Applying Occam's Razor

Occam’s Razor is an important principle of scientific epistemology. The Encyclopedia Brittanica explains:

“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, ‘Plurality should not be posited without necessity.’ The principle gives precedence to simplicity; of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. [1]”

In this article, we will focus on a particular class of applications for Occam’s Razor: the class of applications where it is used to select the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is the hypothesis on a question that we assume to be true, by default, unless an alternate hypothesis on the question is satisfactorily proven. To clarify this, let us proceed immediately to an illustrative example.

Illustration: The Veracity of Jack and the Beanstalk

You finish telling a child the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, a story involving giants, immense climbable beanstalks, geese that lay golden eggs, and other bizarre phenomena. The child asks: ‘Is that story true?’ How do you respond?

 Well, the veracity of the story is dependent on the source of the story. Did the story come from someone’s imagination? Or was it actually based on an eyewitness account of actual events? Thus, our question is: What is the origin of the Jack and the Beanstalk story?

Let us say that we entertain two competing hypotheses as possible answers to this question. They are:

1. The story came from the active imagination of a storyteller.

2. The events in the story actually occurred on another planet and the eyewitness account of those events was communicated to the originator of the story on Earth via interstellar, telepathic brain waves.

It is unlikely that we could satisfactorily prove either one of these hypotheses. If we treated both of these hypotheses equally, than our response to the child’s query would have to be: ‘I have no idea’. 

This is a highly unsatisfactory answer though because we do in fact have an idea: even in the absence of satisfactory proof, one of the hypotheses just seems a lot simpler and more plausible than the other, which is pretty outlandish. Applying Occam’s Razor, we select this simpler and more plausible hypothesis as the null, or default, hypothesis, and the other hypothesis as the alternate hypothesis. 

Our setup now looks like this:

Question: What is the origin of the Jack and the Beanstalk story?

H0 (null): The story came from the active imagination of a storyteller.

H1 (alternate): The events in the story actually occurred on another planet and the eyewitness account of those events was communicated to the originator of the story on Earth via interstellar, telepathic brain waves.

Because we cannot satisfactorily prove H1, H0 remains standing, and we can tell the child: ‘I strongly suspect that the story came from the active imagination of a storyteller, and hence isn’t a true description of actual events’. Much more useful and satisfying than just proclaiming utter ignorance!

Anthropogenic Climate Change

The proper selection of the null hypothesis is an important part of answering many scientific questions. One such question is that of whether human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could cause disastrous global climate change in the future if continued unabated. I would set up this question as follows:

Question: What was the primary cause of the global warming that the Earth has gone through since the 1970s?

H0: The primary cause was not human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, but rather was a ‘natural’ cause or set of causes, that would have happened even without any human interference.

H1: The primary cause was human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases.

Why do I choose the skeptical position as the null hypothesis? Isn’t this just indicative of my particular bias? I do so because the ‘natural’ explanation of global climate change is in fact the simpler explanation of the phenomenon. This is because we know that the Earth’s climate has changed significantly and relatively frequently in the past, long before humans were in a position to emit any significant quantities of greenhouse gases. We also know that humans have been spuriously blaming themselves (or their sins) for negative changes in the weather since the beginning of human history. Thus, the simplest explanation is that this recent bout of global warming has a natural cause, and that humans are once again blaming themselves erroneously for changes in the weather, as has happened multiple times throughout the Earth’s and humanity’s history.

The selection of the null hypothesis for this question is very important, given how complicated the Earth’s climatic system is. Due to this complexity, I don’t think that any well-informed person can honestly say that either of these hypotheses has been satisfactorily proven. Treating both hypotheses equally is not a good option, because then we would be forced to say ‘I have no idea’, which is not a very useful response when deciding whether implementing anti-emissions policies would be a good idea or not. Setting up the hypotheses as I have allows us to say: ‘I suspect that most of the observed global warming has been due to natural causes, not human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and hence we should not implement any anti-emissions policies for the moment. However, if more convincing evidence favouring the emissions hypothesis came to light, I would be willing to change my opinion accordingly.’

The Existence of God

Occam’s Razor can help us answer this age-old and much-discussed question. I would set it up as follows:

Question: Does God exist?

H0:  No, there is no omnipotent sky ghost (God) in existence.

H1: Yes, there is an omnipotent sky ghost (God) in existence.

Why do I set the atheistic position as the null hypothesis? The first reason is because, given our current knowledge about how the world works, it is the simpler explanation. We can already satisfactorily explain many seemingly mysterious phenomena by employing the principles and findings of physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences. Given this, the simplest hypothesis is that there is an as-yet-undiscovered scientific, non-omnipotent-sky-ghost-dependent explanation for the mysterious phenomena that we still cannot explain satisfactorily.

The second reason is because it is impossible to prove a negative. If religious people had their way and the existence of God became the null hypothesis, it would be impossible to prove them wrong, no matter what evidence came to light. For this reason, it is infinitely fairer, for these kinds of ‘existence’ questions, to put non-existence as the null hypothesis.

In addition, if religious people insisted that the existence of God should be the null hypothesis, for consistency’s sake the same should apply to the question of the existence of other magical creatures. We would have to accept the existence of the tooth fairy, unicorns, talking garden-gnomes, leprechauns, and Santa Claus, for the simple reason that is impossible to satisfactorily prove that any of these things don’t exist.

A group of people called Agnostics think that the two hypotheses regarding the existence of God should be treated equally; neither should be the null hypothesis. The problem here is that a consistent Agnostic can never say that anything doesn’t exist, because it is impossible to prove a negative. To be Agnostic just with regards to God is arbitrary and illogical; to be logically consistent you have to be Agnostic with regards to any being whose existence cannot be satisfactorily proven, including the aforementioned other magical creatures, such as Leprechauns.

If you have no idea which, if any, of the scores of magical creatures that people have dreamed up over the centuries exists, how do you know which actions to take in regards to these creatures? Do you pray to God? Sacrifice to Poseidon? Pay homage to Vishnu? Follow rainbows in search of the Leprechaun’s pot of gold? In practice, most so-called Agnostics will take no action related to any magical creature, including God, and thus seem to assume, like Atheists, that these things don’t actually exist, unless proven otherwise. Agnosticism, in practice, usually proves just to be a more socially-acceptable form of Atheism, with little difference in actual content. This is for the best, as a consistent Agnostic, not sure which of the thousands of potential gods to pray to, or whether to chase rainbows and hunt Unicorns or not, would probably quickly go insane.

Government Intervention

We can apply Occam’s Razor to the desirability of political action as well. I would set up such questions as follows:

Question: Should the government engage in coercive intervention x?

H0: The government should not engage in coercive intervention x.

H1: The government should engage in coercive intervention x.

Why set non-intervention, the libertarian position, as the null hypothesis here? In a theoretically pure free-market society, every individual would be free from violent coercion or harassment when it came to taking the actions they deemed most conducive to their material and mental well-being. They would similarly be free to engage in voluntary exchange involving each others’ services or material possession, as long as the transaction was deemed beneficial and worth engaging in by both parties.

The simpler and more plausible general hypothesis is that this regime of individuals being allowed to pursue their own well-being in the best way they know how and of mutually beneficial exchanges with others will in fact be the regime most conducive to most individuals’ well-being. It is certainly simpler and more plausible than the other possible general hypothesis, which is that a regime where all individuals’ lives are completely controlled by a centralized, coercive power will be the one most conducive to most individuals’ well-being. This is especially true given the extensive and pretty one-sided empirical evidence we now have with regards to the negative effect of totalitarian regimes on individuals’ well-being.

Given this setup, if we cannot satisfactorily prove that the government intervention in question will increase the relevant individuals’ well-being more than it decreases it, we retain the null hypothesis and opt for laissez-faire in this instance.

But again; why the need for a null hypothesis at all? Why not just treat both hypotheses equally. Because either the government intervenes or it does not; there is no ‘neutral’, or ‘I don’t know’, option available. If you don’t take a position on the question at hand at all, then you’re basically just supporting whatever the majority of the more active people have decided.

The Standard of Proof

I have used the term ‘satisfactorily proven’ a number of times throughout this article, referring to what must be done in order to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternate hypothesis in its place. The level of certainty of a proof for it to be ‘satisfactory’, or the Standard of Proof, is a subjective determination, and will vary person by person and instance by instance. For example, in criminal trials the null hypothesis is innocent, and in order for the court to accept the alternate hypothesis of guilt, it must be ‘proven beyond a reasonable doubt’. This strong standard of proof makes the null hypothesis difficult to reject. By contrast, in civil suits, the standard of proof is ‘balance of probabilities’, meaning that it doesn’t really matter what the null hypothesis is, because if there is even a shred more evidence for the alternate hypothesis than for the null hypothesis, the alternate is accepted.

How do we decide what standard of proof to set? This will depend on how much simpler and more plausible the null hypothesis is over the alternate hypothesis. It will also depend on how bad the consequences of erroneously rejecting the null hypothesis, balanced against the consequences of erroneously retaining it, would be.  

Conclusion

Null hypothesis selection using the principle of Occam’s Razor is an important part of the scientific method. For many questions, it is important to select the default hypothesis properly because we do not have the luxury of waiting for all possible evidence to be collected before making a determination. ‘I have no idea’ is a pretty useless position to take when it comes to deciding upon concrete actions. Often we must decide one way or the other without delay, and in the absence of sufficiently definitive proof one way or the other, this means relying on the default hypothesis.

  

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[1] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/424706/Occams-razor

Legalize Prostitution

Anti-prostitution laws are inspired primarily by fanatical Christian moralism. According to Christianity, having sex outside of marriage is a ‘sin’, and paying for this kind of sex is even worse! Paying for foul sex with foul coin; surely the parties that engage in such an activity deserve an eternity in hellfire! No decent community could possibly tolerate such sinfulness; hence the activity should be illegal, punishable by imprisonment in this life, hellfire in the next.

The anti-prostitution laws are thus an unwelcome attempt by nosy fanatics to violently and noisily intrude into the lives of other people. The other arguments in favor of anti-prostitution laws mainly consist of ex post facto rationalizations of these laws that are seemingly less religious and moralistic in tenor. Like most rationalizations though, they are as flimsy as reeds, and can easily be disposed of. We will do so in turn:

1. Prostitution is inherently exploitative.

Prostitution is neither more nor less inherently exploitative than any other form of wage labour. Both involve selling a specific service which requires the use of a specific body part to perform. Whether it is a ditch digger selling the service of digging ditches which requires the use of his hands, or a prostitute selling sexual services which requires the use of her sexual organs, the nature of the two phenomena are fairly similar. It is prudish Christian attitudes about the sexual act and, more recently, a kind of spurious mysticism surrounding the sexual act, which leads many people to neglect the essential similarity between prostitution and other forms of wage labour.  

The Marxists hold a bizarre, yet consistent, position on this question. They consider both prostitution and wage labour to be inherently exploitative. The libertarians hold the other consistent position on this question, which is that neither prostitution nor wage labour, as long as they are voluntary, are inherently exploitative. If you think that wage labour is at all a good thing, then the libertarian position makes the most sense for you, which means that prostitution is not inherently exploitative.

2. Many prostitutes are trafficked or otherwise forced into the ‘profession’.

Forced prostitution and human trafficking should of course remain illegal, I do not dispute that. But prostitution that is voluntary on both sides is not an impossible, nor even an unusual, occurrence. If prostitution were legalized and became an above ground business, rather than an illegal, shadowy one monopolized by shady operators as it is currently, it would be much easier to identify and prevent instances of forced prostitution and trafficking than it is currently.

Pointing out the similarity to other forms of wage labour is again fruitful here. Forced labour and trafficked labour exist; we call it slavery and the practice is rightly illegal. The way to combat slavery is not to outlaw all forms of labour for hire; it is to identify and stop the practice of slavery exclusively, something that is much easier to do when the labour for hire market is above ground and relatively transparent. The exact same thing applies to prostitution.

3. Prostitution leads to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

As a general rule, people that engage in an activity professionally are able to perform that activity more safely than people that engage in an activity as an amateur. Prostitutes and brothel operators will probably be more aware of and cognisant of sex-related safety matters than amateurs. They will know better what preventative measures to take to avoid STD infection, and will know better how best to monitor sexual health.

As such, it is probable that having promiscuous sex with a bunch of amateurs would put you at greater risk of STD infection than having promiscuous sex with a bunch of professionals. Of course, having no sex at all or having non-promiscuous sex with only one partner would probably be safer than going to a prostitute, but this is not really a fair comparison.

4. Think of the children!

Anti-prostitution law advocates worry that if prostitution were legalized, children would see prostitutes in their neighbourhood and would see advertisements for prostitution. My response: so what? So children might learn (a little bit earlier than they currently do) that there are people who have sex with others for money, big deal! There’s nothing wrong with children learning things about the real world: they will eventually learn it anyway! Besides, it is only the religious notion that prostitution is inherently sacrilegious and shameful that makes people especially touchy about letting their children learn about this particular aspect of human life.

With these lame rationalizations out of the way, we can now discuss a number of ways in which a legalized prostitution industry could be especially beneficial:

1. Practice for young men (or women).         

Many young men, whether for social or natural reasons, are desperate to lose their virginity. They are also nervous about doing so though, for the understandable reason that they have had no practice engaging in the sexual act before. They desperately want to be able to ‘perform’ and not to ‘embarrass’ themselves on their first sexual encounter, for fear that if they do not, the woman they are courting will leave them in frustration and they will have to begin the long process anew. The problem is that, for men, this potent cocktail of desperation, nervousness, and inexperience will play havoc with their ability to ‘perform’ the sexual act effectively.

Here is where a safe, socially respectable prostitute could beneficially come in. This professional could kindly and patiently help the young man to lose the desperation of virginity, and to become more comfortable with and skilled in the sexual act. This would hopefully allow the young man to be less desperate and nervous, and more confident, when it came time to perform the sexual act with a woman he really cared about, an experience which would probably be a lot more enjoyable for both parties as a result.

This suggestion is nothing new; the practice has a very ancient pedigree, prominent in the time of the Ancient Romans, amongst other civilizations. It was only really the rise of the puritanical monotheistic religions that cast this reasonable practice into disrepute.

Please note that similar reasoning could well apply for young women and male prostitutes, but since I have never been a young woman, I will refrain from commenting extensively on the matter.   

2. Sexual outlet for people that are not conventionally-beautiful and for others who have a hard time finding a romantic partner.

Intimate/sexual companionship is, I suspect, for most people an important contributor to good mental well-being. Unfortunately, some people find it difficult to get this kind of companionship on a non-commercial basis, whether it is because they are not conventionally-beautiful or for any other reason. While probably not as satisfying as non-commercial companionship, many people will consider the occasional bout of commercial companionship to be better than nothing at all.

If prostitution were legal, above ground, and socially acceptable, these people would have a much appreciated, practical outlet for intimate/sexual companionship available. Only cruel Puritans would take pleasure in denying these people this.

 3. Break the Amateur Monopoly

Anti-prostitution laws and taboos create a strange kind of monopoly for sexual services: a monopoly by amateurs that excludes professionals. People that seek sexual companionship are only allowed to get it ‘for free’. The thing is though that sexual companionship is rarely actually given ‘for free’: it is often given only in exchange for being taken out on ‘nice dates’, or for pledges of undying love and commitment, or, sometimes, for a diamond ring and a marriage contract.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with going out on nice dates, or pledging love and commitment, or getting married. I just don’t think that it is ideal when one of the main motivations for doing these things is the satisfaction of sexual desire. In this case, the price for this simple satisfaction is a monopoly ‘price’, one that couldn’t be asked as easily if the anti-prostitution laws and taboos didn’t create the Amateur Monopoly in the first place.

With the professional option available in an above ground and socially acceptable fashion, people wouldn’t agree to pay such high ‘prices’ to amateurs for the simple satisfaction of their sexual desires. Rather, they would be more likely to make relationship decisions based on less superficial factors, such as compatibility and deep emotional attachment.  

In conclusion, the main argument for anti-prostitution laws and taboos is a fanatical religious/moralist one, and thus need not be taken seriously. The seemingly ‘secular’ ex post facto rationalizations for these laws are flimsy and easily disposed of, while there are some definite advantages to legalizing the practice. For all these reasons, I would be in favour of the immediate and total repeal of all anti-prostitution laws.       

30 Widely Accepted Falsehoods and Why They Are Wrong

1. Raising the minimum wage is an effective way of helping poor people.

            Actually, doing so causes increased unemployment amongst unskilled workers, chases away capital investment from the region, and tends to lead to higher prices for consumer goods, something which poor people are the most sensitive to. Giving poor people a direct cash subsidy would be much less disruptive.

2. Moderate inflation is much better than moderate deflation.

            Actually, moderate deflation caused by more goods being put on the market, so-called ‘growth deflation’, is an entirely benign, and actually a welcome, phenomenon. On the other hand, any inflation, moderate or otherwise, caused by monetary expansion always results in arbitrary, stealthy wealth transfers and economic distortions.

3. The familiar ‘business cycle’ phenomenon is an inherent offshoot of the capitalistic free-market.

            Actually, the business cycle is caused by monetary expansion via credit expansion, something which the government enables and encourages through its interventions in the monetary and banking system.

4. Government intervention is necessary to get an economy out of a depression or recession.

            Actually, even when we reach the ‘bust’ of the government-sponsored ‘boom-bust cycle’, the free-market is perfectly capable, if it is allowed to, of making the adjustments necessary to get out of a depression or recession. The ‘anti-depression’ government interventions usually just involve trying to spark yet another ‘boom-bust cycle’.

5. There is a certain class of economic goods called ‘public goods’ that only the government can provide effectively.

            Actually, the government has no rational way of determining whether ‘positive externalities’, the defining feature of so-called ‘public goods’, exist or what their magnitudes are. As such, it does not know whether its interventions in the provision of ‘public goods’, interventions which always involve the creation of ‘negative externalities’, will be beneficial or harmful on net. There are numerous voluntary, free-market ways of ‘internalizing’ the positive externalities involved with certain economic goods (such as bundling, contingent contracts, social pressure), thus enabling the effective provision of these so-called ‘public goods’ by free-market mechanisms.

6. Government regulations are necessary to solve the ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem.

            Actually, more often than not, the government, by refusing to recognize private property rights in these so-called ‘commons’, is responsible for creating the problem in the first place. Usually, a more complete and sophisticated structure of private property rights would allow the free-market to solve these kinds of problems in its usual manner.

7. Businessmen and capitalists are too concerned with the short-term, thus the government, which takes the ‘long view’, must intervene accordingly.

            Actually, private parties whose ownership of both the income and the capital value of a resource, parcel of land, or productive organization is recognized usually have an incentive to take a ‘longer view’ concerning their property than the government does. If they neglect the future too much, the capital value of their property will suffer accordingly. By contrast, democratic politicians do not own the capital value of the properties they are ‘regulating’. If they want to be re-elected, they are almost forced to narrow their horizons to the shorter-term in order to appeal to voters in the present.  

8. Government protects us from exploitation by private-sector monopolists.

            Actually, empirically, governments have created and encouraged monopolies far more than they have destroyed and discouraged them. It is very difficult for a free-market business to monopolize its entire industry, whereas it is quite easy for the government to create a monopoly. It just needs to pass a piece of legislation outlawing competition in that industry, something which governments around the world frequently do.

9. Government protects small businesses against big businesses.

            Actually, empirically, governments have tended to privilege big businesses at the expense of small businesses, not the other way around. The bigger a government becomes, the more resources businesses must devote to complying with complex regulations and to lobbying for special privileges or against specially harmful legislation. Due to their economies of scale, bigger businesses are generally better able to expend these resources in these areas than smaller businesses.

10. Governments socialize industries in order to help poor people get access to the fruits of those industries.

            Actually, if this were really the government’s main objective, they could just give poor people the money necessary to purchase the fruits of the industry on the free-market; there is absolutely no need to socialize the entire industry. In reality, industries are socialized in order to pursue egalitarian objectives and in order to give the government more control over the economy, even if this means the industry being made much more inefficient and much less consumer-friendly.

11. Without the efforts of the labour movement, working conditions and hours would be the same as they were in the 19^th century.

            Actually, increased productivity-raising average capital investment per worker leads to higher real wages, and many would opt to take these higher real wages in the form of better working conditions and shorter working hours, rather than purely in the form of higher weekly take-home pay. This phenomenon, even without the help of the labour movement, would be sufficient to ensure that working conditions and hours would not, in the modern day, be those of the 19^th century.

12. Government regulation is the only thing that can protect us from unsafe products.

            Actually, third party private safety certification agencies, combined with basic anti-fraud laws, would be sufficient to protect us from unsafe products, and would probably do so in a more effective and less heavy-handed way than the government.  

13. Selflessness is better than selfishness.

            Actually, everything that is pleasant in life can be pursued and attained effectively in a selfish manner (including the pleasure derived from helping other people). True selflessness is an absurd self-sacrificial attitude, suitable only for fanatics.

14. There is scientific consensus on the fact that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, if maintained at their current levels, will cause catastrophic global warming within the next 100 years.

            Actually, there is only scientific consensus on the fact that the earth has been slowly warming for the past 30 years and that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions probably had something to do with it. There is still a lot of debate about whether natural causes may have been responsible for a lot of that warming and about the magnitude of the temperature-change that would result if humans continued emitting greenhouse gases at their current rate.

15. Gold or any other limited commodity could not possibly serve as the basis for an effective modern monetary system.

            Actually, this belief is tied to the belief that moderate inflation caused by monetary expansion is much better than the moderate ‘growth deflation’ we would probably get under a fixed commodity standard such as gold (see falsehood #2). This belief is fallacious, so a gold or any other fixed commodity standard would work just fine. In fact, with the increased importance that international trade is playing in our world, having a commodity-based, international monetary system is even more important to have now than it was before.

16. Fascism and communism are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

            Actually, fascism and communism both involve authoritarian governments who strive to attain total control over the economy. Given these important similarities, they should be considered to be very close to one another on the political spectrum, whereas radical libertarianism would be at the opposite end.

17. There exists a universal standard of morality that every human being ought to adhere to.

            Actually, there is no good reason, besides broadly conceived self-interest, to do anything at all. Since following a universal standard of morality cannot, by definition, always be in every individual’s self-interest, there is no good reason why every human being ought always to adhere to one.

18. The interests of your ‘countrymen’ are necessarily more important than the interests of ‘foreigners’.

            Actually, you should feel free to put the interests of whoever you want before those of anyone else if doing so suits you, whether they are your ‘countrymen’ or not. No one has the godlike power to decree who you should or should not care more about.

19. Karl Marx was a great thinker.

            Actually, Karl Marx was a great botcher. His economic theories were fallacious and his theory of a necessary antagonism between workers and capitalists was thus fallacious as well. His prediction that ‘capitalism’ would impoverish the working classes more and more until the advent of socialism, proved to be spectacularly wrong. His ‘philosophy of history’ was overly simplistic and not very helpful, and his technological determinism ignored all of the complexities of humanity and human history. His theories led to rivers of blood being spilt in the name of absurd ideals and social systems. He truly turned out to be a plague on humanity’s collective house.

20. What we have now is free-market capitalism.

            Actually, what we have now is a mixture of interventionist crony capitalism, socialism, and some free-market capitalism. Many of the ‘evils’ that free-market capitalism currently gets the blame for can more correctly be attributed to government interventionism or socialism. 

21. Democracy is inseparable from personal freedom.

            Actually, some more authoritarian governments, such as Singapore’s, restrict their citizens’ economic freedom less than the governments of the western democracies do. Democracy and authoritarianism are political systems, while the amount the government restricts their citizens’ freedom is a policy decision that both of those political systems could potentially make the same way.

22. There are certain things, such as raw nature, that have intrinsic value.

            Actually, there is no such thing as intrinsic value. The value of something is always assigned by an individual, valuing mind. Without this mind, the concept of value does not make sense.

23. Taxation is not coercive.

            Actually, taxation is coercive by definition. People pay their taxes to the government with the knowledge that if they refuse, their assets could be confiscated or they could be thrown in jail by that government. If these credible threats did not exist, than the government would get its funding through voluntary contributions, not by taxation, and the government would be indistinguishable from a private charity, which is simply not true.

24. Voting in a democratic political election means that you consent to being governed by the resulting democratically-elected government.

            Actually, voting can best be seen as a form of self-defense. People know that they will be governed regardless, so given that unpleasant fact, it is better to try to pick the party that will prove, in government, to be the lesser of the two or three potential evils. Also, if voting is consent, than non-voting should mean non-consent. However, most people say that if you don’t vote, you are not even entitled to complain about any political outcome at all; the very opposite of non-consent!

25. Consuming your resources is better for the economy as a whole than saving and investment your resources.

            Actually, the very opposite is closer to the truth. Resources that are saved and invested contribute to raising the real wages of workers in the region where the resources are invested and to making the structure of production as a whole more productive in the eyes of people when they do eventually consume their resources. Consuming resources has no such general effect; it just benefits, in the short-run, the industries closest to the final consumer, at the expense of the industries more remote from the final consumer.   

26. If the economy grows, than governments can ‘grow their way’ out of deficits and debt.

            Actually, government debt is denominated in monetary, not real, terms, so even if the real economy did grow, if the money supply remained constant, it would be no easier for the government to balance its budget or pay off its debt. It would be more correct to say that the government could ‘inflate their way’ out of deficits and debt by causing (in the case of national governments) or waiting for (in the case of sub-national governments) more fiat money units to come into existence, with a more or less devastating impact on the purchasing power of its citizens, depending on how the real economy is doing.

27. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were good examples of ‘robber barons’.

            Actually, Rockefeller and Carnegie revolutionized the oil and steel industries respectively, and contributed greatly to making life significantly better for millions of present and future people who now had easier access to these products. They didn’t ‘rob’ anyone, nor did they even succeed in ‘monopolizing’ their industries, contrary to popular belief. They are examples of great benefactors of humanity; it is sheer unwarranted impudence to call them and those like them ‘robbers’.       

28. If the wealth and incomes of ultra-rich people were confiscated and distributed amongst poor and middle class people, the lot of these latter groups would improve considerably.

            Actually, if the saved and invested wealth of the ‘ultra-rich’ were distributed amongst the masses, most likely a significant fraction of it would be used for purposes of present consumption, and as a result the economy would soon become a lot less productive overall, thus soon impairing these same masses’ standard of living significantly. The fraction that remained invested after being transferred would probably be invested less skillfully in its new hands, also impairing the productivity of the economy. If only the income that the ‘ultra-rich’ used for luxurious consumption was confiscated, than when distributed amongst the masses, it would probably have an almost negligible effect on the masses’ average standard of living. But this action would significantly undermine the incentives of the ‘ultra-rich’ to invest and manage their businesses skillfully, which would have disastrous consequences.

29. Modern liberalism is a logical continuation of classical liberalism.

            Actually, classical liberals believed primarily in the free-market, limiting government, and laissez-faire. Their ideology was closest to that of modern libertarianism. Modern liberalism was created around the turn of the 20^th century when the Liberal political parties started putting more and more aspects of interventionist and socialist policy into their platforms. Presently, ‘liberalism’ stands more for government interference, whereas ‘conservatism’ leans a bit more towards laissez-faire (in the economic sphere at least), a complete reversal of the situation in the mid-19^th century when classical liberalism was at its peak.

30. Free-market economics relies on the unrealistic assumption that humans are motivated solely by material, especially monetary, objectives.

            Actually, sound free-market economics (ie. Austrian economics) relies on no such assumption. It is not a problem at all to include purely psychic motivations alongside material and monetary motivations in free-market economic theory; it is essential in fact, and the best economic thinkers (including Mises and Rothbard) have done so explicitly. Some unhelpful mathematical models of fanciful static economies constructed by neoclassical economists rely on the artificial assumption in question, but these models can be rejected entirely without doing any damage whatsoever to the main body of free-market economic theory.    

The Uselessness of Shame

Shame, or embarrassment, is the emotion that many people feel when others learn something about them that they wanted to keep hidden. This something could be a personal preference (ex. a man who enjoys watching ‘chic flicks’), a personal attribute (ex. what your backside looks like naked), or an action performed (ex. extra-marital sexual relations).

For whatever reason, you want to keep one of these kinds of things hidden from other people, or at least from most other people. It could be that your career prospects, your reputation, and/or the fruitfulness of your personal relationships depend on you keeping such a thing hidden. Fair enough; it is often wise to keep certain things hidden from other people. But shame is the emotion that pops up after the thing has been revealed. The consequences of the thing having been revealed will occur whether or not you feel internal shame after the fact.

This being the case, adding the painful emotion of shame on top of the negative external consequences of the thing being revealed is really just a form of useless self-flagellation. The more intelligent approach to take is to be discrete and diplomatic in order not to divulge potentially damaging information to the wrong people; but if for whatever reason the information is divulged, it is better to be internally shameless. Shame is a form of self-torture and self-torture is only for fanatics; the practical person is shameless on the inside, even if he must appear to be repentant for external purposes.   

One Easy Step Towards Self-Liberation

There is one easy step that you can take to liberate yourself from all kinds of constraints. It requires only a sheer act of will and thought: to forget about all the concepts, the mere words, that internally constrain you unnecessarily. Forget about God, morality, duty, conscience, loyalty, honour, virtue, nations, ethnic solidarity, and familial piety. Forget about the ideals that you have not chosen and those that you refuse to allow yourself to challenge. Forget about all these things and just ask yourself: how will this action really make me feel? How badly will betraying a friend really make me feel? How good will helping someone in need really make me feel? This is what’s important; everything else is just nonsense.

We are subject to all kinds of external constraints that we cannot get free from so easily. We are constrained by the fear of other people thinking badly of us, and consequently being less friendly with us and maybe even ostracizing us. We are constrained by the fear of being violently harassed by people, whether from the government or otherwise. These oppressive constraints we must, for the moment at least, put up with, and we must modify our actions accordingly. Why reinforce this oppression with internal constraints, constraints which we can liberate ourselves from so easily? Why reinforce the oppressive force of public opinion with internal moralism? Why reinforce the oppressive force of the State with internal legalism? Why subject ourselves to a whole new, and often bizarre, set of internal constraints by becoming religious?

The threatened cold shoulder of the people we want to cooperate with, the guns of the political State; surely these are constraint enough! But perhaps you say the world would be an uglier place without the concepts of honor, loyalty, duty, morality, etc… But if you think that way, then just create your own, individual versions of these concepts! Don’t just swallow the pre-packaged versions of these concepts, formulated by other people for purposes very different from your own. Create your own versions of these concepts if you like, and if you don’t find the concept useful anymore, than just discard it! Make these concepts your creation and your servant, not your master. If this were done, then finally these concepts would be suited to the individual’s own purposes. Only in this form would they be worth retaining.

How will the immediate result of this action make me feel? What will be the remoter consequences of the action and how will these likely make me feel when they arise? Are these not much more simple and useful questions to base your decision-making on than: What would God think? Would it be moral? Is it legal? Is it in the interests of my nation? Am I displaying virtue, honour, and loyalty? Is my duty done and my conscience appeased? You will have successfully taken a great step towards self-liberation when you can look at this latter set of questions and respond with: who cares?

Blame The Passive Victims

Who is to blame for the existence of harmful government policies? The most obvious answer is that the formulators, implementers, and supportive beneficiaries of these policies are the ones to blame. However, I would not blame these people for the simple reason that I could not, without trying to bamboozle them, honestly advise them to do anything different. If someone is a true beneficiary of a government policy, how can I credibly advise them to cease their support for that policy? If I were a true beneficiary of a government policy, I would support it too!

The group of people who can be more fruitfully blamed for the existence of a generally harmful government policy are the victims of the policy who take no steps to effectively oppose it, the passive victims of the policy. It is these people who, out of ignorance and/or inertia, fail to defend their interests against government policies which will result in their victimization. These people I have no problem enthusiastically and honestly advising to speak out against the government policies that are harmful to them. The voices and resistance of the victims is most likely the only thing that can result in a change in these kinds of policies. It would be foolish to expect the beneficiaries of the policy to self-sacrificially do this work instead.

Let us consider some examples. I favour the liberalization of the medical profession and the removal of the monopoly status of the Medical Associations. In pursuit of this aim, am I going to try to convince established doctors and Medical Association brass to support my cause? No, that would be a fool’s errand. Rather, I will bring my case to the medical consumer who is frustrated with the high prices and scarcity of doctors. If the policy remains unchanged, I will not blame the established doctors and Medical Association brass for opposing it, they are only doing what is natural. Rather, I will blame the passive medical consumer who refuses to recognize that this policy is victimizing them and who refuses to effectively stand up for their interests.

I favour full free-trade between nations. Will I try to convince tariff-protected, relatively inefficient domestic producers to join my cause? Banish the thought! Rather, I will try to get support from general consumers and from competitive businesses who don’t need tariff-protection and who would benefit from cheaper imports. If tariffs remain, I would assign the blame to the latter groups, not the former.

This perspective makes it easier to see the futility of the ‘good politician’ strategy. Many people argue that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our political process, we just need to get the right people into political office and then all will be well. These ‘good politicians’ will allegedly selflessly pursue the ‘general interest’ and will have the intelligence and knowledge necessary to do so effectively. They will know when the government should intervene, and when they should let the free-market run its course unhampered. With such people in power, proponents of this strategy maintain, libertarian complaints about the evils of State power will no longer apply.

The problem is that the likelihood of this kind of person taking and maintaining power is almost vanishingly small. This is because being a ‘good politician’ is generally not in the interests of an individual politician. To become a ‘good politician’, an individual would have to be both foolish enough to self-sacrificially pursue the ‘general interest’ at the expense of their own interest, and smart enough to know what policies would effectively advance this ‘general interest’.

