Challenging family traditions

Kudos to this Australian kid:

A COURT has placed a 16-year-old girl on the airport watch list to prevent an arranged marriage taking place in Lebanon.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, applied to the Federal Magistrates Court for an order to restrain her parents from taking her out of Australia to marry a man she had met only once.

The girl, given the pseudonym Ms Madley by the court, approached the Legal Aid Commission after her parents organised the wedding despite her telling them that she did not want to go to Lebanon and did not want to marry the man.

Mr Harman praised the girl's ''act of great bravery'' in using the legal system to challenge her parents' authority.

Ms Madley was fearful of her mother's reaction to her application, he said, and he ordered her mother and father not to assault, harass, threaten or intimidate her, or question her about the proceedings.

''Her actions in approaching the Legal Aid Commission, let alone this court, might be perceived as disrespectful of her parents and disobedient of their will,'' he said.

Although legally a minor, the girl had displayed maturity not only by taking action to protect herself from an arranged marriage, but deciding to challenge part of the Lebanese Islamic culture which she was brought up in. (Sydney Morning Herald)

In another article from the same newspaper someone says that arranged marriages are not necessarily a bad thing:

    Lyn Fletcher, from Relationships Australia, said there was a big difference between arranged marriages and those which are forced.

    "Some people are happy with an arranged marriage, because that's how they've been brought up they don't have any expectations of falling in love or romantic attachment," she said.

This doesn't really cast arranged marriages in any kind of a positive light. So arranged marriages are not that bad because women in some cultures have learned to live with them, i.e., have learned not to question the system? They've merely accepted their fate of having to live in a suffocating environment for the sake of the (extended) family, not because they want it.

It's precisely for this reason that it's good that this Australian case has gained some publicity, making it to the news even here in Finland. No doubt the city where I live is filled with dozens of immigrant women who think they have no choice but to submit to the authority of their families. These people should be made aware of the fact that there's a life beyond the role your family had decided for you the moment you were born.

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." -Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

Strip clubs, pornography and feminists

The United States is an easy target when it comes to narrow-minded attitudes toward sexuality. Here's Texas, the heart of the Bible Belt:

In 2007, state legislators passed the Sexually Oriented Business Fee Act, which imposed the fee ["pole tax"] on nearly 200 establishments that feature live nude performances and allow the consumption of alcohol. The $5-per-customer entrance fee, which is imposed on the business and not the patron, is intended to raise money for sexual assault prevention programs and health insurance coverage for low-income people. (NYTimes)

This a form of collective punishment, which is kinda perverse in a country that values individual responsibility. The tax assumes that everyone attending strip clubs is responsible for the actions of a few rapists. 

Moreover, open attitudes toward adult entertainment have actually been found to reduce violence against women. So, if the aim is to reduce the incidence of rape, Texan lawmakers should consider subsidizing strip clubs rather than taxing them.

But at least it's still legal in Texas to take your clothes off for money. In the so-called progressive Nordic countries women's rights and liberties are being curbed by feminists (a female supremacist movement that opposes individual liberties and equal rights) to a much, much greater degree than some conservatives in the United States ever could. Here's Julie Bindel, a feminist author, writing about banning strip clubs and pornography in Iceland:

Iceland has passed a law that will result in every strip club in the country being shut down.

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons.

So, feminists are united with religious extremists in their contempt of women's right to make decisions about their own lives. Only their reasons differ.

Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold."

This is just idiotic. How is selling "yourself" at a strip club any different from selling "yourself" at an office? Nearly every profession is a mixture of inherent talent and obtained skill and those are the things you're selling. The labor market consists of people selling themselves. So, the problem is not that these people are selling themselves as "products"; the problem is that feminists don't happen to like this particular product even though it's none of their business. Feminists, like religious extremists, have a vision of what a proper woman is like (even their rhetoric is similar: "It is not acceptable that women..."). Any deviations from this standard are to be looked down upon. Feminists perceive women not as adult individuals capable of using their own discretion but as child-like members of a collective who are to do what the collective tells them to do.

Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.

What an idiot. If "not looking happy" or "working just to make ends meet" is a qualification for banning an occupation, I guess all of us are to be unemployed in the not-so-distant future. Simple-minded authoritarians like Bindel are not really helping the situation by not showing much of any respect for these women. If feminists and cultural conservatives actually respected women working in the adult industry (and taught their children to respect them as well), these women might have a better time at work and life in general. I'd guess that a big reason why some women in the adult industry don't feel appreciated is precisely because narrow-minded people like Bindel don't appreciate them as adults capable of making their own decisions. Instead, they're trying to force-feed the "you're a victim" mantra. This could also explain why drug abusers and poor people are overrepresented in the adult industry; only they've really got nothing to lose. Mainstreamization of pornography would attract more "mainstream" people. In fact, it's not surprising anymore to find that an adult entertainer holds an academic degree. Of course, feminists probably consider well-educated women who choose to work in the adult industry as traitors.

Let's end this post on a positive note:

Let’s look at attitudes towards women – studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men that didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators, female as well as male, essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship of the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography – by any definition – has had a cause and effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women.

Lisää kieltoja ratkaisuiksi ongelmiin

Pettämätöntä logiikkaa:

Sisäministeri Päivi Räsäsen (kd.) mielestä ravintoloissa tapahtuvaan seksikauppaan puututtaisiin parhaiten kieltämällä seksin osto Ruotsin malliin.

Räsäsen mukaan ostokielto selkeyttäisi pelisääntöjä.

- Toimintaan pystyttäisiin aina puuttumaan, tapahtuipa se sitten yleisellä paikalla tai ei, hän sanoo lehdelle. (Iltalehti)

Pari päivää sitten uutisoitiin, että tullin haaviin jäi kevään ja kesän aikana lasti laittomia potenssilääkkeitä. Kerta oli tuskin ensimmäinen, eli voimme olettaa mustan pörssin lääkekaupan olevan jonkin sortin ongelma. Räsäsen logiikan mukaisesti ehdotan lääkkeiden oston kieltoa. Samaan hengenvetoon ehdotan pelien ja elokuvien ostokieltoa, jotta piratismiin "pystyttäisiin aina puuttumaan".

Kristillisdemokraattien Räsänen nähtävästi käyttää asemaansa sisäministerinä hyväkseen ajaakseen kristittyjen sairaita seksuaalinormeja Suomen lakiin.

Tragedy in Norway and the assault on individual liberties

Since Anders Behring Breivik used to play Modern Warfare 2 with the intended purpose of learning military tactics, why don't we ban the game? This is pretty much the line of reasoning dozens of politicians have utilized in the wake of recent school shootings in various countries. This is the line of reasoning Finnish politicians and wannabe politicans are now utilizing to further their political agendas in the wake of the mass murder in Norway. Our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Erkki Tuomioja, wants to put restrictions on online "hate speech", specifying hate speech as speech that encourages people to do what Breivik did. (I haven't seen such hate speech myself, kinda like I have never seen child pornography on the internet even though some politicians make it sound as if you can't get far without running into such pornography.) More specifically, he wants to restrict the use of aliases which champions of free speech have historically used in order to avoid persecution. Dissidents in China, the Middle East and so on rely on anonymity. He also wants to restrict gun ownership rights, saying that "no one needs" guns with magazine capacity at or above 30, as if it were up to him to decide what people need.

It's a disgrace that the actions of a single madman are used as a pretext to curb individual liberties, liberties that belong to everyone, liberties that the vast majority of us use in a responsible way. This is why there aren't many lessons to be learned from the massacre. Anti-immigration "racists" are no more responsible for what Breivik did than Modern Warfare 2 is. A quick look at Breivik's political positions reveals that the guy is a mess if anything, combining Christianity, liberalism (he cites classical liberals such as F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and even Ayn Rand who was a staunch atheist), conservatism, anti-Marxism, Islamophobia, nationalism etc. in his writings. None of these in particular makes him mad. Breivik was mad in believing that his actions would spark a European civil war that'd end by the year 2083. If anything, this resembles Charles Manson's reasoning (Manson believed that the murders he orchestrated would ignite a race war that'd inevitably be won by blacks) and Masonic conspiracy theories (Breivik was a Freemason). Moreover, Breivik's writing is incredibly child-like and idiotic, as revealed by the fact that he actually proposes using Modern Warfare 2 as a military simulator and World of Warcraft as a means to hide your real activities.

So, look no further than the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was both a lunatic and an idiot. You're not helping anything by attributing Breivik's behavior to video games and broken marriages like this Swedish terrorism expert does, citing video games and his parents' broken marriage as causes of his "personality disorder". Should we draw the conclusion that you belong to some kind of a risk group if 1) your parents are divorced and 2) you play Modern Warfare 2? How many millions does that make? I'm sure many of you can name a few who meet the requirements. But how many people you know who could actually start shooting kids? Our "anti-immigration" politician Timo Soini said it best: "We're talking about a single fanatic, a psychopath and the murders he committed."

We should not start restricting our liberties simply because some lunatics abuse theirs. For lunatics, any excuse will do. We just have to live with it (and punish these individuals when they do act); that's the price of liberty. Otherwise, if we do start restricting our liberties, there's nothing left to live for. This is why I'm more worried about what our politicians will do now than I'm worried about the next attack. Restricting the use of online aliases would alone be a greater tragedy than the massacre in Norway.

----

There's a very serious lesson to be drawn from all this and that is that the Norwegian state failed in what is the most fundamental responsibility of the state; protecting individuals from criminals. While the massacre was ongoing the local police did nothing but wait for a SWAT unit that then ran into some difficulties before finally making it to the island. It's also telling that Breivik didn't shoot himself once he was done. When news of the incident started to emerge I immediately assumed the killer had committed suicide. Then I remembered that Norway is like Finland: murderers can expect lenient sentences and prison conditions are actually quite comfortable.

China is not a model

The Economist has another typical article that degenerates into treating China with words like "ooh" and "aah". First the article lists economic and political similarities between the US and the EU and then starts drawing comparisons to China, implying that the Chinese government (or any authoritarian regime) could cope with financial crises more effectively than "dysfunctional" democracies. Maybe, but let's not start treating China as some kind of a model until comparisons between the West and China become valid. Despite the fact that the Chinese GDP soon catches up with that of the US, their current GDP per capita is less than one tenth of that of the US. The time to start drawing comparisons is when the Communist party has made it possible for the Chinese to enjoy Western levels of prosperity. With their current political and economic system there's no chance of that happening.

