Category: FYI

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FYI Update

The Curtilage? What’s That?

property, rights, invasion, civil rights

On Thursday, Paul Jacob discussed a Tennessee case where the prospects look good: “Unconstitutional searches of private property by a renegade Tennessee government agency may be coming to an end.” Specifically, “Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency employees have no right to ignore No Trespassing signs on private land — not even to enter it, let alone install cameras there in search of a crime.”

Government agents had trampled on private land thinking they needed no permission at all. They thought it was somehow American and hunky dory to even sneak onto private land and set up surveillance systems, the better to catch the land owner doing something “wrong.”

But the reader may have been asking the burning question: what the heck is going on here? How could governments just blithely ignore one of the core American principles of law, the limitation on government not to spy on us and trespass on our property?

Well, something called “the Open Fields Doctrine” is at play here.

In “Good Fences? Good Luck,” Joshua Windham and David Warren (Regulation, Spring 2024) explain how a 1924 Supreme Court case upheld a warrantless search of private property on the grounds that “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers and effects’ is not extended to the open fields.”

But it gets worse, for “the term ‘open fields’ is a misnomer. The doctrine isn’t limited to fields or other open areas. Instead, it applies to all private land except for the small but ill-​​defined ring immediately surrounding the home, called the ‘curtilage.’”

Even under a generous definition of curtilage, only about 4 percent of all private land qualifies for Fourth Amendment protection under current law. In other words, nearly 96 percent of all private land in the country — about 1.2 billion acres — is exposed to warrantless searches.

The whole paper is worth reading, for it provides big clues about how government employees — including judges — concoct ways to get around our basic rights. Is there anything they won’t push to expand their power?

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FYI

On Its Last Legs?

Biden, China, Tariffs, controlled economy

The blurb explains the title:

Joe Biden’s new tariffs on Chinese goods mark the decisive rejection of an economic orthodoxy that dominated American policy making for nearly half a century.

Rogé Karma, “Reaganomics Is on Its Last Legs,” The Atlantic, May 18, 2024.

The article explains the bipartisanship of the new economic policy:

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced plans to impose steep new tariffs on certain products made in China, including a 100 percent tariff on electric cars. With that, he escalated a policy begun during the Trump administration, and marked the decisive rejection of an economic orthodoxy that had dominated American policy making for nearly half a century. The leaders of both major parties have now turned away from unfettered free trade, a fact that would have been unimaginable less than a decade ago.

And that bipartisan nature is made exceedingly clear:

A president announcing a new policy does not mean that the political consensus has shifted. The proof that we are living in a new era comes instead from the reaction in Washington. Congressional Democrats, many of whom vocally opposed Trump’s tariffs, have been almost universally supportive of the increases, while Republicans have been largely silent about them. Rather than attacking the tariffs, Trump claimed credit for them, telling a crowd in New Jersey that “Biden finally listened to me,” and declaring that he, Trump, would raise tariffs to 200 percent. Most of the criticism from either side of the aisle has come from those arguing that Biden either took too long to raise tariffs or didn’t go far enough.

Mr. Karma explains how this trend is not insignificant, not a blip in the winds of policy change:

The shift on trade is part of a broader realignment that Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has aspirationally called the “new Washington consensus.” What unites Biden’s tariffs with the other core elements of his agenda, including massive investments in manufacturing and increased antitrust enforcement, is the notion that the American government should no longer passively defer to market forces; instead, it should shape markets to achieve politically and socially beneficial goals. This view has taken hold most thoroughly among Democrats, but it is making inroads among Republicans too — especially when it comes to trade.

But this perspective, of how politicians “passively” “deferred” to “market forces,” suggests that active opposition to market forces makes any kind of sense. Truth is, as economist Eugen von Böhm-​Bawerk explained, “there is one … thing that not even the most imposing dictate of power will accomplish: It can never effect anything in contradiction to the economic laws of value, price, and distribution; it must always be in conformity with these; it cannot invalidate them; it can merely confirm and fulfill them.” The consequences of policies that seek to use State regulatory powers to guide market outcomes tend not to conform to politicians’ and regulators’ expectations, for at no point do they magically alter the laws of supply and demand.

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FYI Update

Let’s Play “Who’s the Fascist!”

The problem of the Left Pole is, who’s not a Nazi who’s not leftist? This is a consequence of the game leftists play, calling everyone not leftist the very worst names they can think of.

The latest casualty is Javier Milei, libertarian president of Argentina. He’s been called a fascist.

Benjamin Williams clears this up in “No, Milei Is Not a Fascist,” over at Mises Wire.

The dictator Benito Mussolini and his close comrade Giovanni Gentile were indisputably fascists. They invented fascism, wrote fascist literature, and called themselves fascists. So it stands to reason that if you want to see if Javier Milei is a fascist, you’d compare him to these fascists. The critics never make these sorts of comparisons because they’re aware it would expose their ridiculous accusations for what they are: ahistorical and ignorant.

Mussolini viewed the state as almost something to be worshipped, with his works riddled with references to its greatness and importance. He summarized his view with the mantra, “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” In stark contrast, Milei’s speeches, debates, and rants are filled with insults and criticisms directed at the state. One of his most famous quotes, “wipe my ass with the state,” encapsulates this disdain. Milei does not hold the state on a pedestal like Mussolini did.

