Don't Worry, I'm Molesting You for Your Own Safety.

So I’ve spent quite some time trying to decide what my next entry would be about. As new issues came up daily  I was getting better and better ideas for an entry, and leaving the old ones somewhere in my Google docs.  I finished several of them, only to realize later they weren’t in the vein of what this blog was for. They were things that mainstream media had blown out of proportion only to distract from what was really going on, and I was attempting to make sense of all the idiocy, which I thought I knew better than to do. So I then set out to write another politics 101 type entry about the abomination our “two party” system has become. Then this week happened. I will finish the aforementioned article and probably post it this month as well, to make up for missing October, but this weeks events have trumped everything, and sets the most dangerous precedent of any thing this year.

I am of course talking about the TSA and its new “safety” measures. For those of you that live under a rock, these new measures subject people of all ages to the “choice” of either going through a x-ray scanner that snaps a picture so that an agent can see through your clothing to ensure you have nothing on your person or, if you don’t like this naked photo shoot, getting a new and improved “palm in” pat-down that allows the TSA agent to feel every square inch of your body, and if they are unsure of what they feel, they are also allowed to feel under your clothes. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, little Sally can now look back on her life and remember that when she was three she either stared in her first porno or let some one get to second base with her. The TSA has a license to grope, and no one is too innocent, or innocent at all for that matter.

In some of my research*  for this entry I stumbled across one of the TSA’s new training videos. As my wife will attest, I have been no fan of the TSA for quite some time, I would imagine flying with me is about as pleasant as sitting next to a three-yea- old with a toothache, only with slightly more complaining. Until now I was only complaining of the grave inconvenience for nothing more than the illusion of security, and the concept of being guilty until proven innocent, which seems to be the starting premise for all of the TSA’s policies. This new measure, however, is so much more. It’s an infringement on our “inalienable” rights, it sets an extremely dangerous precedent, and lastly and least important its an insult to our intelligence.

Most important I want to begin with talking about our rights, which are really the only reason these new measures must be overturned. First we need to define some words. Words and their definitions are important. In the discussions so far, we have heard arguments about rights, liberties, and freedom, all of which are often being used wrong.  I want to assume nothing and define them. Rights are natural  they can not be taken away regardless of how hard anyone tries**. Rights are things such as speech, thought, the ability to defend one’s self, I think you get the picture. Freedoms and liberties are where most people get blurry. My favorite talk show host*** likes to ask people to define liberty without using the word freedom, and often, when I ask, people cannot. Freedoms are things we are able to do like drive a car, fart in public, and in this case fly. They aren’t things expressly undeniable by nature, but are obviously an important part of any free society. Liberties are the abilities to act, believe and express one’s self as one chooses without the unwelcomed intervention from a second or third party, i.e. government. We, in America, are lucky enough to live in a country with a constitution that protects our rights, freedoms, and liberties, but even if we weren’t my argument wouldn’t change (much). I have the right to private property, and nothing is more private than my privates, I am also afforded liberty, and I have the freedom to fly. I won’t insult you by explaining how these procedures infringe on my privates, but I do want to talk about the liberty and freedom part. Barring marshal law, my liberty means government should never force me to choose between my rights and my freedoms, which is exactly what is being done here. I am being told “give up your right to privacy, or don’t fly” and that is not a constitutional or free proposition. That is why this cannot stand unchallenged or in the words of The Dude, “This will not stand, ya know, this will not stand, man”

In some ways the precedent this sets is scarier than the fact that it ever came to this. If this procedure stands, it blatantly says that the government or any agency of government can take away our rights and freedoms as long as it’s in the name of “safety.” Gov Co. has been attempting this concept for quite some time, with things like seat belt and helmet laws, but never has it been done on this scale before. Since terrorism is always a possibility this essentially puts us in a constant state of marshal law.

Lastly I find this whole concept to be beyond insulting. We are expected to believe that this somehow makes us safe. That somehow we weren’t safe until every penis, vagina, and breast in America had been either felt up or photographed. We are to believe that this extremely expensive measure made more sense than airlines spending their own money to train their pilots in weapons and self-defense, which was outlawed. That instead of training these government agents like law enforcement with criminal profile training to simply ask you a few questions prior to boarding a flight,  we teach them to apply blanket “procedures” that are not to be interrupted by - God forbid!-  using common sense or having an original thought. That instead of saving billions by simply placing three air marshals on a flight, we should instead spend billions on expensive machines that will violate the 1,500,000 people that fly every day.  That instead of making sure that people that we have previous intelligence on are stopped from carrying out their attacks  like  9-11, the underwear bomber, and the Ft. Hood shootings, we should grope little children.

