1. Why the Court was correct to demand more than mere legislation to outlaw abortion.
2. How we can meet this demand and legally do something about the casual disposal of humans.

It’s over 2000 words, a rather large time investment, but if you care about Life, it is required reading.

A few tidbits:

Suppose we were to outlaw abortion based on a mere majority vote. And suppose half the population was strongly pro-life and nearly half strongly pro-choice. Would such a law be enforceable?

Not if we had randomly selected juries! It takes a unanimous jury to convict an abortionist. If roughly half the available jurors are pro-choice, then the odds of getting a unanimous pro-life jury is 0.5¹²=0.024%. Hardly worth the effort.

Only by non-random juries and/or intimidating juries to vote against their conscience could convictions practically be obtained for laws for which only half the voters support. Where the general population is interested and divided, a stronger consensus is required. On this the Supreme Court was correct.

In many states we probably have such a strong consensus. And that is the subject of my rather extensive article: how to measure the level of consensus to provide hard data to the courts. And yes, given my close reading of Roe v. Wade, such measurements could sway the courts given the correct arguments to go along with the data.

Read more and come back here to comment.

I say “could” and “might” as I am not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV. Read the article yourself and ponder the implications. Come back here and comment or use the Disqus comments on the article page proper. If you are a lawyer, I would absolutely love to hear your opinion, either via comment or email.

Let’s save some lives — soon.

1. It’s time to update the Enhanced-Precision Political Quiz in 2D. You’ve probably heard of it, as you probably got here via said quiz. I wrote the initial quiz as a Windows app, suitable for deploying cheap computers at political booths. As such, it needed to be short. A web based quiz can be longer, and based on the feedback I’ve gotten over the years, I need to provide more options, especially more viable authoritarian options. Also, the question set solidified rather early, with the last minor update in 2004. The pressing issues of the day have since changed.

To this end I have set up a new blog on quiz2d.com. There, I am setting up blog posts designed to kick off forum-like discussions in the comments. If you want to have some influence in what the next version of the Quiz will be like, drop by the new blog, subscribe to the feed to keep track of topics under discussions.

2. I have launched a brand new web site: National Debt Solutions. Much as I love promoting the grand ideas for a better America, in these dark times it is appropriate to simply ensure the United States as we know it continues. We are plunging into a financial abyss. While we are today the world’s mightiest superpower, we will not retain this status much longer without doing something about the debt. For all the errors of our foreign interventions, I, unlike Ron Paul, am not convinced that the world would be better off without our efforts. What would the world be like if Russia or China rules the waves? What of the future of our children in a post-American world?

So I am going to anger my libertarian friends and call for more taxes — while still calling for less spending. It seems the older I get the more I appreciate H. Ross Perot. The debt is dangerous; that sucking sound is real, albeit toward China; corruption is rampant at the federal level; and we need a better election system. Alas, Perot’s first draft of a political movement didn’t get the job done. Electronic voting and trying to make it even easier to vote was a mistake, as the subsequent implosion of the Reform Party proved. The country should be run by those who care enough to put in some effort. His platform needed some work as well.

I digress. National Debt Solutions is to be a nonpartisan site. I shall appeal to be both liberal, libertarians and conservatives to do something about excessive debt: both public and private. Whether we need a new political party to accomplish this end remains a matter to be discussed here at Holistic Politics.

You might find the first articles of interest. I have a super easy introduction to Austrian business cycle theory using a single potato farm. I also take a rather hard look at the Laffer Curve.

I’ll calm down and tidy things up in a few weeks, hopefully — after I play with all the permutations. Please bear with me.

