The law cannot create rights without creating the corresponding obligations. It cannot create rights and obligations without creating offences. It can neither command nor prohibit, without restraining the liberty of individuals.

In his “Principles of the Civil Code,” Jeremy Bentham has some interesting thoughts on the relationship between liberty and property. (h/t Marc) He points out that property laws, like all laws, are infringements of liberty. They are useful infringements, but infringements all the same.

Rights and obligations, though distinct and opposite in their nature, are simultaneous in their origin, and inseparable in their existence. According to the nature of things, the law cannot grant a benefit to any, without, at the same time, imposing a burden on some one else; or, in other words, a right cannot be created in favour of any one, without imposing a corresponding obligation on another. In what manner is a right of property in land conferred on me? By imposing upon every body, except myself the obligation not to touch its produce.
. . .
The proposition, although almost self-evident, that every law is contrary to liberty, is not generally recognised: on the contrary, the zealots of liberty, more ardent than enlightened, have made a conscience of combating it. And how have they done it? They have perverted the language, and will not employ this word in its common acceptation. They speak a language that belongs to no one: they say, “Liberty consists in the power of doing every thing which does not hurt another.” But is this the ordinary meaning of this word? The liberty of doing evil, is it not liberty? If it is not liberty, what is it then? and what word should we make use of in speaking of it? Do we not say that liberty should be taken away from fools, and wicked persons, because they abuse it?

Libertarians are perhaps better regarded as propertarians. Bentham suggests that laws should only be enacted where the burdens they impose are outweighed by the benefits they confer.

The legislator ought to confer rights with pleasure, since they are in themselves a benefit; he ought to impose obligations with repugnance, since they are in themselves an evil. In accordance with the principle of utility, he ought never to impose a burden but that he may confer a benefit of a greater value.

The libertarians I have read don’t seem to bother much with this sort of calculus when it comes to property rights. They take it as an article of faith that property rights always outweigh the corresponding restrictions on liberty. This is so, I think, because of the tendency to regard property rights as “natural rights” — something that comes not from the rational acts of humans but from the ether or something. I’ve never heard a convincing explanation of “natural rights” — mainly just hand waving references to a Creator whose mind is apparently known to those who divine the natural rights. Fact is, in the absence of law, there are no rights; just unenforceable opinions about how things ought to be.

But, I think in the coming years as the nature of work evolves, we’ll have to be more aware of the calculus underpinning our assessment of property rights and the corresponding burdens imposed thereby.

I’ll keep thinking about this. I think it plays into all kinds of major concerns: jobs, debt, taxes, the shrinking middle class, etc.

Update Came across a quote from Adam Smith in his “Wealth of Nations” which seemed appropriate to this post:

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all.”

I had a thought about our current fish-bicycle style employer-based health insurance system where good chunk of the American public’s health insurance is tied to their place of employment. The two things aren’t really connected intuitively. There is no real reason one has to be tied to the other. And I think it results in some unintended consequences – for example, sick people or family members are sick people are likely to stick with a job that’s otherwise unsuitable for them simply so they can keep living and stuff.

But, it does have one salient feature that’s especially resonant in the United States – it at least gives some assurance that we are not insuring lazy people. Laziness might be the cardinal sin in the U.S. And, I do believe, we’d rather have a screwed up, expensive system of health insurance that gives us less for our dollar if it means that no one who is lazier than us gets more than us.

Which might explain why Medicaid is fairly unpopular. Even I’m guilty of it. Within the last month, I’ve grumbled to my wife about some expensive procedure received by someone with whom we’re acquainted. It was something that would possibly wipe us out financially despite being insured if we were to find ourselves in that position. But, since the recipient has Medicaid and nothing to lose, in some ways, they’re better positioned to receive medical care.

Matt Taibbi has a brief article entitled More Evidence Wall Street Is Overpaid.

We’ll be getting to this more next week when we do our piece on Mitt Romney and the private equity business, but one of the most frequently-overlooked problems of the financialization age is that a lot of our brilliant financial engineers are actually pretty damned average, when it comes to playing the market.

Apparently only 11% of hedge funds have outperformed the S&P 500. The huge compensation for people working in this field comes not, it seems, from the market smartly allocating resources in the people who provide the highest return; but more from successful rent seeking by Wall Street firms who more or less control access to the casino.

In addition to being wasteful in terms of asset allocation, our current system is also probably a waste of talent. Taibbi again:

Someday we’ll get back to the time when the really smart guys from the best schools went to work for companies that built actual products, engineered more efficient cars, cured diseases, etc. Because it seems like our best minds kind of suck at investing.

Neil Armstrong passed away yesterday at the age of 82. I always felt a certain affinity for him because: a) he was Neil Armstrong and I was a kid in the 70s; and b) he grew up in the same general geographic area as me: born in Wapakoneta, OH (my family spent some time in Sydney, OH) and went to school at Purdue. But, on some level, I resisted picking him for personal hero worship – not because of any deficiency with him, but because I’ve always had a tendency to gravitate to second banana types or less obvious folks. Neil was the shining star. I felt bad for Michael Collins – go all that way and be the one who has to circle the moon while the other guys get to walk on the moon.

So, I got to wondering why Armstrong’s death hit me so hard. We were driving home from a kid’s soccer game, Amy told me that Twitter was full of the reports of his death. And I felt a real pang of sadness that I never get with your average celebrity. Now, Armstrong was a man with a lot of heroic qualities; but I can’t think that my feelings about his passing had a lot to do with his qualities as an individual. He was heroic, but not uniquely so. He was not John Galt or some sort of ubermensch that went to the moon by himself. In fact, for me, one of the most heroic things about him was his humility in his life following the moon landing. Not many would have conducted themselves with such grace in his place. Still, with respect to the moon landing itself, there were and are other individuals who would have performed as heroically under the same circumstances. My pang of regret at his passing had more to do with what Armstrong represented. He was iconic.

Armstrong was America at its very best. An America that bent itself and its resources on a noble goal. Not to make myself look too wishy-washy, but I recall a moment when I was maybe 26 or 27 and I was thinking about the moon landing. And the full magnitude of that accomplishment really hit me. I cried a little bit. Thinking of the hundreds of thousands of years of humanity that spent nights looking up at the moon and wondering about it. And only now, within a couple of years of my birth, humans – humans from my country no less – had the audacity and the ability to leave the planet and go there. And Neil Armstrong was the tip of that particular spear who first set foot on the damn moon. We live in the future!

But, his passing represents the passing of that time; when we strove and accomplished. It was akin to the feeling when Discovery made that final flight. It wasn’t because I had a particular investment in Discovery; it was, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out, because there was nothing waiting in the wings behind Discovery. When Gemini gave way to Apollo, that was a moment of excitement, not melancholy. Similarly, part of what hurts about Armstrong’s passing is that there do not seem to be astronauts waiting in the wings to repeat or advance what Armstrong and NASA did in 1969. I read that the youngest person who walked on the moon was born in 1938. His passing is a reminder that, in many ways, we have become a lesser, meaner people; less inclined or able to strive together toward great things.

Rest in Peace Commander.

Getting ahead of the upcoming session and drafted a bill for supporters of the Akin distinction about legitimate/forcible/actual rape:

SECTION 1. IC 35-42-4-1, AS ADDED BY P.L.148-1976, SECTION 2, AND AMENDED BY P.L.340, SEC.36; P.L.320-1983, SEC.23; P.L.16-1984, SEC.19; P.L.297-1989, SEC.1; P.L.31-1998, SEC.3., IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE UPON PASSAGE]: Sec. 1. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a person who knowingly or intentionally has sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex when:
(1) the other person is compelled by force or imminent threat of        force;
(2) the other person is unaware that the sexual intercourse is occurring; or
(3) the other person is so mentally disabled or deficient that consent to sexual intercourse cannot be given;
commits rape, a Class B felony.
(b) An offense described in subsection (a) is a Class A felony if:
(1) it is committed by using or threatening the use of deadly force;
(2) it is committed while armed with a deadly weapon;
(3) it results in serious bodily injury to a person other than a defendant; or
(4) the commission of the offense is facilitated by furnishing the victim, without the victim’s knowledge, with a drug (as defined in IC 16-42-19-2(1)) or a controlled substance (as defined in IC 35-48-1-9) or knowing that the victim was furnished with the drug or controlled substance without the victim’s knowledge.
(c) If pregnancy results from the sexual intercourse described in subsection (a), such pregnancy shall create a rebuttable presumption that the offense did not occur.

Who wants to introduce it?

This intro to an Evansville Courier Press editorial caught my eye:

Maybe we’re overstating it, but it seems that the more we learn about the universe — and we are learning a lot — it seems the less we know.

Well, now, that’s the beauty of it all, isn’t it? With the scientific method, curiosity, and a sense of wonder, the universe is like a cornucopia of puzzles to solve.

Specifically prompting this editorial:

Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy — 5.7 billion light-years fitting anybody’s definition of “distant” — that spits out new stars at, well, an astronomical rate.

The galaxy is creating about 740 new stars a year, compared to about one a year for our own Milky Way.

Astronomers are nicknaming the galaxy Phoenix because, at 6 billion years old, it was thought to be dead, but it came back to life in a way that gave scientists new mysteries to puzzle over.

The universe is vast, and we are small; but we’re getting bigger. Compare the first couple million years of human progress versus the last five hundred or so. (Unless you believe that humans have only been around for 6,000 years, in which case, this discussion is probably already blasphemous.) If we can hold it together long enough to travel faster and get a foothold on other planets, our species could really make something of itself. Right now, however, we’re kind of making a mess of our nest on the planet Earth; and it’s an open question how long we’ll have the resources to continue progressing.

