Geek News: Revolutionizing Digital Privacy

There's an app for that!  Read the whole thing. There is a related thought. I also couldn't resist making this:

Here's a nice little Quote of the Day from Silent Circle CEO (and former Navy SEAL, by the way) Mike Janke: 

"We feel that every citizen has a right to communicate, the right to send data without the fear of it being grabbed out of the air and used by criminals, stored by governments, and aggregated by companies that sell it."

PREACH.  Surveillance society snooping pushing you?  Push back.  The fact that I have nothing to hide doesn't mean that you get to look at my stuff just because you can and feel like it.  The app launches on February 8.

Property Rights ... In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

All kidding aside, this is very interesting.

On Property Rights: Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right

Via Samizdata on property rights with my emphasis in bold:

It’s typical of the left to argue that all property rights are somehow tainted by past injustices and therefore that government can redistribute to whatever groups wield sufficient political power to demand a share of the spoils. Of course, that is a non sequitur; past injustices do not justify new ones, against people who did not commit the original wrong. It’s true that, as Twain said, there’s not a foot of land that has not been stolen and restolen countless times. But isn’t this good reason to stop stealing what belongs to people? Instead of institutionalizing as social policy into the indefinite future a system that deprives people of their earnings, their belongings, and their substance, to serve priorities that others consider more important? The American Indian suffered terrible abuses, and stands today as an object lesson in what happens when government is given too much power to seize and redistribute property. Yet Yglesias praises that state of affairs and urges its repetition! That really is outrageous.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Pseudo-Polymath! Yes indeedy, two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights do make an airplane!

The Human Cost of China's Infrastructure

Indeed.  Note too the environmental cost.  Think about all this next time some idiot like Tom Friedman or Elizabeth Warren says out loud that it's too bad the US is not like China.

Thoughts From A Small Business

I had noted this current kerfuffle here and done it with an eye roll and a laugh, but you really should read this too. UPDATE: Oh, and this too.

Too Much Copyright

Via Techdirt (with commentary) comes this video.  Look, nobody is advocating that it's OK to filch other people's stuff, but the point is that fair use is a legitimate concern for the consumer and the legal maximalist terms of copyright have become stupid and becoming stupider by the moment (cf. the recent SOPA/PIPA debacle with a side of censorship and entertainment industry shenanigans).

Well, well, well ...

Heh.  You do remember this.

Teachable Moment: Eminent Domain Debate

Sometimes you really do get teachable moments.  In class earlier, we were going as planned, and then we had a digression that turned into an impromptu class debate about eminent domain.  That hadn't been on my lesson plans, but I let it go because I thought it was a great "teachable moment."  The opinions and feelings expressed by the undergrads were actually close to what I personally espouse as an evil center-right enemy of social progress, and I was frankly rather surprised (and delighted) by the debate's results.  So, folks, at least in this one class, the kids are all right ... right down to their defense of property rights and their hostility to the Kelo decision even here in blue state Nerdworld.  Even the strongest defender of eminent domain conceded that it could be readily abused by corrupt politicians.  Well, whaddyaknow?  Glimmers of hope!

Leftists and Property Rights

Harvard econ prof Greg Mankiw observes, with photographic evidence from the Occupy Wall Street kerfuffle, that even leftists believe in property rights when it comes to their property.  Heh! 

London Appalling: Liberty, Property Rights, and Self-Defense

Here's a perspective, though it just might be summed up by the quote from John Adams at the very end.  There is something deeply perverse about denying free people to right to defend themselves and their property, homes, and businesses.  UPDATE: I had to read this twice because at first I couldn't believe it -- a modern Brit is thinking about the right of private citizens to bear arms!

James Delingpole Asks a Question

It's simple ... and simply devastating.

Quote of the Day: Government in the Economy

Who said this?

"The ... economy ought to be dominated by private businesses and private investors. The government must protect the choice and property of those who willingly risk their money and reputation."

So, who said this?  You might be surprised.

Happy Magna Carta Day!

Something remarkable happened in Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Read this landmark document via the British Library.  Here's part of it:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

Indeed!

Nerd News: Is Columbia University a Bully over Eminent Domain?

One law professor seems indeed to think so.  We need strong property rights, he argues, because they protect the little guy ... especially from big guys.

