Mutually voluntary arrangements are those each participant believes best advances their ends, without violating others’ similar pursuit of their ends. And what can better advance others’ ends than letting them choose how to use their current means most productively as they see it?
Month: October 2023
‘Private Tyranny’ Is Less Private Than You Think
Sohrab Ahmari inadvertently gives even more reasons to reduce the power of the state.
The question is what, practically, to do about all this. Ahmari’s solution is to use the heavy hand of government to brute-force outcomes he likes more. Not only is this unlikely to make things better, but it has the potential to make them much worse.
https://reason.com/2023/08/15/private-tyranny-is-less-private-than-you-think/
The Coolidge Curve
Harding blasted a federal “financial orgy” but struggled to restrain it. Coolidge set about the task with relish. With his budget director, Herbert Lord, he set targets for spending cuts, and he developed tax cuts with Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon. He announced his tax reforms in December; tax exempt securities would lose their special status and tax rates would be cut. Coolidge, who had a moral aversion to high taxes, echoed Mellon’s argument that lower rates “will not greatly reduce the revenue from that source, and may in the future actually increase it” by stimulating economic growth.
Appeals Court Rules Woman Who Had $8,000 Seized Through Asset Forfeiture Will Get Her Day in Court
Cristal Starling lost $8,000 after she missed one of several filing deadlines to contest the seizure of her money by police. A federal appeals court says she and others like her should be given more leeway.
“As was made clear in this case, the lax notice requirements allow the government to start the clock toward default judgment with perfunctory measures, such as ordinary mail, and by posting on a government forfeiture website that the citizenry has no reason to know of,” the 2nd Circuit wrote. “And because the typical forfeiture case concerns cash and goods with consequence to the deprived party but which rarely justify hiring a lawyer, a huge number of civil forfeiture cases are fought by claimants acting pro se. All this is driven by incentive: The authorities can pocket what they can seize by forfeit.”
Valuable Mercatus Center Study Surveys Progress and Setbacks in the Struggle Against Exclusionary Zoning
Exclusionary zoning is the most important property rights issue of our time, a stifler of economic growth, and a major obstacle to opportunity for the poor and disadvantaged. While liberals, conservatives and libertarians all have compelling reasons to oppose it, there are also powerful NIMBY factions on both right and left defending it.
Did Drug Decriminalization Cause a ‘Catastrophe’ in Oregon?
Many of the problems the state is experiencing are caused by the continuing impact of prohibition.
It is important to keep in mind that Oregon’s Measure 110 did nothing to address the supply of illegal drugs, which remain just as iffy and potentially deadly as they were before the initiative was approved. Decriminalization was limited to drug users, and it was based on the premise that people should not be arrested merely for consuming forbidden intoxicants. This distinction between drug users and drug suppliers is similar to the policy enacted during Prohibition, when bootleggers were treated as criminals but drinkers were not.
https://reason.com/2023/08/03/did-drug-decriminalization-cause-a-catastrophe-in-oregon/
David Friedman’s Substack: How to Change the World
People sometimes ask me is how to change the world, in my context in a libertarian direction. One of my answers is that, because of rational ignorance, political outcomes are largely determined by free information, what everyone knows, true or false. One way of changing outcomes is by putting ideas in an entertaining and easily remembered form so that they will be remembered, repeated, spread, become part of what everyone knows.
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/how-to-change-the-world
A SWAT Team Destroyed an Innocent Man’s Shop. Then the City Left Him With the Bill.
Carlos Pena’s livelihood has been crippled. It remains to be seen if he’ll have any right to compensation.
The police-power shield invoked by some courts is a historical “misunderstanding,” says Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm representing Pena in his suit. Judges have recently held that so long as the overall action taken by the government was justifiable—trying to capture a fugitive, for example—then the victim is not entitled to compensation under the Fifth Amendment.
Anarchy in Central Park
New York politicians got out of the way for once, and something beautiful happened.
Politicians usually want to control more things. My town has been the worst example of that. Progressive politicians add so many rules they make it nearly impossible to do anything new.
Foster-Parent Red Tape Hurts Families and Taxpayers
Foster parents face state regulations that go far beyond preventing abuse and neglect.
Recruitment of foster parents is at an all-time low, partly because people are fed up with this onerous licensing process. Meanwhile, children languish in institutions or on the floors of child welfare office lobbies—the result of low relative placement and a shortage of non-kin foster homes.
https://reason.com/2023/07/23/foster-parent-red-tape-hurts-families-and-taxpayers/