Chris Sikich and Michael Boren have an article entitled National Guard leader draws heat for promoting religious group. Apparently Maj. General R. Martin Umbargar, adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard filmed a promotional spot for Centurion’s Watch, (pdf) an evangelical Christian group, while using his title and wearing his uniform. The spot itself seems fairly innocuous.

In the video, he says: “I would say Centurion’s Watch is a wonderful way that you can help. Any donation or resource that you can give this organization — it’s faith-based, it’s wanting to keep families together with the stresses and strains of being apart, being in harm’s way, risking their lives for this, for this country. I can’t think of a better organization that you can support. So if you want to give back, if you want to have some way you can help, I would highly encourage that you support this organization.”

However, by doing this in uniform and in his capacity as the leader of Indiana’s National Guard, the general appears to have violated a number of regulations. (Here is a graphic showing the allegedly violated regulations.) And, the watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is seeking to have those regulations enforced.

If this was happening in a vacuum, I probably wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But, I’m a little more inclined to be wary of this kind of promotion in light of the disturbing things I’ve heard coming out of, in particular, the Air Force Academy. I don’t know if it has been coming from the same groups or if the information I’ve been seeing is reliable. But, if it were the case that a particular religious faction were becoming dominant in the U.S. military, that would be bad news. Anyway, this is the type of thing I’ve read about the USAFA:

The email describes a group of cadets who don’t fit the Protestant evangelical stereotype; they’re Catholics, mainstream Protestants, LGBT, atheists or agnostic. They tell Weinstein that his earlier advice to “trust the system” and take their grievances up the chain of command has failed, and they are forced to pretend to be something they are not. In order to achieve and prosper in the academy, these cadets pretend to be evangelicals and even attend Bible studies to avoid being “outed.”

“Despite the Cadet Honor Code we all lie about our lives,” the anonymous cadet writes. “We have to. We don’t have a choice. Thus we are all ‘invisible’ to our tormentors. They will never find us. My own parents don’t know. Only my fiancée knows and he/she is one of my classmates and a fellow member of our underground group. I keep ‘Christian’ books and ‘Christian’ CD’s in my room so others will be fooled and leave me alone and not suspect that I’m not actually with the USAFA ‘Christianity is the Only Way’ program here, even though I consider myself to be a Christian.”

The Indiana National Guard is a long way from Colorado Springs, so maybe it’s not fair to associate the two things.

Suzanah Crouch, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article on some back and forth on the impact of Indiana’s “right to work” law. Dennis Dan Hasler, of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, says it’s going gangbusters – he collected quotes from company officials and everything who said the law was a significant consideration. Meanwhile, Nancy Guyott of the AFL-CIO pointed to at least one of those companies and said they were already coming to Indiana, so all the information provided by the IEDC is suspect.

I don’t think there is any reliable way to know at this point. Give the law 5 years and see if Hoosiers have more and better improvement in employment and wages over their more union-friendly counterparts in other states. Union folks are going to be skeptical of any reports that new jobs are “right to work” related; and the IEDC – no stranger to puffing up its job numbers – is going to characterize any new employment in the state as related to “right to work”. Friends and well-wishers of the current administration in those companies are likely willing to say “yeah, sure, right to work was a consideration.”

The Guardian has an article about the UK’s soft economy. I’m not an economist, but this looks a lot like what I understand Keynes to have warned against. Austerity leads to less economic activity leads to lower tax receipts leads to more austerity, etc.

July is usually a buoyant month for tax receipts, but this year the corporate sector has been hit hard by the downturn. ONS figures showed North Sea oil and gas output has been unusually low, leading to lower profits and a cut in tax payments.

The impact of a near 20% drop in corporation tax receipts was to push government receipts down 0.8% in July on the same period last year.

Government spending, meanwhile, grew 5.1% on the previous year, mostly on welfare payments.

O.k., it wasn’t this day, but it was August 19, 1953. Laurence Lewis has a good summary up discussing the American-engineered coup in Iran back then.

The short version is that Iran’s fledgling democracy had produced Mohammed Mossadegh, making him prime minister. He was making rumblings about nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (what would become BP). The Brits didn’t like that, and the Americans went along with them. So, the CIA tasked Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Teddy) with deposing Mossadegh. He did so successfully and the second Shah returned to power and brutally put down his secular opposition for the next couple of decades. When he was engaged in his brutality, the Iranians remembered that they had American meddling to thank for it. When the revolution against the Shah came, it took the form of a hyper religious movement led by the Ayatollah Khomeini and, the early years, featured American hostages.

Our whole relationship with the Middle East is seemingly colored by that 1953 coup. I don’t know enough about the history to know whether we would likely have had friendly relations with that part of the world in the absence of the coup. But it certainly didn’t seem to help anything.