Dollars and Sense: Two Thoughts on Wealth and Poverty

Read this and look for a great quote: "The only way to fight poverty is with employment."  Well, duh.  Handouts accomplish little in the long run.  Do I really have to give you the fortune-cookie-worthy quote about how to feed a man for a day versus how to feed him for a lifetime?  (Hint: the first involves a handout.  The second involves skills.) I would add that the corollary to employment is really trade and wealth creation (and add t0o the protection of private property).  There really is a vital nexus among the ideas of free markets, free people, and property rights.  Then watch this:

Of course you know that I am firmly in the camp of the "let's make more wealth and then everybody wins."  Consider, perhaps, the experience of standards of living in Taiwan just from WWII to the present day.  Frankly, a lot of leftists seem to look at people whom they define as "wealthy" (and you better hang onto your wallets, because pretty soon that means you, as their rapacious appetite for both spending and confiscatory taxes continues) and consider them as the barbarian hordes considered the cities of medieval Europe -- as things to be plundered and pillaged.  Rant below the fold.

Wealthy Chinese Communists Oppose New Property Taxes

OK, it's a weird headline but an interesting news story. Not even some Communists like taxes? Heh!

Nerd Analysis: Is Government-Subsidized Home Ownership Necessary to "Preserve Our National Identity"? Plus a Rant!

Say WHAT? Robert Shiller may be a Yale economist, but I think he's wrong about this whole home ownership and government subsidy business. Here's his New York Times op-ed, by the way, so you can read for yourself. Besides, government meddling helped create the housing bubble and resulting toxic mortgage mess.

Also, are we really saying that somehow home ownership is a prerequisite for a national identity/character? WHAT? What do you even mean by those words? Pffffft. I already figured out a while ago that in the government obsession with home ownership, even for people who shouldn't have gotten mortgages in the first place, the humble, taxpaying, fiscally responsible apartment renter (like yours truly and most of my hard-working friends) gets the shaft.

Shiller even concedes that government house-buying subsidies have very little economic justification (i.e., actual, practical, common-sense reasons for doing stuff), but he insists on the "social engineering" aspect. And so in the end he begins, most unfortunately, to sound like every other tiresome, ideologically-driven, pie-eyed dreamer with no grip on harsh pragmatic reality, justifying bad policy by claiming some kind of moral high ground and good intention. (Booooooo!)

You know, someday I'd like to buy a house (or a cute condo). But a house isn't the only kind of personal property that matters (and with the Kelo decision and eminent domain, you might still be out of luck with that -- oops, did I say that out loud? Ask some New Yorkers about their property rights). I think the entire idea that homeowning is somehow a requirement for good communities and individual liberties is flawed, and besides, it's reductionist and doesn't even try to account for the fact that people who don't own houses matter too (don't they?). I was in a towering rage about the mortgage mess, and I still am. Homeowning is not the end-all and be-all of life.

I find amusing also in the extreme Shiller's statement that renting puts us all under the "oppression of a landlord" and brings up nasty memories of tenements. REALLY? TENEMENTS? I'm looking around my apartment and out the window at the rest of the sunny complex right now. Hm, we haven't had a single cholera outbreak this month or last, actually. Not a single instance of typhoid or tuberculosis, no rats or vermin or filth or crime, no high-rise fires or leaky pipes, no instances of entire families crammed into a single room, no kids crying because they'd spent all day working in a mill for The Man!

Funny, I don't feel oppressed that I pay rent to someone. I don't feel like some kind of serf or peasant or whatever. In fact, I actually (gasp!) LIKE the fact that I pay my own rent with my own money for my own place to live that I chose. Funny, when I went apartment-hunting, the sheer awful, blood-sucking, soul-killing oppression of it all -- landlords and rent and tenements, oh my! -- never entered my head. I was more thinking, closet space and kitchen appliances and nice sunlight exposure so I can have a place to live and work hard and make my way in the world without depending on anyone other than myself, so I can keep chasing my American Dream. Well, I guess this just doesn't make me part of the community or national identity of people who care about individual liberties and property rights! After all, I'm just a poor sad tenement dweller crushed under the heel of some ruthless landlord. Or something. PFFFFFFT.

Nerd News: Columbia University Abusing Eminent Domain?

I don't need to tell you that recent developments in eminent domain practice have been infuriating. It's about the right to one's own property.

Anyway, here's some news from Nerdworld, where Columbia University is under fire for supposedly engaging in in eminent domain abuse.