Mussolini believed that capitalism was deeply flawed and needed to be abolished. In “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” he states that the state was “the force which alone can provide a solution to the dramatic contradictions of capitalism” and that fascism would replace capitalism with “a system of syndicalism.” On the other hand, Milei holds a contrasting view. He frequently praises capitalism as morally and economically superior. In his World Economic Forum speech — dubbed a ‘fascist rant’ by socialists — he declared that people should resist the state, asserting, “The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself.”

Milei’s policies are certainly not fascist either. Mussolini’s dictatorship supported the socialization of industry, not privatization. His dictatorship mandated union membership, harshly regulated industries, and socialized over eighty firms.

Leftists need to see the world as it is, not as they think it should be — sequestered, as their minds are, at the Left Pole, from which all roads out are “far right.” Ideological geography is more complex than that.

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FYI

Something Fishy

“The Chinese government has repeatedly denied any mismanagement in response to the accusations of illegal and unregulated fishing,” explains an article on DW News. Indeed, a “2023 government white paper on the development of distant-​water fisheries said China holds a ‘zero tolerance’ attitude towards illegal fishing.…”

But can we believe China? The China run by the Chinese Communist Party?

The article is titled “Chinese fishing fleets in Indian Ocean accused of abuses” and is written by Yuchen Li and Chia-​Chun Yeh, both from Taipei. The accusations are familiar — and not just for readers of this website, or of StoptheChinazis​.org. Accusations against Chinese poaching are decades old.

“As a leading fishing nation, China’s distant water fishing (DWF) industry is the world’s largest in both catch volume and fleet size. And according to the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Index, China ranks as the worst offender among 152 countries worldwide,” explain Li and Yeh. They quote a senior researcher from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), who says “This isn’t a handful of bad actors or captains. What we’re seeing is a fleet-​wide issue on the Chinese distant-​water fleet.”

One of the more gruesome practices is the harvesting of shark fins: the fins are cut off and the rest of the shark carcasses are disposed of immediately, back into the ocean. And this is not just the South China Sea or the Pacific Ocean. This includes the Indian Ocean, says a new report from the EJF.

The report charges that China’s poaching is “systematic.”

 

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FYI

Extreme Protest in What Cause?

He set himself on fire as a protest. 

Self-​immolation may be on the rise, but we of the older generation remember the classic case, of Thích Quảng Đức, the Mahyana Buddhist monk who set himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam.

The most recent self-​immolator was outside the “Trump trial in Manhattan,” and he has been accused of being “crazy” and “right-​wing.” To make up your mind about those accusations, you should read his own testimony:

My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan.

This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: 

We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.

Let us hope he is incorrect. Still, a lot of people are saying things like this. And the Great Reset is promoted and worked towards right out in the open.

But it is mostly anti-​leftists who make such claims. And, as we all know, according to Left Pole Theory, anything “not leftist” is “right wing”! But was Max Azzarello really a right-​wing extremist? (We can safely call anyone who burns themselves to death in protest an extremist, surely.)

The now-​deceased and burnt-​to-​a-​crisp protester believed the proof lies in the nature of our financial order: “If you learn a great deal about Ponzi schemes, you will discover that our life is a lie.”

Like many other critics of the current American order, he notices that the current political order is bipartisan: “That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H. W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on.”

Max Azzarello called the current order a “totalitarian doomsday cult,” and asked why the elites are pushing us to disaster. “There are many reasons,” Max answered, “but the simplest is because capitalism is unsustainable, and they knew it: Climate change and resource extraction would catch up eventually. So, they never intended to sustain it. They knew all along that they would gobble up all the wealth they could, and then yank the rug out from under us so they could pivot to a hellish fascist dystopia.”

This does not sound very right-​wing, does it?

More important, though, is the truth. Surely not all of Max Azzarello’ claims are true. But how much? 

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FYI

Read Ludwig von Mises, Says Fighter, with Fury and Expletives

“I love America. I love the Constitution. I love the First Amendment. I want to carry … fucking guns. I love private property. And let me tell something: if you care about your fucking country, read Ludwig von Mises and the Six Lessons of the Austrian Economic School, motherfuckers.”

This rant by Brazilian fighter Renato Moicano, after a UFC victory, Joe Rogan in the ring officiating, went viral this weekend. But what does the fighter mean? What are the “six lessons” that Mises listed? Mises wrote a lot, after all. 

A lot more than six lessons!

Turns out, “Money Moicano” is referring to the short book Ludwig von Mises wrote that is entitled, in America, Economic Policy. The book consists of six lectures, which is why, in Brazil, the book is called Six Lessons:

  1. Capitalism
  2. Socialism
  3. Interventionism
  4. Inflation
  5. Foreign Investment
  6. Politics and Ideas

The lessons of each section could be listed like this:

  1. A country becomes more prosperous in proportion to the rise in the invested capital per unit of its population.
  2. Economic calculation, and therefore all technological planning, is possible only if there are money prices, not only for consumer goods but also for the factors of production.
  3. The idea of government interference as a “solution” to economic problems leads, in every country, to conditions which, at the least, are very unsatisfactory and often quite chaotic.
  4. Inflation is a policy. And a policy can be changed.
  5. What is lacking in order to make the developing countries as prosperous as the United States is only one thing: capital — and, of course, the freedom to employ it under the discipline of the market and not the discipline of the government. 
  6. Ideas and only ideas can light the darkness. These ideas must be brought to the public in such a way that they persuade people. We must convince them that these ideas are the right ideas and not the wrong ones.

Moicano’s rant has conjured up quite a bit of interest and appreciation: