Category Archives: Private Property

Libertarian Feminists Make A Move On Von Mises

Gender, History, libertarianism, Private Property, Reason, Socialism

“Libertarian Feminists Make A Move On Von Mises” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“As I paged through the dog’s breakfast of an essay titled “The Feminism of Ludwig von Mises,” I found myself wondering:

What does midwifery have to do with Mises? Both find their way into the stream-of-consciousness non sequiturs that is the article. I suppose midwifery is an occupation dominated by women. Mises was an old-fashioned, European economist whose legacy women are attempting to occupy. That must be it!

Incidentally, naming the solipsistic feminists (a redundancy, I know) who’ve made a move on the Austrian-School economist is unnecessary. “Avoid naming names when dealing with marginal characters,” I was once instructed by a veteran journalist, who was responding to a devastating critique I had penned in reply to some self-important, insignificant sorts. Joseph Farah e-mailed one of his lacerating missives: “Good job. But who the hell are these people? Their arguments are of a piece with Yasser Arafat’s. Next time, tackle the Arafat argument instead,” he admonished.

Alas, “The Feminism of Ludwig von Mises” is devoid of argument to tackle. From the fact that Mises taught and mentored capable lady scholars, the FEE.org* feminists have concluded that the Austrian-School economist “actively promoted the interests of women in academia” and “saw women intellectuals in Vienna as an undervalued human resource.” …

… Indeed, it takes a degree of provincialism unique to our country’s feminists to claim that a European gentleman, born in Austria-Hungary in the late 1800s, was one of them—a rib from the feminist fraternity’s ribcage. This writer grew up in Israel at a time when quite a few elderly, highly educated Austrian gentlemen were still around. Grandfather, a master chess player, hung out with these men in Tel-Aviv chess clubs and cafés. Having actually encountered this creature in his natural habitat, I put this to you, gentle reader:

The proposition that Ludwig von Mises was a feminist is an apodictic impossibility. …

… Read on. The complete column is “Libertarian Feminists Make A Move On Von Mises” now on WND.

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Killer Government

Government, Private Property, The State

The stories of government reckless indifference are unchanging. We saw it during super-storms Katrina and Sandy, to name two natural disasters.

Simply knowing the incentives at work in government makes predictions about the inaction of officials foolproof. Thus, borne out is my “premature” contention that local officials had procrastinated after the Snohomish County hillside landslide, in which “[a]t least 25 people are believed dead in the massive mudslide above the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, although only 16 bodies have been identified. Dozens have been reported missing.”

Via The Seattle Times:

The commander of the Washington National Guard said Wednesday that he offered his help to county emergency-management officials last Saturday and Sunday but was rebuffed until midday Monday. A spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said its help was requested around noon on Monday.
The National Guard has a 50-person search-and-extraction team with experience and specialized equipment. FEMA has a nationally recognized 65-person urban search-and-rescue team.
Both teams arrived to help Tuesday, long after any sign of survivors was reported in the debris. …

Where have we heard this before? The answer is during every other rescue mounted by government.

Via Salon.com comes a belated report—it’s too late for the victims of the landslide in Snohomish County—that the officials failed to forewarn residents who built homes on the hill of a foreseeable lethal landslide.

One likely reason for the tragedy in our state is the failure of the state’s Department of Natural Resources to properly monitor clear-cutting nine years ago.

A Seattle Times analysis of government geographical data and maps suggests that logging company Grandy Lake Forest cut as much as 350 feet past a state boundary that was created because of landslide risks.
The state Department of Natural Resources is supposed to verify a timber company’s proposed cut on the ground and then reinspect the site after the harvest has been taken.
State Forester Aaron Everett reviewed records on the issue Wednesday afternoon and said it appears that a portion of the clear-cut’s footprint extended into the sensitive zone. He said his agency was trying to locate records to show whether it inspected the site after it was logged.
“I was surprised,” Everett said. He will investigate further before concluding whether Grandy Lake went beyond the borders.
Grandy Lake officials have not returned calls seeking comment.

Had the resource been privately owned, the owners would be legally liable and would have had all the incentives in the world to manage the land responsible. But I repeat myself.