In the meantime check out the new header. Pretentious, no? But relevant. The diverse reading list portrayed has affected my political thinking considerably. For example:

• Quantum mechanics has taught me the futility of attempting to achieve absolute zero temperature, or absolute zero initiation of force. While we are certainly far from the achievable (or optimal) libertarian ideal, the achievable is far from that demanded by Lew Rockwell and his grumpy band of Praxeologists.
• Paul Samuelson’s Economics describes the Keynesian paradigm clearly, with useful graphics. Critics of Keynes (such as myself) should at least try to understand him, or at least Keynesian Economics as it is understood by the mainstream.
• My hobby of electronics and speaker building (re. The Art of Electronics) has taught me about feedback and stable and unstable filter functions. Adam Smith described negative feedback with his famous invisible hand metaphor. Karl Marx pointed out some unpleasant positive feedback loops in capitalism. I, alas, have come to the conclusion that we cannot blame all the instability of capitalism on the Federal Reserve. If we are going to get rid of the Fed, we need to address some of the positive feedback loops and unstable filters in our financial system.
• The Dilbert Principle because freedom lovers need to be reminded that there is plenty of waste, fraud and abuse in the private sector. (And whenever we have a “too big to fail” situation, the private sector becomes as unaccountable for its failures as the government sector.)
• Modern Chess Openings. Chess teaches the importance of getting the most out of each move. You need to consider attack, defense and long term strategic implications of each move to play well.

I leave it to the reader and/or future posts to figure out the relevance of some of the other books I put in the picture.

(I live on the coastal plains of North Carolina, a land not noted for its white winters.)

Today, it is supposed to get up to 63 degrees.

Two points do not a trend make. However, in this case they are representative. Last year was the coldest Eastern NC winter in my memory. This was followed by a very hot summer. Didn’t have much pleasant weather until this fall, and it has continued to be pleasant through December for the most part. (This why I have been working on my house instead of blogging.)

Concidentally, sunspots have restarted right at the time it started warming up around here:

(Image courtesy of NASA.) A causal connection? Not for me to say. But I have seen it written that the last few years have been cooler because of low sunspot activity, and that we would be noticing the effects of global warming again once the spots resumed. This prediction appears to be coming true, at least in my back yard. How about yours?

OK, it wasn’t as bad as Avatar. And it didn’t offend me as much as the movie butcherings of Dune, Starship Troopers, or Lord of the Rings. But it was objectively bad. Surf Nazis Must Die had better dialog. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes did a better job of building up a mystery. Who is John Galt? Just show it within five minutes of the credits and kill all the suspense. This is as bad as Peter Jackson’s revealing the history of the One Ring in the opening scene of Lord of the Rings. The only reason the movie version of Atlas bothered me less than LOTR or Dune is that I have less love for the Rand’s book than for the other works. (Her words sparkled at times, but her philosophy was dangerously defective.)

Here’s a tip for rich fanboys who want to make a movie of their favorite book: hire a good screenwriter! You can skimp on sets, makeup and special effects; see Dr. Who from the Tom Baker years. You can save some money on actors as well. Big name stars are valued for their trademarks as much as their actual acting abilities. But if you have a crappy script, you have a crappy movie. Think of The Love Guru, Independence Day, or Star Wars—The Phantom Menace.

Atlas Shrugged does present some unique challenges. The book is huge, with way more dialog than can fit even in a miniseries. And the scenario is hopelessly obsolete: the passenger railroad lines have been nationalized for decades. The first problem we could mitigate by following the example of Hollywood films from Ayn Rand’s day, before the spaghetti western popularized sparse dialog and posedowns. Watch an old romantic comedy or detective flick. Back in the old days, the actors motor-mouthed. So should most of the characters in Atlas Shugged. The heroes are nerds, and Ayn Rand was fond of stimulants. (Speaking of which: there should have been more smoking and less drinking in the movie.)

The obsolete scenario presents a bigger problem. Today’s long haul passenger trains are museum relics run by the government: NPR on wheels, if you will. Having the grandchildren of robber barons struggle to save the line in 2016 just doesn’t work. Once possibility would be to switch from trains to airlines, but this interferes with the Rearden Steel plotlines. Another would be to go further into the future, long after air travel has been deprecated because of Peak Oil or anti global warming regulations. Yet another option would be to go retro, as in Brazil or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Set the story in an alternate past, where the New Deal never ended. Maybe even shoot it in black and white.

The last option is the safest. Tinker with the technology and you tinker with the story so much that devotees will wince at the changes. Moreover, the technology in Atlas Shrugged is not the only thing which is now obsolete. So are the villains. The overt Kantian philosophy Rand loathed went out of style during the Me Decade. That which survived mutated into deep environmentalism. An updated Atlas Shrugged based on today’s Man-hating villains, might make an interesting movie, but it would offend the fans of the original. Better to make a story inspired by Atlas than to mutate it.

So, will I be writing that retro screenplay? No. I have a hundred higher priority items on my queue, ranging from writing a replacement operating system for Windows, starting a new political party, to becoming the All Being, Master of Time Space and Dimension. Also, my grass needs mowing.

I jest, slightly. Part of me wishes I could avoid the issue entirely, as it divides both the liberal, conservative, and libertarian camps. And it will divide the new Upper Left alliance should it ever get off the ground as well. So should that new political party ever get off the ground, I would enjoin the membership to keep the issue out of the platform entirely — or have an explicit statement that individual candidates vary on the subject. This is an issue where I will ally myself with the social conservative Republicans, the Blue Dog Democrats, and whatever fraction of the Upper Left turns out to be pro life.

But I cannot leave the issue alone, because if legal abortion continues much longer, natural humans may become an endangered species. (And this is without factoring in any supernatural wrath.)

One obvious new color for liberty is gold vs. the light blue I had in the old logo. Gold is the color used for the Libertarian Party, and I hadn’t used it yet. The question remained how to add a fourth dimension to the logo. One option was to use grow/shrink as the fourth dimension, taking a cue from Flatland.

That didn’t look right. So I had a go with a physics option. Rotations can give us three more dimensions to play with, so:

Possible, but doesn’t quite connote rotation. Trying again:

Hmmm, now we have a rotation in the Equality/Liberty plane, sort of. Another possibility was:

Much more physics like: the rotation is definitely about an axis. But the wrong axis IMO. The wife definitely didn’t like. She wanted morality to point up. But getting a curved arrow to behave propertly in Power Point eventually taxed my patience and I stumbed on this:

Instead of a rotation, how about a halo? Works for morality, and angels as beings that can move in another dimension fits some of the historical descriptions. (It is not the only option, however. Our three dimensions are mostly empty space. Matter which acts through different forces could pass through us without our knowing it. Neutrinos are known to do this.)

Next, I needed some liberty books. Greed vs. Freedom is a critique of Ayn Rand’s approach to liberty as much as it is a morality series, so it could be gold instead of blue. And I have started a new manual of libertarian strategy to have another gold series. For those who have followed my other projects over the years, some of he material will seem familiar. I have written on libertarian strategy at Quiz2d.com and on the Libertarian Reform Caucus site. This go around I am being less party-centric and attempting to be more accomodating to those who won’t follow my approaches. Comments to come will determine my success in this matter.

As for the font choices for the chapters on liberty, I wanted to have headings that resembled those in either the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The closest I could find is an Old English font. Not a perfect match, and these documents are mainly cursive, with just some Old English like highlights. What think ye?

Of course, many modern Marxists would claim that Marxism has never been tried, that what the Soviet Union and similar states practiced was State Capitalism, not Marxism. Well, the Soviets never got to communism, but Marx thought something akin to what the Soviets tried was the next step to communism. Methinks these modern Marxists are closer to the truth than Marx himself.

Freedom for all requires pushing capital down to the masses. A worker with his own tools is a free agent. The Marxist and the Bible agree on this: freedom of speech, religion, voting, etc. are mere “bourgeois freedoms” – important but incomplete. Freedom includes financial freedom, owning your own farm or business – or at least being able to shop employers so you are not a wage serf. A truly free society is one with an economy dominated by sole proprietorships, family businesses, partnerships and human scale corporations.

Capitalism will always be with us. Where tools are expensive, we must concentrate capital. And capitalism is usually the better way to allocate and manage these capital concentrations. Large scale worker democracy is often inefficient, and government ownership downright dangerous.

But both Marx and defenders of modern capitalism overestimate(d) the inherent power of centralization. Adam Smith wrote at a time when economic centralization was just getting started, when the returns on centralization were enormous. Marx extrapolated from Smith and assumed that the optimal economy was complete centralization – a gigantic error!

