Potpourri
==> Yikes, I think I might be two Contra Krugman episodes behind. Here’s the live broadcast from Mises U, and here’s the latest episode where we discuss Krugman’s slogan for Hillary: “She probably won’t be a disaster.”
==> Lucas Engelhardt gives a nice review for my book *Choice*.
==> Steve Patterson argues that modern set theory is built on quicksand.
==> As it was intended, the Democratic clips of Donald Trump talking about a disabled reporter made me think he was mocking someone’s disability. That may not be true. (To be sure, I think the guy is still a jerk, but the single worst thing I thought I knew about his behavior was this clip–which now appears to be out of context. HT2 David R. Henderson who also is not pro-Trump, but is just clarifying the record.)
==> I haven’t read this yet, but there’s a naughty post-9/11 Seinfeld script running around…
One More On All Those Racist Libertarians Supporting Christian Bakers
As alluded to in my last post, Benny Lava (and he is hardly unique in this) kept suspecting that anybody who sided with the right of Christian bakers to not participate in gay weddings is probably a closet racist. I hope Benny never sees clips like this; his entire worldview would collapse.
The Sad State of Libertarian Discourse, and the Total Misunderstanding of Christianity
Part of why I am so disappointed in the Gary Johnson campaign is that his remarks on the wedding cake controversy lead Scott Sumner to say this: “Sorry, but bigots having their feelings hurt is not high on my list of problems…”
I eventually realized that my critics on this thread truly had no idea what the standard libertarian view on business issues is, and they had even less understanding of the gay wedding stuff. So here were two of my comments, one snarky and one pretty straightforward.
The snarky one, explaining why it is incorrect to say that Christian bakers want to “refuse to serve gays”:
…Last thing, for the record, for those who are lurking: It is completely inaccurate to say the wedding cake thing is about “denying sales to gay people.” Have any of you ever in your life been in a bakery, seen a guy trying to buy a pastry, and heard the cashier ask, “Just double-checking: You like girls, right?”
Of course not. There are Bible-believing Christians who sincerely believe (and you can think they’re nuts if you want) that marriage, by definition, is between a man and a woman.
Look, suppose a brother and a sister have for years been buying pastries from a bakery. Then one day they say, “We are marrying each other, and want you to bake a cake for us to celebrate the event.” The owner says, “Yikes, uh, sorry I just am not comfortable doing that, please ask someone else to do this.”
According to Benny Lava, this baker refuses to sell to siblings, and any…commenter who supported this anti-sibling stance would be described as racist. (Really, go look above at his comments, that is how he has been handling himself on this discussion.)
I understand most people reading this don’t agree with my conclusions, but I hope you can at least appreciate that it has been difficult for me to argue with Scott and Benny Lava, when they apparently have no interest in even correctly framing my position.
And now theless snarky comment that spells things out from scratch:
OK this needs to be my last post.
Benny Lava, let me apologize. (You weren’t expecting THAT, I bet.) I now see that you really didn’t know what the standard libertarian position was on matters like this, and so my earlier interactions with you were unhelpful. I was not trying to be evasive, I honestly thought everybody knew what the default libertarian view on this type of thing was.
OK watch this and (I hope) you will see how I am being perfectly coherent. You might think it’s a horrendous type of coherence, to be sure, but let’s at least make sure you see the logic behind it:
(1) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally endorse using heroin, but a heroin user isn’t violating anybody’s property rights and so it would be wrong to imprison or fine someone for heroin use.”
(2) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like racists, but if they want to print literature talking about white supremacy, that isn’t violating anybody’s property rights and so it would be wrong to imprison or fine someone for publishing white supremacy literature.”
(3) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like pacifists, but if they don’t want to volunteer for the Army even if we’re being invaded, it would be wrong to institute a draft and force them to fight against their will. The draft is tantamount to slavery. Slavery isn’t OK just because you endorse the ends to which it is put.”
And pertinent to our discussion this week:
(4) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like evangelical Christians who think marriage is between a man and a woman, but it would be wrong to force them to participate in such ceremonies against their will. If bakers refrain from baking a cake for a lesbian couple, that is certainly not violating anybody’s property rights and so it is absurd to fine the bakers $135,000 for exercising discretion over their own labor and materials. To force people to bake a cake against their will is forced servitude, even if we approve of the end.”
I’m not expecting you to agree with the above positions, but I hope you can admit that they are consistent.
Winning Hearts and Minds at Sumner’s Blog
The only thing worse than me wasting time arguing with people in the comments at Sumner’s blog, is me doing so without you guys knowing about it. On this thread, Scott engaged in his shock, shock routine because Trump is proposing the first-use of nuclear weapons (and Trump also thinks US elections are rigged–can you imagine?!). As usual, I wasn’t defending Trump’s crazy statements, but instead I was pointing out that Scott Sumner’s own candidate–Gary Johnson–was also pandering and incoherent, and pointed to his recent CNN statement about forcing bakers to sell cakes to gay customers, but not forcing them to decorate the cakes. I started arguing with people in the comments, and then fired off these two statements that I am sure will make my critics apologize:
For the record, I am not defending Trump. I also think E. Harding is half trolling you guys, for what it’s worth.
But some of your guys’ comments about the cake stuff are revealing. For example, Benny Lava wrote:
Interesting how libertarians on an Econ blog can’t see the fundamental difference between the two examples. Apparently there is no difference between a product and a customer. They are exactly the same thing to libertarians.
Guys, think back to the last time you went into a bakery, and just pointed to something ALREADY MADE and sitting in the case. You were like, “Hmm, I’ll take one of those blueberry muffins, and…how about that sticky bun?” And then, did the cashier say, “I bet you want to smear that on your gay lover, huh?!?!”
Of course not, you guys. The issue here is not about Christian bakers refusing to sell standard products to homosexual customers. Indeed, I have even seen news interviews with distraught bakers (a young woman in her mid 20s I’d guess) saying, “We have plenty of gay customers. We have no problem with that. But we don’t want to be forced to participate in a ceremony that violates our deepest religious beliefs.”
Also, when you guys think that it solves the problem to let the gay customers buy a plain cake and decorate it themselves: How many wedding cakes have you decorated in your kitchen? Are you serious? What about saying, “Black people can buy cars from Ford just like anybody else, but they have to assemble the parts in their garage”?
Gary Johnson’s answer, and some of the commentary here, is totally missing the point, and doesn’t even make sense if you think about it for 2 minutes.
Last thing on the alleged singling out of this particular sin (from a Biblical literalist’s POV): I agree that a lot of Bible-believing Christians emphasize homosexuality rather than other sins, and you can draw what you will from that. But do you think if a guy went into a Christian bakery and said, “I want a cake celebrating the one-year anniversary of my affair with my secretary,” that they’d be cool with that? THAT is the analog to a gay wedding cake, not “Selling pastries to an adulterer.”
Also, some of you (including our host) are really concerned about the evil Trump who is considered the first use of nuclear weapons. Did you guys know that Gary Johnson also approves of the first-use of atomic weapons, even if it means melting thousands of children?
It must be that you didn’t realize that. Now that I have pointed it out, I am sure Scott will stop supporting Johnson, after getting up from his swooning couch.
Ah, my work is done here. Let peace and understanding begin with me.
Gary Johnson: “I’m neither Hillary nor Trump, please vote for me. The fewer questions you ask, the more attractive I am.”
The more this guy talks, the more convinced I am that I made the right call. (I don’t vote, period–not for Ron Paul, not for anybody. But I mean, I have been trolling GJ on Facebook. And I regret nothing!)
Look kids, Gary Johnson is going to get destroyed in the Electoral College in November. So don’t tell me, “He’s so much better than Trump/Clinton!” That’s not the point. Do you send a job application to the Lakers because being an NBA player is so much better than your current job?
There are various justifications for libertarians concentrating their support on a “focal point,” notwithstanding imperfections. But at some point, surely you have to say, “This guy is way too mushy and incoherent for me to cast my meaningless vote upon.” Where do you draw the line? Suppose Johnson said, “I support the draft, but only for single men between the ages of 18-29”?
Thanks to Tho Bishop for grabbing this short clip (at my request).
Is God a Tyrant?
That’s the question I will be tackling as a speaker at this weekend’s Libertarian Christians conference. Especially for you agnostic/atheist libertarians, can you give me your best arguments on this? Also, if you could give me quotes/citations to famous critics (like Hitchens) on this topic, that would be great.
Contra Krugman: What Does the Stock Market Mean?
Tom and I respond to Krugman’s column on the stock market.
Gene Callahan on Non-Human Actors
In a post criticizing methodological individualism, Gene writes (and then quotes):
A plain fact that methodological individualism will block us from seeing or accepting:
“The facts authorize us — no, they oblige us! — to say that Islam as such, Islam understood as a meaningful whole, is in motion, that it strives and struggles, in a world [where] it is an actor on the stage of history that must be taken very seriously. Thus the world in which we must live and act is a world marked by the effort, the movement, the forward thrust of Islam.”
I think Gene’s position here is interesting to juxtapose with his earlier criticism of the notion of intelligent computers that could play chess better than humans:
They were, of course, built by human beings. When a grandmaster is “shredded” by a computer program, he is really being defeated by a team of programmers and chess experts who have a calculation machine at their disposal. Just because they don’t literally sit inside the machine, as a human being did inside the chess-playing Turk, does not mean that the machine has somehow mysteriously “become intelligent,” any more than a rabbit trap is intelligent because it “knows” how to catch a rabbit. Machines can be “intelligent” only in that they can be “intelligently built.”
I think this raises the obvious question: Can Islam as such play chess better than humans?
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