If such a rare mixture of fool and sage managed to get into power, what would be the result? They would perhaps manage to ram a few good reforms through the political process, but then what? Their elite (rich and influential) supporters would soon abandon them, most special interest groups would shun them, the media and the press would turn on them. In the next election, their political party would be obliterated and their political career would be ruined. The succeeding government would either immediately repeal or start gradually eroding the reforms that were passed. Is it really plausible to maintain that a person who had the cunning and savvy to claw their way to the top of the political ladder would, as soon as they took power, turn around and rapidly precipitate their own downfall like this for the sake of a few ephemeral policy victories?  It seems foolish to put our faith in such a rare bird.

Most politicians will just go with the political flow and will be rewarded for it. There is no reason to believe that they will go out of their way to pursue knowledge that would point to the general harmfulness of the general ‘political consensus’. Why pursue knowledge of real free-market economics and libertarian political theory if there is no realistic way of putting these ideas into practice? Doing so would just be a kind of intellectual self-flagellation.

I do not blame this kind of politician for acting the way that they do; it is only natural after all. It is the victims who suffer from the delusion that most politicians have their best interests at heart that I blame. If these people do not wake up to the realities of political life, then the sociopolitical elites will just carry on privileging themselves at the expense of political outsiders. Only a change in the mindset of these political victims will be able to change the political world.

Reforming The Criminal Justice System: Thinking Outside The Prison Cell

Introduction

There are five main objectives that can be advanced by applying criminal sanctions: restitution, rehabilitation, retribution, isolation, and deterrence. I will discuss these five in turn, examining how effectively the most common criminal sanction currently, jail time, fares in advancing each one of these five objectives, and suggesting alternatives that might advance these individual objectives more effectively. Then, I will attempt to pull the threads together in order to sketch a picture of what a more effective, reformed criminal justice system might look like.

1. Restitution

The idea behind restitution is to try to put the victim of a crime, as much as a money payment can do so, in a similar position to what they would have been in had the crime not been committed. Being responsible for causing the damage, the criminal bears the responsibility for making this money payment.

The current criminal justice system doesn’t even try to get the criminal to provide restitution to the victim. In fact, in a sense it does the opposite. Not only is the victim not recompensed for the damage that they suffer, they must also, as taxpayers, fund the incarceration of the criminal in a jail.

If the victim wants any kind of monetary restitution at all, they must try to sue the criminal, in a completely separate trial, in a civil court for tort damages. But the criminal justice system as such does not really help the victims of crimes at all.

One can think of ways to make restitution a more central part of the criminal justice system. The methods for doing so can be divided into two types: free-range restitution and confined restitution.

One kind of free-range restitution is asset seizure. If the criminal has cash or other assets, just seize enough of them upon conviction to provide proper restitution to the victim, no civil suit necessary. Another kind is court-ordered installment payments. If the criminal does not have any valuable assets, the court can order that they make regular installment payments of the restitution money, with the interval set with the criminal’s potential earning power in mind. If they fail to make the payments, then another criminal sanction could be applied.

We would turn to confined restitution when we don’t think it advisable to let the criminal retain their full freedom of movement. A way would have to be found to both confine the criminal and allow them to engage in the productive economic activity necessary to pay the restitution at the same time, something I will discuss below.

2. Rehabilitation

The idea behind rehabilitation is that people commit crimes because they have some kind of mental ‘sickness’, one that can be cured through a process of rehabilitation.

Locking someone in a jail is a terrible method of rehabilitation, in fact it is likely to lead to the opposite. Criminals are removed from normal society and placed in a prison society filled with other criminally-inclined people. Here, they cannot really do any productive work, must fight to survive, and are routinely degraded and humiliated by both guards and other prisoners. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that precious little ‘rehabilitation’ is going to happen in such a setting, and that the more likely outcome is that the experience will make the person even more criminally-inclined than they were before.  

The only way I can think of to make someone less criminally-inclined is to somehow get them used to living and thriving in a non-criminal manner. Pushing them to perform the economic activities convicted criminals would need to engage in to pay back restitution to their victim could be a method for doing this.

3. Retribution

A sense of social reciprocity seems to be hardwired into most people’s brains. If someone does something nice for you, most people will wish that person well in return. But if someone does something nasty to you, then a lot of people will wish something nasty on that person in return. The process of making sure that something nasty happens to such people is called revenge, or retribution.

The Lex Talionis, or ‘eye for an eye’ style justice, is probably the most satisfying method of handing out criminal sanctions from the standpoint of retribution. If someone shoots you in the leg, you get to shoot him in the leg. If someone kills your mother, you get to kill him. This kind of justice is satisfying to a lot of people because of that strong sense of social reciprocity which they have.

Locking someone in prison for doing something bad is much less satisfying from a retribution standpoint. If someone kills your mother, he gets locked in a prison, funded by your money as a taxpayer. While prisons are horrible in their own ways, the lack of real reciprocity here makes the jail time punishment much less satisfying for victims.

4. Isolation

The idea here is that criminally-inclined people must be removed from the mainstream of society, because otherwise they might harm more people with their actions.

Jail time as a criminal sanction probably advances this objective more effectively than all the other objectives. The criminals are indeed removed from the mainstream of society and prevented from hurting people outside of the jail’s walls.

However, I suspect that we could think of a way to advance this objective in a much less expensive and less brutal way. In Old British Imperial times, many convicted criminals were sentenced to ‘transportation’, meaning a one-way journey to colonies such as America or, especially, Australia. This was the British government’s way of getting people they deemed socially dangerous out of the mainstream of British society. It was much less expensive than locking them up in jails, because with ‘transportation’, all the government really paid for was passage to the colony; no guards, secure buildings, free food or other amenities were necessary.

