Quake
Jim Davies
2010-03-15 03:00
Exclusive to STR
Among the welter of news reports about the recent tragedy in Haiti, I noticed a couple that were quite perceptive. As it happens, they both broke surface on the PBS News Hour.
One came a few days after January 12th from David Brooks, the Hour's token conservative. He observed that a slightly more severe earthquake had hit San Francisco and Oakland in 1989, which brought...
Half Full
Jim Davies
2010-01-21 04:00
Exclusive to STR
I've been re-reading a couple of excellent, recent articles on Strike The Root, each of which in its way predicts a gloomy future.
One is Glen Allport's "Year Ahead" and the other, Tzo's "Got Money?. Glen provides us as usual with a wealth of evidence to prove his point, piling one piece atop another until there can be no doubt of the message...
Oslo
Jim Davies
2009-12-15 17:00
Exclusive to STR
There's no doubt of it, Obama is one of the world's two best orators of the last hundred years, and his performance at the December 10th ceremony was stellar. Was there a teleprompter? I didn't see him even glance at a set of notes, yet the delivery was flawless. To his credit also is the way his speech addressed head-on an irony of the occasion; here was the world's...
Duty
Jim Davies
2009-12-07 17:00
Exclusive to STR
The word comes in two flavors, and I'd like to focus on the second; but both derive from the Latin debere, meaning to owe--hence also a "debit" to an account. In most common use, the word has to do with an obligation, contractual or moral; it is alleged for example that by some mysterious means everyone has incurred a duty to serve one's country, as in JFK's...
Handouts
Jim Davies
2009-11-15 17:00
Exclusive to STR
One of the debates among liberty seekers is about the extent to which it's morally right to accept or reject government handouts. In my opinion, it's one of a rather small number of issues still open to valid debate, and for sure there are good, sincere people on both sides of it and I respect all of them. Although these remarks come down clearly on one side, that respect...
Marbury
Jim Davies
2009-11-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR
There's a legal case which changed the face of America, and which poisons a great deal of contemporary life; it's known as Marbury v. Madison, and was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in 1803. That was the year the Judicial Branch drove through the gaping hole left for it by Article Three of the Constitution (which gives it very few powers and...
Origins
Jim Davies
2009-10-25 17:00
Exclusive to STR
Where and when did government start? It's quite a mystery. Given that human beings are basically harmless creatures, how did it happen that an inherently violent institution arose in human society, whose whole raison d'tre is always to destroy the fundamental human right of self-governance? The question is important not just to satisfy historical understanding, but to...
Human Nature
Jim Davies
2009-10-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Recently some friends and I discussed the nature of hom sap so as better to understand how it could be that the violent institution of government could appear from nowhere, back before writing was invented. Are we good, or evil, or neither?
We didn't reach full agreement, but the subject was given a new boost by B.R. Merrick's recent fine thought-provoker, The Heart...
A Terminological Exactitude
Jim Davies
2009-09-16 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Standards of parliamentary civility are maintained in the Mother of them all in London by a convention that excludes the following words from the floor of that House: blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, ignoramus, liar, rat, swine, stoolpigeon, and traitor. Her cousin in Belfast prohibits calling members papish bigots and protestant bigots, to disguise the fact...
Insuring Health
Jim Davies
2009-08-17 16:00
Exclusive to STR
My father worked all his life for one company, a prestigious insurance firm in the UK. He began from school as an entry-level clerk, and ended up its Branch Manager in the city of Worcester, where the well-known sauce is made. In all that time, he made only one key mistake of which I'm aware.
Soon after he took over the Worcester branch, he came up with a plan for a new product....
Airport Conversation
Jim Davies
2009-08-11 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Last week I waited for a Westbound flight to be called, from a gate in London Heathrow, and happened to sit next to a black lady, somewhat overweight, in a dark uniform. I made conversation with, "Are you joining this flight?"
"No," she said, "I work here"--meaning, presumably, Heathrow. "I'm a profiler."
"Really?" I said, in my...
Gulches
Jim Davies
2009-06-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Stewart Browne's recent, eloquent column here about the need to secede reminded me of the long-running debate among freedom-seekers about the best (or at least, the most feasible) way to establish a free society: (1) to attract libertarians to populate a small independent area, a marked-off Government-Free Zone (GFZ) of some kind in which statists would have no place, or (2) to...