UPDATED: We’re From The Government & We’re Here To Rescue You. NOT (How About Saving People In Unsafe Circumstances?)

Government, Private Property, The State

“We have people who are yelling for our help … We suspect that people are out there, but it’s far too dangerous to get responders out there on that mudflow.” So said Travis Hots, Chief of the Snohomish County Fire District, in a news briefing about the “massive mudslide in rural northwest Washington State.”

The rescuers who’d lined-up behind Hots for a photo-op nodded vigorously as their chief described the dangers to themselves, dangers that might preclude them from heeding the cries for help of the residents still buried beneath a “135 feet wide and 180 feet deep landslide, near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle.”

This is not to say that “local rescue units, plus units of the Washington State Patrol and US Army Corps of Engineers” are not trying. But they’re probably not trying as hard as they would had they been in the employ of a private rescue company.

In the case that residents or neighborhood associations had contracted with a private rescue company, company employees unwilling to risk their lives to save their clients would soon be out of a job. If residents felt they’d been failed by Rescue Inc., they’d seek out a new contractor, staffed with daredevils (like retired special-forces soldiers) who’d do anything to save their charges, while being paid handsomely for doing what they love doing and what they do so well.

“Rescue me. Not now”: That’s the reply these poor mudslide victims are getting from their government. They’ll perish before it’s “sufficiently safe” for a state-employed rescuer to risk his neck for another.

The incentives for a state-employed rescuer to risk his life for others are simply not there. Failure is not punished; its costs socialized. Should the country be sued by relatives, the taxpayer will shoulder the financial settlement, and not the likely extra-cautious rescuers.

UPDATE (3/24): More devastating news. The bold text below goes to the point of the blog post. Isn’t the idea of rescue to send in individuals who are prepared to save people in unsafe circumstances?

“Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.”

“108 people may be missing in Washington state mudslide”:

Authorities are searching for more bodies after a massive mudslide in a rural part of Washington state killed at least eight and possibly left more than 100 missing, while crews battle uneven ground and rising waters.

A 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 several homes. Eight bodies have been pulled from the scene and authorities described the search for additional survivors to be “grim.”

John Pennington, emergency response managing director, said there are reports of up to 108 people missing in the mudslide but noted that number is unconfirmed.

“This is a large scale disaster event,” Pennington said. “We have 108 individual names, or likeness … It’s a soft 108.”

“It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day,” he said of the victims during a press conference Monday. Pennington said it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.

The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate

Constitution, Founding Fathers, History, Private Property

“The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Bolstered by the U S. Forest Service, Summit County authorities, in Colo., are scheming on seizing 10 acres of verdant land that belongs to Andy and Ceil Barrie.

The parcel of land is situated within the White River National Forest. The authorities claim the couple’s use of a motorized vehicle on the preserved land risks “damaging the alpine tundra and streams and the habitat of the endangered lynx.”

Since it is the nature of government to “turn a wormhole into a loophole,” the solution sought by the county’s commissioners and attorney general is to confiscate private property under the guise of “open-space” conservation.

On their side—and against the right of private property—the knaves of this Colorado county have a thing even more formidable than the U S. Forest Service: the U. S. Constitution.

Or, dare I say the Con-stitution?

Any discussion about the plight of the Barrie couple must be prefaced by noting the following:

There is no dispute as to the right of government grandees to grab private property.

What remains of some dispute is whether the county has exceeded its authority to steal. For the Constitution gives authorities the right to seize private property for the “common good—that catch-all constitutional concept. Has not the General Welfare Clause, in Article I, authorized all three branches of colluding quislings to do just about anything which in their judgment will tend to provide for the general welfare?

The term for state-sanctioned theft of private property is “eminent domain.” A section of The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Understand: Compensating the individual if and when government confiscates his land for the ostensible greater good: that is not what’s so wicked here. Rather, it is that implicit in the Bill-of-Rights clause mandating “just compensation” is the acknowledgement that government has the right to confiscate private property, in the first place. …

Read on. The complete column is “The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate,” now on WND.

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