The Filter^

Prisoners to get the vote for the first time - Telegraph

The decision, which brings to an end six years of government attempts to avoid the issue, opens the possibility that even those facing life sentences for very serious crimes could in future shape Britain’s elections.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

In the past I've advocated a restriction of the franchise, and the reason I like to raise it is that people tend to act as though universal suffrage is both desirable and the norm. It's clearly not though - and this article possibly reflects a popular view that certain prisoner's shouldn't vote. But which prisoners?

I'm with P.J. O'Rourke - don't vote, it just encourages the bastards!

Your life is not worth saving prolonging... NICE

Sky News report:

Avastin (bevacizumab) can help patients with advanced bowel cancer which has spread to other organs, usually the liver and lungs.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said it had considered the drug, including a risk-sharing scheme from the manufacturer Roche.

But it insisted the price is too high for the extra benefit it gives patients.

I know that in the UK daring to question the NHS is seen as being as patriotic as kicking the Queen up the arse, but here's an honest question to my non-rabid, sensible, non-libertarian readers - what do you make of this story?

Seen on the tube...

Why I'm Not a Libertarian

It all comes down to implied consent and the contracting out of institutional safeguards. Here are two quotes worth pondering:

Here proposers of the second objection (like Adam Smith) will point out that such people as policemen and magistrates see to it that no individual contracts out of the existing institutions, and that therefore institutions are not contracts. But this is an error. What an individual cannot do is to force other individuals, policemen or no policemen, to contract out of a convention. The law- breaker is the person who, by the act of breaking a law, contracts out; if the other individuals in his society do not contract out they will try to catch and punish him in accordance with the laws (namely the conventions) which they adopt; if they contract out as well, he will not be punished, and that is all there is to it.

Joseph Agassi, "Methodological Individualism" The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Sep., 1960), pp. 244-270 [p.265]

"If I find that I am able to do little  or nothing of what I wish, I need only contract or extinguish my wishes, and I am made free. If the tyrant (or 'hidden persuader') manages to condition his subjects (or customers) into losing their original wishes and embrace ('internal-ize') the form of life he has invented for them, he will, on this definition, have  succeeded in liberating them." I. Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, I969), pp. 139-140).

Amartya K. Sen, "Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory" Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 4  (Summer, 1977), pp. 317-344 [fn 43]    

Democracy and law

"It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract, but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the government steps in."

Guess which famous fascist said this.

If you know your history...

Via David Henderson:

Klamer: But doesn't government try to resolve social injustice?

Lucas: That wouldn't be anything like my view. I can't think of the pharaohs as being in existence to resolve social injustice in Egypt. I think they perpetrated most of the injustice in Egypt.

Via Russ Roberts:

The specialness of this country [USA] is the lack of totalitarian regime and individual liberty. Once that's gone, this country is no longer all that special... You can call me evil or "not doing my part" because I'm not willing to work myself into the grave for your family instead of mine, but the reality is that unless you plan to start a Gulag, you can't make me.

Stockwell revisited

I'm not sure whether this is real or not (click to enlarge), but it poses an interesting question - would a similar poster in Miami airport even be noticed?

Parts One, Two and Three.

Consistency, please

Recent examples of horrific child cruelty are ammunition for those who defend interventions into family concerns. For those who see it as rationale for expanding the scope of the state, do you advocate interventions here? If not why not?

Free Speech, Tolerance and the Thirst for Knowledge

I've not written about the recent Oxford debate nor the British teacher held in Sudan, because I'm not an expert, and many finer words have already been written elsewhere. But I wanted to draw them together with two questions that don't seem to be being addressed:

• Who was speaking against free speech? It's a shame that the protesters granted the moral high ground to anti-Semites and Fascists, but if this really was a debate on free speech, I'm with the irrationalists.
• Do people not take intellectual nourishment from learning about the local customs of countries you go to work in? I'm not criticising Ms Gibbons - and am deeply empathetic to her plight - but prior to going to Thailand, for example, I was told what not to do. That doesn't always prevent innocent error, but she's been surprisingly naive. Perhaps it's a consequence of the rise of cheap air flights, cultural imperialism, and subconcious intolerance.

Doesn't free speech require tolerance, and doesn't tolerance require a thirst for knowledge? This seems lacking in both cases.

on Libertarianism

According to Time,

And what is the opposite of libertarianism? Libertarians would say fascism. But in the American political context, it is something infinitely milder that calls itself communitarianism.

It's a shocking mischaracterisation of a political philosophy most people feel instinctively suspicious of, and unfortunately only serves to propagate that myth. Anti-collectivism - in all it's forms - would be a better source of distinction.