The need to centralize waxes and wanes by industry. Consider flour. Once upon a time, people ground grains by hand between stones. Then waterwheels powered the process, so people brought their wheat to central milling facilities to grind it into flour. We generally do so today, but more out of habit than necessity. With electric motors, you could have fresh flour ground on demand by an affordable kitchen appliance, and some hardcore foodies go that route. Most people don’t bother because they are used to bread made in giant automated bakeries. But once again, technology is turning full circle: you can buy an automated bread bakery that fits on your kitchen counter.

Computers were once centralized. Then the technology became cheap and personal computers became the norm. I am writing this chapter on a machine more powerful than the multimillion dollar supercomputer I shared time on in graduate school.

The music industry was centralized until recently because recording studios were expensive, and distribution channels limited. Top musicians put themselves under contract in return for recording facilities and promotion. Nowadays good quality recording equipment is within the range of high school students who flip burgers during the summer break. Distribution is trivial over the Internet. CD burners are standard equipment on even cheap used computers. Music is becoming a freelance business again.

Computerized machine tools and computer aided design tools have plummeted in price. Were it not for cheap labor in China, we might already see human scale manufacturing businesses displacing the industrial behemoths of old. We used to have over a hundred auto manufacturers in this country; we might again. The collapse of GM and Chrysler could be the start of something good.

We could have an economy which is neither capitalist nor socialist. We could have an economy which is dominated by human scale firms: family businesses, partnerships, small corporations, etc. It’s a matter of taking advantage of technological trends which have already happened, and discontinuing government policies which lock in the 20th Century economy. (This is not to say that large scale capitalism can or should be eliminated. Big business has is place. Likewise, some large scale government owned enterprises have their place as well. But both could be relegated to being minor features of the economy.)

To get back to a human scale economy we need to get rid of artificial economies of scale: unnecessary bureaucratic overhead and high transaction costs. We need to rethink our education system to prepare the average person for the possibility of being a free agent; the basics of business should be part of the core academic curriculum. We need to reform the tax code so it doesn’t encourage people to be wage serfs their entire lives; most especially, we need to disconnect health insurance from employment. Finally, we need to get cheap capital down to the smallest businesses. The big corporations succeed in part because they can afford to be less efficient, since they have access to cheap capital. Smaller businesses pay higher interest rates; startup corporations need a huge upside to justify venture capital or an IPO.

And the poor pay high interest rates on just about everything.

(This article was originally the intro to my updated Loans for the Poor. I decided it was a bit too long as an intro for said chapter, but it kind of stands up well on its own. Could even start new series…)

Anyway, I think you will find the current tax rates to be instructive. I took five of the federal income taxes collected on working class. (I omitted unemployment insurance.) Then, I did a bit of algebra in order to to treat employer portions of FICA and Medicare as part of salary in order to be able to compare a single flat tax with the current array. For tax filers who simply take the standard deduction and personal exemptions, the following tax rates hold.

For single taxpayers:

For a couple without children:

And for a family of four (with no child tax credits applied; I am not up to date on the latest law on this score):

As we can see, the marginal rates get up to 28% rather quickly, and peak at a bit over 37%. Dick Armey’s call for a 17% flat tax is a huge giveaway to the rich compared to current law.

I crafted a flat 40% tax plan which merged all these taxes which comes out as a tax cut for everyone short of around $200K/year/individual by having a $12,000/year prebate. Not sure how this would come out for the treasury, but if we count the prebate against all welfare and Social Security benefits, we could get most people off those other programs.

Of course, those who game the system pay less than the rates above. For example, state income taxes alone take many high income earners above the standard deduction. Throw in mortgage interest and property taxes and my estimate for the professional class (doctors, lawyers, full professors, engineers, etc.) is low. Furthermore, pay in the form of health insurance is not taxed. (Or is that was? I am not up on the details of Obamacare.) And professional class workers can defer income through 401(k) plans, HSAs, etc.

So my evil plan may be a wash for professionals. But even if it is a wash monetarily, it eliminates the need to play the government’s game to keep your cash. Those who want to save to start a business instead of save for retirement. We could expect a mini boom in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, employing others would much easier. One simple tax to collect. Multiply by 0.4 and send it in.

What think ye?