Honestly I can’t understand how anyone can stomach the idea of this, let alone going through it. There are literally no facts supporting the effectiveness of anything the TSA has done thus far, just speculations. To afford that organization these powers is unacceptable. Now if you excuse me I have to go beat my head up against the nearest brick wall. As always thank you for reading and I hope at the very least I made you think a little.

-D

*This is the first time I needed to do research for an entry and I wanted to share a little bit of my findings: The first commercial flight was in 1914.Regulated scheduling began in the late 1930s. The TSA was officially formed in 2003, obviously in response to 9-11, (now that’s speedy!).  There have been approximately 1,296,000,000 flights worldwide since the 30’s. Aproximately 1,500,000 people fly domestically in the U.S. every day. There have been a total  of 782 recorded hijackings worldwide, an undisclosed number of which were carried out by the CIA and the Cuban Intelligence Agency (also CIA, weird huh?) on their respective counterparts. Now I want you take a look at the total flights and total hijacking with me real quick. With a  drastically rounded down one  billion flights and a drastically rounded up 800 hijackings there is a .00008% chance of a flight being hijacked, not very scary when expressed in terms of  probability. I mean in no way to down play how traumatic the experience is, just recognize how very unlikely it is to happen.

** Taken away and oppressed are not the same thing, many governments suppress or deny rights, but they can’t truly take them away from you.

***I am in no way endorsed by my favorite talk show host or the company he works for. I hope they don’t sue me.

Like Ad-ROCK said, Let me clear my throat.

EHEHHEEMM...Now that’s out of the way, hello and welcome. Here is the disclaimer:

This is my blog, therefore, you will see my opinions here, most of them placed very soundly on a bed of facts and a foundation of economic principles, all of which I believe to be correct. While I respect your right to have an opinion, I don’t have to respect your opinion. So while I will try to respond to as many rebuttals filled with half baked “ideas” and accusations of my belonging to one political party or the other, I’ll probably ignore a lot of them. If you have read this far and I haven’t pissed you off, hold on; we’ll get there.

I want to start this thing off by outlining where it is I stand, you know, on the issues. I am not a Republican or a Democrat, I’m also not a Libertarian. More so, the fact that I ever fell victim to the jersey-wearing political game “they” want us all to play sickens me and is probably my underlining reason for doing this blog...thingy.  I consider myself to be a constitutionalist. Generally speaking a constitutionalist favors limited government, as prescribed by the Constitution. In the beliefs of the constitutionalist, such a government should be small not only in size but also in scope and in power. Government has no business telling individuals they can or can’t get married, where they can or can’t smoke, how much money they can make, how to drive their car,or  to wear a helmet, a seat belt, or underwear for that matter. More specifically  I know in order for a society to have the maximum amount of individual freedom and liberty for everyone, the government has three roles, and only three: dealing with and mediating externalities, operating technical monopolies, and upholding contractual agreements. That’s it.

If that list is nothing more than big words to you, let me help. I believe upholding contracts is pretty self-explanatory:  You sign a contract, someone breaks said contract, you need an impartial third party to mediate the dispute. Very similar are externalities, only these are things that we didn’t enter into a legal contract for. Externalities deal with the unwritten contract of trying to get along, and to generally be civil human beings. In a more Merriam-Webster sense, externalities are any decisions made by a party that negatively affects another party or  other parties that were uninvolved in the decision-making process. While at first this may seem open-ended, it’s pretty cut and dried. Things like murder, rape, theft and all the other big crimes obviously fall under this category. If someone decided to shoot you, you probably weren’t at the meeting, and if you had shown up I doubt they would have given you a vote. Externalities are also things such as, a meth lab in a populated neighborhood, a Ponzi scheme, or even something like the BP oil spill (if actual property damage or substantial pollution is done). In bringing up the BP oil spill I think it’s important to also outline How the government handles these situations. The point is not for government to demand a massive fund of money from the “offending” company, only  to dole it out to special interest groups that will in turn help the politicians’ campaigns. Rather it is to directly prove guilt or innocence in any legal actions brought on by the negatively affected parties. So if the oil spill had ruined your beach-shore property, or threw off your hotel’s business, you would sue BP for damages and the government would make sure (if BP were found guilty) that BP would be held accountable. If the affected parties were, say, dolphins which can’t find a good lawyer, then the government's responsibility is A) to clean up the mess, and give BP the bill or B) to just make sure BP is actually taking care of it. It is not, however, the job of government to arbitrarily point the finger of blame at a party, blame him for a disaster, and use the situation (whether it be real or one that they have created) to manipulate people into going along with their political agenda. ( I’m looking at you too Iraq war.)*