Of course, the modern world is much more crowded than the world of those times was, so old style ‘transportation’ wouldn’t exactly be feasible. However, there does now exist GPS technology that can track the movement and location of people. People under ‘house arrest’ are often fitted with a bracelet connected to a GPS. If they leave the vicinity around their house, the bracelet alerts the authorities, who then impose harsher criminal sanctions on the perpetrator as a result.

Now, imagine that a whole geographical area, much bigger than a single house, was designed as a ‘criminal area’. Convicted criminals, of a certain variety, could be sent to this area, instead of to jail, equipped with a GPS bracelet, and placed under ‘area arrest’. As long as they stayed within this area, the criminals could move around freely and engage in economic activities freely, just as the ‘criminals’ sent to America and Australia in the past could. If they left the area though, the bracelet would alert the authorities, who could then impose a harsher criminal sanction on the escapee. These areas could potentially become manufacturing districts on the outskirts of cities, or agricultural or resource extraction districts in rural regions. This would seem to be a much less expensive and much less harmful way of isolating criminally-inclined people from the rest of society than locking them up in jail.

5. Deterrence

The idea here is for criminal sanctions to be harsh enough to effectively deter people contemplating criminal actions from actually carrying through with those actions.

Locking people up in jail is indeed a pretty harsh sanction, and hence could serve as a deterrent. Most prisons are pretty horrible places, generally filled with the most unpleasant kinds of people. Most prisoners are bored, humiliated, mentally degraded, and fearful. In many prisons, there is a high incidence of prisoner-on-prisoner violence, especially rape.

The thing with deterrence though is that ideally it should just be a by-product of pursuing the other four objectives, not pursued for its own sake. If criminals are to be forced to pay restitution, to be forced into some kind of ‘rehabilitation’, to be on the wrong end of some retribution, and to be isolated from mainstream society, the sanction is probably already going to be harsh enough to satisfy the deterrence criteria sufficiently. As I argued above, jail time is not a very good way of pursing the other four objectives, and hence any deterrence that it achieves is achieved inefficiently.

In addition, jail time is an expensive form of deterrence. If we really want criminal sanctions to deter, ‘eye for an eye’ justice is the cheapest method.  

A Reformed Criminal Justice System

So, what might a reformed criminal justice system, one that relies much less heavily on jail time as a criminal sanction, look like? Well, it would depend on the variety of criminal under consideration.

1. Thieves and Fraudsters

The main sanction for theft and fraud should be restitution-based. The criminal should be forced to either return or pay back the value of the goods misappropriated to the victim, along with money damages for things like apprehension costs, pain and suffering, lost time, etc… For the first two offenses, the free-range restitution methods of either asset seizure or forced installment payment should be used.

For the third offense onward, it would be advisable to isolate this serial thief from mainstream society for a while. They should be sent to a designated area for thieves and fraudsters and placed under area arrest there for at least a year, or longer if they still haven’t been able to pay the restitution yet. Hopefully, there would be opportunities to do some honest economic activity in the area, which would help pay the restitution, and which perhaps might help with the ‘rehabilitation’ of this serial thief.

2. Occasional Violent Offenders

This category consists of people convicted of a violent criminal offense for whom violence is not a settled way of life, but just a temporary aberration. Many murderers and batterers actually fall into this category. For these people, the violent act in question occurs within the context of a very specific set of emotional, relational, and situational circumstances. The murder of a spouse might happen within the context of a very dysfunctional marriage. A severe battery might occur as an excessive retaliation against the deliverer of a verbal insult. None of this is to excuse the violence, but the circumstances surrounding the violence do have a major impact on the recidivism rate of that criminal (rates which, for this reason, are actually quite low for most types of murderers).

For these cases, the victim (or the victim’s family in the case of murder) should be presented with a few choices when it comes to selecting the sanction to be applied to the convicted criminal. The first is for them to invoke the lex talionis and to carry through with the ‘eye for an eye’ justice that it prescribes. The second is for them to invoke the lex talionis but to offer the criminal a pardon in exchange for a mutually agreed-upon sum of restitution money. The third, in case the criminal doesn’t mind having the talionic penalty applied to them too much, is for the victim to opt for the amount of restitution money set forth in a court-provided schedule of restitution payments for every kind of violent offense.

These three choices should only be available for intentional violent crimes. For accidental violent crimes, such as manslaughter, the lex talionis shouldn’t apply and only the third option, restitution from the court-provided schedule, should be available.

If the victim invokes and carries through with the lex talionis, but it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the supposed criminal was wrongfully convicted, than the wrongfully convicted person or their family should have the right to apply that same penalty to the victim, or to receive the corresponding court-set amount of restitution money. This rule should help rein in the retributive wrath of the victims, especially in cases that aren’t nearly 100% certain. If the victim opted for restitution money, then they should have to pay it back to the wrongfully accused person, with the hopes of recovering it from the real criminal soon instead.          

Occasionally violent offenders who need time to amass the restitution money necessary should be sent to a designated area for occasionally violent offenders and placed under area arrest there until they are able to pay the restitution. Again, hopefully, there would be opportunities to do some honest economic activity in the area, which would help pay the restitution, and which perhaps might help with the ‘rehabilitation’ of this offender.

3. Serially Violent Offenders

Offenders for whom violence is a settled, continuous way of life, such as serial killers and serial sexual predators, need to be permanently removed from mainstream society in order to be prevented from doing any more harm.  If their conviction is very close to certain, they should either be placed under area arrest in a very remote area, such as a part of the Arctic, a remote mountain, or an uninhabited island, or if this is not feasible, just executed outright. The only exception should be if a private individual or group, volunteers to fully fund the incarceration of the offender in a high security prison.

Conclusion

My proposed system might seem bizarre to many, and it certainly is very different from the current system. But I submit that it advances the five main objectives of criminal sanctioning: restitution, rehabilitation, restitution, isolation, and deterrence, far more effectively and cheaply than the current system, which consists mainly of of locking criminals up in prisons.