentioned above falls into that category — both in moral and economic terms the wealthy have by definition already given back.
....After years of hearing the twisted jealousy of the left, too many Americans believe that billionaires are “takers” and therefore have a duty to “give back.” That turns reality — and morality — on its head. These people have been wildly successful because they have made the lives of millions of human beings wildly more productive, secure, healthy and even fun.
.... Their affluence is a measure of their contributions to society, not their impoverishing of it. As laudable as it is that Mark Zuckerberg and other participants in the Giving Pledge direct their wealth toward charitable enterprises that reflect their goals and values, what should truly be celebrated is that they were able to earn those fortunes to begin with. No matter how well the billionaires target their altruistic impulses, they have improved our lives more by making their fortunes than by disposing of them.
Imagine each state in America was a country like Europe. Here are the two extremes in America. Wyoming is the state with the most guns per capita. District of Columbia is the least -- yet Washington D.C. has the most gun murders. Simply banning potential victims from having guns will not stop criminals from using them. It will only leave the victims disarmed. Further Reading:
