Music: "I don't belong to you/You don't belong to me"

I won't let you down
I will not give you up
Gotta have some faith in the sound
It's the one good thing that I've got
I won't let you down
So please don't give me up
Because I would really, really love to stick around

Heaven knows I was just a young boy
Didn't know what I wanted to be
I was every little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy
And I guess it was enough for me
To win the race? A prettier face!
Brand new clothes and a big fat place
On your rock and roll TV
But today the way I play the game is not the same
No way
Think I'm gonna get me some happy

I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I told you so
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone else I've got to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Take back your singing in the rain
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don't belong to you
And you don't belong to me
Freedom
You've gotta give for what you take
Freedom
You've gotta give for what you take

Heaven knows we sure had some fun boy
What a kick just a buddy and me
We had every big shot good-time band on the run boy
We were living in a fantasy
We won the race
Got out of the place
I went back home got a brand new face
For the boys on MTV
But today the way I play the game has got to change
Oh yeah
Now I'm gonna get myself happy

I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I stopped the show
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don't think that I'll be back again
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don't belong to you
And you don't belong to me
Freedom
You've gotta give for what you take
Freedom
You've gotta give for what you take

Well it looks like the road to heaven
But it feels like the road to hell
When I knew which side my bread was buttered
I took the knife as well
Posing for another picture
Everybody's got to sell
But when you shake your ass
They notice fast
And some mistakes were built to last

That's what you get

I say that's what you get

That's what you get for changing your mind

And after all this time
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes
Do not make the man

I'll hold on to my freedom
May not be what you want from me
Just the way it's got to be
Lose the face now
I've got to live

Video: Robust Political Economy v Market Failure Economics

Cato:

Mark Pennington is a Professor of Politics at the University of London and has recently released a new book entitled Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy. Here he defines what he means by a "robust political economy" and contrasts it with what he calls "traditional market failure economics."

Robust is a measure of resistance of stresses and strains.

There are various human imperfections. These include limited rationality and limited benevolence.

Limited rationality
People are not fully rational or omniscient. They must act under uncertainty with imperfect information.

Limited benevolence
People may be opportunistic and act in a narrow self-interest.

We can now evaluate instituations based on these imperfections. Which institutions enable learning over time and minimize the effects of human mistakes. Also, which institutions channel potentially self-interested and opportunistic actors to improve the public good.

Challenges to classical liberalism must address the question of how their own favoured institutions will cope with the human imprefections of limited benevolence and limited rationality.


Dispursed ownership of property, open markets and a minimal state are more robust to limited rationality as  many actors making many decisions facilitates trial and error learning and limits the effects of the errors.

If you centralize decion making in one place and people make mistakes, the effects are much more far reaching and destructive than if the decision making was dispersed.

A competative frame work allows people to escape from potentially predatory actors. This is a check on potentially self interested behavior.

The case for markets isn't that they are perfect but that they are robust.

Any market that is based on imperfect information is going to look imperfect when judged against an standard of perfection. The question is: What is the alternative to imperfection. Is it a world where regulators are magically suposed to know what is the ideal market structure.

If we are in a world of limited rationality, there is no reason to supose that regulators that are in a monopolistic position are in a better position to know what the ideal market structure is.

Stateless in Somalia

Foundation for Economic Education:

A lecture by Professor Benjamin Powell on institutional development in Somalia. In this lecture he compares the government failure in Somalia with the spontaneous development of indigenous markets.

Audio:Stream Download 58min 
Video

Introduction

1m42
Brief History
Independence 1960's
Brief flirtation with democracy
Dictatorship in the late 1970's to 1991
Civil War
UN humanitarian intervention
"Black hawk down"
1995 UN withdraws
Multiple 'governments in exile'
2006 Transitional Federal Government (TFG)
Resisted by the Council of Islamic Courts
Council defeated but TFG controls only parts of the capitol Mogadishu and some country side.

3m18
Somalialand and Puntland have declared themselves sovereign but are not recognized and do not provide essential services. Also, the rest of the country is still essentially stateless.

5m18
Theories of natural law
Thomas Hobbes - nasty, brutish and short, inefficient and dangerous
Murray Rothbard and David Friendman - private firms and insurance companies provide essential services

Somalia is neither in pure form.


6m02
Analysis Method
Comparative institutional analysis
Compare the kind of government they would likely get with the type of anarchy they would likely get, and compare

Type of gov: history of predatory states extracting resources for the benefit of the rulers.

Allied with Soviet Union until Somalia's war with Ethiopia.

About 90% of gov't spending was used on 'defense' protecting the state from the citizens. Transfer of wealth from rural to urban, mainly the capitol.

8m30
70% of labour was in the black market.Including health, education, banking, dispute resolution.

Even with a state, Somalia was among the poorest nations in the world.


8m40
Anarchy in Somalia

When the government first collapsed there was a lot of violence. When US/UN forces left Somalia the clans lowered expectations of a new government being established and violence subsided.
1995 - 2005 was a period of relative peace. Most violence happens when an exiled government tried to return.
2005 - violence centred around Mogadishu as TFG got a foothold.

10m40
Rural agricultural
Sales have increased 4x since the fall of the government.
Mostly successful in anarchy since rural areas were the focus of the state predation.
26% of traders think security is currently a problem.
13% think security is worse under anarchy.


11m45
Urban
Dole Fruit and Coke have invested in Somalia.
DHL has offices
8 of 90 restaurants have international star ratings.
7 of 18 fuelling stations have underground fuel storage.

12m50
Overall living standards
Comparing international organization reports from IMF, UN, WHO and such.

18 indicators were established
Over the twenty years since the fall of the government
13 improved
2 worse
3 undetermined
But you would expect conditions to better over time.

14m10
How did Somalia do compared to sub-Saharan Africa?

Improvements in life expectancy was 3rd best.
Telecommunications:
cheapest rates and best signal for cell phone communications
Somalia is generally improving faster than other Sub-Saharan African countries.

18m10
Peace in Africa
25 of 42 Sub-Saharan countries experienced an armed conflict from 1991-2011
Including Somalia's civil war
Comparing Somalia with other Sub-Saharan countries that had wars in the same period
Somalia did very well in all indicators except for infant mortality.

19m20
How does Somalia provide complex goods and services.

Airlines
Stable Prices
-market based counterfeiting
--paper backed currency
-international currencies for larger transaction
Funds transfers
-moves about $1B/yr
Roads
-same km's per person as other similar countries
Social insurance
-within Diyya groups, generally based on family relations.

25m00
Security protection law and order
Security costs about the same as before the collapse

26m00
The law system is customary, traditional
Elders resolve disputes

If in the same clan, clan elder decides based on custom
Punishment is based on restitution, no jail.
Diyya group is responsible for payment if individual cannot pay or refuses.


If different clan
Their respective clan elders attempt to resolve the issue. If they cannot, those elders turn to a mutually agreed upon third elder from a different clan to mediate.

Clan laws tend to converge toward a standard.
Clans are not geographic monopolies, or de facto states.
An individual's clan, and that clans law, is tied to them regardless of the person's location.


31m00
People are free to switch clans. Often through marriage. But not always
This creates competition.

The worst individuals are not accepted by any clan and receive no protection of law.

33m05
Defence - They have successfully kicked out seven governments, the US and the UN.
Kept would be invaders at bay

34m20
What about the Pirates?

Pirates trade with Somali's and tend to only use violence on outsiders. Pirates cooperating with the legal system is evidence of a robust system.

35m50
Is piracy morally bad, or are the pirates sea-steading?

37m55
Pirate stock market
People may invest money or in kind, to receive equity in pirate ventures.
More evidence of pirates respecting property, and the robustness of the system.

38m45
Challenges for the future

Customary law has not yet developed a way to deal with outsiders.

40m00

Wrap up

44m55
Questions

Benefit Dance for Danny Rose, Sat Nov 26

Benefit Dance in Aid of
Danny Rose
Saturday, November 26th 2011
Charlottetown Legion

Time: 9:30 P.M. - 1:00 A.M.

Music By: Platinum Drive

SILENT AUCITON

Tickets - $5.00

What I saw at Occupy Charlottetown

Occupy Charlottetown gathered about 80 people near Province House this afternoon. The Facebook group announced "We will be having discussions and teaching sessions". It turned out to be less of a discussion and more of a rally focused around people taking turns with a megaphone. The organizers recognized this and a discussion type of group is tentatively scheduled for next Saturday.

The talking points were predictable, but the gathering helped to put a face and a story behind most of them. As I arrived, just behind schedule, a man was speaking about what it was like to live with AIDS on PEI. This was my introduction to the main theme of the afternoon, economic injustice. There were appeals to the vague ideas of corporate greed and poverty reduction/elimination and basic human rights. Some speakers were more focused on specifics like wasteful government spending (not unlike the Tea Party) on certainly Island and federal projects, and public housing. Still others got down to business about actions each person could take such as supporting local businesses and using cooperatives to take control of their own futures. And proportional representation made a cameo.

I was disappointed that NONE of my three focus points were raised. I was tempted to raise them myself. I was able to keep myself seated only by reminding myself that this was not my movement. My three neglected points are war, limited corporate liability and sound money. I appreciate that war doesn't fit nicely into the economic injustice framework, and that sound money is still mostly played in academic circles, but limited corporate liability should be front and centre at meetings like this one. I will raise the issue if I make it to the gathering next week.

Hearing Leo Cheverie speak about the desired ends of the movement, I realized that a movement doesn't have to be defined by ends. The anarchist movement is not defined by ends, but rather the delegitimization of forceful means. I am hopeful there might be some analog in the Occupy movement.

Fine Finale

On Oct 11th I passed in my volunteer log sheet and thus closed my first episode with the Fine Options Program. One month earlier on the due date for my fine I had caved and paid the $20 for the 'Victims of Crime Fund'. It was a compromise. I don't know that it will go to victims of crime rather than creating more victims of police. And if it does go to victims of crime I don't know that the police will not spin it as a vital role the police play in the community. Regardless of where the money goes, when it is collected with threats of force, it is not a service to the community.

My time spent at the Richmond Street soup kitchen was disappointing. It was usually over staffed with volunteers, most of them volunteer volunteers, so there was not usually much work to be done. I spent a lot of time peeling vegetables, some time sweeping and mopping, a bit of time organizing their pantry, and a good hunk of time standing around making sure people knew I was around back when the manager found something for me to do. If you do this detail bring your MP3 player. After I signed up with the kitchen I heard of a need for volunteers at the Humane Society. I might look to them next time I volunteer.

Pre-Occupy Wall Street: Peaceful v War-like

I have been talking and thinking about peace and morality for a short while now, so when I see violence like that happening at the protests I see a clear distinction between the peaceful and the war-like. When I see these opposing elements it pains me to see the protesters preoccupied with the rhetoric of the 1% v. the 99%.

Regardless of the message that comes out of OWS, I must applaud them for a few things. The first is simply getting off their butts. There are many ways to participate in the order of things in a free society, voting is among the most useless. Educating yourself and others is among the most useful. Somewhere in between is holding a sign in the street. I must also applaud the protesters for remaining peaceful. So long as they do so I cannot be against them regardless of their message.

I assume the movement will be about as effective as the Tea Party. Unlike the Tea Party, the successful portions of the OWS will be to increase government intervention, as those demands are more palatable even to the 1%. Taxes on the 1% might get increased, but so too will government spending on the 1% in the forms of corporate subsidies.

If I could influence the protesters I would ask them to focus more on the government non-intervention part of their demands.
- Stopping wars
- Ending corporate limited liability
- And they should focus more on sound money, as price inflation via monetary inflation has a large impact on the middle class.