Beyond Rand
Jim Davies
2009-05-20 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Larken Rose is best known for his courage in resisting the supposed US "income tax," which is enforced without having been written into law; and suffered imprisonment for encouraging folk to take advantage of the fact. Recently, however, he has taken to writing novels, and his latest, called The Iron Web, has nothing to do with the i-tax but much to do with our...
What If the Sky Falls?
Jim Davies
2009-05-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR
As Alex Knight reminded us a few months ago, there are those who say the present recession will get worse, ending perhaps in a general breakdown of society complete with food riots and martial law; and last week an STR reader poll revealed that as many as 85% of us think that the March stock market bottom was not the bottom at all, that the Dow will go lower yet after what may...
A Measure of Freedom
Jim Davies
2009-04-06 16:00
Exclusive to STR
Quite rightly, we tend to focus here mostly on what is happening today, rather than long ago. However, to do that all the time is a pity, for it robs us of historical perspective, which can be quite valuable. For example, consider: Are we more free today, than our forebears were in the 1900s? How can we tell? Does it matter?
I think it may matter, because if we can measure...
A Denarius for Your Thoughts
Jim Davies
2009-03-22 17:00
Exclusive to STR
Britain has turned out some pretty good mathematicians over the years, and one reason may be the complexity of its old currency system, which we were expected to understand by the age of six or so. Its structure was that of Pounds, Shillings and Pence; symbolized £, s and d and pronounced LSD (which may be why Brits of my generation did not all immediately tune in to...
Greener Grass?
Jim Davies
2009-03-05 04:00
Exclusive to STR
The screeching from our gloom and doomster friends on the Right has become deafening in recent months: they say the US dollar is on the very verge of collapse!
It's monotonous, and I usually just hit the "delete" button. Occasionally, though, when the mood takes me, I reply with some such innocent question as "When?" or "To be replaced by what?" or...
Misallocation
Jim Davies
2009-02-23 17:00
Exclusive to STR
Nine or ten thousand years ago, mankind began to plow fields. I don't know what tools he used--perhaps some kind of wooden spades or trowels, fashioned with flint from a cedar of Lebanon; but somehow he turned the earth and cereal seeds were planted and some months later his little society had something to eat--without having had to strike camp and move along every few days or...
Geithner, Killefer, Daschle & Schiff
Jim Davies
2009-02-15 17:00
Exclusive to STR
No, that's not the name of a distinguished firm of tax lawyers with a German flavor, and no, Irwin Schiff has not been offered a place in the Obama Cabinet. That would be the day! He did once run for President, with a cute little red plastic cowboy hat adorning the heads of his Libertarian Party supporters, but delegates instead nominated Harry Browne, who did a very creditable...
Law and Ethics: Unrelated
Jim Davies
2009-02-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR
Like all good STR articles, the recent one by Marcel Votluka got me thinking.
It got me thinking about what laws are, and what an ethic is when it's at home. Both purport to be about behavior--harmony between humans--so we expect them to coincide well and are surprised when they don't. However, I take the opposite view, and express surprise when they do. An examination of what...
Inflation?
Jim Davies
2009-01-07 17:00
Exclusive to STR
You'll be wondering about that question mark.
As Dave Barry so accurately put it, '. . . the troubled 'big three' auto makers . . . ask Congress for $25 billion, explaining that if they don't get the money, they will be unable to continue making cars that Americans are not buying.' Others suggest that once bailed-out, the Big Three will no longer make cars, but will just keep...
Public Works Don't
Jim Davies
2009-01-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR
A financial report I encountered says that "President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, has said his first priority will be to pass an economic stimulus plan that will invest in public works and create or save 3 million jobs." I don't doubt that it's accurate, and so am horrified.
One thing he and his admirers have glossed over is that almost the entire...
Night
Jim Davies
2008-12-28 17:00
Exclusive to STR
There's a very remarkable short book I recommend, called simply Night. It tells in the first person what happened to a young boy after he and his family were taken to Auschwitz from their home in a small Hungarian town in 1944.
After a grueling train trip, everyone was segregated by gender and Elie waved farewell to his mother and three sisters. The two elder ones survived, as he...
Barry Sotero
Jim Davies
2008-12-07 17:00
Exclusive to STR
I can see four things wrong with the following provision of the US Constitution:
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been...
M
Jim Davies
2008-12-02 17:00
Exclusive to STR
No, this is not about a newly-discovered manuscript by Ian Fleming, revealing more amazing exploits of Agent 007 and his mysterious boss; it's about the even more mysterious subject of money; specifically, about how much of it will be needed in the coming free society.
Some may feel that's rather theoretical, but I have little patience with such a view. If we are serious about...
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