That brings us to technical monopolies, which are not the kind of Monopolies your teachers in school taught you about. (Those don’t actually exist). Technical monopolies do things that have to be done, regardless of the normal economic parameters that make a business idea viable. These include things such as the military, a space program, the sheriff’s dept., and interstates and highways. (Notice I didn’t just say roads.) It’s also important to understand that just because something is at one point in time a technical monopoly, does not mean it forever remains one. Take for instance the space program, right now it is not cost-effective, there is little demand in the private sector Because of time, safety, and generally nowhere to go. Regardless, it is still extremely important that we maintain a space program. In the distant future, however, when space travel is faster, maybe we will have colonized the moon and some planets, and maybe formed a nice trade agreement with some Twi’leks. You now have an environment that businesses could compete in, allowing space travel to be self-sustainable. Therefore, it would have gone from a technical monopoly to operating in the free market (if one still exists then), which  by the way is the only way this can evolve. If something can successfully exist in the free market, it will never have a reason to become a technical monopoly (other than politicians wanting to use it to buy votes). Lots of things are currently being treated as technical monopolies that aren’t, and in every case their private sector counter parts operate more efficiently on less money. The USPS and public schools come to mind, and I could write entirely separate entries about them. Maybe on a off week when not too much is happening, I will.**

Most of the time when I explain this to someone, they have one question left: “What about the poor?   We have social programs to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves, where would those fall into your government?” There is a very simple answer: Our social programs are always touted by the politicians who support them as exactly what they should be, but aren’t: charity. Private charities, again, operate with higher success rates on less denaro than any government social program. Eliminating government social programs would also get rid of a lot of unneeded animosities in our society, as people would then be freely giving to charity instead of being forced.*** So, there we are. That wasn’t so bad was it? Thanks for reading. Keep coming back, and maybe we can continue to learn together. You may have seen asterisks here and there, for some additional clarification if you didn’t understand my reference or point. You don’t have to read them as they are just there to clarify, and I felt they were generally not needed to get my point across

-D

*Side note on the Iraq war: I support our troops and, generally speaking, what we were doing over there. Saddam was an asshat, an asshat that we put into power. Therefore he was probably our mess to clean up. He was oppressing people and overall was a tyrant who needed to be taken out of power. THAT being said, the way the Bush administration just sorta popped that in, piggybacked on the fear and ultimately “patriotism” that culminated from 911 was disingenuous to say the least. We already had a war that needed to be fought, one, I think, we will ultimately be unsuccessful with due to the nine years the Taliban and other terrorist organizations have had to organize and plan. In short, taking Saddam out needed to happen sooner than later. However, following 911 was just the wrong time and more importantly the wrong way to finish Daddy’s laundry.

**Like I said, I could right a whole entry on public schools alone, this, however, is not it. Public schools are a great example of something that started off as a technical monopoly and no longer is. When formal school houses started popping up, cars didn’t exist, roads weren’t good and people were spread far out. If the government had not have facilitated this process the majority of people would not have gone to school, the schools would have went out of business, and we would have been a lesser civilization for it. However, that is no longer the case. We have better transportation and higher population density now. Generally speaking, we could have three times as many schools in certain areas than we do. It’s high time government gets out, stops taking our money, and lets us choose the schools we want our children to attend. Along with that, we would end the debate on prayer in school, busing, overcrowding, teacher wages, and  almost everything. Don’t want your kid to pray in school? Send them to a school that doesn’t pray or vice versa. Underpaid teacher? You’d have a bargaining chip in your students. You could take students with you. If you were good, students would follow you, much like people follow a good hair dresser to a new salon. Schools would compete to have the best teachers, ultimately getting good teachers paid what they were worth. (Not such great news for the bad teachers. Sorry.)

***The tax structure as it stands is essentially theft. Then the stolen money is being given to people who did not earn it. To better explain this we can take the government out of the equation. If Paul is carrying a brown bag of money that has 100 bucks in it, and I knock it out of his hands, take 50 dollars really quick, and hand it to a homeless guy three doors down, the homeless guy is going to like me. In fact, if I were to run for mayor he and all his homeless buddies might vote for me. But Paul is probably pretty pissed, not only at me, but also at the homeless guy who saw me steal the money but took it because he really needed it. Now I have created animosity between the two people, who without my intervention would have either had no feelings, or possibly even positive ones if Paul would have thrown the homeless dude a couple of bucks.