There will be a solidarity event in Charlottetown tomorrow. Details here.

This video is disturbing to some, but it shows well the clash between the peaceful and war-like

I AM NOT MOVING

Benefit Dance for Stacey O'Connor Fri Oct 14

Benefit Dance

for Stacey O'Connor
Stacey is the loving mother of two and is fighting cancer for the fourth time. Your presence and support is appreciated.

WHEN: Friday, October 14, 2011
TIME: 8:00 pm - 1:00 am
WHERE: Charlottetown Firehall, 3rd Floor
TICKETS: $10 each
(Tickets available at the door)
FEATURING: The Wrecking Crew

19 and over
Silent Auction
50/50
Cash Bar

Benefit Dance for Ed Lamb, Fri Nov 4

PEI Talk | Forum | Benefit Dance
On Nov 4 @ 9:00 pm there will be a benefit dance for one of the Pat & The Elephant driver (Ed Lamb) who is down with Cancer. Phase 2 is playing. It will be at the Charlottetown Legion. There will be a Silent Auction, a 50/50, as well there will be a Line Dance Demo .Tickets are $5.00. You can get your tickets by calling Pat & The Elephant office 894-3339.. The more the merrier..


Thanks
Pat & The Elephant

Rabble.ca Moderator: "Trolling questions"

In an effort to expand my philosophical horizons, or perhaps return to my liberal roots, I decided to engage Babble, the forums at Rabble.ca. I started the thread Why do the rich owe? with a question:

When I hear about 'tax the rich' schemes I often wonder why do the rich owe? It cannot simply be because they are rich because there is no move to get the rich from China to pay for your social programs. Or should rich Chinese pay for your social programs?

I don't understand this and was hoping that you good people could help. Thx.

There were a few engagements and a few unfriendly 'troll' comments, then a moderator broke in:

As you are aware, this is a left-wing progressive site. So far, you've confined your conservative opinions to blogs and columns on rabble, but babble is different. No one here is required to educate you on issues that are already abundandtly clear to the left. I suggest you find a discussion forum where you will find some like-minded individuals.

As the conversation kept rolling with the non-moderators I commented:

There have been several references to the 'oppressive 1%'. A few questions:

Is it more important to stop the oppression or to get revenge?

What keeps you from opting out of their oppressive system?

To which another moderator wrote:

Ashley, those are trolling questions. Do you see my title over there on the left-hand side? The one that says "moderator"? This is me telling you nicely that you need to attend more closely to what I am saying. Otherwise, I will "get revenge" by banning you. Consider this a warning.

I contrast this story with a Free Domain Radio forum thread. Not only does the community have a healthy, hearty debate about this critique of the NAP, a central idea to philosophical anarchism, but it is an anarchist who started the thread. The author of the source article doesn't join the debate until a dozen comments are posted.

I find the ideas of liberty fascinating and elegant, but the frankness and openness of the community did a lot to invite me in to take a closer look despite the initially scary implications of anarchism.

One long-time Babble user also complained to me in private about the rigidity of the forum. He is now a member of Free Domain Radio.

Benefit Concert/Silent Auction for Dylan Bingley

A benefit concert will be held October 15th, 2011 at 7:00pm at the Cotton Centre in Stratford. The benefit is in aid for little 9 year old Dylan Bingley who is currently being cared for at the IWK Children's Hospital in Halifax. Dylan is fighting a rare Bone Infection Disease.

Dylan is the son of Wade & Bonnie Bingley and the grandson of Eric & Erma Rose of Stratford.

He is a very lively young child who enjoys many hobbies and loves spending time with his friend, Dylan is very loved by a great family all of whom are praying daily for his recovery.

At the benefit will be providing all kinds of local entertainers as well as silent auction with many wonderful items to be bid on. We encourage all to come join us this will be a family affair. We also encourage all to join us in our many prayers for his recovery.

The benefit will be locally sponsored by the Stratford and area Lions Club.

Phone Erma Rose 569-3956
or Heather Daley 569-3799