There's one good point there though: "Every year China continues to grow, the case that countries need to be democracies in order to become wealthy and developed becomes more tenuous."

Of course, this is nothing new. During the Cold War many 3rd world countries adopted the Soviet system as an economic model. What failed them was not any lack of democracy but the centrally-planned economic system that China has now somewhat abandoned. Even in the West many countries were economically liberal before they were politically liberal. It was the wealth brought on by Capitalism that made people in the West demand more political liberties. This is also what makes the Chinese leadership so nervous.

It is Capitalism that brings stability in the first place because materially well-off people have a lot to lose if they resort to petty factionalism. (No wonder then that Communist revolutions took place exactly where Marx least expected them.) This is why democratic countries that have been made prosperous by Capitalism are stable while attempts to introduce democracy prior to Capitalism tend to result in failures.

The Power of Ideas and the Middle East

I recently finished reading Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, a controversial book according to which the liberal democratic system would ultimately prevail over alternatives. The book, based on an article in the National Interest, was written at a time when the Soviet system was collapsing. To put it simply, Fukuyama's thesis relies on two arguments:

1) Scientific knowledge, which Fukuyama associates with modern capitalism, accumulates in the sense that it's not possible to reverse the course of scientific advancement and as such it's not really possible to reverse the course of human history (for extended periods, that is).

2) People everywhere possess what Fukuyama calls thymos (from Ancient Greek), the desire for recognition, which goes unfulfilled in non-democratic systems because dictatorships don't recognize individuals as sovereign, as adults capable of independent thought and action. Thymos is just one part of the soul, however, as the soul also has desiring and reasoning parts.

If prosperity brought on by the free-market economy can fulfill the desiring and reasoning parts of the "soul", the thymotic part of the soul can only be fulfilled by granting the individual some inalienable rights, including the right to participate in the political process. Democracy can also effectively restrain individuals with megalothymia, the desire to be recognized as superior to others, while still allowing these individuals to excel in ways that don't interfere with the rights of others. And once this liberal democratic system has been imposed, it's unlikely to collapse. We may have thousands of unsatisfied people at any given time but they have no credible alternatives to liberal democracy. (The downside, according to Fukuyama, is that a world where people no longer have to struggle for recognition is a world without great human achivements; a world that is, simply put, boring.)

Fukuyama's book was written at a time when Easter Europe was going through a series of revolutions, the Autumn of Nations, which resulted in what had been considered unthinkable up until then; total disintegration of the Soviet Union with no shots fired (technically that's not true but you get the point). Now there's a chance of something similar happening in the Middle East, at least with respect to "struggle for recognition".

Of course the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan are not the first phases of a liberal revolution but they do address something that Arab dictators have long tried to ignore; the need of the average Arab citizen to be recognized as a citizen, not a subject. But the definition of a citizen varies as there are more competing societal models in the Middle East than there were in Europe in 1989. Communism had promised material abundance which never materialized. The free market system, on the other hand, had been tried and proven by then, so there was no question as to what should replace communism. Traditional authoritarianism in the Middle East might as well be replaced with an Islamic alternative. Islam is hostile to both free markets and democracy and Islamic movements in countries such as Egypt are anxious to consolidate power after having settled for a minor role for decades.

Islam remains a threat to the Middle East because there's no tradition of secularism in the Muslim world. Europe had Reformation, and the wars it brought, but many Muslims still dream of going back to the old days, days when the Muslim world was united under one caliphate bent on expansion. Fukuyama argues that Christianity contributed to democracy in spreading the idea that all people are equal in the eyes of God. The problem was that this would matter in afterlife only. God had to be taken off the equation - Christianity had to be secularized (at first via Reformation, then via the Enlightenment) before the idea of equality could be applied to our existence on this rock. Except for countries like Turkey which went through a process of quick and forced secularization, the Muslim world has yet to witness a similar process.

But while the current situation is not a liberal revolution and while it carries great risks, it's not the starting point for the establishment of a new caliphate either. Yesterday (on Fox News) Glenn Beck was going on about how the situation in the Middle East could lead to the establishment of a new caliphate, stretching all the way from Pakistan to the UK. This is of course a completely ludicrous idea. While there's no tradition of secularism in the Muslim world, the average Egyptian is not exactly a puritan Muslim either and as such is not too keen to hand power to extremists. The very fact that the extremist Muslim Brotherhood has tried to appear as a moderate force throughout the crisis pretty much proves this. Egypt is not the Iran of 1979 in the sense that there isn't a similar backlash against modernization (Westernization) in Egypt. Another obstacle to a caliphate is nationalism, which played a prominent role in the struggle against European colonial powers. While the Muslim identity surpasses the national identity, this does not automatically mend fences between dozens of Muslim groups. The United Arab Republic lasted for only three years even at a time when Egypt and Syria shared a common enemy. With different factions killing - or waiting for the opportunity to kill - each other, how can anyone expect these people to form a caliphate when they are nowhere near getting their own houses in order? The fact that Beck wears glasses these days doesn't make him any smarter. 

At the moment the situation in the Middle East seems chaotic and the outcome unpredictable but the prospect of a change in a system that is hostile to all three parts of Fukuyama's "soul" sounds better than mere stability. The status quo, which the Western world has helped maintain, has been feeding resentment in the Middle East for decades now with hardly any proof that it's been worth it.

"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."

Thou Shalt Not Burn the Qu'ran

A recent stunt by Finnish freethinkers involved exchanging bibles (and other religious nonsense) for porn magazines. This aroused some controversy but, as far as I can remember, there were no calls to have the freethinkers arrested for inciting religious hatred. But in Britain, and quite probably soon in Finland too, you can get arrested for burning the Qur'an. Of course, British freethinkers would not even be able to pull off a stunt like the one described in the opening sentence because local Muslims would immediately resort to violence, if necessary, to prevent their worthless book from being traded for porn. And local authorities, instead of guaranteeing the freethinkers' right to exchange goods for goods (and voice their opinion in doing so), would side with the Muslims to preserve whatever peace and order (our consensus) Europeans happen to value over liberty.

Chief executive officer of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Catherine Heseltine, slammed the burning of the Koran - one of the most offensive acts to Muslims she could imagine.

Why have extremists been interviewed for the news article? This woman is obviously only concerned with the fact that someone dared to burn their holy book rather than with the fact that authorities arrested a 15-year-old girl for it. Some local dhimmi politician interviewed for the article also failed to see this in terms of freedom of speech and religious liberty, instead bringing up how damage control is being done to appease Muslims. Once again, it's the feelings of the local Muslim community that matter the most, not liberty.

'You can see that in the way Muslims treat the Koran - washing before touching it and in many Muslim homes you will find it on the top shelf above all other books.

Is this supposed to make one respect Muslims' beliefs? I for one consider it merely hilarious and pathetic that some people feel the need to clean themselves before touching junk.

I also wouldn't mind seeing some British Muslims arrested the next time they incite ethnic hatred by burning the Union Jack, for example. Of course, both Muslims and non-Muslims should have the right to express their opinion but for as long as these double standards exist, Muslims won't give a damn about freedom of speech.

Are greens simply evil?

They seem to be:

While mere exposure to green products may “prime” us to think about social consciousness and perhaps improve our behavior, if we actually buy a green product, we appear to take it as license to act like jerks.

Things got interesting when these students were subsequently given $6 for an economic task and asked to share it with an unknown partner. The students who had purchased products in the green store, it turned out, were far less generous with the $6 than students who had merely been exposed to the green products.

A subsequent experiment pushed things even further. Students were again asked to shop in a green or a conventional store. They were then put through an experiment where they had the opportunity to earn extra money by cheating — even to steal money from an envelope left in the room. Consistent with the previous experiment, participants who had purchased from the green store were significantly more likely to cheat and to steal than participants who purchased from the conventional store.

I'd draw a different conclusion than the one in the first paragraph. I don't think that buying green products makes you act like a jerk. Instead, it's the way the left-wing brain has been wired that makes you act like a criminal, a mentality of total disregard for the property and freedom of others. It doesn't surprise me in the least that a green person would steal the money from an envelope. These are the same people who see nothing wrong with high marginal tax rates. These are the same people who think it's acceptable to break store windows and burn cars of private individuals while demonstrating against government policies.

Feminists couldn't care less about women's rights

Spiegel:

Copenhagen's city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and delegates to 'Be sustainable - don't buy sex'.

"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the approach to hotels says.

Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk.

According to the report, the move has been organized by the Sex Workers Interest Group (SIO).

"This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don't understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way," SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller tells avisen.dk.

(Boldface and italics mine.)

Ever wondered how little feminists appreciate the liberty of women to choose their own occupation? I haven't. It's common for these types of socialists to have such a high opinion of themselves as to be able to make decisions about how individuals are supposed to live their lives. Another feminist trait is the perception that whenever a woman chooses to be a model, a pornstar or a prostitute instead of a chief executive she has somehow betrayed other women and the feminist cause, as if individual women are worth something only as members of their respective genders and not as individuals acting on their own.

Also, this is a gross violation of state's appropriate role in the economy. What if she had attacked retailers, suddenly telling people that they should not buy anything and just let the retailers starve?

Lasten fyysinen pahoinpitely

Suomessa nähtävästi sallitaan, että vanhemmat huvikseen puhkovat reikiä puolustuskyvyttömien sylivauvojen korviin:

Martina Aitolehden ja Esko Eerikäisen 2,5-viikkoiselle tytölle on laitettu jo korvakorvut. Martina kertoi asiasta 7 päivää -lehden blogissaan.

- Tänään oli kuitenkin jännittävä tapahtuma, kun kävimme laittamassa tyttärellemme korvakorut. Kyllä, ihanat timantit saatiin tytölle korvaan.

Onpa ihanaa!

Sinänsä tällaisen salliminen ei ole mikään ihme, onhan täällä sallittu mm. pikkupoikien puukottaminen uskonnollisista syistä.

Hirveätä simputusta

Ei ole Suomen armeijassa helppoa:

Kaksi varusmiestä on tuomittu sakkoihin alokkaiden simputtamisesta Jääkäriprikaatissa, Yle kertoi tiistaina. Lapin käräjäoikeus määräsi alikersanttien maksettavaksi 30 päiväsakkoa eli yhteensä 180 euroa.

Kiroilevat alikersantit olivat vaatineet alokkaita tekemään tupailmoituksia sängyn alla tai sängyllä selällään maaten. Ilmoituksia oli määrätty tekemään myös seinän takaa.

Pari asiallista kommenttia Hesarin uutisen keskustelupalstalta:

"Kylläpä on tapahtunut kamalia! Ihan on laitettu sängylle makaamaan ja KIROILTU ALOKKAIDEN KUULLEN!!! Kai paikalle on jo lähetetty kriisiapua ja kaikki vapautettu palveluksesta? Missä viipyy Vanhasen anteeksipyyntö?"

"No jos on ihan kiroiltu niin kyllä on varmaan mennyt pojalta sitten fiilis. Toivottavasti ovat edes päässeet heti soittamaan äidilleen!"

"Kyllä siellä on ollu taas porukalla rohkeita äitin pikku mussukoita ku on ollu niin RANKKAA. Rankkaa on sitte ku ollaan 9 yötä metsässä 4h yöunilla, mutta nämä mammarit on saanu sentään kuulla KIROILUA!"

"Voi hellanlettas ku on poikia "kiusattu" tuolla tavalla. Aivan normaalia touhua, piristää kummasti välillä tunnelmaa tuommoinen "pelleily"."

Tässä on itseasiassa kaksi hyvää argumenttia asevelvollisuutta vastaan. Ensinnäkin, vapaaehtoisuus kitkisi armeijasta kaikenlaiset herkkähipiäiset, asepalvelukseen kelpaamattomat yksilöt. Toiseksi, meininki armeijassa on todella lapsellista. Aliupseerit ovat kuin kakaroita ja upseerien älyä joutuu jatkuvasti epäilemään, kun kaikki pitää aina tehdä vaikeimman kautta (missä ei tietenkään sinänsä ole mitään ihmeellistä, onhan armeija valtion monopoli). Armeija ei todellakaan tee pojista miehiä, vaan se tekee miehen aluista poikia. Minun on vaikea nähdä armeijassa mitään mekanismia, jonka avulla normaaliälyinen varusmies miehistyisi sen 6-12 kuukautta kestävän leikkikerhon aikana. Toisaalta jos lähdetään siitä, että asevelvollisuus pitää säilyttää, niin tällöin olisi tietenkin kaikkien kannalta parempi, että tällaisesta "simputuksesta" ei rangaistaisi, sillä se tekisi asepalveluksen entistä tylsemmäksi. (Todellinen simputtaminen on tietenkin asia erikseen.)

Kohti vastuutonta yhteiskuntaa

Helsingin Sanomat, 14.10.2009:

Eduskunta hyväksyi keskiviikkona lainmuutoksen, jonka mukaan pikavippiyritykset eivät saa luovuttaa rahaa lainaajalle öisin.

Lainmuutoksella yritetään vähentää turvautumista pikaluottoihin öiseen aikaan, jolloin lainanottajan harkintakyky saattaa olla heikentynyt.

Helsingin Sanomat, 15.10.2009:

Hallitus esittää eduskunnalle, että mitään ilotulitteita ei saisi enää myydä tai luovuttaa alle 18-vuotiaille.

Vaarallisimmat ilotulitteet kielletään kokonaan.

Helsingin Sanomat, 15.10.2009:

Raha-automaatteja ei voi enää muutaman vuoden kuluttua pelata anonyymisti, jos sisäministeriön arpajais- ja asehallintoyksikön suunnitelmat toteutuvat.

Suomessa ollaan vauhdilla menossa suuntaan, jossa yksilöä ei pidetä enää mistään vastuullisena. (Olemattomia tuomioita raiskauksista ja henkirikoksista jakeleva oikeuslaitos on jo pitkään ollut tämän suunnan tiennäyttäjä. ) Itse asiassa tämä varmistetaan siten, että yksilön ei enää sallita tekevän päätöksiä omasta elämästään, vaan kaikki päätökset tekee eduskunta. Näin yksilö ei voi enää tehdä "vääriä" päätöksiä.

Ne kaikkein avuttomimmat saattavat tästä hyötyäkin (mutta eivät välttämättä, vaikuttaahan epäonnistumismahdollisuuden poistuminen kannustimiin), mutta miksi meidän muiden pitäisi alistua idioottien hallittaviksi?

Muslim women and burqa - not free to choose

Barack Obama in Cairo:

"it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear." (The Economist.)

The problem with this idea is that the Islamic world (including Islamic enclaves within the Western world) does not recognize the right to practise religion as individuals see fit. Rejecting Islam is punishable by death in many countries including, in practice, western countries. Burqa (the thing that covers Muslim women from top to bottom) is not something Muslim women choose to wear but something they wear because they're afraid of the consequences of not wearing it. Freedom means freedom from physical violence or the threat of it. Freedom does not mean freedom to subjugate individuals in the name of religious nonsense.

Banning the burqa (which goes against the principle of individual liberty) should be viewed as a compromise: Because the Muslim world is nowhere near mature enough, we should assume that a woman wearing a burqa is not doing so out of her own free will. If banning the burqa means that some subjugated women will simply be forced to stay at home instead of walking outside in a burqa, then this should be taken as a call for further action against Islam in the West. Banning the burqa would be a violation of individual liberties only in a world where Muslim women are truly free from other Muslims.

Rahapelimarkkinat ja paternalismi

Tanska aikoo liberalisoida rahapelimarkkinoita. Kun Suomessa yleensä seurataan muiden Pohjoismaiden esimerkkiä niin asiassa kuin asiassa, niin tässä olisi nyt kerrankin siihen aihetta. Valitettavasti Tanskan tapauksessa ei näytä olevan kyse rahapelimarkkinoiden täydellisestä liberalisoinnista, vaan Danske Spil -valtionyhtiön monopolioikeuksien rajaamisesta. Yhtiö siis näyttää jäävän valtion käsiin. Tätä perustellaan samanlaisilla argumenteilla kuin Veikkauksen tai Rayn monopolia Suomessa: Osa tuloista allokoidaan kaikenlaiseen yhteiskunnan hyvinvointia edistävään toimintaan. Miten valtio on tässä suhteessa kyennyt ottamaan valtionomistuksen vaihtoehtoiskustannukset ja monopolista aiheutuvat hyvinvointitappiot huomioon, sitä en tiedä. Kyllähän Neuvostoliitonkin talousjärjestelmällä oli jotakin näyttää.

Toinen argumentti rahapelimonopolin puolesta on pelaamisesta aiheutuvat yhteiskunnalliset haitat. Tämä on tietenkin arvokysymys, ja vasemmistolaiset mielipiteet kallistuvat rankasti paternalismin puolelle. Koska yksilöt ovat heikkoja, houkutuksille alttiita ja yhteiskunnan hyvinvointia ajattelemattomia, heidät pitää pakottaa toimimaan heidän omien etujensa mukaan (aivan kuin valtio tietäisi, mikä on yksilön etujen mukaista).

Rahapelimarkkinoilla olisi vapaassa markkinataloudessakin tärkeä sosiaalinen tehtävä: allokoida idioottien varoja parempiin käsiin, ja vielä täysin vapaaehtoisten transaktioiden kautta. Miksi tätä pitäisi pyrkiä vastustamaan?

Loppu lihansyönnille?

Myös vihreinä tunnetut, kasvua ja hyvinvointia vihaavat kontrollihaluiset hullut ovat toivomassa "vain yhtä liharuokapäivää" Helsingin kouluihin:

Helsingin vihreät nuoret -järjestö toivoo kouluihin liharuokapäivää. Järjestö ehdotti keskiviikkona, että Helsingin kouluissa ja muissa kaupungin ruokaloissa tarjottaisiin liharuokaa korkeintaan kerran viikossa.

Tätä nykyä Helsingin kouluissa tarjotaan lihaa neljänä päivänä viikossa ja kalaa yhtenä päivänä. Kasvisruoka on vaihtoehtona joka päivä.

Mitä vikaa normaalissa ruokavaliossa on? Vihreiden kannattama, pelkästään kasviksista koostuva ruokavalio on luonnoton ja ironisesti talouskasvun mahdollistama. Ihmisen elimistö on sopeutunut sekaravintoon. Vielä sata vuotta sitten ihmisellä ei ollut tarpeeksi tietoa ihmiselimistön tarvitsemista ravintoaineista. Pelkkä kasvisruokavalio on satojen vuosien ajan ollut terveysriski. Pelkän kasviksen syönti ei ole sen luonnollisempaa kuin pelkän lihan syönti. Kasvissyönnissä ei olekaan kyse lasten terveydestä vaan moraalista. Lihansyönnin pitäminen moraalittomana on typerää, abstraktitason haihattelua. Tähän väliin sopiikin lisää hyvää settiä Starship Troopers -kirjasta.

What is "moral sense"? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations.

...

Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is - not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Kun vielä huomioidaan, että kasvisruokaa on kuitenkin saatavilla joka päivä, on vihreiden kanta vielä vaikeammin ymmärrettävissä. Koululaiset ovat tunnetusti nirsoja ruoan suhteen, joten liharuoan katoaminen ruokaloista johtaisi lähinnä karkkipatukoiden kulutuksen lisääntymiseen kouluaikana.

Julkisten koulujen ei tulisi opettaa mitään ideologiaa. Toisaalta koulu soveltuu mitä parhaiten virallisen ideologian iskostamiseen lasten mieliin. Koska vihreiden toimien takana on halu hallita yksilöiden käyttäytymistä, ei tällaisen paternalismin kannattaminen ole mitenkään ihmeellistä. Jos peruskoulut yksityistettäisiin, koulut saisivat itse päättää, minkälaista ruokaa tarjoavat. Tosin tällöin hippivanhemmat passittaisivat lapsensa pelkkää kasvisruokaa tarjoaviin kouluihin, mikä olisi vähintään yhtä arveluttavaa - ja kaiken lisäksi paljon vaarallisempaa - kuin lapsiansa kristillisiin kouluihin passittavat vanhemmat.

Muistakaa myös, että Hitler oli kasvissyöjä. Joidenkin historioitsijoiden mukaan Hitler kiihdytti sota- ja tuhoamiskampanjoitaan heikon kuntonsa vuoksi, jonka arvellaan osittain johtuneen hänen kasvisruokavaliostaan. Ruokavalio saattaa myös selittää näiden nykyvihreiden "toiveet". Eikös jonkin teorian mukaan lihansyönti edistä aivojen kehitystä?

Do your part in fighting fascism - eat meat!

Heinlein on value part 2

More gold from Starship Troopers:

There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free." Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

...

I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money - which is true - just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life iself - ultimate cost for perfect value. -Mr. Dubois

Limits to Growth

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a scary book; not because of its predictions but because of its recommendations. Seriously, a global environmental collapse does not sound all that bad if the alternative is some communist dictatorship led by the kind of people (victims of the Fatal Conceit as Friedrich von Hayek would say) who wrote this book.

All the arguments in the book are based on a computer model. (This is the fatal conceit: that these Ph.Ds think they can first model and then guide the world with their expertise.) The first 200 pages are pretty tedious, going through various scenarios with a bit different variables and values each time. After this the book gets scary. The real agenda is revealed to be nothing but an attempt to control the world by controlling consumers via central planning. They never of course say it out loud but what else could they mean?

From page 240:

But what if the world's people decide to moderate not only their demand for children, but also their material lifestyles? What if they set tehmselves a goal of an adequate but not excessive standard of living? ... To achieve this change would mean that the globe's people establish their status, derive satisfaction, and challenge themselves with goals other than ever-increasing production and ever-accumulating material wealth.

Okay, it is very hard for me to believe that the authors believe even for a second that individuals around the world would somehow just choose to "moderate" their material lifestyles. Accumulating stuff may very well be a part of our biological makeup. This may be because, at least to any single individual, more is better since those with more are better positioned than those with less. This is hardly news to anyone. In this respect greed is an emotion that serves a biological purpose just like love, hate or some other emotion. Only a totalitarian dictatorship can "remove" this desire and it can do that by making it impossible to accumulate stuff. Remove restrictions and the people will tell you to go fuck that Little Red Book of yours.

... figure 7-2, shows a simulated world again with a desired family size of two and perfect birth control, and now also with a definition of enough. This world has decided to aim for an industrial output per capita level for everyone that is about 10 percent higher than the world average in the year 2000. [Boldface mine.]

This is their definition of an adequate but not excessive standard of living. Once again we're given a taste of the left's tendency to define what people really need. Shortly after this the authors try to convince the reader that "It does not necessarily mean that the population and economy are static or stagnant. They stay roughly constant in total size, the way a river stays roughly constant in volume, even though water is always running through it." Seriously, how are you planning on maintaining a certain level of income without extremely coercive measures? The authors would destroy the very mechanisms that could save us from environmental problems. Since the market economy would be the first to go in their new world order, market dynamism would no longer be the primary source of technological innovation.

In the authors' utopia the only place for innovation would be the government:

A sustainable society would be interested in qualitative development, not physical expansion. It would use material growth as a considered tool, not a perpetual mandate. Neither for nor against growth, it would begin to discriminate among kinds of growth and puposes for growth ... Before a sustainable society would decide on any specific growth proposal, it would ask what the growth is for, and who would benefit, and what it would cost, and how long it woud last, and whether the growth could be accomodated by the sources and sinks of the earth. Such a society would apply its values and its best knowledge of the earth's limits to choose only those kinds of growth that would serve important social goals while enhancing sustainability. Once any physical growth had accomplished its purposes, society would stop its pursuit.

By now you should get the idea. No doubt the authors would be among those making the decisions, consulting their computer models and "experts". Free market capitalism would cease to exist since growth is an automatic result of competition. To end competition, you must first end consumer choice since whenever a consumer makes a choice between two similar products, he encourages competition. What the authors seem to want is some kind of a huge gosplan responsible for resource allocation.

Here is some other creepy stuff from page 261:

Creativity is needed here to get beyond the narrow idea that some peple "create" jobs for others, and the even narrower idea that workers are simply costs to be cut. What is needed is an economic system that uses and supports the contributions all people are able to make, that shares work, leisure, and economic outputs equitably, and that does not abandon people who for reasons temporary or permanent cannot work ... People don't need enormous cars; they need admiration and respect ... Trying to fill real but nonmaterial needs - for indendity, community, self-esteem, challenge, love, joy - with material things is to set up and unquenchable appetite for false solutions to never-satisfied longings.

Once again you can see how the left (this includes the green/eco movement) always knows what we really need. (An enormous car can, by the way, give you plenty of admiration and respect. Not that I'd know.)

The people who wrote this book are dangerous. The green movement is filled with people who believe that drastic measures must be taken to save the earth from man even if that means sacrificing individual liberty. Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update is nothing but a gigantic call for central planning and collectivism. The book is a bible for the eco movement just as Mein Kampf was/is to nazism.

But here's some funny-not-in-a-scary-way stuff from the book:

... Interior Secretary Donald Hodel [of the Reagan Administration] said in public [in 1987] that the ozone layer would be no problem if people would just wear broad-brimmed hats and sunglasses when they went outside.

Or just put on some Sunblock 5000:

Liberaalisen puolueen ohjelma vuodelta 1880

Ajatonta tekstiä:

... mutta me hylkäämme pois tuon kansankiihkoisten vaatimuksen, joka tarkoittaa törkeää, tuulen tuomaa yhdenvertaisuutta, jonka mukaan se erilaisuus luonnonlahjain, kasvatuksen, sivistyksen, varallisuuden ja vaikutusvoiman suhteen, jommoista luonnonlakien ja kaikkien kansain kokemuksen mukaan alati on ollut olemassa, olisi pois hävitettävä ja kaikki ihmiset olisivat työnnettävät yhteiskunnallisten olojen kaikkein alhaisimmalle portaalle. [Kursivointi allekirjoittaneen.]

Lähde: Hyvärinen, M. ym. (2003). Käsitteet liikkeessä.

Oikeus toisen omaisuuteen ja maailmanloppu

Tämä on niin perusegalitarista eurosettiä, mutta amerikkalaiset näyttävät oppivan:

"He wants to serve food and earn tips and why can't he?"

So argues Martin A. Shellist, attorney for Nikolai Grushevski, a citizen of Corpus Christi, Texas, who filed a gender-discrimination lawsuit after Hooters denied him a job as a server at the chain restaurant.

Tosin kun amerikkalainen on kyseessä, kyseessä tuskin on niinkään yhteiskunnallisen epäkohdan korjaaminen kuin mahdollisuus imeä rahaa maineikkaalta yhtiöltä. Suomessa tuskin menee kauaa, kun strippiluolan omistaja ei enää saa syrjiä strippariehdokkaita sukupuolen perusteella. Tähän suuntaan vieviä lakiehdotuksiahan sataa taivaalta kaiken aikaa.

Tuossa jutussa käydään läpi aika hyvin, miksi omistajalla tulisi olla oikeus palkata kenet tahansa. Koska kenelläkään ei voi olla mitään oikeutta työhön (oikeus työhön = oikeus toisen omaisuuteen), päätös palkata pelkästään naisia tarjoilijoiksi on omistusoikeuksien soveltamista aivan kuten sekin, kun minä päätän kenet asuntooni päästän. Hootersin tapauksessa kyse on tietenkin siitä, että mieshakija ei yksinkertaisesti ole pätevä, sillä nätit tarjoilijatytöt nimenomaan kuuluvat Hootersin brändiin. Tämän takia kyse ei ole syrjinnästä sen enempää kuin tapauksessa, jossa mekaanikkoa ei koulutuksensa perusteella palkata kemistiksi.

Tosin vapaassa markkinataloudessa (jossa valtio ei omista firmoja) tulisi "syrjinnän" jonkin ulkoisen, merkityksettömän tekijän perusteella olla vapaata. On järjetöntä olettaa, että ilman valtiota syrjintää esiintyisi runsaasti. Kilpailullisilla markkinoilla järjetöntä syrjintää harrastavat firmat karsiutuisivat automaattisesti pätevien työntekijöiden päätyessä sellaisten firmojen palkkalistoille, jotka eivät syrji ulkoisten tekijöiden perusteella.

Onneksi ällömäinen, keinotekoinen egalitarismi kostautuu ennen pitkää.

En pidä runoudesta (tai ymmärrä sitä), mutta suosikkipätkäni on T.S. Eliotin runosta The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

(Jotkut saattavat muistaa ylläolevan pätkän Tukikohta-minisarjan alusta.)

Runo muistuttaa demokratiasta, joka hiljalleen tuhoaa itsensä, ja kaikki tapahtuu jonkin yleisesti hyväksytyn hyvinvointi-ideologian mukaan kansan hurratessa.

Tuetaan tupakointia

Työryhmä ehdottaa yksilönvapauden rajoittamista:

Valmisteilla oleva tupakkalain tiukennus rajoittaisi tupakoivien ihmisten esittämistä lehdissä, televisiossa ja teatterin lavalla.

Ehdotus sisältyy tupakkapoliittisia lakimuutoksia ja toimia valmistelevan työryhmän loppuraporttiin. Siinä tupakkalain kahdeksatta pykälää halutaan täydentää niin, että tupakkatuotteen mainontakielto koskisi myös "tupakoinnin suoraa ja epäsuoraa mainostamista ja edistämistä".

Toivottavasti ihosi nousee kananlihalle joka kerta, kun kuulet valtion suunnittelevan työryhmän perustamista jonkin yhteiskunnallisen epäkohdan korjaamiseksi. Byrokraattien ja poliitikkojen ongelma on, että kuvitellaan valtaan pääsemisen tarkoittavan, että jotain pitää tehdä. Oppisivat vaan pitämään näppinsä erossa.

Kannattaa muuten suhtautua skeptisesti puheisiin tupakoinnin negatiivisista ulkoisvaikutuksista. Kansantaloudelliselta kannalta tupakoinnilla on myös positiivisia ulkoisvaikutuksia, sillä syöpäkääryleitä tupruttelevat kuolevat muita aiemmin ja näin ollen eivät käytä eläkevaroja ja vanhuusiän ongelmiin liittyviä terveydenhuoltopalveluita yhtä paljon kuin tupakoimattomat. Jos ulkoishyödyt ylittävät ulkoishaitat, kansantaloudelliselta kannalta järkevämpää olisi tupakoinnin subventointi kuin verottaminen.